This is a type of fungus that can grow in the basement and most of the times is harmless but left untreated it can cause health problems. It can go from allergic reactions and all the way to outright poisonous. For this reason you’ll have to find the mold quickly before it gets out of hand.
Finding the mold
One way to identify it is by the stench but only for some types of mold. In the same time you can start and check the spots where the chances for the mold to appear are the highest.
Maybe this way you will stop it before it spreads too much.
Some well known things about mold are that it needs a wet environment to grow and it feeds with common household materials. Thanks to this information you can look first around pipes and near plywood, drywall, furring strips if you have something like this. If you can, you need to check the basement for mold once a week having a flashlight with you for better illumination.
If it happens for the basement to get flooded, the walls will get infested with mold spores that will remain dormant until the next time they will find water. Don’t get excited too much if after a flood the mold didn’t appear because the spores can remain dormant for a long time and can develop after several years.
When you find mold, you should be careful and take some precautionary measures. You are not allowed to inhale or touch it with any part of your body. Mold can be seen and identified from distance so there is no need to get close to it.
How to identify basement mold
Color can be a factor by which the mold can be identified. It can have any color that ranges between light gray and black. The ones that have the color closer to black are Stachybotrys or Cladosporium and the ones that have the color closer to light grey are Aspergillus or Fusarium. If the texture is slimy, the mold is likely to be Strachybotrys. In what concerns the other two types of mold, if it grows in disjoint circular patches then you have to deal with Aspergillus.
What to do next
If you can, you should test the mold in a lab to be sure what kind it is. When it comes to removing it, you can do this yourself or get help from a professional.