White Powder On Wood In Attic

Below is a photo of white mold growing on wood rafters in an attic.

White powder on wood in attic.

The photo at page top shows white attic mold on the roof sheathing and rafters and some brown or black mold on the attic side of ceiling drywall where we pulled back insulation. The vast majority of attic mold is caused by humidity which is why white mold growth is common here. Attic sheathing and framing. It is that dry.

White mold growth on joist. The white powder wipes off readily with just your hand the vertical line was created by doing this. If it were on crawlspace concrete i would call it efflourescense. As white mold spreads it eats away at the material it is growing on.

The white powder that you have shown i have seen on many of my inspections i received some feed back from a mold specialist that indicated to me that it was a type of mold that had dried up and offered no harm as long as it was not present in the living areas. In the attic photograph at left we show a mix of green gray and white attic mold. Although it can look similar to mildew at first white mold is more harmful since it can grow within organic materials not just at the surface. The spots can be powdery and filmy in nature.

This is why it s less common to see mold growth on base trim after a flooding event. There appears to be no damage to the truss material and it is only on the trusses not on the sheathing and seems top be localized over the attic entry and. After all some mold shows up as a white powdery material but more often in a crawl space than an attic. Once the colonies form white molds will appear as white spots on a surface.

It is difficult to declare this one substance over another simply based on one s senses of sight or smell. White mold tends to grow in high humidity environments rather than areas suffering from total saturation. The best temperatures in which mold grows is between 2 and 40 degrees celsius.