By Indoor Air Quality Solutions | July 19, 2016 at 02:23 PM EDT | No Comments
Air Sampling for Mold Spores is NOT a Mold Inspection and NOT an Air Quality Sample
Mold has become an issue for homeowners and home buyers across the country. Mold inspections have become a part of most real estate transactions. However, here in Florida, a mold inspection has become a bit cliché even passé. Today it’s all about Air Quality. Why call it a mold sample if you can charge more and call it an Air Quality Sample? I’ve given my 2 cents about the value of mold sampling and the total lack of value in simply sampling for mold and calling it a mold inspection so I won’t beat a dead horse, well not much.
If anyone is purchasing a home and they want to know if there is a mold issue they will typically ask their home inspector to collect a few air samples for airborne mold spores. This is the add-on feature that benefits the home inspector and adds no valuable information to the home buyer. But hey, the home buyer doesn’t know that, right? Worse yet, the home inspector doesn’t even know that. The home inspector isn’t aware of the standard of practice for mold inspection, the ASTM D-7338. The home inspector simply excludes as much liability as possible in his or her inspection disclaimer and collects a few air samples for airborne mold spores and calls them air quality samples, C'est La Vie, That’s life, thanks for the extra cash and on to the next job.
The home buyer who then becomes the homeowner may soon realize that there’s an issue with water intrusion that the home inspector missed and the mold samples for airborne mold spores didn’t discover. How could that be? The home inspector inspected for mold, right? The home was sampled for mold, right? There were air quality samples collected that said there was no problem, Right?
No, not true. The home was never inspected for mold, and actually only a very, very, small amount of the air was sampled for mold. The actual air quality was never established, and if the one component that was sampled (mold) is undisturbed, the mold won’t be in the air. The air sampling for mold spores is extremely unreliable and will not provide any valuable information. (pardon my beating the dead horse a bit).
The home inspector or mold inspector that collected the samples for airborne mold spores provided the homeowner with no valuable information about the home they just purchased. So now that the new homeowner has discovered a water or mold problem they have to hire a new mold assessor to take a second look at the home. If we are contacted, we always take the opportunity to ask the new homeowners to provide us with their mold inspection report to review.
We have a great collection of mold inspection reports from home and mold inspectors all across the state. Insurance companies and homeowners have been asking us for a second opinion for years and our collection of worthless reports is substantial and growing each week. How our industry came to this is amazing? Let’s just say it’s capitalism at the expense of personal ethics. If all you care about is making a buck and you could care less about the value of what you’re providing your client, go ahead and collect a few more air samples for mold spores and call them “Air Quality Samples”. That’s capitalism without ethics.
So exactly what happens when we get to the home and actually take a look. A disclaimer free look. A true mold inspection in accordance with the ASTM D-7338. Let’s face it, if we’re there, then there’s a problem. If there wasn’t, the homeowner wouldn’t have called us, right? So now we have a homeowner that should have had the opportunity to identify a problem with the home they wanted to purchase prior to that purchase. Critical, right? That’s what they hired the first mold inspector for. To identify any issues with the home that can support mold growth. Prior to the purchase is the time to identify any mold related issues. That’s when the issues can be used during the decision making phase of the purchase.
Regardless of the issue, everything can be negotiated if the issues are identified during the buying phase of the transaction. What the home buyer wants is information about the home. Valuable information about the home not useless airborne mold spore count information. Valuable information like, “The home you are wanting to purchase has areas of building envelope failure that are allowing water intrusion that could support mold growth in the following areas.” Then list the areas of failure. The list should be specific and define the extent of the water and mold damage, describe the failure, and don’t be concerned with the genus of mold because it doesn’t matter. What matters to the home buyer is the knowledge any issues before they make the purchase, not after.
The collection of air samples is a feel good placebo that may help facilitate a sale but is not a mold inspection. If you’re selling a mold inspection, then provide a mold inspection. The only thing worse than collecting air samples for mold spores and calling it a mold inspection is selling that simple collection of airborne mold spores as an air quality sample. With all that can be in the air, mold is but one small piece of the air quality puzzle. I can assure you that sampling the air for mold spores is not and never will be an air quality sample any more than it’s a mold inspection. This is the art of over selling and under delivering.
This brief article should be informative. It should raise questions, but it shouldn’t offend. If it does offend you then you’re probably the guy collecting the air samples for mold spores and either calling it a mold inspection or air quality sampling. If that’s the case, no apologies necessary on my end. My advice, stop it. Stop over selling and under delivering just to make a few extra bucks.
I gotta go for now, I have a dead horse to go kick in another forum…….
EPISODE465 - Nuno Canha, PhD - University of Lisbon - IAQ and Ventilation This week on IAQ Radio we welcome another international researcher from the University of Lisbon Nuno Canha, PhD. Dr. Canha recently published a paper "Indoor air quality during sleep under different ventilation patterns". This is a topic we have been interested in but there has not been much research to discuss. We look forward to talking about this paper and and other research Dr. Canha has done related to IAQ issues.
Dr. Canha holds a MSc in Chemistry from Instituto Superior Tecnico of University of Lisbon, Portugal, and completed a PhD degree in Environmental Sciences in Delft University of Technology (Delft, The Netherlands) in 2014. His main research interests are instrumental neutron activation analysis, indoor air quality, source apportionment, ventilation rates, atmospheric air quality, exposure to air pollutants and biomonitoring of air pollution with lichens. Join us live today at noon or download the show later to LEARN MORE on IAQ Radio!
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The Veterans
Lee King -President After Disaster and current RIA Board of Directors member
Wes Williams - Founder and President CJB in the Vancouver BC
Scott Stamper - CEO Regency DKI and past RIA president
Tom Laska - President ICC Restoration Minneapolis, MN
The Next Generation of Leaders
Chris Yanker - Production Manager Buffalo Restoration in Bozeman, MT
Jacelyn Carpenter - CEO Ideal Restoration, San Francisco, CA and RIA board member
Grant Nitzche - President SERVPRO of Wheaton, IL
Tom McMahon - Senior Project Manager McMahon Restoration Chicago, IL
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Martin King, ASA, CR was the Restoration Industries Association Technical Adviser for 30 years, where he developed a broad range of restoration procedures and published over 300 articles in trade journals. As the CEO of Martin Churchill Associates, Inc. Damage Investigators and Appraisers Mr. King also investigated and prepared formal reports on over 2000 property damage cases. Marty also taught at the University of Maryland in the Fire Sciences group. Mr. King was the man disaster restoration people went to when nobody else could answer their questions. Donâ??t miss this rare opportunity to hear the â??Dean of Disaster Restorationâ??. Also joining us on this show was The â??Restoration Industries Global Watchdogâ?? Pete Consigli and our Technical Director, Dr. Dietrich Weyel.
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Fri, 26 May 2017 12:00:12 -0400 EPISODE460 - Rachel Gutter - What is a WELL Building Standard? This week on IAQ Radio we welcome Rachel Gutter, Chief Product Officer for the International WELL Building Institute. Ms. Gutter joined the International WELL Building Institute in late 2016 as senior vice president, bringing with her a wealth of cross-cutting experience in safer, healthier environments where they matter the most: in school rooms across the globe. She joins IWBI after a nine-year career at the U.S. Green Building Council, where she founded the Center for Green Schools, convening and collaborating with a diverse group of partners, including teachers unions, the National PTA, the Department of Education, the Princeton Review, executives from Fortune 100 companies, and green building councils around the world. Under her direction, the Center published more than 1,000 pages of technical guides and original research, mobilized more than $275 billion in investments in LEED certified educational facilities, and deployed more than half a million volunteers to contribute $50 million in donated time to transform schools and campuses on every continent.
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The RTPE program (Registered Third Party Evaluator) recently explained to RIA members at their annual convention in Palm Springs during their Town Hall meeting by Ken Larsen, CR, WLS, CMP may be a solution for contractors who are constantly challenged by TPA's on their scope of work and invoices. Longtime industry activist and RIA supporter Ken Larsen presented his vision for the RTPE program on the RIA Town Hall panel along with Peter Crosa, AIC, RPA and Ed Cross, Esq. Larsen has a 5 part series on the TPE concept that was previewed in the 2017 February issue of Cleaning and Restoration (C&R) magazine.
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Fri, 07 Apr 2017 12:00:18 -0400
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