The safety and health of our homes becomes more important during the winter period as we seek to secure a comfortable environment. And, in the absence of key understandings for maintaining a desired outcome, the results are a lack of heating, closed windows, drying clothes indoors etc
An opportunity exists for replacing blame with “did you know?” aligned to everyday, simplistic and recognisable tasks that have been shown to improve our living environments. Such tasks have reduced time, money and resources spent on maintaining our homes alongside costly repairs and any reworks.
Say hello to the future of safer and healthier homes for you and your tenants with our new Property Health App.
This unique platform delivers key benefits including:
- Safer and healthier homes by promoting wellbeing.
- Damp and mould management protocols to swiftly address and control these issues for long-term outcomes.
- Independent expert-level guidance provided in an easy and understandable manner for timely resolutions.
- Reduced time and money spent on numerous callouts, maintenance works and reworks that have not achieved the desired outcome.
An overview of each key benefit upholds their delivery with greater yet simpler understanding of each aspect.
Promoting wellbeing serves to underpin landlord-tenant relations with a greater understanding of what, where and why commencing with recognising damp and mould are two separate issues.
Damp is generally aligned to a physical issue with either a leak, water ingress, rising damp etc, whereas mould is a symptom that requires an understanding of the resultant pattern and its location.
Landlords and residents will learn from information in the 24/7 readily available app why it has developed, where it has and what its key nutrients are for its ability to develop.
Alongside this recognisable reasoning, are key methods to try and adapt for timely improvements.
Managing damp and mould-related issues is a key undertaking in order to reduce its potential for secondary related issues.
One key element undertaken in the majority of cases is to clean, remove or paint over the mould. Each one of these actions should not be started unless the root causes (there are always more than one) are diagnosed.
Suffice to add, cleaning mould requires bespoke products and not bleach- related items. Removing it must be undertaken in a controlled manner to contain spore release and painting over mould does not deal with the outbreak and its ability to redevelop elsewhere.
The Property Health App has all our key information and proven findings embedded in the Knowledge Base such that its immediate availability serves to underpin the latest regulatory requirement for timely reviews and remediations for these issues.
it is fully recognised that typically vapour pressure differential, relative humidity, surface temperature, ambient air temperatures, specific humidities etc, alongside ventilation adequacy, purge and passive ventilation and everyday moisture generation etc, are key to developing defined root causes for damp and mould.
The result is all the key technical requirements for a healthy environment are embraced in the platform with recognisable understandings of each and how they can, and do, lead to the reported problems.
Many property-based organisations have developed damp and mould strategies for dealing with this annual phenomenon and, while this is a positive step forward, in the absence of key understandings, our experience has shown many ‘improvements’ following site surveys have not been successful with their expected outcomes.
In 2023, the government estimated that in social housing:
• 8,000 homes had the most serious damp and mould issues.
• 40,000–60,000 homes had serious damp and mould issues.
• 120,000–160,000 homes had noticeable damp and mould.
These figures would suggest many residents live with damp and mould on an everyday basis with a potential understanding it is a ‘normal’ environment.
The Property Health App serves to uphold key knowledge aspects for all who embrace the platform with a Did You Know? section that, once understood, has shown to improve internal atmospheres and everyday living activities with recognisable traits, for example:
Did you know…
• ALL atmospheres hold an amount of moisture, both internal and external.
• Relative humidity alone does not indicate the level of dampness in an environment.
• High internal vapour pressure moves to areas of low vapour pressure, such that moisture generation in kitchens and bathrooms moves to other areas of the building via open doors.
• 4-5 people asleep for approximately eight hours generates between 1.3-1.6 litres of atmospheric moisture, cooking can produce between 2.3–2.8 litres and drying clothes can produce between 4-5 litres.
• Surface condensation is the most common cause of mould in the UK; however, it can grow on moisture-sensitive materials without condensation ie leather, clothes, paper etc.
• A musty or damp odour in a property suggests mould is currently active and needs to be located.
• One cubic inch of mould can contain up to 10m spores.
• A condensation “season” is widely known as being between September and April and roughly aligns with closed windows and heating requirements.
• Most moulds require between 5 and 12 days to proliferate within constant conditions.
• Removing mould with bleach does not remove the mycelium (root system) and can grow back in a reduced timeline.
• There is no safe level of mould spores in the atmosphere.
