Why Is Moisture Control Important?

It can be a pain to try and deal with unwanted moisture in your home. Not only does that moisture make your home less comfortable to live in, but it can put the structural integrity of your home’s essential supports at risk.  

The moisture that makes its way into your home is more than just a temporary inconvenience. As mentioned, uncontrolled levels of moisture in your basement, crawl space, or around your foundation can rapidly destabilize the supports you need to keep your home upright. There’s more to the issue than that, however. The longer you let unprecedented levels of moisture into your home, the more likely it is that both your home’s value and your family’s health will suffer. 

Water Damage and Your Home’s Market Value 

Moisture does not play nice with your home’s structural supports. As water, be it in liquid or gaseous form, makes its way into your home, it is readily absorbed by wooden and metal structures used to hold up your floors and walls. Over time, that moisture can facilitate not only the growth of mold in those supports but the general weakening of both your walls and floors. In turn, the hydrostatic pressure that said moisture generates can cause cracks and leaks to appear throughout your home, generally making conditions therein worse. 

This kind of damage isn’t just inconvenient at the moment. If you want to put your home on the market at some point in the near future, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve done as much as you can to keep that unwanted moisture out of your crawl space, basement, or foundation. If you don’t, and you choose not to treat the damage therein, you can lose up to 30 percent of your home’s market value. 

Water Damage and Your Family’s Health 

There’s more to the problem of moisture, however, than just the value of your home. Moisture can rapidly compromise your family’s health. Any residents with allergies or respiratory issues can see their conditions rapidly worsen, as high levels of humidity can make it more difficult for these parties to breathe. Even family members without these conditions can see them develop over time, especially if you don’t make a point to attend to the damage that you’re facing. 

Note that high levels of humidity make it all the easier for mold to take root in your home. Mold comes in many forms, some benign and some toxic. More often than not, the mold that prefers to take root in the dark and untreated parts of your home is going to pose an immediate threat to your and your family’s health. Before long, you may find yourself contending with a persistent cough or other similar respiratory problems. Parties who live in mold-infested homes for an extended period of time can even find themselves contending with long-term lung damage later in life.