Have you ever found mold in your home? If yes, where was the most…surprising or interesting place you found mold in?
Pictures are welcome but please put a warning at the top of your comment if it’s especially grotesque 
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Nothing too crazy! But I usually find mold in my cheese, my bread, and my compost bin (especially in the summer).
When I was living abroad, I would find mold in the shower (it was very humid). I ended up needing to scrub down the shower every week and dry it with a fan. Not something I’ve had to do in North America though luckily!
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When I planted grass for my cat I must’ve introduced some mold or fungus with my hands, so I was surprised to find some white fuzzy stuff growing after a few days. Not sure if that qualifies as mold 
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That sure sounds like mold! Hopefully your cat didn’t eat it
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I have a window frame in my bedroom that is totally water logged and potentially moldy or at least decomposing! Oregon can be a bit damp throughout the year so it was bound to happen sooner or later. I think we’re going to wait til spring to take the window out and rebuild the frame. I wake up stuffy quite frequently though and thought maybe this could be contributing to it.
Other than that, I came home from a weekend trip once to find these tiny yellow mushrooms growing in the soil of some of my house plants! I never saw the same ones again! It was the weirdest thing.
Sorry - off the mold topic slightly here!
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Those of us that work in the hvac field never use the “m” word. We call it organic growth.
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Interesting! Why is that? 
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I read recently that many people in Japan develop allergies over time because of the plants growing there and the humid climate (probably fair for parts o North America as well). I think most people don’t know they have allergies thinking it’s just a stuffy nose.
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In my previous place I lived in, the washing machine had the strangest issue of causing mildew on my clothes. Little small dots would appear on my clothes which really upset me. I like to air dry my clothes in a separate room but it was causing such damp smell in the room and I feel like it was effecting the air quality. I never had this issue before, only in that apartment.
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This actually describes me to a T. Especially for the past few years with the dreaded C…I’ve never actually noticed how frequently stuffed up my nose gets 
Not sure what exactly it is I’m allergic to but I read an article saying that in the fall, when leaves fall and start to decompose on the ground, there tends to be a lot of mold growing and releasing spores into the air, leading to allergies. But it’s not even fall anymore and I still get a stuffy nose pretty frequently 
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Most technicians are taught to exclude labeling your fuzzy roommates to prevent any possible liability.
Hard to test samples in the field and not alot of labs available to a.c. techs. Petri sample… because science-based facts are better rhan educated guesses .
Building’s with high humidity are more prone to harmful growth. Of course anywhere there is a mix of cold and hot there is a higher chance of condensation. Moist environments are breading ground for new biology experiments
Remember… Not all biological growth is the same. That “m” word could
create fear and panic when its only a mislabeled harmless fungus amoungus . Better stick to unindentified organic growth labels untill we add spore matching test equipment to our arsenal of tools and knowledge.
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interlocking foam exercise mats on basement floor!!
This is going back about 12yrs when my son was only 3. I had wanted to make a play area in the basement as it was the only ‘empty’ space for us to have the toys and books. II bought several packs of those interlocking foam floor mats (approx 1/2" thick x 2ft x 2ft) and covered the concrete floor with them. After about two months i felt it smelled ‘musty’ in that area and so i lifted one of the tiles and found they were soaking wet on the underside and molding. So i ripped them all out and disposed of them. washed the floor multiple times with bleach water and it was good. i found out that my foundation wall has been leaking and had that repaired.
After that, I insulated the basement walls on a separate quest to make the home more efficient. Well to my dismay, 3yrs ago, I came down to the basement during a rainstorm to find a stream running across the floor. Tracked it back to behind one of the insulated panels and found a leak i was not aware of when i insulated the walls. So i had to pull down a few insulated panels and found mold on the concrete face of the wall.
Needless to say, it is my experience that basements are not good places to be. However, if you are like me and live in 700sq.ft. with other lifeforms (i.e. children, pets, etc.) you tend to run out of room and find that you use the basement a lot.
Another time, I discovered mold behind the window trim in my bathroom. The framing had been installed poorly around the window and the trim had unknowingly been allowing water into the wall. The easy solution there was simply take the window out of the bathroom. I cut out all the old rotten moldy structure and trim, and boarded up the void where the window was. Re-finished the inside and outside of the wall and problem solved!
At this point I haven’t had mold in several years. No one ever said home ownership was easy!!
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Thank you for sharing, this all makes a lot of sense! We definitely don’t want anyone to panic unnecessarily.
I also really like your line about how “science-based facts are better than educated guesses” - an awesome mantra to live by
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Oh, no! What an unfortunate surprise Glad to hear that you were able to clean and repair the area.
During COVID we also converted a room in the basement to a home gym and have some interlocking foam mats on the floor…this is a good reminder for me to periodically check underneath them…
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Some techs guess, the best ones test.
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Can you calculate how much other lifeforms contribute to the IAQ? 
Like how much filtration/ventilation power is needed to clean the air per lifeform
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@Summer LOL that was just my way of poking fun at my son and pets and 700sq.ft… they’re cramping my style 
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I’m keeping the term “lifeform” 
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i found mold on my carpets that were kept in the storage area, unwashed for only 2 weeks, and i was pretty surprised because the humidity levels were just 50-60% but i managed to get rid of the mold with my detergent powder only
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