The questions that do not fit on a service page
Written to be useful whether or not you ever call us. If a guide here does not tell you something you can act on this week, it should not be here.
Written for the houses we actually work in, not for search engines.
More are coming. If there is something you wish somebody had explained to you before you had a mold problem, tell us and we will write it.
Which one is yours
Four situations that need four different answers. Reading the wrong one costs you an afternoon; reading the right one occasionally saves a rebuild.
- Water came in and it is still this weekThis is the only one of the four with a clock on it. Porous material that stays wet crosses from a drying problem into a removal problem somewhere around the two-day mark, and the difference between those two jobs is measured in thousands of dollars. If anything is wet right now, the first 48 hours is the one to read, and read it before you start pulling carpet.
- You have quotes in hand and they do not agreeThe useful test is whether the spread is a percentage or a multiple. Quotes within a few hundred dollars of each other are pricing the same job and you can choose on other grounds. Quotes that are several times apart are not, and no amount of staring at the totals will tell you which one is right. Comparing three quotes sets out what has to be written down — affected square footage, what comes out versus what gets cleaned, who does the clearance — before the numbers can be compared at all.
- The dark staining is on the outside of the houseMost of what people photograph on a stucco wall and send us is not a remediation problem at all — it is algae, or it is the shaded north side doing what shaded north sides do in this climate. The stuff on your stucco covers how to tell those apart from the pattern that does mean water is getting into the wall, which is the one worth acting on.
- The house is about to sit empty for monthsA closed-up Florida house with the air conditioning set to a comfortable number is the single most reliable way to come back to growth on every north-facing wall. Closing a Florida home for the summer is about humidity setpoints and what to leave running, and it is worth ten minutes before you drive north.
What a guide cannot do
None of these will tell you whether what you are looking at is mold. That takes somebody in the room with a moisture meter, and on a property where remediation is likely it takes a licensed assessor who is not the company hoping to do the removal.
They also will not size a scope. Square footage, what comes out versus what gets cleaned, and whether the plenum has to be replaced are decisions made against readings, not against a photograph. If a guide leaves you fairly sure you have a problem, the next step is somebody looking at it — ours or anybody else’s.
And there is one situation where reading is the wrong move entirely: standing water that has not been removed, sewage involvement, or somebody in the house with asthma or a compromised immune system. Those are phone calls. Tell us what you are seeing or ring the number at the top of the page.
Tell us what you are seeing and we will tell you what it is
We come out, look at what is happening, and write you a scope you could hand to another company. Walkthrough rather than assessment on purpose — assessment is the separately licensed job we refer out. If it turns out you do not need remediation, we will say so — that is the most useful thing we can tell you.