Mold Remediation Blog

We Refuse To Go Cheap When It Comes To Your Safety

With Mold Remediation, It’s The Little Things That Really Matter

Many DC area mold remediation companies will spend big on equipment without hesitation but pinch pennies everywhere else. Unfortunately for them (and you), it’s the less expensive supporting materials that can make or break the safety of a worksite.

And when that worksite is in your home, and the work is supposed to make your home safer for you and your family, those little things matter an awful lot.

Spending Big While Accomplishing Little

You may have read in one of our other blogs how insurance company billing can affect how mold remediation gets done. One of these effects is the reliance on the use of large machines instead of elbow grease to get the job done (overdrying and undercleaning).

While we have definite ideas about the efficacy of that method, the problem runs deeper than just wasting everyone’s money. This focus on equipment lets other, far more important items slide.

If the supporting materials are sub-standard or lazily applied, a contractor can end up filling your home with high concentrations of mold spores when they’re supposed to be bringing those numbers down.

A Little Plastic And Foam Or A Lot Of Negligence

Whenever a mold remediator comes to your home, job #1 is always containment. Simple in application, containment remains the most important safety element of the process. The goal is to separate the work area from the rest of your home and, thus, your family.

Skimping on containment is simply not acceptable, yet it happens all the time. Thin plastic, inadequate taping , and a general lack of respect for the process are all endemic in the mold industry.

That’s why we go overboard on our containment procedures. Maybe our tape lines don’t need to be ruler straight, but they are. Perhaps covering the floor in plastic isn’t always necessary, but you’ll never convince us to stop.

And sure, tension poles can hold up the plastic over large openings but reinforcing the ceiling with five-foot foam rails is a far superior method.

Other companies seem to forget that we can’t see the mold spores, so the tiniest leak is a huge problem. Removing mold colonies releases mold spores by the billions, so it pays to make sure they can’t escape into the rest of the home.

A major aspect of that process is creating negative air pressure. Mold spores go where the air goes, so if the pressure in the room is negative, the spores go where we tell them to, which is into our HEPA-filtered negative air machine and ultimately outside.

Yet, most remediation companies don’t even set up negative air pressure machines even though the ANSI S520 Mold Remediation Standard strongly recommends it. And when they do, few set them up correctly.

Creating And Maintaining Negative Air Pressure

Most of the work in creating negative air pressure in the work area is done by special machines created for that purpose. But they are only as good as your support. A key step that most mold remediation companies skip (because it’s very expensive) is monitoring that air pressure.

If you don’t have a Manometer monitoring the negative air pressure in your workspace, you have no idea if the rest of the equipment is operating properly. A manometer picks up fluctuations in that pressure and can alert you to trouble, whether it’s a failing seal or some other break in containment.

Most DC mold remediation contractors don’t use manometers because, on top of the expense, they can’t bill for their use. Insurance companies don’t consider it essential, so they won’t pay for their use.

But it gets much worse than missing equipment.

Loose Hoses = Loose Spores

The air hoses (called “lay flat ducting”) we use come in rolls and are cut to size at the site. They are a thin, strong plastic duct that is attached to the exhaust port on the negative air machines(NAMs) so we can duct them outside the containment and create negative air pressure in the first place. Think of blowing air through a straw.

Attaching those ducts properly is essential. If they break free, instead of keeping the mold spores from spreading, the NAMs will force the spores past the containment and flood your home with mold spores.

To prevent this from happening, we go to the trouble of buying the expensive and hard-to-find clamps designed for these machines. Instead of the $0.17 worth of duct tape other companies spend in taping the hoses in place (and praying they hold), we use $31 clamps.

See above for a real-world example of a picture a client sent us of a prior remediator’s setup. Needless to say, the pressure wasn’t enough (like having a split in your straw) and independent testing proved the mold spores got into nearby rooms.

More expensive? By far. But also reliable, and just as we are willing to spend extra to protect ourselves, we’ll do the same to protect your family.

And these clamps simply do not let go. Whereas tape – well, how many times have you tried to tape a hose in place and have it work leak-free for any length of time?

Yeah. Us, too.

We feel that if we can avoid risk, we should, even when it costs us more.

If you think you have a mold problem in your DC area home and want a company that won’t let cost affect their safety precautions, contact us at Valor Mold Removal for a free estimate.