Latest / Bozeman Builders Science / Ep. 1: Mike Schaan - Deep Dive on Mold

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Ep. 1: Mike Schaan - Deep Dive on Mold · Bozeman Builders Science

• Ian White: Welcome back to the Bozeman Builder Science Podcast. I'm your host Ian, and today we're going to talk about mold. I'm sitting down with Mr. Mike Sean of Restoration Consultants. Now, before we get into today's conversation, I wanted to give some context about Mike because I forgot to ask for his background until much later in the episode. And it's important that you understand the depth of experience behind what Mike has to say. Mike spent roughly thirty years working with buildings affected by water, mold, fire, and smoke. He began in property restoration where he spent fifteen years managing crews and overseeing everything from residential projects to major catastrophe work. That includes drying hospitals and performing mold remediation in schools following hurricanes. For more than 15 years since then, he's worked in the consulting side. And Mike has now examined thousands of structures over the course of his career. It is important to note that we are not doctors, and this is not medical advice. Mike is intentional about the limits of his expertise. He's not a certified industrial hygienist. Mike's specialty is in the built environment and what happens to it when it's affected by fire, water, mold, and other problems. What stood out to me during our conversation though, wasn't just Mike's experience. It's how seriously he takes the responsibility that comes with it. He continues to study the latest research, technologies, and practices. And underneath all of that is someone who genuinely cares about helping people create healthier homes. So with that in mind, let's dive in. Mike: maybe you go online and you read about Well, we'll come out and we'll fog your home. Or we have this Shazam chemical that we can spray and it will take care of your mold problem. That's very much untrue because mold remediation 101 is source removal. It used to be thought that mold spores were the only Component of fungal growth that cause people to get sick. But that's not true. Mold is basically it's comprised of three different parts of the fungal structure. So you have the mold spores, which are I always use the analogy of broccoli. To describe more broccoli. Ian: I love Mike: Yeah, I love broccoli and it's easy to think about. So and it looks so much like mold spores, most typical mold spores. So The seeds, those are the mold spores. The broccoli seeds are the mold spores. And then you have basically the trunk and then the root structure. And it's called mycelium. And mycelium and hyphae. And that's how the organism takes nutrients out of the growth substrate. So if it's drywall paper, cardboard, something like that, that's how it's drawn into the the body. It used to be thought that mold spores were. what really made people not feel well. But it can be now parts of the entire structure. So even when we do fungal analysis, I don't do the fungal analysis. I always it's goes to an independent, third party, objective laboratory. and what they've gotten used to doing now in the last few years is also analyzing for and reporting hyphal fragments or hyphal structure. Because trunk. That Ian: And that's the truth. Mike: yeah, that's the trunk and the root structure, that that whole system. And because now it is, you know, I can look at lab results and and I can just look at how much mold is in that sample or was found in that sample, what kind of mold. But now I also look at hyphal fragments because that tells me a little bit of the history of that organism. hy hyphal fragments can tell you it gives you another clue into recent or past mold growth. So that's why you know, this air sampling that we do and everything like that. I always have a little bit more data interpretation than most because I want a more clear picture when you go out or or when I go out and do a a mold investigation. I unless I can tear off ceilings and walls, we truly don't know what we're up against. But by doing an infrared inspection first, so I always look for moisture. And an infrared camera, some people think it looks through walls, it doesn't. They also think it looks for moisture, it doesn't. It's looking for cool surface temperatures. And when a building component gets wet, it will start to evaporate. It wants that moisture in that wet drywall, for example, to go into the air or whatever is drier. That evaporation process is a very much a cooling process. So when we use the infrared camera, we're working for very cold, abnormally cold temperatures compared to the rest of the building structure. Any of those anomalies can indicate, you know, potential source of moisture. So whenever I d identify those, then I'll use a moisture meter, an actual moisture detection instrument. I either place it on the the surface or I have one that has pins in it and you stick it in and it tells you, okay, number one, is it wet? And number two, what's the moisture content? Is there enough moisture there to support mold growth? So Ian: So there are times where the thermal camera, from my understanding, gives you the clues as far as where to investigate more. It's not necessarily gonna guarantee that there's mold there, but now you have narrowed things down versus just looking at everything as a whole. Mike: That's exactly correct. And it was really from the water restoration and the mold remediation industries, really transformative. Because imagine going into a big vaulted living room, for example. And so the peak of the vault is 16, 18 feet up off the floor. And a customer reports: well, every time I go into my living room, it smells really wet, really musty, smells like mold to me. But they can't see anything. It's just a suspicion at that point. So the very first thing I do, even before I set up a pump, is because we know that moisture is the number one proponent that we need for mold growth. Is okay, do we have some water source here that should not be here that's causing mold to grow in a cavity that's producing these odors? And what we're smelling, they're called MVOCs. Microbial volatile organic compounds. An easy way that I remember what they are is it's basically the digestive burps of some type of mold growth. So I'll look with the infrared first, or with the infrared first, looking for cold spots that would indicate, okay, this could be a water source. It could be, you know, if we have the water there, okay, now it could be part of that mold reservoir that we need to identify. So but imagine doing that with an infrared camera where you can scan a room of that size in what half a minute. Back in the day, you would have a moisture meter, you know, imagine like something the size of a cell phone and a ladder and say, Okay, go find go go find the wet spot. Yeah. Ian: Go find the way. Mike: Which exactly. Exactly. So the infrared camera was really in my line of work, really helpful. Yeah. Ian: Are there other tools s c you've been doing this for a while? Mike: Yeah. Ian: So in the last thirty years, thermal camera huge one else. Mike: What else? You know, moisture meters have come a long way. In fact, you can pretty much buy a moisture meter for every substrate, meaning so one of the things that I do is I check out concrete slabs. There's a very specific way to check out concrete slabs for moisture content. I have a special meter for that. you know, there's one most meters are geared toward wood, but then they have some conversions that you can also add drywall and ceramic tile and things like that. So moisture meters have come a long way. even air sampling pumps back in the day. You had a tripod, you had the pump, you had your extension cord, you had your hose, and it was all separate pieces. And you carried I carried it around it. It looked like a big tackle box. And I would pull all of this stuff out. Sometimes I was unable to do an inspection because there's no power. Yeah. And so I mean, I bought a generator for work. So that I could run air sampling pumps if I felt the need to for both mold and and asbestos testing. So now the pump that I have is it's really nice. It's it's a tripod and then a plastic carrying box. And inside that box, there's the pump. It's battery operated. it lasts over 90 hours on one charge. so I can go anywhere and collect a sample. It carries all of the sampling media, the different cassettes that I would like to use, or do I want to use surface swabs or tape lifts? And so even the the ease of the instruments is is really fascinating. Something else too, Ian, that has really helped a lot. Two things actually as I think about them. number one is the medical community or medical information is catching up to what everybody suspected but could not prove. And when I say that, what I mean is an example is okay, you have a office building, for example, and everybody goes to work on Monday and they're feeling great and fantastic. How was your weekend? All of that. And you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, they start to feel down. They start to feel Well, they almost have a thought of like, gosh, I think I'm I caught a bug or something like that. I'm getting Ian: Yeah. Mike: sick. And by the time Friday afternoon quitting time rolls around, they are goners. They're fatigued, they can't think straight, their cognition is down. All they want to do is go home and crawl into bed. It's almost like having a bad flu. And so Saturday they start feeling a bit better. Sunday, hey, I guess maybe it was just one of those quick 24-hour things. They go back to work Monday, feeling great. Tuesday, Wednesday, here it starts again. And what I'm describing is, and I'm using my air quotes, is called sick building syndrome. Where there is something there that's giving a dose to a lot of different immune systems, a lot of different peoples. people, but it is generally causing everyone to feel really icky. And when I do these types of investigations, I always ask people their health history a little bit. you know, nothing very intrusive, but more like, do you have asthma, do you have COPD? Any allergies, things like that. but what is happening is they're breathing in in the case that I was describing, mold spores from somewhere. And it's not just in fact impacting one or two people, it's like there's quite a few people. And they're bringing them in, and the your body's immune system recognizes, okay, hey, we've got something in here. It's either something we don't recognize or it's a lot more than what we're used to taking care of. And so your immune system goes into overdrive trying to fight off this bug. That's why fatigue rolls in, because it's just like a really bad flu. After a couple days, your immune system is like, holy smokes, this is taking a lot of energy. And so you start to to hunker down and we become fatigued. So so the medic but so this is what we were we could go out, we meaning consultants could go out, do these air sample draws. And then this this example I'm telling you, which is I've had many of these examples. we come back and we see mold that is really way out of line either by how much there is, or more importantly, what kind of mold is it? Because there are some molds that are documented now that really can make you feel sick. And so we would give that information, our inspection report with recommendations to the client. And a lot of people back in the day, Ian, and I'm sure you've seen this response too, you tell them that you do mold remediation or mold testing or something, and they kind of roll their eyes a little bit and they're like, he's one of those. You know, he he's he's off the r he's off his rocker when it comes to absolutely. They're like, Okay, he's the he's doing something kind of he's kind of a shyster here. He's just trying to get somebody's money and he's trying to scare them a little bit. but I mean now the medical community enough research has been been done. you know, if you think of someone who sees a naturopathic doctor or a functional medicine doctor or something like that, they will tell you there are I I saw an article once that says twenty-three percent roughly Of the population really has the genetic makeup to have mold really impact them poorly. And so it's nice now, you know, if you want, you can take a stool sample, urine sample, blood sample, send it to a lab, and they can tell you exactly what kind of mold is in your body, what kind of mycotoxins are in your body. And a regimen to, you know, start binders and and supplements to start flushing these out of your body. And so that has been really helpful because now people don't think we're just a bunch of crackpots out there, you know. so that's something that's helped us a lot. Just just a general awareness, to be honest. And and again, I am not an alarmist when it comes to mold. We're breathing in mold spores every breath we take. But it always comes down to a function of how many and what kind. That's where a consultant like me will come in and and help. Ian: So the kind matters, but it sounds like a lot of it is genetic related. So initially I'm Mike: In Canby, yeah. Ian: is there a specific demographic or for example, young kids, new mothers, things like that. Mike: I think, yeah, certainly more susceptible and from a consultant standpoint who writes defensible mold remediation protocols, there are populations that I become way more conservative than than for most. it comes down to is the person or are the occupants immunocompromised in any way? And that could be from a recent surgery. undergoing some type of cancer treatments that's knocking out their immune system. infants and toddlers because their respiratory and and immune you know systems are not up to speed yet. elderly folks because they've had 60, 70, 80 years of breathing in and fighting off everything that Mother Nature could throw at them. And so now they're they might have a diminished immune system. anything like that, I'm particularly I I get I raise an eyebrow a little bit higher. folks with breathing issues and I mentioned COPD earlier where they just they have that diminished exchange capacity between carbon monoxide and and oxygen in your lungs. So those are the ones I really look out for. Yeah. Ian: Interesting. Gosh, I thought twenty-three percent. I definitely thought it would be higher than that. Yeah. So as far as kind of like there's there's thousands of strains of mold from my understanding. Mike: I think hundreds of thousands of of different species, yeah. Ian: What do you see most often around here locally? And then Mike: That's a great question. Ian: which ones should we actually be concerned about? Mike: That's that's really wonderful because you know, folks will go to a home improvement store and they'll get the little self-tests. It looks like a little petri dish. And so you set it in a room, you take the lid off of it, you let it sit there for an hour, you put the lid back on, wrap it in aluminum foil, and send it to a lab for analysis. And it comes, they send reports back. informing the client of what kind of mold there is, but also pictures of what actually grew. And I'll tell you, talk about taking phone calls where people are really upset and scared. And it can be probably in in most instances, some of the most common molds we breathe, every breath. So molds that I'm used to seeing commonly outdoors are cladosporium, asidiospores, you know, smuts and rusts, mixomycetes, just different things like that that are naturally occurring in the outdoors, you know, vegetative growth, mulch, decay, things like that, they produce mold and molds sporolate or release mold spores and they become airborne. And so there are many, many, many very common molds that we find in the outdoors. an example would be: I wanted to share about how that mold concentration is in such a state of flux, both from location. But also a time of year. So I can take an air sample in December, January, and in one cubic meter of air, which is how we the the results are reported to us, there might be 100 to 150 mold spores, which is so low in a in a cubic meter of air. It's dry, it's dormant, nothing's growing, nothing is producing mold. I could take a sample from that exact same location in July or August. So life has been thriving now for months. People are watering their lawns and putting mulch out and all of that. And in that same cubic meter of air, have 30 to 40,000 mold spores. So you go from one or two hundred up to thousands to tens of thousands. It really gives you an idea of just the major swings and just in fungal concentration in an air sample. So that's where experience and knowledge comes in. Because you know, if I take an air sample outside in in January and say, okay, there's two, for example, 200 mold spores. Okay, Mr. Mold remediation contractor, you have to beat as part of your clearance test 200 mold spores, which that can be really challenging. But if I take an outdoor control in July or August, all they have to do is beat the outdoor fungal concentration, which is can be many, many times higher. So the experience and the knowledge, that's where that comes in, though. Like, okay. What are we really talking about here as far as what kind of mold, how much, what is this particular mold remediation project up against? What are some characteristics of it? And so it's not just a numbers game or a mold identification game when it comes to testing and clearing. you just it it just takes some time to learn. but those are the very common ones. And there are some that are, I'm using my air quotes again. Some laboratories will record, a and truly they are, they're called water loss indicator mold types. These are molds that generally, especially for example in s in Montana's southwest arid climate, we only see these in a water damaged building. And it could be something that was unknown. So maybe if you had a a small drip inside of a wall or something under the sink. I've had clients in the past where they go down into their basement once every few weeks. And you know, water for some some source of water has caused things to grow. but these molds typically take a much more moisture water activity to grow. They take a longer time to grow. And so an example would be if I look at a building and I see Aspergillus penicillium, very common. It's one of it's a primary colonizer, meaning it's one of the first ones we're gonna see after water damage. But then I look at another one, Stachybatris or Catomium or Memnaniella. Those take a lot of water, a fair amount of time, and a good growth substrate and temperature. And so when I see those, I you you can't age mold, but knowing about them can really help because that indicates to me, okay, it's at least most likely weeks, couple, two, three weeks plus. And then if you even look at your structure beyond the mold and you start to see some form of rot. Woodrotch or something like that, then you're like, okay, now we're we're months to to potentially years. So you can't age mold, but you can, that's where the knowledge of the mold can really help determine you know, roughly about how long things have been going. Those are those really bad ones, though, that we we keep an eye out for. Kaetomium, Stachybotris, scopularyopsis, memnoniella. And generally, what's interesting about a lot of these molds, not all, but they are much bigger than most mold spores. they're stickier because they they take so much moisture in, right? And they grow more clumpy instead of like you've if if you've seen kind of like that white wispy or green, green wispy type of mold, these are more the black clumpy kinds. And so you can't identify it with the naked eye, but it it just it's like another clue in my knowledge, you know, that I use to determine source what's there as far as the mold and then the the correct remediation plan. Ian: if I go down in my crawl space or my storage room in the basement that's unfinished and I see air quotes black mold. Is it black mold? Mike: No. I I don't call anything mold until I have a lab report that says, okay, it is mold and it is this kind. and that's the official line. The of unofficial line is it it could be, it probably is, it might be. you know, sometimes speaking of like foundation walls or basements where you can go down, and this happens even in newer structures, where you see that white granular looking stuff on the c either the concrete or or the CMU blocking or something like that. A lot of people say, Well, I've got white mold growing on my on my concrete foundation. And I'll look at it and it's it's it looks crystalline in structure, but then you touch it and it's like a talcum powder, it's just very soft. That is not mold. That is called efflorescence, which is as water goes through that that material, it brings out mineral salts with it, primarily calcium. And as that starts to dry, it will start to crystallize. And that's what people think are mold. It's kind of like if you put very, very salty water in a bowl and just let it evaporate. That remaining white residue, it's that's what we're talking about. The other thing too is that you know, mold and or I'm sorry, concrete and plaster and things like that, they're inorganic. So there's no food source for mold to grow on. So it has to be something cellulose-based that is gonna produce fungal growth. It that's the food for mold to grow. So drywall paper, framing, wood framing, things like that are the common building materials that have mold on them. So so it You know, that's a long way to say, well, it could be, but again, if I don't know something, I call it SMG, which is suspect microbial growth. So that's how I report it in my in my reports, for example. Unless I have a lab report can confirming the presence of or absence of, that's how I identify it as SMG. Ian: I think that's the most common question that most people have is black mold. It once I see black and I think it's mold, it's black mold. And now my family's gonna die. Mike: Exactly. Yeah. Ian: how do you approach that? How d how do you have those hard conversations with clients and back them off the ledge and and assist with yeah with that fear? Mike: Yeah, and it is fear. That's a great way to say it. even before looking at at a building, it's usually a home. A homeowner will call and say, Well, I've got mold in my house or I have black mold in my house. Should I move out? Well, there's a lot of things that go into that. Number one, I haven't seen it. Number two, I don't have a lab report. number three, I'm not a medical doctor. I I can't comment on that and won't. So there's a lot of there's two things, or a couple things I think, Ian, that go into this. Number one is the internet. Because I can go on the internet and and I can research something and I can scare the pants off of me by what I read and stuff. And there's been a lot of very poor knowledge about mold out there. About 15 to 20 years ago when I was actually doing property restoration and mold remediation projects, there were companies out there who wanted restoration contractors to start giving them ad money where they can get more sales online and all of that. And when they found out that you were doing mold remediation, maybe you've heard of it. It's called mold is gold. Heard of that? Ian: I never heard. Mike: Yep. It is late nineties, and it was mold is gold. Here's how you sell it. And a lot of it was lack of knowledge, scary techniques. there's a lot of what I call shyster contractors out there who would prey on folks using a lack of knowledge and well, your family could get sick and all of this stuff. And you know, I mentioned earlier when it comes to mold, I'm not an alarmist. We we breathe in mold spores every breath we take. our bodies have become used to flushing them out. the concerns come when you have more than what your body is used to taking in or different kinds than your body is used to processing. So it I really try to work with my clients and just let them know, okay, well, there's mold here, or it could be mold, but it's okay. We're gonna, you know, a lot of times mold remediation, although it can be expensive, is really not hard, you know, to do. I always recommend everybody to every client if if you are so concerned about your physical health with this. When you get my lab results, take them to your doctor and see what he or she says. but mold is everywhere and it does impact, you know, some certain some portions of the the population more than others. but it can really be handled well and quickly. you know, I describe when it comes to mold remediation, for example, When I'm telling people after I've gotten the lab results back, there's always two basic avenues for mold remediation. And I I use this example. If I were to walk into the middle of your home and I have a five-pound bag of flour, and I cut it open and I shake it as hard and as vigorously as I can, what happens? You have this plume of flour that goes everywhere. You can see it in the air. And if you wipe your finger, you can see it on your finger. You know, if you wipe a finger on a surface, you're going to see it there. That is what we're up against when it comes to mold remediation. We have to tackle the mold in the air and also the mold on the surfaces. Even if you have mold on a surface and it has mass like household dust, it's going to settle out and it usually will collect on horizontal surfaces. it's very commonly drawn into a furnace or AC system, and then it's distributed throughout the whole house or the entire structure. so that's why the combination of using air scrubbers or AFDs, air filtration devices, that scrubs the spores and it lowers the mold concentration in the air. And then the way that we tackle surfaces is HEPA vacuuming first to collect up. as many of the loose material particulates that we can. And then damp wiping. with a regular cleaning solution, it you the intent is to not kill the mold because a lot of it is difficult to kill. interesting. Yeah. But the intent of of, you know, when you've seen my remediation protocols, it's HEPI vacuum and then damp wipe with a I prefer plant-based antimicrobial. The intent is to remove the mold from the surface, not to kill it. Because if you remove it, that's called source removal. then you're done. You've removed it. And so once I describe to potential clients things like that, you know, it's very common. it can impact you. Check with your doctor. the cleanup is relatively easy. It's certainly more extensive when you have mold on dry wallpaper or something like that because now you're into demolition. the other thing that people really like is is I tell them if you want me to, after the in the restoration contractor or remediation contractor has completed the the protocol that I write up, I will come back out. And I will make sure everything is good. I'll do a visual inspection to make sure I don't see anything. I will spray the product I use is called IAQ 1000. It's a very strong hydrogen peroxide solution. It's just like the hydrogen peroxide that you get in the brown bottles at the store. And and if you were to ever pour that over a cut, it would bubble and fizzle a little bit. the product I use is much stronger. So if I see something. A little suspect, like, well, maybe they missed a little spot right here. I always spray it with this very strong hydrogen peroxide. If it has a reaction, this bubbling fizzling, I stop. The project has not passed. We need to do some more cleaning. But if that passes, then I'll do at least one surface sample and I'll do another round of air samples. And when I get the lab results back, when I do my data interpretation, if The air samples look great. The surface samples look great. Visually it looked great. Now we have a successful re remediation with a laboratory report stating you have really nice indoor air quality. When people hear that, like, there's a way to even check for it once the work is done. It really starts to alleviate, you know, the Ian: Right. Mike: the feeling of. Of just being scared and the unknown because of a lack of knowledge. And it's not because folks are are not dumb they're they're not dumb. This is my office. I've been doing this for over 30 years. They're just they do different things. And so when they start to see that, they see the science that's going to behind it. they see the fact that I'm I'm not trying to scare them, I'm trying to help them and support them and be an advocate for them. It really lowers the the temperature quite a bit where they're like, Okay, okay, we this is a manageable thing. I had a customer last night who was this person that we were talking about who older lady, her daughter lives with her and and her two grandchildren. And she is really concerned about the health of her grandchildren. I'm a grandfather. Yeah, I'm Ian: Yeah. Mike: I'm a grandfather. I get it. You know and so we talked about 30 to 40 minutes and she said, Okay, great. Should I move out? And I said, Well, it doesn't sound like it to me. You can always do what you want to do, but I'll be there Monday and I'll have results on Tuesday afternoon for you and we'll go from there. And she said, Mike, I can't believe how much better I feel talking to you, but I also re appreciate you taking my phone call at six o'clock on a Friday night. And that's what we do, right? We're I I am passionate about what I do, Ian. I really like what I do. it gives me great joy and a sense of fulfillment at the end of the day. And and probably you too. Like, you know what? We made someone's home safer. We re we helped their health potentially. And so it's easy to to just sleep at night knowing knowing. Ian: Is very rewarding. it it feels good. Like you said. It there's a a fulfillment there and an authenticity that makes people feel better. Truly. Even if it is placebo. Yeah. At the end of the day, if that helps, that makes me feel better. I can sleep at night, they can sleep at night. Yeah. Mike: Absolutely. Ian: you're helping save lives at the end of the day. Or improving lives dramatically. Mike: improving, but also from the the financial aspect, you're helping preserve their probably the number one biggest asset they'll ever have in their lives, which is their homes. True. So when they go to sell the home, you know, the work that we've done maintains the value of that asset. Where a home inspector isn't gonna come into a crawl space or an attic and and say, okay, you've got a twenty-five thousand dollar mold remediation project ahead of you. Yeah, and so we just it it's just a great feeling. Love it. Ian: you've spoken to cost a couple times. Why is mold remediation so expensive? And why, if you get multiple bids, why can they vary by sometimes twenty thousand dollars? Mike: Yeah, it's so I again I did the multi remediation and wrote many thousands of estimates. and it it really depends on two things. number one is scope and number two is the cost to do each line item. so there's a lot of things that go into a a mold remediation project that you wouldn't normally think about. The most important aspect of a protocol for me, or one of them anyway, is the the idea of air control. So if we can control where the air flows during this work, we can control where the dust goes, we can go or we can control where Bits and pieces of drywall and insulation where they where they go. And we can also control where the mold spores go. Let's imagine you have a mold remediation in the kitchen and there's bedrooms above on the next floor up and there's a basement below. If you don't have the correct air control there, there's a great potential That as you're doing demo on drywall, you're going to release mold spores into the air and they're going to blow all over the place. So the very first thing, so this is not a demo like you see on a fix and flip show. You know, it looks like a lot of fun where you get to take a sledgehammer and go after a wall. That's the worst thing you can do on a mold remediation project. So the first step of my protocol always is called installing engineering controls. And engineering controls, it's a combination of critical barriers. So that's our plastic. We're gonna build plastic rooms. We're gonna cover over plastic penetrations into this room. So switch covers and electrical outlets and all of that. Going back to that that pressure differential we talked about earlier. Ian: What about HVAC vents? Mike: Yep, absolutely. Any penetration into that room is gonna get cover covered with plastic. Okay. So that's number one. So we're gonna completely isolate this room and then we're gonna place this room under negative air pressurization. And that's where we install a negative air machine, which is basically a a big HEPA filter equipped exhaust fan inside that work area, and we're gonna duct the airflow out. So when you turn that on, you're drawing more air out of that space than it was used to having because you have your plastic walls up. And so compared to the rest of the structure, now that work site, that work chamber is negatively pressured. So as you are creating dust and releasing mold spores and all of these other things, there's no way that air can flow out of that chamber to the rest of the house. So that's a a big thing that's that's different than most. demolition. Another is we want to protect our workers and we also want to protect our occupants. And so PPE. Depending on the mold types I find and how much and things like that, there's different levels of of personal protective equipment that you can use. You can use like an N95 mask and just leather gloves for demo. you can go to a half-face respirator that covers your nose and mouth. you can go to a full-face respirator that also protects the mucus membranes in your eyes. Because, you know, when you go back to what does mold need to grow, well, it needs moisture, it has the mold spores and a warm temperature environment and a food source. Mucous membranes are great for that. if you ever want to kind of gross your Gross out. you can Google or look up fungal ball. And it is a mass of mold that grows in sinuses in the sinus cavity. It's a mass of mold. Yeah, I know. It's it's absolutely gross. It's fascinating. Yeah, fungal ball. Check it out. So, you know, there are molds. Aspergillus has some. Some like I think it's Aspergillus Versa color and Aspergillus human goddess where they'll either go go into your lungs and start to grow. You've warm, wet, moist the tissue And so we want to protect that. And that's where we'll do the different layers of of respiratory protection. I always recommend some type of disposable suit, a Tyvek suit or something like that. because you don't want to have that stuff on your clothes and then jump in your work truck, take it back to the shop, jump in your personal car, take it home. so you want to just be able to leave all of that bad stuff at the job site. So PPE is another thing. and then it's really control demolition after that, you know. drywall that has a lot of mold on it. you know, I prefer that it's bagged up. It's not hazardous waste like asbestos or anything like that, but it should be bagged up so as you're taking it out of your work chamber, potentially through that building out to a dumpster or wherever you're gonna discard it, you know, it should be contained should be contained so that you're not spreading that that around the house. once all of the demolition is done, mold spores are very small. And so The next step is to vacuum, but I always it's it's part of the mold remediation standard, the IICRCS 520, that all of the vacuum should be HEPA filter equipped, true HEPA vacuums, not a shop vac where you go to a home improvement store and grab a air quote HEPA filter. That is not a HEPA vacuum. HEPA vacuums are truly sealed. So as they're exhausting that air. No mo no mold spores are coming out and the HEPA filters are capturing point nine nine seven percent of all mold spores and and very small particulate. So then you vacuum up as much of the loose dust, mold spores and whatnot that you see. and then you know, you're still gonna have some mold spores that are attached to the surface. So let's use the the example of wood framing. So, you know, if you you have mold on the framing, you vacuum it up, you're getting a lot of the loose material, a lot of the loose spores, but you're not getting it all. You're not getting down into that mycelium and hyphae, that root structure that we talked about earlier. So then it's an abrasion after that. It could be just lightly sanding it with sandpaper or a sanding block. On very large commercial projects, I've seen where they come in with soda blasters or You know, the media is corn cobs, chewed up corn cobs or rubber sponges that they blast on it. dry ice is another dry ice's favorite. So basically what you can do is you can take off a very, very thin layer of that material. It's usually even less than a sixty-fourth of an inch. Okay. And you will get everything. Because mold haife. But again, the root structure only grows into a product like wood, for example, less than the width of a human hair. No, no. It Ian: No. Mike: so mold when it grows, it has a tendency of searching outward for more moisture and cellulose. It does not have the ability to go in deeply. And so by just slightly removing that, that little bit, less than a 64th of an inch, you're getting it all. You've got the spores, you've got the mycelium, you've got the hyphae, you've got it all. And so once you're done with that, you know, then it's another round of hepa vacuum again, disinfecting all of those surfaces with an antimicrobial. Again, I always recommend plant-based back in the day. We would always use formaldehyde-based horrible stuff. Probably were it was probably what we were. Putting on a surface was probably worse than the mold itself going back. But how that would be it was all industry standard back then. and then it's just ensuring that the whatever remains there as far as wood building components, wall framing, sub wood subflooring, trusses or rafters, everything is dried to the moisture content to the background of the rest of the home and for that climate. My rule of thumb is a moisture content of twelve percent or less. that way, you know, there is not enough moisture in that that material to promote any fungal growth. So when you add up all of these different things, again, it's not hiring Mike the handyman guy to come out and tear out a few square feet of drywall. It is a very well thought out, Air controlled, controlled demolition. And then once all of the work is done, the contractors or the client will call me and I will go back in and I will again certify visual inspection, hydrogen peroxide, surface air samples, and and say, okay, this area here that we worked on is now ready for reconstruction. It's nice and safe. So there's a lot more. control layers through that process and and so that's why mold remediation is is expensive. And in this current market that every trade is having a hard time with of finding you know qualified tradesmen and and all of that. It's it's just expensive. It's very similar. The procedure for mold remediation really just came out of the asbestos abatement handbook. And they took the word asbestos and they took it out and they put mold in all of your engineering controls, negative air pressurization, how many air changes per hour, PPE. Yeah. That was a that was a profession that was already in happening. And a lot of the principles were from asbestos abatement were applied to mold remediation. Ian: Which makes perfect sense. It's a a microscopic thing floating in the air that you can't see. Mike: Exactly. Which makes it really difficult, you know, going back to this kitchen that had the mold in it, or or, you know, let's go back to the vaulted living room. Let's say you cut out and you removed all of the the materials that I recommended that had mold on it. and something I'll add to that is wherever the water staining or the physical mold growth ends that you see with your eyes, you go two more feet. You take two more feet of drywall, left, right, up, down, doesn't matter because you don't have mold growth. And then when you don't see any more, it stops. It just hasn't grown to the size where we can see it with our eyes. And so we always take another two feet. so now we're in this vaulted living room and we've done the demolition and all of that. Now, since we were inside of this work chamber. There's a great chance mold spores were released into the chamber, even though we had negative air pressure and all of that. Now we have to finally clean every surface inside that work area. And we're cleaning something that you can't see. It's not like cleaning up soot after a fire. You can readily see the black. So it is a slow, laborious routine. To go back and forth and not lose your spot and to do a good thorough cleaning. And so even that time component, you know, adds to the labor cost on a project. And so it's just this combination of so many different things that that go into a good remediation with a high success rate of passing the first time around. Ian: Because you could do fifty percent of the job and likely not pass a post inspection or a Mike: Right. Yeah, truly. I mean, it can even you know, it it could pass visual. But I really I rely more on my eyes and then the air samples than anything else. Ian: Because that gives you the baseline info of exactly at the end of the day you're testing it. If it's there, it's gonna show up. It's gone, it's gone. Mike: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it w it won't won't be there. Ian: if you're coming in in an effort to do it correctly the first time, it's going to be more labor intensive. There's likely surgical demolition depending on the project. And that's gonna take a lot of time. Yeah. If you're gonna do it right. Mike: If you're gonna do it right. It does, yeah. I mean, I I can't tell you. I did a thing back when when we were knee deep into COVID. And so I had some time on my hands. Well, I think everybody did. Ian: Yeah. Mike: And so I thought, well, I'm gonna do something kind of fun, and I'm gonna go back to three years of data. And this was when I was living in Denver, had a lot of restoration or mold remediation clients. And I picked up a trend on one of them where their post remediation testing, they were they went from about a 93 to 95% pass rate first time down to about 60%. And I hadn't caught that before. And so when I I'm going to use the word P or the the term PRV a lot. And PRV stands for post-remediation verification. So when I go to a clearance. It's a PRV inspection. Okay. And it's that combination of visual hydrogen peroxide air and air and surface sampling. And so I started going back in, and something that I do on every one of my projects is I take a lot of pictures. And so I was tracking this company and I knew the owner really well. And I know that he there had been some time there where he, for whatever reason, had a high turnover rate. But he was as busy as he really had ever been. And so I started just kind of in a in a very unscientific way, collecting how many PRV inspections my firm had done, and then how many had failed first time around and what we noticed on our PRV inspection. Poor cleaning. So we would go in and we could see dust on something. Or we could see in a basement cobwebs on the framing. That surface hadn't been cleaned, you know. we saw incomplete demolition where they had gone up to where the mold was, but then they stopped. They didn't go further enough. And so we're tracking all of these things. This drives home what you just said, Ian. Like, yeah, you can go in and and you can go fast and you may pass, but if you want to do it right. It's there is a procedure to follow and it it takes time. It takes, you know, to go nice and slow. A lot of remediation contractors, they kind of have the they're fighting the clock because when they get done with this project here by eleven thirty, guess what's happening at twelve or twelve thirty? They're right into the next one. So it there is that pressure to perform and do well. That's why when you if you're an estimator for these projects to remember or a scheduler for these projects, remember these things you don't rush through. You it takes time. You can become, by doing a bunch of them, you can become more efficient in your work and you can find tricks of the trade to help you do things faster, but you can never bypass that cleaning component. You just can't. Ian: there's almost like a minimum that is always gonna be a standard. You can get better and faster and more efficient and still do good work, but at some point this is gonna take at least this amount of time. Exactly. Mike: Yeah. When I would write estimates, I always knew that, you know, just there's always variances in each project. And the more experience you have, you can start to eliminate some and hone your estimating skills. But whenever I I would just stand and and look at a project and say, okay, if I had two or four workers here and they work for four hours and da-da-da-da, and try and determine labor rate like that. I would come up to that what I thought would be the correct number of hours, and then I would add 20%. Cause just that's where you can start to function. You can start to factor in non-tangibles, traffic, a flat tire. maybe you opened up a wall and it was what much more found much more than what anybody anticipated. So it there's a lot of variables into it. And again, it goes down to the fact that i if you have a two-man crew or a two-person crew, for example, there is a finite amount of work that that team can do in one day. So yeah. Ian: Planning accordingly is important. Mike: it's it's critical to to the success of a business because if you start missing deadlines and going over budget, your reputation suffers, people talk. So it it always goes down to Mike Sean's theory of it is unnecessary to collect or to take on every project that you might be presented with. Take on the projects that are going to be profitable for you and your firm, the ones that you know you can pull off pretty successfully. Because if you start tripping up, you're not servicing your clients. Correct. You know, you're not doing a good job for them. I have told people and they've thanked me for it. We're so busy. We have so much going on. I can get to your work, but it's going to be three, four weeks down the road. You know, there's other options around here. and they've said thank you for the honesty because it it's kind of like when you you know, the T V, the cable guy is gonna come out to your home and they give you what a four hour window or whatever it is, and they can't even make that. It's disrespectful of people's time. And so, yeah, when it comes to estimating and scheduling, that's always that's a good thing. People may not like the answer, but It's the honest answer. Ian: Which they deserve. Regardless of what you're giving them. Mike: goodness, yeah. I I being a contractor for so many years, I'm pretty judgy on contractors. So if somebody says they're gonna show up at my house between eight and ten, guess what they better do? You know, it's an expectation of time. Ian: Well and and like you said, it's a respect thing. It is. I'm here to help you, but I'm also not here to waste your time. And on the other side of that, I would prefer that you not waste mine. I'm here to help and answer questions, but at a certain point, now we're approaching, you know, at this point you're wasting my time. Yeah. maybe there's a situation where I can help you and I know what needs to be done and you're resisting that. Mike: Right. Ian: But I mean, if that's what you want to feel comfortable and healthy, I'm happy to help. But there is an honesty aspect where you don't need this. Mike: Yeah, both ways. that's the part as a business owner that's kind of challenging sometimes because, you know, I completely understand the interest and the concern and all of those things that they have about their property. I truly, truly do. In my life, I've had both a water damage and a fire in my home. So I know l Ian: It Mike: It's scary, it it's all of these things. You have to I call it my I believe button. And it's it's like one of those big red buttons, you know, where it was like that was easy. Mm-hmm. Well, I've got an I believe button just like that. And I may not always understand something or or or whatever, but I just have to press that I believe button sometimes and just let a process take its course. And nearly every time it it comes out famously. And but you know, we have those clients. Where they're just so concerned, and and and you don't want to say to them, Well, you know, I have 18 other projects happening right now, and so it you don't want to be disrespectful like that. But it comes to the point too, where you're like, maybe this isn't the best client for me right now. I even told potential clients, I may not be the best person for you in this case. Because if we take on a client, We are committing to give them 100% of our best every day, every project. And if if I feel like there is a chance that's not going to go the right way, or we're not going to achieve that for one reason or another, I'll tell them. You know, I can refer you to another a good person or something like that. But the way that my world is built right now may not have you in it. In a in a very respectful way. Right. Ian: Which is admirable and necessary in this contractor climate that we're in. Yeah. It's important. I wanted to go back to your vaulted living room. Because Mike: Okay. Yeah. Ian: I'm still curious here. What about my furniture? Mike: Mm. Ian: Do I carry all that out? If you if you're pulling out a drywall, it would make sense to have my furniture out. But is that something that I should do? What's the cleaning process? Is that something you guys would do? that something they should be doing? Mike: Yeah, that one, part of it is an easy answer and part of it is more challenging. The easy part is hard furniture. So a dining room table, a bed frame. it's you know, it's it's a hard surface, it's not going to absorb or allow any of these mold spores into it. And so the process is just like for structural wood, HEPA vacuum damp wipe. It gets a little trickier. on so what we call soft contents. So that could be upholstered furniture, a upholstered recliner, pillows, mattresses, box springs. Area rug. All of it. Clothing. Okay. Curtains. Yep. She's so that one becomes more challenging for a couple reasons, Ian. Number one is is what kind of mold was it? Was it these common molds or was it some of these really concerning ones that we keep an eye out for? What is the health history of the occupants? That's a biggie for me. Because if I know we have an older person, an infant, anyone who's really immunocompromised, and we're talking about a mattress and a box spring. So conceivably their face is up against their pillow or their mattress for hours every day. This is not like a one dose and done. It's it's a daily dose of hours long. I become very conservative on that, and I recommend removing and discarding. If it is not if it is not one of those situations, a lot of times you can first HEPA vacuum. So let's talk about a a sofa, upholstered couch, HEPA vacuum it. Steam clean it and let it dry. Mm-hmm. Ian: Team clean. Mike: Yeah, because the HEPA vacuuming again, the intent is to clean off and remove as much of that surface particulate mold spores that you can. And then steam cleaning it gets deeper into the material, deeper into the nap. And so you you draw out. So if there was a layer of mold spores on this and you sat on it. You're gonna push it down into the material a little bit. Yeah. Ian: That makes sense. Mike: So then you steam clean it to draw it out. But again, you know, when you talk about immunocompromised folks and mold types and things like that, I'm gonna I'm gonna fail safe, fail conservatively and say, okay, let's consider just discarding this. So, but most things, you know, a lot of people think that like If you open up your dresser drawer and for s you had a high humidity situation or something and you have mold growing on clothes or something like that, launder them. Ian: that was my next question, is can can I just throw it in the washer? Mike: Throw in the washer. Absolutely. And you don't need any crazy, you know, with bleach and with all of this other funky stuff. Because again, the intent is to not kill. It's to remove. And so the mold spores are removed just like regular soil and skin cells and all of those other things that laundering does. Ian: Why is the intent to remove versus kill? I mean, I I understand why removal sounds best, but if you can't remove all of it, why would you not want to try and kill what's left? Mike: you certainly can. You certainly can. But a good mold remediation, you know, really the intent is to not leave anything behind. There are some cases I always talk about, let's imagine if you have a basement and it has the concrete foundation walls. And it has dry wall, you know, so you have the wood furring strips and then the dry that are fastened to the concrete, and then you have the dry wall fastened to the wood furring strips. And it has a major mold issue. So you take all the wall, drywall off, and you're left with these wood two by fours or two by twos attached to the foundation. You can easily clean up the three surfaces that you can see. But do you think there's mold on that back side where it's attached to the concrete? Absolutely, I do. So then you come to the question of, okay, should we tear off all of this wood furring just so we can clean off the back side of it and then put it back on? There are some cases where it's called encapsulation, where I'm okay with encapsulation. It, you know, either from a cost perspective or a scope of work or function or time. where, okay, let's go ahead and we'll clean off all three surfaces of the wood that we can see. We'll run a bead of caulk down where that wood meets the concrete foundation, and then we'll encapsulate everything. w it's you can use either a white or a clear, it's almost like a shellac. A lot of people think I can use KILLS, which is a common building product. Absolutely not. KILLS is designed as a stain blocker. It is not designed for mold. But there are products out there that go on, they look white, they're just like kills, but they actually have a antimicrobial right in the matrix of the paint. So if that wood ever does get again, it won't grow mold because it will immediately stop it. So there's times when you can leave it behind. you know and and you can come in with really harsh chemicals and and kill a lot of it, but there are documented cases Where w back in the day, what go back to like, okay, how would you what would you spray on mold? Ian: Bleach knows to use Mike: Bleach, use Clorox, heck yeah, it's good stuff. There's cases actually where that bleach caused more mold growth. Really? Yeah. Because what's the number one component of bleach? Water. Ian: Yeah. Mike: So it will kill some molds, but will actually promote fungal growth in in a lot of other ones because it contains so much moisture. So yeah, don't use bleach on anything. Ian: Four kills apparently. Mike: Kills is not for mold, no. Kills is a great stain blocker and And and you know, different uses like that, but it's not designed for mold. there may be new products that I'm unaware of, but you know, when I say kills and and I don't want to get in trouble with the kills people, right? but you know, the kills that I'm referring to is is I believe it's marketed as a stain blocker, odor blocker. So Ian: It's a very common primer. I think those makes a lot of stain blocking primer for Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. And it's a great product. I've got a can in my garage actually. So so it is a good product, but when it comes to mold there are mold specific products that makes sense that that are are better, I think. Ian: Okay, so by encapsulating, so stick framing in the basement, you've got the drywall off, you're you're encapsulating, are you essentially making any existing remaining mold that you can't get to or can't kill? That's now considered outside of the internal building involved? Mike: Yeah it is. Yeah it's it's encapsulated so it has a thick layer of this encapsulant over it so there's no way that any mold if it's if it is there can reasonably escape into the breathing area. Ian: Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. if you are going into a basement, what are you looking for right away? are we talking like window wells, things like that? With yeah, leakage points, moisture Mike: As potential sources. Yeah. Yeah. You know, basements typically it's going to be window wells are are pretty common. Anything below the grade of the soil. especially on northern elevations and at least in Colorado where you're gonna have snow sit there for potentially months. The north side of the building Ian: Tid of the Mike: the north side, yes. anywhere where the gutters, you know, may not be shedding the water away from the foundation. So anywhere where that the outside soil and the moisture that could be in it is prob probably in it is going to be resting up against the concrete foundation. another common one, and this goes back to the building techniques of of pouring concrete for a basement. First they'll pour the slab and let it cure, and then later on they'll pour The vertical walls. And so that is not a monolithic pore. Meaning, between the slab and where the wall comes down, there's some minor imperfections because it's two different concrete pores, two different rates of curing. And so in wet years, that's a really great the most common source of moisture is coming in at that interstitial point between the two pores. Ian: We fight that a lot with radon. That cold joint between the slab and the footer, the slab and the stem wall. It's a great entry point. It is. And it would make sense if air can go through it, water can go through Mike: Sure. Ian: in a basement are you more often fighting like direct water intrusion or would it be like a humidity level thing? Mike: Basements tend to be, in my experience, more of a liquid water than d because you know, when you think of it that's kinda like the sink of the home. That's where gravity's gonna work, it's the water's gonna flow downward, so that's typically that. Ian: Okay. So from a contractor perspective, proper waterproofing of the basement Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. That's so important. And you know, if you've ever heard of a French drain system or a perimeter drain system, this is more in wet portions of the country where you know the soil is really wet a lot of the time. And so you the water goes into the top of the corrugated pipes into a sump pit and it's you know, it's pumped away from the foundation. Yeah. Grading and drainage and and that is all you know, we talked about air control for mold remediation. Now we're talking about water and moisture control for limiting that that water source getting into the the built environment. Ian: What about new construction? where do you see the most consistent problems with moisture and or air in new construction? Mike: Yeah, new construction. that one doesn't take long to think about. It is down in the crawl space or in a basement, the exposed soil. crawl spaces, which is that void space between your flooring system and the soil. a home doesn't go up in a couple of days, it it goes on for months and months. And you have rain and you have snow and and all of these other things that can introduce moisture into that crawl space. And what happens down there, it it doesn't take liquid water, of course. Most of the mold that I see in crawl spaces is due to a high humidity thing. So what I really encourage builders to do. Is to lay down anywhere from a six mil to ten mil layer of plastic. It's called a vapor barrier over that soil. And the best ones are where they wrap up the foundation walls at least 12 inches or so and they're they're fasten. And so you the the goal here is to keep the moisture in the soil and to keep it from evaporating into the air, which is into the crawl space air volume. It's causing the mold spores that are on the wood. already can't can't remove them right to start to grow. And so, you know, further on down, so you you build your framing, you put your floor down and everybody says, okay, let's get after windows and doors and all of this other stuff. And they forget about the crawl space. Months go by, and you have a fantastic microbiology experiment, you know, down in the crawl space. We've seen them, we've seen them together. And so on new construction, it's vapor barriers in my world is is the the is the number one thing that that is missing. you know I come from Colorado, and building code down there now is vapor barriers and crawl spaces. And it's fantastic. It is it is easy to get into a crawl space into a decent sized home and you're looking at a $10 to $15,000 to $20,000 molder mediation. Think of all of those things that we talked about before. Setting your engineering controls, PPE, HEPA vacuuming, sanding, every square inch of wood down in a crawl space. That those can be very expensive projects. And you can spend two or three hundred dollars on a couple rolls of plastic and you have saved yourself a lot of headache and a lot of potential liability in the future. because if you don't take care of that and you sell it to homeowners and they move in and somebody gets sick because of that, now you not only do you have the moral obligation to make it right, but you have a a very tricky financial, potentially litigious situation, all for a few hundred dollars worth of plastic. Ian: and it's so easy to do it before you throw the floor joist in too. You can walk around in there. Mike: Absolutely, yeah. It's the easiest thing. It's kinda like when you put in when you install a radon system, would you rather d retro it or would you rather put it in during new construction? Ian: That's a challenging one because ideally our vapor barrier is last because we're fighting an air barrier. And so if I'm first, for example, before the even before the floor joists are in, Mike: Mm-hmm. Ian: you've The benefit of a crawl space is hidden utilities. You can run all your electrical, your HVAC, your plumbing lines below the floor. It's not visible in the house. But now we've got five or six contractors down there for weeks at a time poking holes in the vapor barrier everywhere. Mike: Get it. Yeah. Ian: So from a contractor's perspective, if they are doing a radon vapor barrier, it's important that they have a vapor barrier in place during construction. Would you recommend that they lay that and then the final radon vapor barrier is laid after the fact, kinda at the end? Mike: Yeah, I think that's best case scenario because you know, during construction the the main concern is keeping that moisture under the in the soil, under the plastic. Then when you install the radon mitigation, you can just leave it as a sacrificial vapor barrier and install radon your radon that right over it. Ian: So it's just an extra layer of protection Mike: Yeah. Ian: and it assisted throughout the entire building process. Mike: Absolutely, yeah. And it and it really saves so much money for home for contractors building these. Yeah. Ian: It also helps the the end homeowner in the long run as well. Mike: Absolutely. Ian: that's new construction. If I have a leak in the crawl space and I already have a vapor barrier, a common misconception with radon systems is that it will help dry out the crawl space. But if we're doing our job correctly, we're not actually pulling air from inside the building and below. Exactly. Mike: Exactly. Ian: So if I get a leak on top of my vapor barrier, Mike: Right. Ian: what do I do at that point? Mike: It actually can make things a little bit easier in fact, because it will not that you know, if it works right, it will collect the water and it will not allow it to seep into the soil where it can stay for extended periods of time. And so you c simply go in and extract the water and remove it. put a moisture meter on the wood framing and make sure that it's dry and it hasn't had this humidity exposure to the point where it's causing or or it could be causing some type of mold growth. So in a way it's a little bit easier as far as cleanup. Ian: Okay. I've seen condensate pumps fail all the time. Or the fitting isn't glued or something. And you go down and there's very obviously a puddle of water from something related to the condensate pump and it's been there for months and there's growth on the water. Mike: Mm-hmm. Ian: What do you do at that point? Mike: Same thing, you know, you extract the water, but then you become a little bit more curious about, okay, if if we had some type of organisms growing on top of the water, that indicates long-term exposure to probably a high humidity or an elevated relative humidity situation. So then, you know, that's a matter of really inspecting the wood components mostly down in the space really well. And you know, it kind of leads me to a thoughty and when I describe to a person how I do a typical mold assessment or mold examination in a home, it's not just a matter of going in and doing air sampling and and all of that. You know, I described the infrared and then I described using a moisture meter and going around the water sources in a home. So taking a moisture meter around commodes, for example, I have to do something while my pump is running anyway. and so I by running around the toilets, you know, I can see, okay, is that wax ring holding or is it leaking out that could be causing some type of thing? Laundry rooms and dishwashers and all of those water sources. When I describe to folks that, okay, I'm gonna take an air sample, if I don't know what's going on in this home. First step is just get some general indoor air quality samples. So I'll take an air sample from each level of the home. I like to position my pump where they are spend most of their time in the home. So bedrooms, you know, kitchen dining, home office, basement, rec room, whatever. One from each level of the home while the furnace is operating or the the ventilation fan, so we don't have any dead air. And then I say, okay, I'll I'll do that and we'll see what the lab says. Well, what about the attic? Or what about the crawl space? I very, very rarely draw air samples out of attics and crawl spaces for a few reasons. Number one, if it's built correctly, they should be open to the air outside anyway. you know, an attic should have good soffit vents, gable vents. The intent is to not let that air become static in the in the attic. You want it to to move. That's why they're all vented. or a ridge vent. Same thing in a crawl space. It has, you know, you usually will have found foundation vents or some type of exhaust system. based on the humidity value in the in the crawl space. So number one, they're open to the outdoor air generally anyway. Number two, they are not conditioned or clean spaces, cleaned spaces. They contain a lot of particulate, you know, attics where you have dust, silica from outdoors, little bits and pieces of insulation, insect frass. Combustion byproducts just naturally occurring in nature, those char ash, and soot particulates. everything that I just described from a size standpoint is much larger than a mold spore. So let's imagine and I'm making my hand into a fist and say, okay, here's a dust particulate. So if I collect that in and then I send it to the lab and they look at this dust particulate, they can only see just a few, just what the the face of this particulate that that their eyes are looking at. What's going on behind it, what's going on around it. It's a rough surface, it's hard to see mold. And so the data that we get from air samples is really not very good at all. Sometimes I will take it in crawl spaces. Generally not, though. What we'll do though in those spaces is we will do a very good visual inspection with infrared moisture meter, all of that. Then if we see something suspect on a surface, then we'll use a swab or a tape lift and we'll collect a physical sample of it. And so, you know, going back to the the crawl space, that's what we would do in that crawl space, for example. if a homeowner really wants me to pay or really wants to pay me. to do it I will tell them, but I will tell you what I I I will tell them what I just explained to you is all of the drawbacks of using this. I'm not saying it it can be it's bad data. It's just not data that is is accurate for me. Ian: So it's not necessarily data that's gonna further assist you in a remediation scope or Mike: No. Ian: advice to the client. No. Mike: Well, because you know, once you see mold on a surface, it doesn't matter if it's one of these super common molds or if it's one of these very concerning molds, the remediation procedure is the same. The clearance procedure is the same. And so I use that information more to see if it could have been impacting someone's health. Ian: you're saying that at the end of the day, the type of mold doesn't necessarily matter. It should be remediated. And the process of that remediation is going to be the same, whether or not it's let's say black mold as as like general population, they hear black mold and it's it's something to panic about. Right. Whether it's black mold or not, it doesn't necessarily matter. The process is going to be the same and it should be remediated anyway. Mike: Absolutely. Yep. Ian: in an attic situation, because you I'm sure you come across moldy attics all the time, Mike: Yeah. Ian: what's the most common cause of that? And then how do we approach that? Is it any different of an approach if it's in the attic versus in the in the living space? Mike: generally not. It's so most of the time I'll see mold in an attic, it's gonna be to some compromised roofing material, whether shingles have failed or blown off. it could be where a penetration, so let's say a vent or something goes in that penetrates through the roof decking. and it hasn't been flashed well. And so whenever we get weather, that moisture comes in around that penetration and it will, you know, impact the roof decking or the the joist or the the rafters. the cleanup is pretty much the same thing though. Something that I I give a little bit is that we remember that this is not a living space and it's not regularly cleaned and it's not conditioned and things like that. So I don't really feel the need to put it under negative air pressurization as long as, you know, you make sure that while you're up there working, there's no way that that air can come. The hatch Ian: The hatch is closed. Mike: is closed. Yeah. It is still good though to get into the same proceed it's the same routine for each project. So you should, you know, you can have negative air pressurization up there. I'm certainly not gonna shun that. I I prefer it on anything just as Hey, it's another mold remediation project. This is how we do them. Doesn't matter what it is. you know, so then I'll recommend the insulation comes out. It doesn't matter if it's yellow, you know, the pink fiberglass, yellow or white blown-in insulation, because the theory is is as this material as this organism was growing, it was producing spores or you know, shedding off metabolites or different things like that. that we're eventually settling into the insulation. So all of that goes out. And now we're back to the HEPI vacuuming, sanding, disinfecting, clearance inspection, part of that that procedure. Ian: in order to do it correctly, you should be removing the insulation. Mike: I generally will recommend it. Yeah. It there there may be times where you'll see i in a very large space a very localized area of fungal growth, one or two square feet, and it's just over by a very obvious water source, then probably not all the insulation, but maybe a six by six or an eight by eight area where these mold spores drop down. Yeah. Ian: So going back to like pass through through drywall outlet switches, what about can lights in the ceiling? Mike: Fantastic question. I'm gonna answer it like this. And and this is a real conversation I had just a few nights ago. So we had a a gentleman call and he lives in a mobile home. And for some reason or another, there was a a long-term leak that he didn't know about under his mobile home, like a year and a half, he suspects. So a restoration he calls a restoration contractor because he's in one of his bedrooms. and he's moving some shoes or some clothes around and he sees mold in a bedroom, which is a, you know, that's a yellow flag right there because there's typically no water sources in a bedroom. There's no water lines running through the lines or anything or through the walls or anything. And so the restoration contractor goes down into the crawl space under the mobile home, finds the leak, and sees a bunch of bunch of resultant fungal growth or suspect microbial growth. On the wood under there. And so he calls me, the owner calls me and says, Yeah, can you come out and do an inspection and test for mold and write a protocol? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, can you tell me how you do that? And I said, Yeah, I'll go under the crawl space. But also, what I'm going to do is take some air samples inside the home. And he said, Well, the problem's underneath. And I said, Yeah, I agree with you. The source is underneath. But There is a way that that air is traveling from that reservoir into the breathable areas. So I want to know what you're breathing in. So it's either can confirm one of two things to us. Number one is that the air quality from a mold perspective is not compromised, and we can limit the work, the re the remediation work to just the crawl space area, or that it has been compromised in some way. So that I am concerned about his health enough where my protocol will be, yeah, we're still going to do all the work in the crawl space, but we're going to add some additional line items up into the living spaces, you know, to get that that mold concentration out of the air and off the surfaces again, like we talked about before. Same thing in an attic. so if I get called to go check an attic for for mold, sure, I'll crawl around and I'll take a s a surface sample of something. What I'm really concerned about though is any of the or are any of those mold spores migrating into the living spaces of the home? Ian: Potentially through a can light or the attacatch itself. Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, there's a bunch of ways for sure. so there's there's penetrations in into the built environment where these things these spores and and everything else in the air can migrate from one place to another. Ian: from an HVAC perspective, I have mold in the house or I had mold remediation done in the house. You mentioned it getting into the HVAC system in the ducts. How effective is just standard duct cleaning or what's the approach there? Mike: The approach is so what I've seen over the years is you'll have one pr one type of process where they will just vacuum out the vents. You'll have another process where they will blow them out, kind of like using an air compressor and just blowing them out. I like a combination of Taping up all of the ducts in a house and working on one duct line. And you actually place that mold or that system under negative air. And then you go into the duct line that you're cleaning. And it the newer you know, the the newer equipment has a vacuum, but it also has a rotary attachment on it. It's a rubber spinning thing, like a Wandy thing. Okay. And so you're getting the air drawn up, but you're getting that mechanical agitation where you're you're kind of beating the mold spores off like you take your vehicle through one of those older school car washes. The best ones are the ones where they have, you know, that. and so that's that's what I recommend is is that combination of vacuuming and then that mechan mechanical agitation and doing that for all of the ducts, as well as Cleaning the inside of the furnace cabinet. So where where all of the the you know the compressor is and the motor and the fan and all of those things. and then replacing the furnace filter routinely. it's so funny where I'll ask a homeowner and they're telling me about what they think is a mold problem in their home. Well, how long have you lived there? sixteen, seventeen years. Okay, how frequently do you get your ducks cleaned? Yeah, exactly. we haven't. And I said, okay, well, it's not the that's not the worst answer I've had, but we're getting there. and the other is how often do you change the furnace filter? that's you know, that furnace filter, I change mine out every six months, and I spend a little bit more money, and I get the ones with the high MERV rating. And so It's like a MERV thirteen. So not only does it capture all of the normal household dust and pet dander and all of those things, but it also will capture most mold spores and a lot of viruses. And you know, so it's that preventive maintenance is really important. But so just because you have mold that was drawn into an HVAC system, doesn't mean you have to tear it out and replace it. It's all tin or metal. It's all inorganic. It's just a matter of getting the mold off of that surface and keeping it clean because as dust starts to accumulate inside of there, dust is just like a filter. It will trap mold spores as they flow through that that piping, that that ducting, and it will start to build up and become another mold reservoir. So just good preventive maintenance. here's what I recommend. get the ducks cleaned every three to four years and do your furnace filter. again, I do mine every six months. But if you have smaller kids, if you have two or three dogs and you know, pets, things like that, where you're just gonna have more shedding, more of a a biofilm, if you will, on everything, do it more frequently, maybe once a quarter. Or something. But that is something that was really found out during COVID was this whole topic of indoor air quality. It was awesome because finally we were hearing about schools updating their ventilation system and getting getting some good filtration and purification. And things that I have been preaching about for three decades now. It's all indoor air quality. So yeah, just do routine maintenance, but just because it's in a system, not a problem. Just clean it. Ian: You hear people talk about fogging ducts, fogging their HVAC systems. Is that an effective approach when paired with other things? Or is that a standalone? Mike: It it can be I've seen it both. talking with a a colleague who does fogging, he was telling me I brought a product now. back in the day, it i if you do fogging alone, Ian, I don't think it is a good standalone because we're missing the number one thing of mold remediation, which is source removal. We want to remove as much of the The mold as we can, right? So fogging alone, it may inoculate a lot of that mold, but it's still there. And it is not just the spores now that you know can make you sick. It's these metabolites, it's these mycotoxins, the bits and pieces, if you will. And so to just fog say something or fog a wall cavity or wherever and say, okay, we're good to go, I don't. believe that. there are others who do, and they're you know, they may have more information than I do. I just I'm more of an old school, I guess. so I always like to see mold removed first. Then you can go ahead and fog it if you want to as a a layer of insurance if you will. So you remove as much as you can You can't see everything. You can't, you know, a hundred percent of anything is really is that always achievable? No. So then you can go ahead and fog and it will that gaseous fog will get into the little nooks and crannies that you couldn't see. So I consider it is a good supplement to sort of nah I wouldn't I wouldn't trust it. like if I hit a mold remediation in my house. And we just fogged it, I'd be like, I am not comfortable. I just, you know, I want it gone. Ian: So it comes back to that full removal versus just kind of like a surface treatment. Mike: Exactly. Yep. Yeah. So but it's it's, you know, again, there are great uses for for fogging. an attic would be a great example where it could be a very good process because where that roof decking comes out to the eve, you know, you'd have to be a very tiny person to get all the way back in there. So you do your best effort cleaning and get as much as you can. But then absolutely supplement it with the fogging of of some antimicrobial product. I think that's a great use for it. Ian: So supplemental, not single use. Mike: That's how I look at it. And that that is what my remediation protocols reflect. Ian: And that's HVAC, the house, et cetera. it could be a supplement, but probably shouldn't be relied on as the sole source of treatment. Right. Mike: Exactly. Cause I I have done many I mean, anecdotally speaking, over thirty years of where I've gone in after fogging and my air samples come back unsatisfactory. Ian: On the topic of air sampling, you're taking a control outside the house. You mentioned seasonality playing a role in that. Mike: Yep. Ian: If I get brand new landscaping done and I have fancy mulch around my house now and you know it's it's May and it's rainy. Should I get rid of all the mulch around my house because the mold can can grow in there? Mike: No, no, I mean there's there's naturally a co occurring mold and bacteria in soil. You can't remove it. Well maybe you can, but it it's not feasible to remove. No. So it's a matter of not will mold get inside my home? It's when it does. You cannot stop it. Anytime you walk in and out of a door, the garage door goes up and down, the windows are open. You walk in and it's on our clothes and on our skin. Mold will always be introduced into the the living spaces just like dust is and everything else. It's a manage it's a matter of keeping it clean. Housekeeping. So we talked earlier about how dust will settle out onto the horizontal surfaces. So frequent household cleaning, vacuuming, mopping, it it removes that agglomeration of mold and skin cells and pet dander and everything that you know can cause if if it gets wet or high humidity, it will start to grow. So just by keeping it clean is really clean and dry. Really are the two the two parts of the secret sauce for for keeping your home healthy. Ian: thinking back to my apartment now. The the Mike: goodness. Ian: HVAC makes sense keeping that filter going and and frequently changed. And yeah, the the household cleaning because if your HVAC isn't clean, it's blowing it all around the house and it settles like on on the baseboard above the door trim. Yeah. On top of the door trim is a prime example. I never think to look up there. No. But if you've got a layer of organic material mold can can grow on that. Mike: Yeah, it just i everything is there. It's just waiting for that moisture component. and it could be liquid water or could be high humidity. if you think of on top of kitchen cabinets on the upper cabinets, when was the last time you climbed on your counter and cleaned up there? Right. Or on top of a ceiling fan blade. Sometimes I get calls to do dust samples to have them analyzed for mycotoxins. And those are two places I will always look at because I'm looking for that agglomeration, which is again that buildup of dust and skin cells and this biofilm. and so I'll always go up there and I always look for the dustiest spots because it it doesn't tell me how long that mold has been there. It's conceivably been there since the last time that surface was cleaned. But if we in this agglomeration we find molds that produce mycotoxins, that's where we get back to opening a window or a door and we get a little puff of air through, it can dislodge these mold spores that produce mycotoxins into the breathing area. One of the things when I work with truly immunocompromised or mold-sensitive clients. The cleaning is is an integral component of keeping them healthy. because mold spores will they will build up just like dust and everything else. And so it's super important. Cleanliness is as important as as anything for folks who are are doing this. Ian: Clean and dry. Yeah. Mike: So Ian: You've mentioned a couple of times, you've been in the industry for over thirty years. Maybe we should get a credibility. Why should I listen to you? What what's your experience here? What have you seen? I what Mike: Where Yeah. Well, I'll answer it two different ways. On paper, there's a credentialing board out there, it's the American Council of Academic Credentialing, I think is what it's called, and it's backed up by the the Construction and Environmental Standards Board. So through that organization, I'm a council certified microbial consultant. And to earn that designation requires a minimum of eight years. Of doing field investigations, mold sampling, data interpretation, writing mold remediation protocols, things like that. Another organization, I am a certified mold inspector and assessor. through the Restoration Industry Association, I a certified water loss specialist. And that one takes a minimum of five years to get five years of field experience. I'm a board certified fire and smoke damage consultant, and that's another eight-year requirement. And so in the consulting portion of the the side where I earn those designations, I have I'm over well, just a bit over 15 years now. Before all of that, though, Ian. I was in the property restoration industry for fifteen years. So I was managing crews doing drying out buildings, homes and large commercials and everything, and managing fire restoration projects and managing mold remediation projects, big ones. And you know, I have years of doing national catastrophe work. So following behind hurricanes and drying out hospitals and mold remediation in schools and and you name it. So it's a combination of the field experience, but also the certification, which I have found, has given me a very well rounded idea of this. I want to make sure everyone knows that I am not a certified industrial hygienist. I'm not. because at the end of the day, I wanted to really focus my career on the built environment as it as they are impacted by fire, water, mold, and and those things. So you know, in the course of my career, I have examined, I don't even know a number, thousands. Thousands of structures for fire, water, mold, you name it. And yeah, I I've just been doing it for a long time. I really like what I do. something to mention on these certifications is, you know, continuing education. I always keeping up, going to conferences and speaking engagements and always researching and considering new technologies, new products, new procedures. so it's it's something that I'm very much interested in. I have a lot of fun for. And so you know, whatever I say is not rooted in something I learned 30 years ago, it can be a good foundation. But it's always augmented with the newest and greatest and and all of that. So so it's important professionally to consider all of those things. The other thing that I think is that you should consider personally, I like to help people. I am I am an advocate for people's health and for their home's health or whatever is going on where they are. And so I I get a little tenacious sometimes if I can't figure something out. But I really do at the end of the day, Ian. I just really care about what I do. I care about people. I have a lot of fun doing what I'm doing. And I will be the first one to say, I am certainly not the smartest guy in the room. but some things I can do pretty good at. And, you know, that's that's how I run. Ian: I appreciate the humility. Yeah. We as contractors, that's I think that's something we're seeing less and less of is this is the way we've done it for 20 years. Why would I change it? Right. And that's a very frustrating place to be on the other side of it as the client. There is a difference between becoming an overnight expert on Google and knowing some of this and then realizing that. y you guys are avoiding doing something or you're doing something that's outdated by twenty years. Mike: Right. Ian: that's a frustrating place to be. Mike: It is. And and you know, I always want to say, if somebody says, well, we've been doing that for 20 years, and I okay, go back 20 years. What were you doing for the 20 years before that? With that way of thinking, well, we should go back 60 or 80 years. Are we doing things the same that we did that far back then now? No. Not with building codes, building techniques, remediation. In my world, 10 years ago, if you said mycotoxins, nobody knew what you were talking about. And it is now becoming on the forefront of of fungal analysis. It really is. you know, we would always do air samples and surface samples and spore traps and and all of that. But now mycotoxin testing, the it's fantastic information and it really helps people feel better if we can identify what their exposure is and what mycotoxins may be in their body. But even that alone, the mycotoxins are not now the answer. They are a component. Ian: Another clue. Mike: Another yeah, another another component of a better answer. I have colleagues who now they have thrown everything in the kitchen sink into mycotoxins and they've kind of forgotten or or kind of poo-pooed now other things. I don't think that's good. I think the more clues we can determine to getting a clear answer for someone's health, that's what I'm open to. And and that's why I I don't say, well, I, you know, I've looked at mycotoxin and I I think those those people are wacky. No, I'm interested in it. Does it help me do a better job for my client? Does it help me provide an answer to my client? Where they feel better. That's how I look at education and and the future of any business, any industry. Ian: On that note, where do you see this industry going? Because you've been in it for a while. Yeah. You've seen changes. Can you give us a prediction? Mike: You know what would be really cool? Here's a business model for you. Is if you could take a mold sample and age it and tell me, okay, how long has it been there? Is it been from this most recent water damage or was it pre-existing to 20 years ago? That would be really cool technology. And maybe somebody's working on it. what would also be really fantastic would be if I could take an air sample in the field. And have maybe AI or something analyze it and give me near real world results instead of I've got to take it to FedEx and I've got to ship it to the lab and then the lab's got to do their thing. So that is something I've I've heard of technology where a sample is collected and out in a van at the job site. A detailed microscopic picture is taken of that sample. It is sent to some AI thing that I I don't quite understand. And they're getting lab results back near real world time, near real time. so things like that are fascinating to me because what we're doing is we're making the process more efficient. As long as we're getting accurate data, I'm all for it. there I there have not been enough studies for things like that. So there's some really fascinating things in the future. hopefully I'll see them while I'm still doing this. you know, so Ian: What would you like to see improve in the industry that we're already currently doing? What would over say the next ten years, what would you like to see people get better at? More about Mike: Short. Yeah. for the general population, more of an awareness. And not it does not have to be about mold, but it sh really should be about indoor air quality and cleanliness, the importance of housekeeping and health. so that is something a general awareness. Also, when it comes to mold remediation, more of a there are standards there, but compliance with standards where you have you know five different remediation contractors. when I write a mold remediation protocol, I help to even out the scope of work where I can where, you know, all five are basically bidding on the process that I come up with rather than this person thinks she should do that and that guy over there thinks he should do this. So more evenness as far as as scope of work. pricing, there's al we're in a capitalistic, you know, place. And so that's always going to be some a state of flux there. always making sure that contractors are doing the best that they can, you know, ethically, morally, things like that. There's I said shyster contractors before. there's a ton. I'd like to get those guys, th those folks cleaned out of the industry. you know, just the and and again more education, but more more science and more knowledge learned about mold, how it grows, where it grows. We have a lot of that, but there's always more. And then the the interaction or the interface of AI into the industry for everything. And I say that like I know AI. I know very little. I'm I still take my notes on paper in blue pen because it was everything in for the state of Colorado had to be in blue pen. And so I I mean that's how I roll. But I do see I don't understand it, but I can certainly see, you know, with artificial intelligence how it can really change some things that I I would be open to. Ian: from a homeowner's perspective. They find mold. Do they call you right away for testing? Do they call a restoration contractor first? we've touched on this in a couple instances, but I find mold in my house, what should I do? Mike: Sure. Either one works. what I would recommend, so if it's an emergent situation. So if you, you know, you go down into you have a flood in your basement and you see mold down there, obviously call a restoration contractor. if there if it is not emergent and you just want to know what's happening, that would be a good time to engage me. I do a lot of the same things having come from the restoration world that they do. So I use the infrared and I use the moisture meter and and all of that. and then what I can supplement with is a sampling methodology with air surface, something like that, to get the answers of okay, here here's what our moisture source is, here's where things are right now, and here's some corrective action for you to to go through the molder mediation. But You know, really, as long as you're getting some help from someone, a lot of times, I will get called by restoration contractors where they'll go and they'll say, Okay, yeah, we think it's mold, can you come on out and do your thing? And that's what I'll do. So yeah. Ian: We have an interesting opportunity here because your wife is a realtor. Mike: Yes. Ian: From a real estate perspective, things are a little different, obviously. We're usually in a a buy-sell transaction. That can be challenging. Yeah. Mike: So Ian: How can realtors be better equipped to approach potential mold problems? Mike: You bet. Well, I you know the realtors in this market are they're pretty savvy when it comes to mold. And with that too, a lot of the home inspectors now are are much more aware of mold and potential issues. And I'll get calls from home inspectors as well. So really it is the the challenge that I see in a real estate transaction, Ian, is the speed with which it has to happen. Because there's these deadlines. And, you know, we we have our objection thing on Wednesday at five and things like that. So for me, it is more challenging, like, okay, we really gotta hustle on this one. the other thing too is the cost to the client is impacted. Because in this market I have to ship all the samples out. There's no laboratory here for mold analysis. So I can get samples to a laboratory in two or three days for a very reasonable price. I can have them there at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. But golly, now we're gonna start talking about price. And then when it comes to the analytical fees, a standard turnaround for a laboratory is three to five days for mold samples. I can have them analyzed same day. But again, it's cost. So we take scenario one where we have some time to work with. and so if I test on a Monday, you know, the following Monday, Tuesday, I'll have your report to you. If I test on another Monday and we need answers very quickly, I can have a report to you by close of business tomorrow. But that's a different checkbook, you know. So they they provide more challenges that way. what I've seen, and it's not just Realtors really, it's it's everybody, they generally fall into one or two, one of two categories when it comes to mold. You have more of the ones that are really not that concerned about it, you know, or they're like, Well, yeah, it's not that bold, it's just a little mold and blah, blah, blah. It could be. That could be the situation. and the other ones now are are like, okay, we recognize that this is maybe a little bit more important than it was back in the day. And so we're gonna get it tested and professionally cleaned and remediated and professionally cleared and and things like that. So it really it depends on the perspective of the person. It depends on that particular project, you know, and the health of of of everybody. So there's There's a lot of different variables that can be introduced into that. Ian: I like it. Like I said, we're in a interesting position here because Terra being a real is very helpful with it. Mike: Yeah. it is. And she, you know, I know on hers, I think she was always like this on her transactions, but now that she's heard me talk about it so much, whenever any inspection happens on any of her whether her properties, whether it's she's working for the buyer or the seller, anything like that, she's gotten used to having me go out now on just water stuff. Hey, the, you know, can you take your infrared out and go check this kitchen around the dishwasher and things like that? So I think she's just heard me so many times on the phone talking to people. But it's great because it's, you know, a lot of times, Ian, I'll go out, and I don't charge anything to stop in for 15 minutes and you know, tell people what I think or look at it and give them some advice. and so it goes back to that helping, you know. so it it's really it's just more awareness, which is great. Ian: Very helpful. Mike: Yeah. Ian: What else? What am I missing? Mike: my goodness. We could talk for hours and hours and hours about all kinds of things. But, you know, I guess a key takeaway from today is you know, if you have mold in your house or something like that, don't you you can be concerned. I'm not saying don't be. But you know, it takes a little time to figure out what we're up against, but most of the time You know, I I give the the example in all of the many thousands of mold inspections I've done, either as a contractor or as a consultant, how many times has it been so bad that I recommend people move out of their house house? And I had this conversation on a on an inspection just yesterday, and it was a lovely young family with three young daughters. And I said, well, I'm again, I'm not a physician and I I'm not qualified to answer that. but if I call you and I say, you know what, you may want to take these lab results and take them to your doctor and see what he or she says, that's kind of like mic speak. Ian: For Mike: You know, we may want to do something here. it it it could be kind of bad. Not saying it is, but let's let's give it some more examination. But most of the time Ian, I think I've ever done that. No more than 10 times. And yeah, I've gone in and you know, you see black and hairy, and it can be bad, and all of these other things. But a piece of advice that I give to any occupants in a building like that is follow your body. you know, when you consider what are generally known as symptoms of some type of mold exposure. Going back to this immune system response, you know, your mucous membranes are working a lot, you're kind of schnutzy here as you're you're trying to flush it out. fatigue, headaches. when you leave and you start to feel better, but then you go back and you start to feel worse. Things like that, you know, keep an eye on on that. if it becomes to the point where either you are so concerned about your health that you're not enjoying life, or you you have the symptoms where wherever I go into my home, I don't feel great, you know, that's time to be to give it more concern than normal. But so that's why I say follow your body. But Th I do not give a medical advice I'm not qualified to. So I always say, Go check with your physician first. I'll be the expert on your home. You let your physician be the expert on your body, and we're gonna find a place in the middle there and we're gonna get you sorted out. So Ian: Do you have advice for tenants? Because this is a very touchy subject often time. Mike: It can be, yeah. that that's always it can be the challenging because if I get a call from a a property management company, for example, and they say, Well, my r tenant is reporting that they think there's mold here or they're feeling ill, go in and test it, and I do that. And I always prefer that the tenant is not there. Simply because I cannot tell them much. My client is the management company or the asset owner. I'm very upfront with them and I tell them I I can tell them kind of what I'm sensing, but I always leave it open like I don't have the laboratory data yet, and that really drives a lot of it here. A frustrating thing for me is when I tell them, just so you know, I cannot share this report with you. You're gonna have to get it from whomever hired me. that's where my fiduciary responsibility is and and they are my client. So that's frustrating. People just they just wanna feel better, you know, and they're scared. I understand it. From a a tenant standpoint, if they call and say, Well, you know, I I live in this place and I think there's mold, but my property management company or my landlord, they they don't want to pay for testing. Can you do it? Again, I I certainly feel their pain, but I generally won't because I need the permission of the owner of that s that property to go in and do what I what I would do. so you know what I offer in cases like that is if you're so concerned about it, I can talk to that person and see if I can, you know, coax them or or give them some good, solid reasons why it would be a good idea to do a a mold examination, then yeah. Those are challenging. Those are challenging and sometimes frustrating. Cause you just want to get in and help. But there's there's legal obligations or or liabilities where it's not a good idea. Ian: Unfortunately, shyster contractors, as you've said, have seemed to almost ruin the second that comes up, it's like, well it's not that big of a deal or it's they're just gonna charge me a bunch of money and so there is a balance there Mike: yeah, truly. Yeah. It's it's they're either gonna charge me a lot or they're gonna do not a great job and I'm gonna be paying somebody else, you know, down the line. Or there's a lot of reasons. I understand it. I really do. and and then you take two good natured people like us and all we want to do is help out. And our you know, we kind of had our our hands are tied in a way to to do that well. Ian: There's a very frustrating balance there of I want to help so much and legally my hands are tied. Yeah and I have to cover my butt. Mike: Right. Ian: But I still want to help you. And regardless of how much I want to help you, I could really screw myself by trying to help you. Mike: Yes. Ian: And it's really hard to explain that and communicate that and get a level of understanding where, yes, it's still a very frustrating situation, but they understand like next steps there are very tough. Mike: Yeah, it is. I mean, you know, in that situation you can always try to get out of your lease and move to a different place. That can be challenging too, you know, where I and I have seen some property managers where they're they're like, you know what, that's not a bad idea. And some of are like, You signed it right here. Do you want a copy of your lease agreement? We're not gonna let you out of it. Yeah. Ian: I've not experienced this myself, but I have seen instances where the tenant can be on the hook for the mold. The property Mike: But the property. Ian: management or the the landlord can in a sense blame the tenant for the mold and now they're on the hook for it. Mike: Truly. Yeah. It's and and I've seen where if you're not keeping up, I mean if you're I don't know, what would be a good scenario if you're frequently overrunning the tub or something like that, if you're not using it the manner it was installed, you know, there can be a very good argument for that. Ian: Is that similar to insurance often not assisting with mold restoration or remediation projects? Mike: It it can be, yeah. I know I used to do a lot of insurance work or work with insurance companies and it became to the point where mold simply because of of the cost of remediation, you know, something that I go back to is an insurance policy covers primarily two things, sudden And accidental. Those are the two keywords that I hear a lot: sudden and accidental. So if your pipe freezes, yeah, they're gonna send out a crew and they're gonna dry you out. And you might have to fix the your your own pipe, but they're gonna pay for you know repairing and correcting all of the resultant damage. mold, on the other hand, does not show up suddenly. It it takes some time. Now it can get to the point where we see it with our eyes within a couple days. but a lot of insurance companies, I think, look at mold coverage as more of a maintenance issue or a usage issue than a covered peril that is sudden and accidental. Where okay, yeah, you went down in your basement, and I know you only go down there once a week to do laundry or something like that, but you should have known you had two inches of standing water in your basement. So now it and I'm not saying that it that is a covered peril or an uncovered peril. What I'm saying is it can bring in some some decision making that may not be advantageous for the policy holder. They may not cover it. mold is generally looked at something not sudden, not an accidental, so therefore generally not covered by standard homeowners insurance. I believe there are some insurance companies that will offer additional riders to a policy that will have $5,000 worth of mold coverage. If there's a water damage or something that is covered, then they'll include that or you pay more for it. it's kind of like you know, some homes, if you want a sewer backup, that is not automatically covered by some insurance policies as I understand it. You have to purchase that sewer backup. which is why when it comes to insurance, and I really recommend. I wish there was a standard questionnaire out there or standard scenarios. Maybe that's something we do one day. And we sit there and and say, okay, I want to buy a homeowner's insurance policy from ABC Insurance. Here's some questions that I ask my insurance agent for my house once a year, like clockwork, because I've seen so many things not covered. Okay, insurance agent. does it cover accidental fire? Yes, water, da-da-da, the biggies. Okay, so if I have, and then I hit him with the scenarios. I'm like, okay, if I have a sewer back up in my crawl space, is that covered? Yes. Okay, is it additional? Yeah. Okay, it's worth $10 more a month for me to do that. Do I have mold coverage in my home? Yes. If let's say if you're on vacation and you have a covered water damage. And mold grows because of that covered peril, yes, you have additional coverage for mold. And so you kind of go through this litany because I think a lot of people, you know, look at you know, recently at the Palisades and the Eaton fires in California, where they are shocked that their insurance companies come out and say, I'm sorry, you're not covered for wildfire or something like that. I've seen it so many times where I I just ask, I know the answer because I pay for the answer, but I want to make sure that I don't, you know, that I have good coverage. And yeah, cost more, but you know, when you look at I might pay a couple hundred dollars more a year for mold rider. For five or ten thousand dollars worth of mold remediation, it's a much easier financial hit for me to pay that than to be like, boy, I've got twenty thousand dollars worth of mold in my home and I don't have a penny under insurance to cover it. So, you know, you you have to you have to be engaged. Ian: It's important to do your due diligence as a homeowner. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, a lot of home how many times have you heard a homeowner say, Well, you know what, I've I've been paying for homeowners insurance for 25, 30 years, and I've never filed a claim. Well, you still have to do your due diligence on this one, you know. that's just it's a contract. And I follow blogs for some public adjusters and s and some proponents for insurance companies and I see both sides of it. You know, and so it just having people really engaged in understanding what their homeowners insurance covers. It's not a a very interesting topic, but you know, it it can potentially be a a significant and sometimes catastrophic financial hit. It really Ian: It's important. Just staying informed and doing your due diligence. Yeah. Because there's preventative practice and then there's future preventative practice. So exactly. You have your your insurance policy understood. Right. And Mike: Right. Ian: you're paying for the extras that you deem necessary. Right. But also there is that preventative cleaning and duct cleaning and changing out your furnace fill. Mike: Absolutely. Ian: Yeah. Just check your basement more than once a month. Mike: Yeah, exactly. You know, when you go on vacation, turn your water off. You know, I I do that religiously. If we're gonna be gone for more than a couple of days, and just you know, it's a valve. Shut the valve. Ian: Yeah, it does amaze me the number of people I even from a tenant standpoint, you should know where your main water shutoff is. You should know where your furnace filter is. And people just have never been exposed to that. Mike: Yeah. Ian: What's under the house is out of mind. Yep. Mike: Does not exist. Two things I always encourage everybody to know about their well, three. Number one, how to get out. Number two, where is your water shut off? And number three, where's your main breaker panel? 'Cause if you need to open your main breaker panel for whatever, you know exactly where to go. yeah. Ian: What about fire extinguishers? at least a fire blanket. Mike: Absolutely. Anything like that. And you you should have a couple different fire extinguisher types. You know, one for grease fire in a kitchen. We have ours under our kitchen sink. It's usually white. And then you have one for for general purpose, which is red. And so yeah, it just it's better to know this stuff before you need to know it in an emergency than being like, holy crap. Ian: So from a a homeowner standpoint, don't use bleach. It's mainly water. Yeah. And you have the potential of making the problem worse. Mike: Correct. Ian: If I drive to Ace or Home Depot because I notice a tiny little spot behind my washing machine, what should I be looking for if I wanted to treat this myself? Mike: Yeah, just anything, a good almost like a degreasing solution. so, you know, there's Benefect, seventh generation. Again, I always go back to these plant-based products. Just a good cleaning s solution. It doesn't have to be noxious and formaldehyde and things like that. Just remove it and then keep an eye on it. It it can be common. In a bathroom, for example, in an older home where they don't have an exhaust fan, and you'll start to see atop the shielding, the seal, the shower ceiling on the drywall, see these black spots popping up every once in a while. that's more of a ventilation issue that you should get you should be exhausting that moist air. you know, so just anything that can clean it well and then keep an eye on it. And then if you have any questions or concerns, that's where you can call and you know look at it. Do some testing. Ian: On the topic of bathrooms, what about the super basic, simple, you know, shower curtains, grout lines and tile, mildew? You can smell that and you you'd mention the burps. I mean it's active at that point. Mike: If you're smelling it, yes. Yeah, something is actively growing. And it does not necessarily mean it's fungal. It could be bacterial. and so yeah, sh tile showers are tough. I have tile showers in my house. and they're great if you keep up on the maintenance of them. So, you know, at the bottom, by the shower pan or something where you have the silicone caulking. I've got a shower Ian, it drives me. nuts. And I know once a year I've got to reculk it. And I'm an environmental guy. And so, you know, reculking that, also treating the tile and the grout at least once a year is what I do in mine. So putting on that, you know, first not using it for a few days, making sure everything's nice and dry, giving it a good clean, and then putting, you know, the the clear protectant around it. Because the ceramic tile less so, but the mortar, the grout, that is the moisture can get through that. And so you just wanna keep, you know, it's kind of like waxing your car, keep putting that protective layer on as you should. And so those are the preventive maintenance things on those. shower curtains, gosh, that just reminds me. I've got a shower curtain. It's starting to look a little yellow on the bottom. And I've tried to clean it and it just stained and so I'm gonna go spend ten bucks a Target and get a fresh sheet put in there, you know. Ian: Are there gimmicky things in this industry that you just despise or misnomers that Mike: Toxic mold. that's a that's a hard for one for me to to wrap my head around because there are many that, you know, cause as verse adverse health effects, but I don't know if there's any that are toxic where they are the source of toxicity, but they can contribute, I think. And now I'm getting into the danger zone of of I'm not a medical person, but you know, they can certainly start to in inhibit good health, I think. And so toxic mold is something. fly by night contractors, who Ian: Who Mike: you can just tell. Do they do their containment? Do they even set up containment and engineering controls? You know, how well their cleanup is and and all of that. I've got a a personal grief with contractors who say they do a good job, but then I look at it and I'm like, Wow, this is way below standard. so that's something, yeah, it's there's always something out there, you know. So Ian: You were speaking on mycotoxins? Yes. Not micro. I C O. Okay. Mike: MICO MY C O Ian: So that is that where the the toxic mold comes from Mike: so yeah, it is because there's as I understand it eleven major toxin groups when it comes to mold. And and so you have aflatoxin, okra toxin, and each one of these groups, those toxins, those mycotoxins can be produced by different types of mold, which is interesting to me. from a consulting standpoint because I like to see if I can reverse engineer the mycotoxin topic where okay I know what mycotoxin this whole this person says the medical report says for example okay I've they have aflatoxins in their bodies. Well as we know it right now there's not a ton there's some specific molds that can produce mycotoxins. So it could be a, you know, some species of Aspergillus or Stachybactrus or something like that. So whenever somebody calls me, this is actually interesting in because they said, Yeah, I've got my mycotoxin test. And I'll always ask if you're comfortable, email them over to me and we can talk about it, at least in the the limited knowledge that I have about them. And then it helps me because knowing now. What specific types of molds can produce these specific type of type of mycotoxins? When I do an inspection in their home, I can start looking for those environmental conditions that favor the gross growth of some of these specific molds that produce these specific mycotoxins. So if it's something with stachybodrus, I know that I am dealing with a a mold that takes a fair amount of moisture, time. You know, it's not something that's gonna be on a surface easily seen. It's gonna be hidden somewhere. It's probably gonna be near a moisture source, maybe in a wall cavity or, you know, under the kitchen sink, the the toe kick area of under that cabinet, not where you put your laundry detergent thing or your your soap and things like that. Under that cabinet. And so it's kind of fun for me to put the puzzle together backwards. from that perspective. And again, it just it adds another clue to the whole picture. And so that makes it fun for me. But yeah, mycotoxins again are our newer topic and and very fascinating. Ian: I'm gonna have to look into that more. That's very interesting. Mike: Yeah. Ian: that's about all I got, man. Mike: Excellent. That was a lot of fun. Ian: Yeah, I enjoyed it. That's two and a half hours. Mike: Seriously? Ian: Yep. Jeez, dude. Mike: Isn't that amazing?