Advice about mold remediation
Looking for advice about next steps in dealing with a mold problem!
We recently hired Adviro (a test-only company) to test the air in our home, and it turns out that basically ALL the air has "high" levels of mold (not black mold, but still mold) requiring immediate attention. I'm pretty sure that they will give me a list of remediation companies, but I thought I'd start here first. Do I go STRAIGHT to a remediation company -- in which case, which ones would you recommend? Or do I go to Mold Busters and have a more detailed analysis of WHY we have mold before bringing someone in to fix anything? (And does anyone think it's actually pretty normal to have a good amount of mold in the air and that except for our one wet wall and our one really musty closet, we don't actually need to be that worried?)
Any advice would be much appreciated!
Parent Replies
I am in the process of finding someone to redo the floors in the downstairs of my house due to water damage and I'm very concerned there is mold under them, so I will be following the responses to this post as well as relying on the recommendations of my flooring installer (who has encountered this before). I had mold illness in the past and it took years of my life to recover, so I personally would be very conservative about mold. Especially if you have children in the house and/or know any of you have the gene for mold illness.
One wet wall and a musty closet doesn't sound to me like a "small" problem. A wet wall is very big problem and could be causing mold throughout your house. I'm not familiar with Mold Busters and the work they do, but whether they help you or another company helps you, you definitely want to find out the source of the mold. No clean up is really possible without addressing the underlying cause.
I can also recommend integrative medicine practitioners who can help with a mold detox protocol; it's a good idea to go through a protocol even if you and your family members aren't currently experiencing any mold illness symptoms.
I'm so sorry you are going through this. We had a major mold issue in our home in 2016. My son was very ill. We had no idea we had mold until his doctor diagnosed him. Long story short, we had slow water leaks from two upstairs bathrooms going into all our walls. I spoke to Neil Nathan (author of Mold and Mycotoxins book) and he recommended using 5-Star Restoration. They were incredible. They found the exact source of the problem, enclosed it, removed it, treated my home, and cleaned my belongings. Our home was completely mold free on all testing afterwards. Tony, the lead at 5-Star Restoration was incredible. I still call him for any water damage/leaks to this day (7 years later). If you need a CIH, Bill Weber in WC at Avelar is amazing and will work with 5-star in ensuring that you are mold free. Many companies don't properly remediate so be careful who you use as your health is at stake. Mold is such an awful problem.
I'm just jumping in here to answer my own question: Anyone with any kind of mold issue should, without question, go STRAIGHT to Cheryl Pearce at Mold Busters! She is so great: calm in a storm (of mold), knowledgeable, and extraordinarily thorough. We haven't started the professional remediation component of our job yet, but she's given us lots of tips about what to do in the meantime and will shortly be giving suggestions about who can do the bigger remediation work. So happy with her mold-busting service!
And further jumping in here, again in response to my own post, to add that Mold Buster's careful testing yielded so much more specific and useful results than the first company we hired, pointing to isolated spots requiring remediation, while letting me relax in the knowledge that the rest of the house was actually fine. Cheryl gave us prompt and helpful recommendations for professionals to help us quickly take care of the problem!