The Cause of the Mold

I have received many questions about the cause of the mold, and from what I understand the cause was threefold:


1. Roof Issues. On August 5th our roof was patched - sounds great right? We have since learned that by patching the roof we essentially left no escape for the water that had come through the holes. Rather than having the water evaporate out of the house (leaving through one of the holes in the roof) it was now trapped within the home- adding a lot of access moisture to the air.


2. The HVAC System. HVAC systems run return air vents that circulate air through a filter that will catch and clear the moisture before redistributing the air back out. Typically such return vents are connected to the filter, so all the air is cleaned before released back into the house. Our unit however, has two return vents that are not connected to the filtration unit (one that dumps air in the chapter room the other in a storage closet). What does this mean? From what I gather, the filtration unit tries to suck all of the air into it to clean, but simply cannot get it all. Thus, leaving moisture in the basement, essentially providing mold with a platform to grow.


3. The Icing on the Cake: an EXTREMELY hot and humid summer.


From what I know & have learned it was a "perfect storm" of sorts. We are looking into ways to fix the HVAC unit so ALL air is filtered and redistributed, so that we don't have moisture just sitting in the basement in the future. We are doing all that we can to make sure this never happens again. 


Hope this helps answer some questions!