102: What to do if you have a sink leak / Disneyland Post-Pandemic / Live Q&A

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, everyone. What is going on? I'm excited to talk to all you guys today. So. So today I'm sitting here on Clubhouse and we're going to be recording an episode from molefinders Radio. And I see some people jumping in the room. How freaking cool is this? This is super cool. All right, so here's what I'm going to do, guys. I'm going to do a quick.

Sort of chat about something that, that happened with one of my family members because it happens to everybody. And so I thought this whole conversation that we had in this text thread was really good. And, and so I thought that I would just share all of that with you guys. So I'll do that for a little bit and then we're. I'll open up and if there's any questions or anything going on, we'll do some questions and kind of talk through some things. So hopefully that all sounds really good. All.

Let's kind of set this thing up. So one of my family members puts us on like a family chat, a group chat, right? And they had a leak under their sink, right? And so they basically say, let me just say, like, like my. The family business is. Is mold finding. Like, that's, that's the family business. So on this chat is my father in law, my uncle in law, my cousin, my brother in law, me.

And even Mike Rubino from All American Restoration. So all of us are on the call or on this group chat together to basically help someone navigate a leak under their sink, right? So it's kind of cool. Conversation that went back and forth. So here's the deal. They had a product that leaked under their sink and there was nothing visible going on down there, but they were kind of freaked out about it, right? So that's kind of how all this started. So, you know, before, before I jump into exactly like what we were talking about and what we mentioned for like solutions and stuff, I just need to tell you a quick story about products under your sinks. All right, so.

In a place I lived in probably like three years ago, my, my wife had bought this mold cleaning tile spray, right? So, you know, there's like spray. You can spray on, like, shower tiles and stuff. And they claim to be, like, mold killing stuff or whatever stuff. So she had bought this stuff. I didn't even know that she had bought this stuff. And like, everyone else, I'm sure, stuck it under their kitchen sink cabinet where all products that you never use go to die. And it was just in there. And it was in the back left corner of this cabinet. I didn't even know it was in there. So one day I go in the cabinet. I'm, like, trying to pull out one of those.

Mr. Clean Magic Eraser things, which, by the way, guys, is freaking awesome. So I tried, but they were in the back, too. Cause I don't use them that often, right? So. So I go into the back and I'm digging stuff out, and all of a sudden I see that this product bottle that she had bought had it. I guess it, like, exploded or the pressure, whatever. So it had, like, overflowed. So I didn't even know what the bottle was yet. Right. All I did is I saw a bottle that had kind of exploded and it had leaked everywhere. And so I'm pulling everything out, and there's mold all over my cabinet. All over in there. And. And I. And so I. I get. I close up the cabinet real quick, and I tape it all up and I seal it up to try to, like, isolate it and do, like, a mini, you know, MacGyver containment on the. On the cabinet. And. And then I look at the bottle that leaked, and it was this mold cleaning spray that leaked, that created. That created mold everywhere. It's like. It's the craziest thing. And so the reason I share that story is because a lot of times people think that, like, if there's a product that leaks in a cabinet, that it can't create a mold problem. And that's not true, right? Like, it's not just if the sink leaks, if you have product leaks, that can create mold issues in your cabinetry, too. One of the things we look for when we pull stuff out of sinks when we're looking at houses is we look for, like, product rings and like, little sort of, you know, humps and bubbles and things and. Or texture changes around where they might be. Because, guys, the main ingredient in these cleaning products is water, right? And then they put little additives in there to clean whatever they say it's going to clean at the end of the day. But the main ingredients, water, right? And so that's why we need to be concerned in our sink areas. And that's why sink areas are such a big deal. And I post things about like, oh, all leaks sink, or all leaks, all sinks leak. It's not a big deal. Blah, blah, blah. Is because when we go into homes, this is one of the most, like, prevalent areas where we find problems in every home, right? So if there's, like, one thing that you want to do right now is go pull all the stuff out of your sinks. And if you see, you know, bubbling or discoloration or product looks like it leaked or anything like that, even if you're not seeing mold on top, that could be a sign that there's a mold problem underneath, right? And so that. That's kind of what the whole conversation that I had with or this whole text thread that started going on was about was. Listen, this thing leaked. We're not seeing mold necessarily on top of anything right now, but we're concerned about it, right? So they happen to live really nearby to one of the family members. So they had, like, stopped and they picked up a moisture meter. They had had it previously or something. So they had a moisture meter in the house already, right? So the first question that comes up in the thread is like, how long has it been wet? Right? So they text it. They're like, guys, there's a leak in my sink. It's wet under here. What do I do? Right? So the first question that came up, well, how long has it been wet? Do you know how long it's been wet? Right. The reality is that that mold needs 24 hours at least to grow, right? So if it's a leak that happened, like, immediately, right? Like, you put something in there and then it overflowed and it spilled, right? Then you know that that's not necessarily going to create a mole problem right now, right? So that was the first question, and then the answer to that was, I don't know, right? We were in here a week ago. It looked fine. We're in here now. We don't know. So we have to assume now that it's been leaking for a week, because we don't really know. Okay? So if that's the case, you have enough time for mold to be an issue. Okay? So now that was kind of the first thing we're trying to establish that we're like, all right, so. So we know that there's been an issue. All right, you have a moisture reader, because you took one from one of us a while ago, so that's cool. So go in here and put the moisture meter on it. So the moisture meter types that we use are. They're not the ones with the pins. I mean, we do use those every now and then, but they're. They're, like, very destructive to use those. You don't really need to use those. So there's a different type of moisture meter where you. It's kind of just like a pad, and you just set it on top of stuff, and it reads down, depending on the. On the meter, half inch, three quarters of an inch down, and will tell you if there's mold or not mold. Excuse me. If there's moisture in the building material kind of below surface level, that's what it tells you. So they had one of these like, okay, so so do the moisture readings in there. Is there moisture? Right? And so, guys, the way that you use a moisture meter, if you're doing this, you put it on top of the area where you think the issue is, and you see what the number comes up on it, right? Then you put it on an area away from where you think the moisture is, and you do it there. Okay? The idea is that you're trying to get a baseline, and then you're trying to find the area that's impacted to see if it's significantly different from the baseline. Okay? Because every building material has a different amount of just natural water activity in it. So, like, if you do moisture reading on tile, that reading is going to be higher naturally than if you did it on wood. Right? So sometimes people ask me, like, what's the number that this thing should say that? I think it's an issue. There isn't a number. Right? There's not a number like that. It's more about understanding, like, getting a relative read on it. So you hit the area that you think that the moisture is, and then you go to another area that's a little bit away from that. That's the same building material type, right? You want to do the same thing and then see if it's wet there, right? And see if the reading is different. So that's. That's what we talked them through. Okay? So that's what they did. And turns out that there was a. There was moisture in the cabinet. All right? So now we know that it's been at least at most a week. I guess we could say at most it's been a week. We don't know exactly how long, and we know that there's actually trap moisture in the cabinetry. All right? So now this. This is where there's now a potential for things to be going on, right? So then the next question is, okay, well, what do I do if I have this? Do I have to call somebody out right away? Am I ripping everything open? Like, what am I doing right now? Right? And the first step that you do, whenever there's a water issue, the very first thing you have to do is you have to dry it out, okay? You have to stop the leak, and you need to dry. You need to dry it out, because as long as it's wet, it's going to continue to grow and continue to do its thing, right? Now, there are times where we do inspections and we find stuff that's wet right now, and that's fine because most people don't know about it, right? So you find it, and you're like, okay, so we got to figure this piece out. We'll put the remediation plan together. Part of the remediation plan is drying it out, right? So it kind of gets handled in that piece. But if there's something that you know is wet, you want to try to dry it out so it doesn't continue to grow and thrive and spread. The thing with water, moisture is that it spreads, right? Right. Like if you. If you had water, like a puddle of water on, like, a countertop, and you dipped the corner of, like, a paper towel in it, and just, like, the edge you see the water soaks up the paper towel, right? It goes from wet to dry. That water's always going to try to go from wet to dry. So you want to try to dry it out so it doesn't happen, right? So it stops moving. So that was the first thing. And then came questions like, okay, well, how do we dry it? Right? And there was all these ideas that were, like, flying around is, we're trying. Excuse me. We're trying to use, like, household items, because this person doesn't have a whole bunch of equipment, right? So we're trying to use, like, household items to dry something, right? And so the two answers that kind of came up the most was, one, a hair dryer and two, a dehumidifier that maybe somebody had. Those were the two things that came up. And.

So. So there's kind of like. So here's the. Here was the conversation. The first thing was the hairdryer. And the hairdryer's like, okay, we're in an isolated space, so it's not like a huge thing. Let's try to get this thing dried out as best as we can. I don't have air dryers anywhere, right? I don't have all these industrial tools, so what could we use? So the concern they came up with the hair dryer was, well, if. If there is a mold issue, are we disturbing that issue with a hair dryer and blowing it around more? That's a fair point, right? Like, okay, so I think in a pinch, like, a hair dryer is better to use that nothing, because you're still drying out the water. But then the next thing came up where the person's like, listen, I'll go to Home Depot right now and get a little dehumidifier and stick it in the. Stick it in here. Like, okay, that seems like a. That seems like a better option. Right? This way you're not disturbing any mold that may have grown up until that point. And, you know, the person ran. Ran out, grabbed one, stuck it in the. In the cabinet, shut the doors of the cabinet. So you're isolating the cabinet, and they ran the dehumidifier in the cabinet and try to soak out the moisture of, you know, of the. Of the panel. So that's what they ended up doing. However, I think that if you're in a pinch and you don't have that and you just got to try to get a small area dry. Listen, the hairdryer is not drying a big thing, right? But this is like a small area in a cabinet, right? So, like, again, I was just trying to MacGyver or we're just trying to MacGyver a situation for something for someone. Okay, so, all right, so that was the next step. All right, so we figure out how to dry it, right? So those are kind of the two options. As they're doing that, they keep. You keep moisture reading it, right? So you want to. You. After some time, you check, is it still wet? Is it still wet? The thing with the hair dryer is you don't have to sit there forever probably holding a hairdryer on it. It's really not ideal. At least with the dehumidifier, you can stick it in there, close it, walk away, and not have to be there. Right? So anyways, that was the deal. All right, now, notice we haven't done any testing yet, because we're trying to dry it out first. We're trying to stop the moisture issue. Okay? So then after that, after it gets dry, then the next piece is. Okay, so now we need to test this because we don't know that mold grew 100%. Right. We just know that it could have. And so we're addressing the water issue. And so now the Next step is, okay, is there a mold problem here now? Right? There's not always a mold problem. That happens when there's a leak like this, right? A majority of the time there is, but not always. Right? So then the next step is, okay, now we have to test the cabinet. Okay, how do you test a cabinet like this, where there's nothing visible in the cabinet and you can't get underneath it because it's an enclosed cabinet? How do you test this thing? And so this is actually how we test cabinetry most of the time, is actually how I tested a cabinet of mine in not the one I described, but the house I lived in before that also had a tiny drip leak under the sink. That was a super tiny little drip, stainless steel. That ended up being a massive freaking problem under my sink. You guys see the. See the connection here? Even all the places I've lived, every place that I've lived has had a sink problem. And I'm, like, looking at them still. The new house that I just moved into a year ago, my master bathroom sink leaked within two weeks of me being here. And luckily I had some, like, a box under there that the little drip fell on. And it didn't actually get into my cabinetry, thank God. So I was able to just get rid of it. But mold was growing on that thing, but it didn't impact the rest of the space because it just happened to hit this box. And then after that, I got this. I got these mats, which maybe I could put a link in here for that once. Maybe when we go to questions, I'll try to find the link for these mats that I got that I put under my sinks to help protect them from leaks and stuff. So anyways, so we talk about testing them. So if there's nothing visible on there to do like a surface swab or anything on, then the way that you test these things is.

You basically do a targeted source level air test in the space. All right.

So the way that we do that is we basically take an air sampling pump. You put it inside of the cabinet, you shut the cabinet doors, and then the other thing that you do, which maybe some people don't do, is again, this stuff is underneath, potentially the cabinet where the water soaked in. So the last thing that you do is you tap the bottom of the cabinet a couple times, Just kind of tap, tap, tap on the cabinet. Disturbs it just a little bit. So if there's anything under there, it can work its way back up during the time that you're collecting the sample. Okay, so that's how we do it. We shut the cabinet doors, you put the air sample in there. Typically they run for two minutes. That's usually enough time to run them, although there could be some variation. Anyways, that's how you test it, right? So then that was the next step. It's like, okay, moisture. Read it again until it's dry. Now that we know it's dry, now you test it and you see if there's an issue. Right? So this was. This was kind of the whole text thread.

That happened. And this was a series of texts and different people's ideas on, like, on how to handle it and based on what you have in your house and this and that. But that was kind of the general flow of everything. So it's not like a super long story or anything, right? It was like 10 minutes or something like that. But this is like a real life thing that happens all the time and something that if you kind of have a plan in place for if it happens, you could stay on top of it and try to prevent things from. From getting worse than what it is. So that's kind of what I got on that story. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna open up the room now for anyone who has questions. So if anybody. And it doesn't have to be like, related to this, this is just something I wanted to share with you guys. But any of you guys that are in the room, if you want to chat or anything, go ahead and pop your hand up and we can get you up on the stage and. And do some chatting. In the meantime, I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do a quick little Parent Corner segment until. Until we get to some questions that are here because. So my daughter's birthday was November 22nd, and we took her to Disneyland for her birthday. And you know, Disneyland, the happiest place on earth, right? It's amazing. So Disneyland's a lot different post pandemic than it was before. I don't know. A lot of people have gone there.

I went there twice. I went there once when it, like they were still forcing you to wear masks outside. Even outside, like throughout the park. It was so silly because it's like, hey.

No one. I thought someone raised their hand, but it looks like someone has. Oh, we got somebody here. I'll jump back into. Into this in a second. Okay, so Alexis is going to jump up now, and I just added you in. So let's see if you jump up here.

I think.

I'm trying, guys. Trying to manage this clubhouse platform here. But it looks like I approved you to come up. You might have to say. Okay. Oh, there you go. Hey, Alexis. What's up?

There we go. I think it works there. Hey. So we just had our. We found mold in our house, and we. Well, I thought that I had ripped all the mold out, and then after listening to your podcast, I realized that I didn't do anything right there. We had someone come and spray.

I got a hold of the, you know, the mold people that you recommended the other day.

We're probably gonna have to pull everything back out of the house again, huh? Most likely. I'm not giving you a lot of details there, but the. Because it wasn't treated properly.

Yeah. They claimed it was stage four. We recently just put those air. You know, just like, the little tests on the seats in the house there. And we found, like, 30 different colonies inside that, you know, a little test kit there.

Yeah. Where was the issue?

So the issue is that we had mold all throughout the house. We caused a lot of autoimmune problems and stuff. And we found it. Ripped it all out, and it was from the foundation up. We found it. Ripped it all out. Then afterwards, we had someone come and, you know, spray. After listening to your podcast, I guess that doesn't actually kill the mold like we thought it did.

Right.

So we found those. Just that. The fact that we found those 30 different mold colonies on that little spore kit there, that probably means the house is completely full of mold still. Right? The.

I mean, maybe those. Those petri dish kits have their kind of strengths and weaknesses in their own. Right. But when. When you guys ripped everything out, was anything contained, or was it just you kind of opened up stuff?

No, it was open. Well, our house is basically like. It's kind of like the size of a big garage. There's only. It's like a studio there. So there's really just one large room, and then there's a bathroom.

Okay.

Basically there. So. But none of it was contained there. The. I thought I was, like, doing it. Right. You know, I put on the. That kit, put on a respirator and all that, and gloves and all that. And I bagged everything up and took it out. But stupidly, I only cut out the drywall there where the mold was affected, like, where I actually saw it, which is now I realize it's really dumb.

Yeah. I mean, listen, don't. Don't beat yourself up over. Right. But there's. There's a reason that I really don't like people doing Remediation themselves because there's just kind of nuances to this stuff where.

You know, you don't know if you haven't done it a bunch. Right? Yeah. I mean the thing, I mean there sounds like there's a couple of things. One, without containment, you're going to cross contaminate everything, which means whatever you ripped apart is now getting aerosolized and moved everywhere. So even if you did actually remove all the problem and remediate properly, you would have created basically this little explosion of stuff that's now popped everywhere in the house. And, and until that gets cleaned, you're still going to have exposure issues in that house. So, so, and that, that's kind of the whole basis of like a two phase remediation approach, which is what, you know, which is kind of how we build all of our plans. But you know, the other thing is if you're just ripping out drywall, there's a good possibility, especially in foundation leaks, that there probably is mold growing on the, on the framing and everything. And just by spraying it, it doesn't remove it. Right. Which is what you were talking about from what you heard. So it sounds to me that you actually need to get the place remediated properly, you know, and kind of do it that way. And, and you definitely need to remove more than just where you see. The industry standard is you go two feet beyond anywhere that you're visibly seeing something, whether it's staining, even just like water staining or mole growth. With me, if there's a wall that's impacted, I remove the whole wall from floor to ceiling. Like rarely do I not do that. We're talking drywall. Drywall is not expensive to do, so cheap. And the problem is that if there's a moisture issue behind the wall, the humidity that's created from a moisture issue moves upward in the wall cavity. So there are times, and I had this in a house where they just cut like the bottom four feet of a wall. In a bathroom where there was a problem, the problem was like a leak coming out from the tub. So it wasn't like a leak from the ceiling. Right. It was from the ground level is where the water came in. But because the humidity that was created from that moisture behind the wall. So I popped my head behind the wall and got my camera up there to take pictures during the post remediation inspection. And there was mold all over the backside of the drywall towards the ceiling of the wall. Because it all moves up. Right?

Right.

So yeah, I mean definitely I'm wanting to remove walls from floor to ceiling. And it goes against what a lot of these remediators say. A lot of them are like, oh, you just need to remove 2ft up or 4ft up. You don't have to do it. Honestly, I think they just say that so it's less work for them. Right? Yeah.

I removed like two feet of it basically. And it was from the. The dirt was up against the siding right there, you know, so I pulled all that back now with an excavator. So it's not like, you know, up against it, but I think the water got wicked up into the out. You know, the redwood siding.

Yeah. So it sounds. It sounds to me like. Like might need to redo some of the remediation and kind of extend it some more. You could always do testing beforehand, wall cavity tests and walls where you suspended expect an issue. But if they just sprayed stuff, there's likely still going to be problems back there. And then the second piece is that you have to figure out or you have to clean the. The main living space of the area too. Right. So it's one thing to clean the walls, remediate the walls. The second is you have to do a cleaning process throughout the living spaces. I can't go into like exactly how to do that on this. But. But molefinder's method, which is my training course to kind of help people get through this stuff, has. Has all of my remediation protocols and it. And that kind of living space cleaning plan, which is the phase two portion of the plan, is written out in there step by step. So something you guys could look at.

So yeah, that's Molefindersmethod.com is where you can get access to that.

And I signed up through another. I talked to you from my other phone earlier and I got a link from you from the. Yes, we. I think yes, we test it was. Or something like that. So I signed up with them. I just haven't heard back yet because I wanted someone else to actually come out who knows what they're doing.

Dave.

Because it's not just that it's mold, it's causing autoimmune problems and stuff.

Yeah, that's my company we inspect, so that's us. Okay, cool. Well, I'm sure that they'll be setting up something with you to chat with you soon. So thanks for asking and calling. Hopefully that was helpful.

Thanks.

All right, Bye. Bye. Okay.

Dog's funny. I think there's a way for me to. To do that. Okay, cool. All right. So I'LL keep an eye out for other hands. I'm gonna get back to Disneyland.

So. Disneyland. So we're going. The first time we went was. Was middle of, like earlier in the Pandemic. I mean, not early, but, like, when they first opened Disneyland and they were making you wear masks outside. Like, but. But there were certain areas where you're allowed to eat outside and you could take your mask off and it was safe to eat in those little boxes of packaging, apparently, but not to walk around everywhere else. The whole thing was so silly. And then. Anyways, so. So now we're back. This time it's different. You don't have to wear masks outside. You do have to wear them inside. So if the line goes inside or the ride is inside, you have to wear the mask inside or whatever. That's fine, whatever. But the, the issue, the, the bigger thing that happened with all this was, was kind of the changes that have happened at Disney since then. And then the fact that we went with, like, four, three toddlers and a baby. So. So, like, this is, this is Disneyland now. So first off, the big change that they made from Pandemic stuff is that they, they had this app now. And you have to use the app to do absolutely everything. It used to be that you just use the app to kind of get in FastPass and do all that stuff or whatever. Now you can't order food somewhere unless you order it through the app. You can't, like, walk up. So like, we were at the Tiki room thing for anyone who knows what that is, and they have like, this, this. My wife loves this stuff. It's called Dole Whip. It's some weird, like, frozen yogurt thing. It tastes like pineapples. And there's the stand. The Dole Whip stand is sitting right there. There's not a soul in front of it. We walk up, we're like, hey, can we get, you know, one of these things? And they're like, oh, no, you have to order through the app. Like, well, yeah, but I'm like, standing right here. I just want to give you money. Can you please just give me one of these things right now? They're like, no, you have to order through the app. Like, okay, so we open the app. The app had a one hour waiting list to get this stuff. Are you kidding? I'm standing right here is. And this is like, there's another question I'll get to. I'll. I'll pull it up in a second. But this is like, this is what is happening everywhere. In Disney, you can't order food, you can't get a drink, you can't get a snack, you can't do anything unless you use this app. And then when you look in the app, it's like massive waiting times when you look at the line and. And there's nobody fricking there. It was so frustrating. So frustrating. So that was the first thing. I'm gonna take this question. I'll jump back into more of it afterwards. Okay, so we're gonna get C up here in a sec. C. What's going on?

Hi. I have a quick question.

Yeah.

In the H Vac unit, we had the coil changed out, the electrician or H Vac guy. So the coil needed to be exchanged. And I had no idea even what the coil looked like. So I went to go look at it when you pulled it out, and it had black mold all over one side of it.

Yeah.

And so he recommended to put those thousand dollar UV lights in the H vac unit. But in my head, I feel like everything's already contaminated.

Yeah. These, the, the H vac system, it's a tough thing. It's all connected. Right. This, this is the thing that I always find so silly with the H vac contractors is that. And we have to think about, like, what they are. They're H vac contractors are basically mechanics for your H vac system. That's what they are. Right. They don't really understand the health component and all this other stuff that's going on. And also they don't really think that mold is an issue because that's not their realm. Right. They don't, they don't understand the impact of has on the world. Right. They just think, oh, these systems get molded and just swap out the piece of mold and everything's fine. Like, that's what they think. Right. So you kind of have to, kind of have to think through like, who's looking at stuff. Right. And kind of what they're, you know, what they're, how they look at things, their perspective. But here's the deal. Your whole system and I did a massive podcast on this, so I'm not gonna go like incredibly into it. I wanted. It was in the 80s.

The, the 80 episodes. Somewhere in there, it was called. Let me. Yeah. H vac filtration purification masterclass is episode 82. All right.

Okay.

This talks about every single technology, like the main ones that exist, how to implement them, when to do them, the strengths that we. All of that stuff. So this is going to help answer a lot of your questions. So I won't go into all of it right now, but the. The overview is your whole air conditioning system is connected. Right? Air is literally blowing through the system to go through all the ductwork to get out of the vents. Right. So to think that there's a mold problem in the coil and it hasn't impacted the ductwork leading out to the vents is kind of silly, you know?

Right.

So. So part of it is, how is being able to test it to understand the significance of what's going on in there. And if we. And if you think it needs to be replaced or if we think it could possibly be cleaned. Right. That's kind of where we're at now on the ductwork and. And even the air handler unit, too. So, you know, from a testing perspective, a lot of guys will go in and they'll try to do, like, an air sample from a vent at the end of the. You know, in a room or something that completely doesn't work at all the way that you really need to do it. Well, I would tell you this. If there was mold growing all over that coil the way that you described, I would just tell you that I think you need to replace all the ductwork. That's what I would tell you to do. Right. But if you wanted to test it and get a better feel for what's going on before you make a decision like that, then basically you can get, you know, you can get ERMI tests. You know, the. The thing about ERMI is that, you know, everybody thinks that it's the single score is the thing, and you can only use it this way. This way. The. The nice thing about ERMI is not the scoring system, but it's the.

It's the technology behind it. It's the DNA formatting of the mold species that are present. When we test H VAC systems, we use an ERMI test in the H vac system to understand the fragment load from these mold species that are in there that you might not be able to see from a growth perspective. And that gives you a better idea of overall contamination. So one thing you can do is pick, you know, five. Five vents throughout the house. Take the vents off, reach your arm in there with an irming cloth, and collect dust from inside the duct lines, and you can.

Oh, wow, okay.

And send that sample out and see what comes back on them. Right now you're isolating the ducts. Right. You're not doing an ermie in the house. You're not doing it from a return vent. That's pulling air from everywhere else, right? You're getting into the duck lines and you can see actually what's working its way out. And if that comes back and there's molds that are, you know, 10 times higher, you know, highlighted like they do from the original study, and there's just a lot going on, then, you know, then you know, there's an issue that's going on there. If you're not completely sure, another thing you can do is run it through the ERMI code. Now, the ERMI code is not. Was not actually built for H Vac system. It's more built on what's going on in your house. Right? But if you ran through ERMI code and found out that you were in like group four, group five and ERMI code, which is more of a significant problem, then you know that there's more of a significant problem in those ducks too, right? So that's another way that you can look at it. So.

Those are a couple things you could do. I'll put up the ermicode link.

Now for you. And if you go to ermicode.com which is here, there's a, there's a button that you can click down there that says like, you want to get an army and, and we'll kind of send you information not only on, like, where to get it, but like collection and stuff like that. Kind of give you like a little coaching on that stuff too. So you could use it for that.

Oh, it tells you where to do the swabs from. If I didn't do inside the dots.

Well, this, again, this is built more for the living spaces of the house. Right. But it's going to give you the idea of sort of how to use it, like how to look at it. Right. So there's kind of. We built out kind of like an educational email series for people who go through that.

There's a button on the ERMI code that says looking for an ERMI or something like that. I forget exactly what it says. But then you can sort of get our two cents on how it's collected and this and that. And again, it's not specific for an H Vac system. So what I'm telling you now is how you would use it for an H Vac system. Right? You'd actually go into those duck lines and do it that way. And keep in mind, the ERMI code interpretation is really built off of home level testing, not in an H Vac system. So it's not directly correlated, but it's going to Give you a general sense of, of the overall load and level of issue in the ducks.

All right, perfect. Awesome.

Cool. Awesome. Thanks.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem. All right, so we got another one coming up. This is fun. I like these Q and A things. At some point I'm going to finish my Disneyland story.

All right, so Alyssa's coming up now.

I believe she'll be here in a second.

Oh, you know, one other thing. Or we'll do this and then I'll do it. Okay. Alyssa, what's up?

Hey, how are you?

Good. How's it going?

Good, good. So my question is, we have been walking through the process and just loving all your information. It's been so helpful on our mold journey. Yeah, I kind of mentioned this on some other platform of yours where our post remediation ermi just like blatantly failed. Terrible, terrible, terrible. So my question is, we found out today our wipe down procedure performed by the remediator, he ended up just fogging or he HEPA wiped for the wipe down, fogged, then dry wiped three times instead of wet wiped with benefect. Do you have maybe any insight into if that could have produced the kind of cross contamination that we were seeing by not wet wiping three times with a benefact on the microfiber versus yeah.

So even before that, I guess the first piece, there's two reasons that, that, that a poster me is going to fail. The first one is that there are still sources left in the house, meaning that wherever, let's say it was behind a wall or in a ceiling or whatever, that either it wasn't found in the first place or it was found but the remediation on it actually wasn't sufficient. So before I start doing ermi testing, that's kind of the second thing I do going through in a post. The first thing I do is go through the areas that were actually remediated and contained and do source level testing on the exposed building material in there as well as a separate air test inside of a containment. Just because there's so much disruption that goes on. For that. For that. But the bigger piece that I'm concerned about is the surface level testing where you basically just do a swab on the exposed framing. You just do a composite. So you just kind of wipe the swab over multiple framing pieces to see if the source is gone, right?

Yeah.

Because if, if the source is there. So if their post testing process had nothing to do with source level validation that the source is gone, then that could be a problem. Right. I don't know what it looks like? Obviously. Yeah.

They did do both error and swab testing, and that all passed. That's why we were kind of scratching heads with two weeks later how this would have looked this way. So.

Yeah, so we'll assume that that went okay. So then the other reason is that the. That the. That the just, like, stumbling. That the cleaning process for the second phase just wasn't done well enough. Or there might. There might still be, you know, other things happening that maybe weren't discovered the first time around on the not done well enough piece. It took us a couple years and a lot of our clients money to figure out what this process looks like.

And, you know, we ended up getting pretty specific on how it's done. You know, the damp wipe to the dry wipe. Realistically, if there's. I don't think that's gonna have a huge issue on it. I mean, I. I prefer a wet wipe because you'll be able to pick up more. Or not when I say more of a damp. Not a wet wipe, but like a damp wipe because you'll just pick up a little more of the particle. So that may be something contributing to it. You know, I don't know if that's. If that's ultimately it at the end of the day. What. What might be the issue there?

I just had another thought on this, and then I started talking about something else. About something else. Where was I going?

Sorry, bear with me. I, like, completely blanked on where I was going next.

Brain fog. It's a symptom of all of us, I think.

Yeah. Gosh, I hope I'm not dealing with it. That's a bigger problem. It's a bigger problem if I'm dealing with brain fog. Oh, this is the other thing. So the other thing is the amount of rags and cloths that they're using. Okay, so you really. So in our process, it's very specific. You fold a rag a certain way. You only wipe a small amount of space with it. You fold it a different way. Fold it a different way, fold, you know, and then you get rid of it. Right. So if this process is happening properly, you should be going through so many rags. So many. So many of them, and then you discard them afterwards. So one thing that. That can happen if they're kind of using the same dry wipe across multiple surfaces and stuff. I mean, think about it, like, if you're cleaning your. Your kitchen counter and there's a whole bunch of crap on your counter, and you spray it, you know, and you Wipe it down and then that all gets on your. On your paper towel. You're not going to keep wiping the rest of your counter with that paper towel that has all the crap on it. Right. Like, you get a new paper towel. It's kind of the idea. So maybe that's something that could have happened where they weren't. They weren't going through enough rags.

Yeah, I will definitely bring that up as we go forward. We're gonna give them one more chance to get it right. So. And I'm gonna print out your. From the.

Oh, gosh. Which one was it?

The.

Whatever the protocol is. I'm gonna print it out.

Oh, from Woelfinder's method. You enrolled in Woelfinder. That's cool. What are your. How did that go for you? I'm just. Now, since we're here, let's talk finders method. Go.

Yeah, it was, it was excellent. Just the amount of detail in it. You know, I feel like we kind of rely on our inspectors to kind of know everything, but there was a lot of instances where I feel like I kind of had to boss mine around a little bit because, yes, I, you know, your input and your reasoning behind it was so thorough and yeah, I just. It was, it was invaluable. So I'm very grateful.

That's cool. So did you find things that your inspector didn't, or did you find stuff first and then bring your inspector out to basically do the sampling? Like, how did you. How did you use it?

You know, I kind of did a little bit of both. There were a couple areas, you know, I went through and tested with my moisture meter and kind of pointed those out or pointed out where I saw signs of water damage and then let him kind of snoop around and find more. We were grateful that he spent like six hours testing, which I know is a rarity.

I think he shadows Mark Levy every now and then, so grateful that he, you know, has a little bit of that knowledge. But definitely there were a couple things I was.

That.

Did you see this? And did you see this? So things I wouldn't known had I not gone through each of those modules and learned.

Ah, that makes me so happy. This is like. That was the whole point of putting that together is that it's really not that hard if you just know what to look for and where to look for it. Right. That's just the big thing that we don't know. So. Yeah. I'm so glad that you were able to like, kind of like work together with someone else and point things out and like get the situation handled a little better. So that's awesome. Yay. Well, thank you for sharing. That's really cool. Makes my day. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

All right, guys, back to Disneyland. So anyone else has a question, you could jump in and I'll cut off the story, but I want to finish this. This is the longest, most broken up parent corner that's ever happened. So far it hasn't been anything parent related. But now we're going to get into it. Okay, guys. So Disneyland is the happiest place on earth for kids and just incredibly miserable for the parents of those kids. That's what I've decided. So we went to Disneyland with two toddlers, a 6 year old and our new baby son, who's at the time three months old. And we're rolling to Disneyland with basically four kids that all have no patience and.

Trying to figure all this stuff out. And here's the thing with this is what this is. One thing I learned at Disney is there's a time at the all the kids are really excited the beginning of the day, right? Like everybody's happy, everybody's doing thing. And as the day goes on, they get more and more annoyed and pissed off and angry and it's because they're all missing their naps. Like I, it just like registered to me. I'm like, my kids are not napping today. And as the day went longer and longer, they just all became just, just terrible. And it was so hard to deal with them. And then I'm looking around the rest of the park and all the kids are doing the same exact thing. So we did, we did a park hopper. We started at Disneyland during the day, went to California Adventures in the afternoon, went to California adventures around 3 o'. Clock. This is like around either around nap time or after nap time, right? So now from 3 to 4 o' clock to 5 o', clock, we're in California Adventures. I'm like looking around and all these kids getting pushed in their strollers and walking around are throwing massive temper tantrums and all this stuff. I'm like, oh my God. All of these kids are overtired and they're just so angry. Like I never realized, I never realized that I had to account for that in the day of what's going on. But it wasn't just our kids, it was everybody's kids. It was nuts. So, so we kind of decided that we were, if we ever do this again, I think we're gonna like get a hotel at Disney we only live 15 minutes away from Disneyland, by the way, but we might actually end up getting a room at Disneyland hotel and coming up and doing a break in the day with them so they can nap so we can end up having, like, an easier night, right? So that's, like, something that we maybe thought of doing a couple more things on this. Any other questions? Feel free to raise your hand. I'm going to go into a couple more thoughts that I had on Disney. Okay.

So I talked about the food thing, right? Having to order through the apps and all this. I found a trick that worked.

To sort of bypass the system in a way. Not sort of bypass it. You still have to order through the app. But then they tell you have to wait all this time, and all the workers are just not doing anything right? Like, you. They clearly could give you your food if they wanted to. But then a lot of them sit on this timeline thing. So later in the day, we're at California Adventures, and I have my screaming toddler who's hungry and overtired and whatever. I brought my. I brought Kensington up to the window where the food was supposed to be delivered, even though we weren't supposed to get it for another 30 minutes. And I just had her scream at the people in the window. Not at them, but, like, around them. And I was like, guys, I have a screaming toddler. For the love of God, can you please give me this food that's sitting over here? And bam. They just gave it to me. Look at that. They're not completely bound by. By these rules from the app. Like, they could do stuff for you if they wanted to. They just didn't want to. So that was a little trick I found. You know, use. Use the toddler to get things done. People are like, oh, my God, anything to help this guy. This looks so frustrating. All right, let me help you out. Right? So that happened. And then the last thing, you know, sometimes with. With her and some of the other kids, you know, you have to kind of like, if they're acting up, you're like, well, do you want to ride this or do you want to do that? You know, you have to kind of, like, use that to try to get them, you know, to sort of coax them or bribe them into things. On the flip side. So that's more of a positive sort of thing, right? On the flip side, it's like, hey, do you want to go home? Right? You kind of use more of the, like, negative form of that. Like, if you do this, something not good is going to happen. Right? And so each of those work kind of. You have to kind of use each type every now and then or whatever. You know, if you do too much of one, it does. It stops working, whatever. So at the end of the day. At the end of the day. But when she was more tired and stuff and complaining, I used the more negative one, which was. Which I was like, hey, you know, do you want to go home if. Whatever. Fill in the blank. Whatever I said. And she just looked up to me and she said, yes, I want to go home. It's like, oh, my God, this is terrible. This poor kid is basically being tortured at Disneyland because she's so tired.

Everything's going on. So that. That was. Was Disneyland and a highlight with kids. Oh, and the last thing, you wait all the time for all this food, and then all the food sucks. But that's like a whole nother situation. So trying to get these kids to eat stuff that's not very good, trying to eat this stuff yourself. The whole thing is very frustrating. I love Disneyland as a kid. Now, as we plan on doing Disneyland trips with the kids, I'm sort of, like, regretting, not regretting. I'm sort of, like, cringing at the thought of doing them and having to think of other things. So that's my whole very extended parent corner Disneyland story. I will. I'll kind of leave it here if there's no other questions that pop up in the room. So I'll give you guys another minute or so if you guys have anything else you want to talk about. Otherwise, just want to thank everybody for joining me in here. This is really cool. So this is going to go up as. As an episode on molefinders Radio. So you guys will hear that at some point here in the near future. And yeah, it looks like. It looks like we're gonna wrap it up now. So thanks again, everyone for jumping for joining on. Really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to my Disneyland story. Hope the sync thing story helped you guys. And some of these questions that were asked, you were able to pull some stuff out of that. And check out ermicode. Check out molefinder's method. Those are two things that we talked about as well in here. If. If those things make sense for you guys. All right, so thanks so much. We will talk to you, you know, again later. All right, bye. Bye.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.