Blogs

Its very satisfying when you walk into a home, look at the water damage, document the affected area with an infrared camera, and conclude that there is a plumbing leak in the wall, only to find out later that you were right-on! I originlly suspected a roof leak, but since the arera of concern was on the lower level, and the upper level had no damage, the water had to be coming from the lower level. We opened a small section of drywall to check it out and guess what.... I was dead-on! There was a plumbing leak that was spraying water on the inside of the wall cavity.

I have a project I'm working on out in west Sonoma County where water was getting trapped under the crawlspace causing mold growth on the subfloor and framing, and resulting in elevated mold spore levels inside the house. The home was built in the 1930's and, at that time, it was constructed on a raised foundation with at least two feet of clearance under the house. Today, the clearance under the house is about 6 inches because gophers and moles have been tunneling and piling up dirt for over 70 years. The level of the ground inside the crawlspace is about 18" higher than outside the foundation. The owner has had two laborers digging out the crawlspace for 4 days and is about half way done. I have never seen anything like this before.

In the past six weeks, I have had five clients that were all burned by the same company. This company will come out to your house and inspect for mold, then collect air and surface samples and will promise you a protocol (scope of work for remediation). Their protocol is actually an estimate for them to do the work. If you try to contact them to get more info... good luck. The only thing they're interested in is getting the job! Thats highly unethical, to say the least, but what makes it worse is that they also read their own samples. The lab report says "reviewed by (I really cant print their name) Laboratory", but they're actually doing the lab work themselves. In 4 of the 5 cases where I followed after this company, I did not find a mold problem at all.

There seems to be a lot of confusion around viable sampling and when its appropriate to collect viables. The most common sampling method is the non-viable sampling method. I use Allergenco D sporetrap cassettes, on a buck pump calibrated to 15 liters per minute for 5 minutes. During the 5 minute sample, 75 liter of air pass through the cassette, where airborne particles are impacted on an internal slide that is coated with an adhesive substance. I send them off to a lab where a mycologist opens up the cassette and looks at the slide to see what stuck in the adhesive.

A nice lady from Santa Rosa called me and said "I have toxic mold growing in my home... what do I do?". I went out to the home for an inspection and found some minor mold growth on the bedroom ceiling. It was obvious that the roof was leaking (several shingles were missing from the last storm). This type of problem is easily fixed...