Anyone here deal with mold?

hscrugby

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2005
Location
Raleigh, NC
Found out we have mold somewhere in our house it looks like.

(Well, Dr finally narrowed it down, and it looks like the wife has been being exposed to mold for a while.) So since they moved offices 6 months ago, and the Dr is guessing it's been 1-2 years slowly getting more exposure.
That leaves the house, and well, our cars?

Anyway, going to buy a bunch of those stupid self tests for mold I guess? Anyone here got any advice? I looked in the usual spots, no moisture in the HVAC anywhere I could see, and no leaks anywhere either?
I guess it could be in the wall joints from when they were building it?

Mainly just annoyed at knowing this is gonna cost a fortune somehow.

So after poking everywhere I could inspect in the house, I figured I'd rant on here. :)

Cheers
 
What kind of health problems led the Dr to suspect mold exposure? If you don't mind my asking.

My understanding is that the testing equipment for airborne spores is pretty expensive. Maybe there are some cheaper kits out now that work well, but I'm not sure. Might not hurt to have a pro test your house anyway, and maybe even the cars.
 
I used to work for a place where I cleaned air ducts, vents, and basements in order to get rid of mold. We got a percent of whatever the bill was, so guys would bullshit people and tell them they needed a bunch of stuff done that didnt need to be done. If you can find anything to test it yourself you might save yourself a lot of money. I have seen people pay $2000 for us to do one days worth of work and sometimes it pissed me off how much the guys overcharged people. It really wasnt hard work, we scrubbed the mold with bleach and a scrubber, vacuumed out the vents, and fogged the house, vents, and basement or crawl space if it needed it. It would be cheaper for you to buy a machine to fog the house (fogger) and some sporocide (I think thats what it was called). If you mess with any mold wear a mask and maybe even a full tyvek suit. You can get respiratory infections and other things if you breath it in.
 
We used to have a ton of mold in the crawlspaces under our house, I got under there, sprayed it with some bleach and problem solved.
 
there are thousands of types of mold. Only a handful are harmful. Mold is actually extremely common in homes but as said before, only a few are harmful.

Proper mold remediation is expensive, so get several quotes on fixing it.

How old is your house? Are you in high density housing or single family home? Do you own the property or is it leased/rented?
 
Do you have a Crawl Space, or basement, or slab. I deal with mold remediation in crawl spaces. Shoot me a pm if you have a crawl space and need me to take a look at it.
 
GSW said:
What kind of health problems led the Dr to suspect mold exposure? If you don't mind my asking.
My understanding is that the testing equipment for airborne spores is pretty expensive. Maybe there are some cheaper kits out now that work well, but I'm not sure. Might not hurt to have a pro test your house anyway, and maybe even the cars.
Click to expand...
Basically it's a ruling out of everything. The first Dr was convinced it was thyroid cancer, then when that was negative, it was definately Graves disease, (cept the most common, read 99.9% of the time, side effect, is EXTREME weight loss, to the point your eyes start bulging out, and well, my wife doesn't ahve that problem. :flipoff2: to the first person that shows her this comment)
So we switched Drs, and after doing a LOT of tests, there is a slight chance mold exposure could cause most of the issues she's having.
rockcity said:
there are thousands of types of mold. Only a handful are harmful. Mold is actually extremely common in homes but as said before, only a few are harmful.
Proper mold remediation is expensive, so get several quotes on fixing it.
How old is your house? Are you in high density housing or single family home? Do you own the property or is it leased/rented?
Click to expand...
The house is ~4 years old. We (read as the bank) own it.
As for testing, I'm planning on doing the home do it yourself test kits tomorrow morning.
(to lazy to do them tonight.) IF they show mold, I'll send one of them off to get analyzed as what type of mold.
Really it mostly just boils down to wanting the wife to get healthy again, and it's getting worse than the way I work on the jeep. Try throwing money and replacing parts. Stop fixing things when it starts working. Then tell everyone the other things were wrong too. :lol:

Just figured I'd ask if anyone on here did it as a business, would rather toss the money to them if we do need it removed.
Wife's paranoia (and as stated my "skills" with the jeep) will prevent me from doing it myself if we need to get rid of mold.
 
Sell it and move on. It'll be cheaper than fixing it.

Was it a spec house or a custom built home? A lot of spec houses are built crappy and tend to hold mold really bad. Some are finished inside before some of the roofing and sheathing is put on, which will contribute to mold due to trapping moisture, especially if it was wet when they built the house.
 
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