The mold remediation business in Virginia started out like the Wild West. There were no rules, no oversight, and few who actually understood what they were doing. We were no better, moving blindly in a profession with incredible potential while lacking the knowledge needed to do a proper job.
But all that was a long time ago, and there have since arisen multiple certification agencies, with some being more useful than others. We now hold every certification available, and David, our owner, even holds the Restoration Industry Association Certified Mold Professional (RIA-CMP) certification, which has only been awarded to 65 people in the world.
Unfortunately, some certifications do little to help a mold remediator do their job and exist solely to allow someone to call themselves a mold remediator.
There are many available mold remediation certifications of varying importance and use. The more certifications a company carries, the more serious they are about their work.
Each certification is a rung on the ladder to a full understanding of mold and how to combat mold incursions, and listed below are the four of them to give you an idea of the differences.
The AMRT is the bottom rung of the mold ladder. Yes, you have to attend a class, and yes, there’s a test at the end. The training takes four days, and you must have first passed their Water Restoration Technician course before taking this one.
The big problem with this certification is that the instructors are paid based on the number of students that pass their course. So, the class is mostly about passing the test and less about learning the deeper facts about mold.
While better than nothing, that’s a fairly low bar to accept in any professional.
This is the certification most water restoration companies carry so they can legally tackle the mold issues that come with water damage, which might explain why most are so bad at it.
This is an American National Standard for Information Interchange (ANSII) approved certification. ANSII are the folks who handle standardization of, well, almost everything. They are why all new cell phones use the same USB-C port for charging.
ANSII doesn’t create standards themselves, but they review what experts create and decide what becomes the standard for almost all industries.
This course offers a good amount of information about mold and proper remediation and digs a bit under the surface knowledge granted by the AMRT certification.
It includes a truer test of your knowledge than the internal corporate type test of the AMRT and is backed by a (mostly toothless) signed pledge to act properly within the mold remediation industry.
Unfortunately, there’s zero follow-up on those who sign this pledge and no penalties for breaking said pledge.
The ACAC-CCMR certification is a much more intense course requiring deep knowledge of mold and the remediation of mold infiltration in our homes.
This is not an easy certification to achieve but is essential to anyone who is serious about their mold remediation business. Anyone holding this certification has a solid understanding of mold and the best ways to remediate a home.
This certification, held by only 65 individuals on the planet, is the pinnacle of the mold remediation industry.
Just as with a doctorate, you must present RIA with an original mold-related thesis to earn this designation.
Few people know more about mold and mold remediation than those who hold this certification.
More damage is done to homes and their families through bad remediation than if no remediation had been performed at all.
Poor knowledge of how mold works and how to properly remediate it can lead to mold spore counts skyrocketing in previously unaffected parts of the home.
Don’t settle for a guy (or even a large company) that holds only an AMRT certification. Sure, they know slightly more than you will about mold, but they lack the understanding that breeds respect for the labor-intensive safety protocols true mold professionals use.
But worse than that, most of the technicians working for those companies are working under the owner’s certification, not their own.
Mold is a complicated subject, and there is a great amount of study involved in truly understanding how mold works and what methods work best to return a home’s mold levels to normal.
True mold professionals know that they are never done learning and spend much of their free time with their noses in books on mold remediation. Even David, with no certifications left to gain, is always hungry for new information. He also demands that his technicians all hold their own CCMR certifications.
If you have or think you have a mold problem in your home in Virginia or the DC area and want it handled by true professionals, contact us at Valor Mold for a free estimate.
We remove mold the right way… and it would be an honor to hear from you.
Your home is in the best hands—our chemical-free remediation has the highest success rate in the industry.
You get the answers you need—our special mold testing provides 99% accurate results on the spot.
You can trust our process—we’ve performed over 300 successful projects since we opened in 2006.
Fill out this form to contact us. We’ll follow up with 24 business hours.
Valor Mold Removal is a certified and experienced mold testing and remediation company. We are fully insured, fully licensed, and accredited with the Better Business Bureau. We also provide crawl space encapsulation, soda blasting, humidity control, and air quality cleaning.
