Valor Mold

Yes, But Not For Free And
Not With An Expert’s Eye

Most DC area homeowners expect home inspections to be exceptionally thorough, and they usually are, but a home inspector’s main concern is immediate safety and structural integrity. They look for areas where failure is imminent or construction is substandard.

They look, in essence, where the law tells them they must. Beyond that, they charge extra for other tests such as radon or mold.

While radon inspection is the simple act of walking around your basement with a sensor in hand, looking for mold is a whole different animal requiring a level of expertise that home inspectors rarely possess.

The Danger Of Inexpert Advice

While most inspectors working in the DC area are well-trained and experienced in building, their knowledge of household mold is minimal.

They have little more than a layman’s knowledge of where mold grows and its dangers, creating a cursory, at best, inspection process and, just maybe, one or two air samples sent off to a lab.

And if they do send off a sample, the chances of them being able to fully understand the report they get back are scant. This is not so much a fault of the home inspector as it is an indication of how much there is to learn about household mold.

So, why do they offer mold inspection when they know so little about the subject?

Mostly, they are responding to consumer demand that they do so, as many homeowners want to ensure they aren’t about to buy into a home riddled with mold and assume that looking for mold is part of the standard practice.

Home inspectors are businessmen and must respond to market demands, so they offer the service. But they only offer it as a premium. Partly to dissuade all but the most determined customers, and partly because lab analysis of those samples is far from free.

So, when your home inspector comes to you with the barely understood report of his inexpertly captured air sample and tells you that all is well, you need to take it with a mountain-sized grain of salt.

We have no doubt that they are doing their best, but their best falls short of the mark when it comes to mold.

Proper Mold Inspection

The first thing to understand about mold is that it is absolutely everywhere, and that’s why the technical term for removing mold colonies is mold remediation. Complete removal of all mold spores is an impossibility, but getting the indoor spore counts to match your outdoor spore counts is possible.

A mold spore in and of itself is not a danger. It’s only when the spores reach an elevated amount in an indoor space that mold becomes a health problem. Most often, the source of those high counts is the result of mold colonizing an area of your home.

Mold needs a food source and moisture to grow a colony but is satisfied with remarkably low levels of each. High humidity (above 60%) is all mold needs to take hold in your home, and that’s why a tiny water leak or poorly drained condensation can cause mold to take over with amazing speed.

While visual inspection for mold colonies is certainly important, mold spores themselves are odorless and microscopic. Air samples are the only way to confirm that the air in your home is free of major concentrations of mold.

With Valor Mold Removal, that means using our InstaScope machine, one of only 70 in the world, to test every room in your home.

With our mobile lab, we can sample individual items, like comforters and area rugs, as well as entire rooms and get easy to understand results within minutes that are 99% accurate.

When we say your home is safe, you can rest assured that we are right. And you don’t have to wait weeks for the results like you would with literally any other mold testing company in the area.

If you are concerned that your DC area home has a mold problem, contact us at Valor Mold Removal for a free estimate.