09: Q&A Day AND FREE Gift! / Crawl Space Remediation / Find Mold RIGHT NOW, and more...

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey guys. So today is a full Q A show, which I'm really excited about. I keep telling you that I like doing these, but I really do like doing these because I see the response from you guys when I. When I'm able to help you out with some of your more specific questions, which is great. I looked last week and actually the Q and A show seemed to be, I think it was the highest listened show, which is cool. So I'm going to do another one today. I asked you guys, last weekend I put up an Instagram story to submit your questions. I got a bunch of them. When I was going through them, one of the things that I noticed was that a lot of them were around the same thing and it was really asking like, what product could we use to clean our stuff that was in a moldy home or in a moldy environment? And so what I want to do for you guys, instead of just giving like a quick answer here on the podcast, I actually put something together that I want to give to you guys that'll help break it down for you. So over the weekend I threw up a website. It's called moldcleaningproduct.com and there's a short little video for you there that explains it. But basically there's really one thing that I recommend first before everything else for this type of cleaning. It's non toxic, which is fantastic because people with mold sensitivities create or oftentimes get a chemical sensitivity as a byproduct of that. So it's super important to be using non toxic materials when you're doing the cleaning. And so the product that I like, it's non toxic, it's antifungal, antibacterial, it's botanical based. So it's using essential oils to achieve all this stuff, which is like super awesome. So if you just go to that site, moldcleaningproduct.com you can just put in your name and email address and then just click the button there to submit it. And then I'm just gonna send you an email with, with the breakdown of the product. I'm going to Link different information sheets about the product for you so you can read more into it yourself, maybe share it with your doctor to make sure that they think that will be okay for you. And then the other thing I did was I actually put a little section in there about what you should 100% definitely not ever, ever, ever use to clean mold. Okay. So I put that in there too because that's really important also. So again, if you guys want all this stuff, it's totally free. There's like no obligation or subscription or anything like that. I just wanted to give this to you because I just saw that the quality questions were all, or at least a lot of them were hovering around that idea. So again, the website moldcleaningproduct.com just put in your email and I'll send it to you.

All right, so I'm coming to you live from my bathroom, which I know sounds kind of weird.

But this morning when I was playing with my daughter, her name is Kensington, she's 18 months old, I picked her up and I like tweaked my neck and my shoulder area a little bit. And so I have a red light therapy machine that I have hung on the back door of my bathroom because I live in a small apartment. There's nowhere else to put it. But these red light machines are so cool for helping reduce pain and short term issues like that, inflammation and all that. There's so many benefits of this stuff. I actually spent like over the holidays maybe like two weeks researching the different types of machines and what they do. And I put this whole note together that I have that has all the benefits that they give you and it's actually pretty nuts, like all the things that these devices can do.

Before I get into the Q and A's, I'm just going to read a couple of the bullet points that I have here, right? And so tell me, you're like, wow, man, this sounds like it's really cool because that's what I was like when I read it. So. So decreasing inflammation, upgrading your thyroid function, helps you lose fat, boost recovery, optimize testosterone levels, increases your energy and your mitochondrial function, and enhances your blood circulation. It's good for your eye health, it helps your stem cells, it helps your skin, it decreases pain. There are some studies that talk about how it could counteract like dementia and Alzheimer's and some other long term things. It's just like all these amazing benefits and I didn't really see anything that was negative about it. So I dove into it. I actually got the idea, I don't know if any of you have heard of Dave Asprey's new book Superhuman, but there's a section in it on red light therapy, and that's what got me kind of going down this rabbit hole that I went down. So anyways, that's what I'm doing. So if you hear a slight echo behind you, it's because I'm standing in front of this machine beaming red light at myself in my bathroom. Anyways, let's get into the Q and A's, and I'm sure that's not what you guys are here to hear about. So one of the questions I got this one was from Malky Stevens, and the question was, what's the best way to abate or protect a crawl space from mold when moving is not an option? That's a really good question. Any of you that have been following me for some period of time now kind of know my sheer like disdain and hatred for crawl spaces. The truth of the matter is, and the reason I don't like them so much is you're basically sitting on a big bed of dirt under your house where water and moisture can accumulate very easily because it's all below grade. So the gravity, so gravity is going to pull moisture down. And a lot of times it happens because your drainage isn't. Isn't functioning properly on the outside of your house. So you get like water that comes near the house and then it goes down the foundation wall a little bit and it gets into the dirt under house. And what happens is that dirt is a massive organic food source. And so then you, your crawl space turns into this like massive accumulation point for mold and bacteria and all this stuff to happen. And the normal airflow in a house is going to move all of that upward through the house. So the crawl space turns into this incredibly large source of a problem in a lot of homes. So this is a really good question because it's important. So.

I'm going to give you kind of the best way to do it, which many, few people are actually able to do, then I'll give you kind of the more maybe doable alternative for it. There's two steps to this. The first is to actually, if there is mold or bacteria or stuff growing in the crawl space, you have to remediate it. So the first step is to get rid of whatever's happened down there. And that's a pretty standard remediation process. The few things that are a little different in a crawl space is one, if there's Any damp or wet dirt down there, you got to get all that out of there. So it's not good enough to dry it, because only drying it is just going to dry out the mold or bacteria that grew down there, but it's not going to remove it. And as we've learned through, or if you have been following me for a while, when mold and bacteria colonies dry out, they actually can move around a lot more easily. So we don't want to just leave that stuff down there. We want to get rid of it. So. So any soil down there that's dirt or damp, we would want to get rid of that. Any of the framing and the subfloor and the joists that are under the house, they all need to be cleaned. So there's no mold growth or anything on those. One thing that's more common in new homes now, and it's a new building code a lot because of energy efficiency, is that they'll put insulation under your house. And from an indoor air quality perspective, this is like a big, big no, no. So this, when I'm saying under your house, I mean that they put the insulation like on the bottom of the, of the, of the floor below where you're walking in your house. So if you crawled in the crawl space and you looked up, which would be the bot, you know, the bottom of that floor, there's actually insulation covering that. And the reason that's an issue is because it's creating a moisture barrier down there. And I can't tell you how many times I've pulled insulation away from like the subfloor it's covering and the framing is down there, and then there's mold all behind it. And it's because the airflow is normally moving upward and it's getting trapped up there around that insulation and then it ends up creating a mole problem. So from my point of view, insulation in a crawl space, Big, big no, no. So like I said, I know that it's current building code, and the reason it's code is for energy efficiency. But if we're trying to manage a mold problem, that's something that we definitely don't want down there. So from a remediation perspective, those are kind of the things we're doing. We're trying to dry anything out that's of kind currently wet. We're removing soil that's currently wet, we're remediating the surfaces, which is actually like, you know, removing the mold growth from the framing from the subfloor and treating all that stuff. And we're obviously not putting insulation back in there. So that's kind of the first step of it. The second step now is, is to prevent this from happening again. Right, Because. Because we got to stop this from happening. So there's a couple pieces to this. The first piece is that we have to understand where water is coming from that's potentially impacting under the house. So the two main places, I guess there's three places, but the two kind of exterior places it comes from. One is from the drainage outside your house. So think when you walk around the outside your house, you have your exterior walls. You might have planters or soil or rocks or things that might be up against your house that is going to accumulate water over time, and it's going to basically work its way downward because gravity is going to pull it downward. And so a couple things you can do to alleviate that. One, if it's possible, we really don't want planters against your house. If there's a way to move them 4 to 6 inches off the house, that's ideal because they don't have the soil that's collecting all this water. So that's something that'd be great. But if that's not possible, we have to make sure that the grading and grading is the slope of the. The ground. So we need to make sure the slope of the ground is going away from our house, not toward our house. So that way, if water does fall on the ground, it's going to be pushed away and not pushed toward the house. And there's so many times when I do an initial evaluation of a home and I start walking around the home that I can see that the soil and the ground is kind of pointing water toward the house, if it ever gets there. And then that's just going to push it straight into the wall, straight down in the crawl space, and it's going to cause a problem. So that's one big thing you can look at. The other big thing in terms of drainage on the outside you can look at is where the water is being directed from your roof. So a lot of roofs have gutters, but a lot of roofs don't. So it's very, very important that you have a gutter system attached to your roof for drainage. This means that when water falls off of your roof from the rain, it's not just going to fall down right next to your house because that puts it very close to the house. And again, it can penetrate down into the crawl space under there. So what you want is that you want a gutter system that's going to grab the water that comes off the roof and then put it through, like, a downspout. And then ideally, that downspout is going into a french drain system, which is basically going to be a little bit under the ground, but the pipe goes into that system, and then that pipe runs it all the way out, like, to the front of the house. Okay. So we don't want any water hitting the side of the house. That's the goal. A lot of times what I see with these downspouts on roofs Is that they have the downspout. It's catching the water, and it's bringing it down this pipe down the side of the house. But then what happens is that the pipe just lets all the water out right next to the house, which is completely defeating the purpose of what it's there for. So we want that water to not be directed to fall right next to the house, because it's just going to cause that problem. So that water has to be directed either very far from the house or into a drainage system that's going to move it far away. So that's what we're looking at from kind of the. The outside water above ground. The other thing to consider is you might be on a high water table. If you're on a high water table, then, then moisture is going to come up from under the ground. And so you're going to have to deal with groundwater, basically. And a way that that can be addressed Is implementing sump pumps that are going to be able to kind of drain out the water that's kind of below the. The ground of the crawl space. And so that's one way it can be handled. You know, to look at all this, you have to bring in specialized experts that can really help you with this. So drainage and foundation experts Are really the guys to bring in for this stuff. The guys or gals to bring in for this stuff. They're going to help you redirect the water, Implement a plan that's going to help keep the moisture out of the crawl space, which is the biggest, biggest thing. The third area that could impact the crawl, not really due to the outside of the house, but it's more. So if you have pipes running under your house and they spring a leak, then obviously they're going to leak in the crawl space. So that's something that has to be looked at, too. So that's the first thing that you got to handle, is you got to make sure that you're not.

Introducing new moisture into the Crawl space. And the second thing is, what do we do about all this dirt that's down there? So, like I said a minute ago, all this dirt moves upward, or the airflow, I should say, moves upward into the house. And that's going to grab the dirt, and it's going to pull it up into the house. So the. The one way, which a lot of people are not going to be able to do, and honestly, most people don't do, but it's actually laying cement under your house in the crawl space. By doing this, you can implement moisture barriers under the cement, and then you're also covering all the dirt so it's not coming upward. That's like the ideal solution, but I know it's not super realistic for everyone. So the other way to try to achieve that is what's called a crawl space encapsulation system. Basically, instead of laying concrete on the ground, they lay a layer of thick plastic sheeting on the ground again to cover the dirt that's down there. And it does also act as a moisture barrier. So that's something you do down there to keep the dirt from coming up. And then the last thing you'll want to look at is you got to understand the humidity in that space, too. So if you're in a really humid climate and it just kind of accumulates down there for whatever reason, then you're also going to need some sort of dehumidification system down there to keep that humidity level down. Because certain molds can grow just on framing and things like that, only because there's humidity that's peaking to, you know, 55, 60%. So those are a few things you could do for your crawl space. Remember, step one, you actually have to remediate it. Remove the mold.

And the dirt that's impacted and the insulation. That's step one. And then step two is making sure that all your waterproofing is intact. If you do those two things, you will be on a good path with your crawl space. So thanks a lot for that question and feel free to submit more.

All right, so our next question is from Karina211, and her question is, is it better to just move to move out of the house if you can't find the cause? Honestly, the answer to that is no, because it's not just your house. And this is something I think that we all have to wrap our head around. Every house is going to have some sort of water damage or mold problem. It's just the reality of the world that we live in. You'll see some stats out there that say, you know, 50% of homes or buildings have been water damage. I will tell you, from all the homes that I go into, that, that number is closer to 80 to 90%. And the reason is because a lot of the things that people think of water damage, they think of larger events that that causes, like, you know, a dishwasher leaked or something that they know about. Right? Or something that's a large event. But a lot of times people are not reporting these smaller leaks that either they don't know about or in their mind they just think are normal because a house normally has a leak under a sink. And so it's fine, right? Like that's what people think. The truth is, that's not fine. And that can create mold problems. So when you take into account all the things that people are not reporting and not considering an actual water damage problem, that number of 50% of homes are. Water damage is so, so low. I'm telling you, it's like 80, 90% of homes, okay? So if we're saying, well, I can't find the mold in my house, so I'm going to move to another house, I hate to break it to you, but you're probably going to move into another house with mold, and you're going to be in the same situation. You can't run from this, unfortunately. So we have to find it. So the answer is, then how do you find it? Right? It's not we can't find it. It's how do you find it? This reminds me of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I don't know if any of you guys have read this book, but in the story, this kid, he has two dads. He's a dad that's wealthy and a dad that's not. And they have different outlooks on life. And you could kind of tell throughout the way of the story that the way that they look at stuff basically affects what their success was throughout life. So one of the dads kind of falls into this category, right? So, you know, if I can't find something, then I, you know, I just have to leave, right? So the example in the book was it's a. It's a money book, right? So it's not tied to mold. But the example in the book is I can't afford this, right? So whatever the thing was, the first dad says, well, I can't afford this. The. The second dad, who's the more successful wealthy dad, he says, how can I afford this? And then it opens up a whole new thought process of what can be done to try to figure all this stuff out, right? So that's what I challenge you guys to think, right? Don't think that I can't do this. Because if you think you can't do it, then you're not going to be able to. And the truth is, where you try to go next is probably not going to be a whole lot better. So we need to shift our thinking into how can we do this? So I'll tell you guys now, I don't have it yet. I'm working on something for all of you that's going to actually help you do this process. We're a couple months out from having it, but I think you're really, really going to love it. And I think that's going to help answer this question a lot for you. Until then, you got to find the right experts to bring in, right? You got to find people that can help you do it. This is why we created a national company, is because we were getting submissions and requests to help people all over the country, and we weren't able to do it. So we created WeinSpec, which is a national brand that actually is completely built to travel the country and help people. Right? So we have people hired that are specifically traveling folks. Myself or my co founder, Corey, are directly supervising all the inspections that happen. So we're seeing every single one that happens through really awesome live streaming technology that we're so lucky to be able to take advantage of. And so we, you know, we created a path around that. But the thing I would tell you is you have to understand that the source needs to be identified. Right? And I think you're understanding that when you say you can't find the cause, here's the quick answer. Water damage. Anywhere where there's been water damage, these are going to be the sources of where the problems are coming from. So do an inventory on your house in your mind. So I've been here for so long. What leaks do we know of? Right? And you might not find everything, and you might not know of everything because, I mean, let's be honest, like, you know, we're not all experts at everything, but if you can just in your mind say, oh, yeah, you know, the dishwasher leaked a little while ago or, oh, you know what? I. There was this thing that impacted the ceiling in the laundry room. It was from the bathroom upstairs. And I mean, they just came out and they said it was fine. Right. I'm going to tell you right now, anywhere where there's water damage there. That's the potential for your problem. So if you're looking for a place to start to try to figure this stuff out, you got to go through and figure out where there has been water intrusion in your house. And historically, you're going to know some of this stuff. A couple other quick places you could go where typically a lot of things are found under your sinks. Pull everything out from under your sinks, right? If you're like me, you have all your stuff under your sink and half of it you don't use anymore. And so it kind of sits in the back of the sink cabinet, and you actually haven't seen the bottom of your sink cabinet in months or years maybe, right? Take all that stuff out. If you look under there and you see bubbling or warping or anything like that, then there's been a leak under your sink, and that's a good chance that there's a mole problem under there. Okay? So you could do that under your sink super easily. The other place it's really, really easy to look without a mold inspector is the baseboards, like behind your toilets and by your showers. So many times there's water damage on these things. They're buckling, they're bubbling, they're staining on them, something like that. And a lot of us rationalize this and we say, oh, well, it's, you know, by the shower, when we get out of the shower, we splash when we get out of the shower. I'll tell you, this water doesn't care where it came from, right? Your house doesn't care where the water came from. It doesn't rationalize this stuff. You know, all it knows is every day some water splashes over here and it soaks into this drywall. And hey, before you know it, I got mold behind the drywall. That's what happens, right? So just because we know why it's happening or we think that it's normal that it's happening, doesn't mean that it's not going to be causing problems. So I'm telling you, if you. If you do those three things, think about historically, where the water issues have been. Go look under all of your sinks and go look in your bathrooms, behind your toilets, and by your. By your showers, you'll probably find something that you didn't know was there. So that's the first step, right? So. So we're trying to find cause. Those are areas for cause. Then what you could do is you could call in a local inspector and you could say, listen, I want a Wall cavity sample in this wall by the shower. I want an air sample in the cabinet under the sink. I want you tell them where you want them to test, because honestly, you can't trust these guys to go through and do it themselves. So if you go through and find some things just from these couple checklists that I've given you, then you're going to be able to have them do that. So when you're interviewing the guys to come out, the mold inspectors come out. You ask them up front, listen, do you guys do wall cavity testing? So, so what does that mean? That means that they put like a little hole in the wall and they stick a tube through the hole and they connect it to their air sampling pump and they're taking an air sample from behind the wall. If they don't do that, then don't bring them in. Tell them, I don't want any air samples in the middle of any room. That's not what I'm looking for. Because those air samples are not going to tell you anything. And even if they were elevated, it's not going to tell you where it's coming from. It's this massive scam and hoax in our industry that is that I'm going to take an air sample in the middle of your room and then I'm going to know everything that's going on. And, oh, if it does come back and there's a problem, cool. I'm just going to tell you there's a problem and literally have no idea how to fix it. Right. Because that's what doing an air sample is going to do. You have to find the source. So when you're interviewing these guys to come in, do a quick look around yourself and then call them and say, I want a sample here, here, here, here, here. You're probably going to have more samples than they would think that they're going to get. Right? You're probably going to have two or three sinks. You're going to have two or three walls. Maybe you had a leak in a ceiling somewhere. So you're going to want them to do a cavity sample in the ceiling. You're going to ask them to maybe come in and take 10 samples in their mind. They're going to be like, heck, yeah, I don't have to go in here and do anything. And I'm just going to take a few samples. Awesome. And that's what you do, Right? And so that's what you could do. For now, like I said, I, myself and my partner Corey are building an entire platform for you guys to help you do this. I can't even express how excited I am to share this with you guys and how amazing it's going to be for you and it's going to allow you to really take control of this process. We're working on it. We're in the weeds on it, and it's going to be a little while before it's done. But when it's done, I will share it with all of you. In the meantime, you can do what I just described, and you should. I think you'll probably find some things that you weren't aware of, and hopefully that could help you try to figure out some of the cause of what's going on. So thank you for that question so much. Hopefully that was helpful.

Okay, so this is the last question. This one came from the Brandt Foundation. It says, what if the ERMI is high, but air tests are negative in all rooms except the crawl space. All right, so we just dove into this a little bit on the last segment here. So this is why I put this question here. Air samples in the middle of rooms are most likely going to give you a false negative. We've actually done an internal study on this stuff and I've looked. We basically went through all of the tests that we've done anywhere that we took an air sample in the middle of a room, which we don't do very often, but we were doing it for this purpose. So we started actually going out, spending our own money to run tests that we weren't charging the client for, so we can prove this very point. Now we have this study that helps us do that. So in a room where I saw that there was a place where I thought there was a source of mold growth, let's say in a wall or in a cabinet or somewhere, that was where I was finding the water damage in the loc.

I was doing the test in that wall and I was validating that there was mole growth that was there. And then I also did an air sample maybe like 3, 4ft away from there. Right. So we're not super far away, but we're the air samples being taken, like in the middle of the room. The further away you are from a source, the less and less and less effective an air sample gets. And so what happened in those 80% of the air samples I took four feet away from the source said there was no problem. Like, wrap your head around that. 80% of the time it was giving you a false negative. Right. So when you ask this question, the ERMI saying there's high, but the air tests are negative in all the rooms. That's because the air tests are not the way to test the rooms. So of course they're going to be negative. Right. And that's kind of what I want to get across with this. The reason the ERMI is showing a problem is because the method of collection for the ERMI is taking dust. What's happening with dust, gravity is pulling all of the particles from the air down to the surfaces. And so you're getting a historical view of everything that's happened in that room. Whereas when you're taking an air sample, it's a snapshot in time. Right. So you're collecting an air sample for maybe five minutes, and whatever's floating around at that time is what's going to get caught in. If there's nothing floating around at that time, then it's not going to get brought in there. The other limitation on air samples is that it doesn't look for the mold fragmentation. It only looks for spores. And because of that, studies have shown that you're missing up to 500 times the amount of fungal fragments that. That are not even being accounted for in those tests. It's another reason why air samples in the middle of rooms are just a disaster to use. And the ERMI does account for those. Right. So you're getting. You're getting so much more in the ERMI when you're using it in living spaces to try to figure out what, you know, the. The mold load is or what you're being exposed to in that space. So that's why your ERMI is coming up high now, and the air samples are not. Now in a crawl space, an air sample is more likely going to come up high. But let's think about that. You're in a more enclosed space, right? It's not a big, wide open space. There's a bunch of dirt down there, right. And it's all floating around. So there's way more particle floating around. Because anyone who has to crawl in the crawl space is creating a disturbance, there's much more particle floating around. And dirt is an organic food source for mold to grow. So, yes, they're so common that you're going to find mold in crawl spaces in air samples. Now, all that said, that doesn't mean that it's okay. So don't rationalize that and say, oh, well, there's dirt down there and the guy's moving around down there. So if I pick up elevated mold, it's fine, because that's what's happening. It's still a problem. Okay, so mold in the crawl space is a problem because like I said earlier, it all moves upward into the house. Okay, so yes, your crawl space may have a problem. Is that the only problem? Maybe. Probably not. You know, obviously I have no idea what's going on in your situation, but I would tell you that typically there is some sort of water damage that has happened in buildings somewhere and they contribute to what's going on. So like I said at the top, I feel like the number of water damaged buildings are closer to the 80, 90% number, not this 50% number. Right. So like I said in the last piece, for the last question, it's so, so important to understand where the water damage is and to test those specific areas and try to validate that stuff. And so that should help fill in the gaps that you have here. And then ultimately how you fix it is you have to remediate the sources, which are the walls or the. Wherever the water damage occurred and where the growth is happening, you'll have to address the crawl space, which we talked about earlier, and then you'll need to do a cleaning of the house or of the space. I don't know if this is a house or a. Yeah, it's a house. It's across space. So you'd have to do a full cleaning of the house to get the particle load out, but that would be the process that you would take for that. So hopefully that is a little helpful for you. Thank you so much for submitting that question too.

All right, guys, so I think we're a hair longer than normal today, so I'm going to wrap it up there on the questions. Hopefully you found a lot of that helpful. I feel like there was some good info in there, so I hope you guys feel so too. If you think so, like, let me know on Instagram, like, like message me or comment or do something over there. Let me know that you enjoyed this episode. Again, before we go, just want to remind you, so like I said, a lot of the questions I was getting was around, what can you use to clean your belongings? So again, I created this mold site or mold site. I created the website moldcleaningproducts.com. all you gotta do is go there, put in your email address, and hit the submit button. I'm going to send you an email with a breakdown of the product that I like, a bunch of information about that product and then also specifically what not to use ever when you're cleaning mold. So if you're interested in any of that stuff, go to moldcleaningproduct. Com. Fill that stuff out, and I will send that for you as soon as that comes in. Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk to you next time.