Previously Known As: Advantage Environmental Solutions, LLC
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Advantage provides mold contamination assessment, mold inspections, and mold remediation design. We can handle the smallest residential job, commercial locations, or the largest industrial indoor air quality project. We do indoor air quality work as well as mold inspections, mold testing, remediation oversight, and post remediation testing.
Mold has been in the news a lot in recent years. Also, you will see ads in local ad magazines and in the phone book with some terrified looking person screaming, "Do You Have Mold?", or some such question. Our company does not use scare tactics to sell our services. We do not want to add to the hype produced by the media and other companies. Hopefully this passage will answer some of the questions you may have about mold without engendering hysteria.
Mold truly is everywhere but that's a good thing. Mold performs a needed function in our natural environment. That is the breakdown of organic materials, especially cellulose (plant products, and wood), so that these substances can be naturally reused in the environment.
Not all people are affected to the same degree from mold. Some people are very resistant to molds effects and others are very sensitive. However, mold may cause health problems in certain individuals. Molds may be allergenic, toxic (poisonous), or may cause infections. The allergenic effects are the most common. Toxic effects are rare but may occur from certain molds under certain conditions. Infections very rarely occur in healthy individuals and are generally found only in hospitals among immune compromised individuals.
Mold needs liquid water to complete its life cycle. High humidity is only a problem when the moisture condenses (becomes liquid) on a cool surface. A good rule of thumb is control the moisture,control the mold.
Mold grows best in areas where there is very little fresh air and no sunshine. Basements, crawl spaces, closets, and inside walls are places where mold can flourish.
If you see mold, in your house, growing on a impermeable surface (hard) you can clean it off with a bleach solution. Mold in the bathroom is pretty common. We often call it mildew. However, when mold grows on a porous material in your house or building, like unfinished wood, drywall, books or magazines, carpets, or furniture it cannot be cleaned with a bleach solution. Porous materials, with mold growth, must be discarded.
Testing for mold, in your house or building, is a good way to determine the how much mold is there or what kinds of mold are present. If you see mold in your living space you should perform mold tests if you believe someone is having a health problem from mold or if you are conducting a mold remediation (cleanup) project. Testing should also be done to evaluate the success of a mold remediation effort.
Mold problems can always be avoided if you control the moisture, provide adequate fresh air ventilation, and keep your house or building as clean as possible. We build our buildings out of mold food. The mold spores (seeds) float on the air and enter and exit our buildings every time we open and close a door or window. If we do not let the mold have water it cannot flourish.
TO BLEACH OR NOT TO BLEACH?
Taking Care of Mold Yourself
A Fictional Example
Mrs. Loudin had only been gone on vacation for a week, but when she returned she noticed that there was mold growing on the walls in her finished basement. She knew they had a big rain while she was gone. In fact, she was glad she was in sunny southern California when she heard about the weather back home. But what had happened while she was gone was apparently that water had pooled up outside at the corner of the house, seeped down the corner of her basement wall and collected in the lower sump corner of the basement. It wasn’t a lot of mold so she just got out the bleach, wiped off the walls in the corner and once the walls were dry she would repaint.
The question is, will this take care of the mold? Well, in some ways yes. The bleach did in fact kill the surface mold on the walls. As long as the corner remained dry, the mold would not come back. But since mold extends out root like structures, called hyphae, there would always be mold right under the surface, deep into the drywall, that would be ready to grow back if the wall got wet again. Can Mrs. Loudin keep the walls dry? Very likely she can. If she does something about reworking the outside corner of her house so that water cannot pool there anymore that will be a fairly effective first step. She will also need to double check to make sure that her sump pump is working properly. That might have prevented the mold growth in the first place. But even with all this, did she really take care of the mold? Not really. There are still mold parts in the air of the basement that can be breathed. There is also the possibility and likelihood that mold spores floating in the basement air will get into other parts of the house during normal day-to-day activity. It extends the breathing in possibilities throughout the house and increases the possibility that the mold might grow somewhere else if it finds a good location with a water source.
The best solution for this problem would have been to first get rid of the water source. The second ideal thing to do would be to bring in a mold inspector to give you an idea of whether or not it really was a significant mold problem. You can probably get this done for less than $100. But even if you did not do this, the next thing would be to determine if the mold covered less than thirty square feet of area in the corner. Then, by widely recognized mold cleanup standards, Mrs. Loudin could have taken care of the problem herself. But there is a best way to do that also. Put up plastic to isolate the corner. Take out the mold covered dry wall about one foot higher than the mold growth. It is also important that the handyman wear a small particle filtering facemask for breathing protection. The contaminated dry wall should be placed in plastic bags and thrown out. If there is carpeting involved, ideally the carpeting should be removed as well since there are mold spores in the carpeting. This will deal with the mold problem the most effectively.
