103: My huge 2021 mistake / How to know if a leak caused mold

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.

Oh, there's people, people coming in the room. Hey, everybody. So this is. This is being recorded for molefinders Radio podcast. I'm gonna start running them through here. Those of you who are in the room, I haven't even really announced this yet. Some of you may be on, you know, the. My email list and all the emails that I send out and I kind of alluded to what I'm is happening right now, which is basically one of the things that we're doing this year, is that we're going to be recording the podcast weekly at the same time, always on Clubhouse, so people could kind of work their schedules around it and interact a little more. So I literally haven't told anyone yet. So for Brian, Mary and Sarah, who popped in this room immediately. Awesome.

And as others come in later, if you guys have questions at the end, we'll do a little bit of a Q and A thing. Possibly want to introduce real quick Rachel, who's in the room with me. So Rachel, on my team that we inspect, she helps me with things and she's going to help me moderate the room a little bit once we get to the point of taking some questions in. So this is going to be a normal thing on the show now. Okay. So the show is going to basically have a topic or a couple topics that I'm going to talk through. And then at the end of that, going to kind of open up the floor for questions, if there are any. And that's how that's going to go. So first, since we're just working through this, I'm going to mute Rachel because I hear the background back there. So now we won't hear that everywhere and we're going to jump into it. So one thing that I wanted to do, so just to kind of give you a rundown of kind of what we're talking about today. So the topic of the room right now is how to know if a leak caused mold. I was talking to a client yesterday before, you know, we do these pre inspection phone calls, right. So I kind of, before we go out to do the inspection at their house, I get on a call with them, it's actually a zoom. We can look at each other's beautiful faces. It's wonderful. And we chat for a little bit about a few different things. So one of the things that I always ask about is what sort of historical water issues. Leaks, drips, major floods, anything, whatever, anything water related that's happened. Tell me everything that's happened. And the reason that I need to know that is because, and I've said this a lot, so if people have heard it, you know, I'll try to keep it short. But basically, just because something isn't wet right now doesn't mean that there isn't mold there. So if there was a previous water leak at some point in time and it created a mold problem and then the water dried up and went away, the mold doesn't just like pack up its suitcase and go follow the water somewhere. Right. It stays where it is.

It's not like a person or a traveling nomad tribe. It's like a plant that grows out of the ground. That's basically what the equivalent is. Right. So it's important to know these things. And so one of the things I was talking about with this client, they were telling me that they had this leak, but they got to it right away, they got it dry, they got it fixed right away. And so they didn't think there's anything going on. So one thing I'm going to talk about in a little bit is what right away really means and how you should think of that. And if that leak actually had the potential to cause a mole problem, even though you think that you addressed it right away. So it's one of the things I'm going to talk about.

And then after that, I had a post on Instagram yesterday where I showed a sample that somebody who had actually gone through mole finders method, that they found this sign of water damage in their ceiling, which is part of the program, teaches you how to find all that stuff. And they actually had it tested and came back and it was like really high mole counts up there, but it really just looks like a tiny little imperfection in the ceiling. And there was a bunch of questions that came out of that post. So I'm going to kind of talk about that a little bit more too. But before I get into all that stuff, like I said, those of you who are on, you know, the emails that I, that I send out, you've seen a couple emails about sort of where, where I've been recently, what we've been working on, and kind of what to expect moving forward. You know, the. Where I've been. This is the first episode in, in, geez, like almost two months. Holy crap. I'm so sorry, guys. This is what happens when you have a newborn and you have a toddler and the newborn doesn't want to sleep, and the toddler starts defying everything that you ever say to them. You lose your entire life, basically, for a short period of time. So that's kind of what's happened. But I've kind of. We've kind of hit our stride. We've recalibrated a little bit. And so that's where the commitment to recording the podcast.

At least once a week, but always doing it on the same day at the same time. I'm gonna kind of rework the format where it's like kind of the long form talking like I usually do with more of a live radio show, call in type of thing. So that's kind of where we're going on that. But I actually, I wanted to talk through real quick because I think it's really important for you guys to understand, like, where we are coming from and how we look at stuff from the company side, from our side, so you can get a feel for, like, how we're trying to do and what we're trying to do. So part of the reason that I had Rachel on is I kind of wanted to talk about a couple of the big things that we rolled out this year and just kind of bring somebody else's opinion who's behind the scenes and seeing what's going on. Because I know that you guys just listen to me talk a lot and it sounds like that, you know, it's okay, but I thought it'd be nice to get another point of view. So, Rachel, you could unmute yourself now and. And we can kind of chat about a little of this. So everyone, first meet Rachel. Rachel is our knowledge strategist at We Inspect, and she basically helps us spread the, you know, the good word, if you will, about, you know, how we can help people and how, you know, information and learning and what water damage is and how all this stuff works and really trying to kind of bring awareness and empower people. So everyone, this is Rachel. Rachel, thanks for, for coming on last minute and not being scared away from the limelight.

Yeah, anytime. Hi, guys. Nice to meet you.

So I just wanted to talk about a couple of things. We do this annual meeting so to set this up. So this year in December, at the end of December, we, myself and Corey, who. Corey is my partner, and the co founder of Weinspect, we had a meeting with the entire company. We flew everyone in to the same place and we really wanted to set the stage and the vision and the mission for where we're going moving forward. We thought really important because as we looked back at what we had achieved, which were some very good things and things that we feel like maybe we left on the table a little bit. And I mentioned this in some of the, in a couple of the emails that I sent out, but I felt like that we really like under delivered in some ways, meaning that there was so much demand for the number of people that really needed resources and help and we're doing so much. But we had this goal last year of trying to help a hundred thousand people find hidden mold in their homes and, and we like already did that. So between all the different things, between podcasts and the downloads and mold finders method and inspections that we did in person and the mold phone, text community and all these things, we reached that relatively quickly. And I felt like that we didn't really look kind of big enough. I don't think we were shooting big enough, to be honest with you. So.

We really sat down, Corey and I, and tried to map out a mission and a vision for the company that not only kind of shows where we want to go, but how we want to do it and the importance of what we do for that. Right. And so I'm going to get into that in a second. But let me ask you this first, Rachel. So. So by the way, everyone, yesterday was Rachel's one year anniversary with us, so HAND CLAPS for her. Anyone who's around. SNAPS SILENT HAND CLAPS yeah, snaps. Exactly. So let me ask you. So we'll tell people a little bit about the meeting, a little bit so they could get a feel for it. But you were obviously with us for the last year and then you come into this meeting and you kind of see what we have in place and what the plans are. What was the general kind of feeling that you had going into it and coming out of it? Was it different? Did you. Did something change at all? Like, I'm just kind of curious. And just for the record, everyone, I haven't asked for this before, so I don't know what.

No, definitely has not asked me.

Yeah, I think we went into the meeting just not really knowing what to expect. But I think the feeling as we were leaving was just so overwhelming in the best way possible because you could tell that Brian and Corey had really listened to the feedback that was coming through, whether it was from social media or.

Direct messages to us or emails, and had just really had this plan that was ready to help as many people as possible on these really cool new avenues. And I'm sure Brian is going to share with you guys today.

That we can help more people and just really expand. So it's exciting.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it is kind of what happened. We get a lot of feedback, right. And you know, you gotta have, you have to look at that stuff to figure out how you can better tailor things for people. Like there are a lot of times I sit in my room and I dream up ideas of stuff. I have so many ideas of stuff and it just doesn't hit right. I'm like, everybody's gonna love this. And then I put something out and for whatever reason it just doesn't hit like I thought. And so you always kind of have to like reevaluate things and see how it's going. The big thing that I kind of noticed that we kind of noticed over the last couple years really is that first off there was limited accessibility, right. Because we were, you know, we're a small company, we're. We're not able to be everywhere at every given time, even though we're a national company, to be able to service everywhere. There was limitations in, you know, how far we get scheduled out and different things like that. So I tried to sit down and sort of look at like the three biggest reasons that I thought that maybe somebody wasn't able to work with us that possibly either wanted to or probably needed to. And so when I looked at it, there's. There's basically three things. The first thing was just a price component, right? I mean realistically. And you know, we all know this between medical treatments and remediations and then obviously the inspection costs and all this stuff, there's a cost component to that, right. And so we're aware of that. It's not like it doesn't fall on us. So we understand that. So that was the first thing. The second thing was access. So a lot of last year was talking about. And really last year is when we kind of create mold finders concept this idea of a community. But the reality is we never actually established more like a formal community really. Right. We had kind of the text phone, we had Instagram account that was more of us kind of pushing things out and then maybe commenting back and forth. But we didn't really have like a formal place, like a true community. And I think that limited the accessibility to the tools and the things that we provided out there. Right. So that was, that was a big thing, access. So as part of it was price, part of it was access. And then, and for those two things, that's really people that are aware of what's going on and they did want to work with us in some way. Maybe we just didn't have the option or the availability or whatever it might be to be the best fit for them at the time. The last piece is kind of for the folks that probably should be working with us, but they just don't completely know it yet. Maybe they're kind of aware, but they're not completely aware yet. Right. And so that was the way I looked at that. That was like a knowledge issue. That was a knowledge speed bump. Right. So maybe someone is just going down the mold rabbit hole and they kind of like understand it, but. But they're maybe not completely convinced of it. Maybe they need more information to validate what they're feeling, whatever that might be. And so that's on us, right? Like we have to provide that.

And get everyone to a point. That's why I try to share as much as I can. And that's why we do, you know, all the stuff that we do is because I'm trying to like push this greater knowledge component out to help kind of bring up that level so people understand kind of where they need to move and how they need to do it and make the best decision decision for them. And so I looked at all access you had knowledge. I'm like, okay, what's all this doing? Like, if I, if we figured main issues that I feel like we may not be the best fit, you know, for someone at a given time, what would that do? Right. And, and that, and when I looked at it, the big word that kept popping out to me is that it's empowering people. If you're providing basically solutions and pathways for these roadblocks and, and that's ultimately started driving the mission of where we're going, not just this year, but for the next several years. Right. So as I said before, we're really focused on a number before. And I feel like focusing on a number of people is completely the wrong way to do this because one, I kind of underestimated like how significant of impact there really is. And two, it's not about a specific number helping them in a specific way. It's about trying to empower everyone in the way that makes the most sense for them and support them where they need it. So that's kind of what drove what our new mission statement is. And that mission statement now moving forward, I just want to share with everybody. So, you know, we're coming from. It's empowering people everywhere with the tools and services they need to create healthy homes. And we thought about every single word in this really carefully. The empowering people part, very important. I kind of just.

Everywhere. Empowering people everywhere is another big thing, right? So we're in this amazing time where there's all this information out there. You don't have to be stuck with the below average options in the town that you live in to get this stuff handled. Because the reality is they're not good enough. Right. So we wanted to make sure that everything that we did was about that. We've already started working on that. Obviously with the inspection business of traveling around. We create a mole finders method which is, you know, our training program and teach people to go through their own houses and that can go anywhere. So that's, that's everything that we do now has to kind of fall within that realm. And then tools and services they need to create healthy homes. It's not just about coming into the house and doing an inspection. It's. It's tools in the terms of resources and then it's services in terms of platforms and ways that you can access and utilize those tools. So, you know, for example, one of the things I'm going to be releasing out pretty soon, or actually one of the things we just did release out is Ermicode. That's a tool, right? It's a tool that could be accessed anywhere. It's a very low price point. We're addressing all three of those things as something that helps somebody understand a better feel of what's going on in their home so they can make the decision on should they continue to look at an inspection, should they maybe think about moving, like, what should that look like? So that's an example of a tool. The next tool that I'm working on right now is an entire kind of guidebook on how to clean your stuff in your house if you've been in a mold contaminated house. It's currently sitting at like 15 pages right now, this cleaning document. So if you're ever worried, you're like, hey, how do I clean this? Or should I clean or not clean this? This is going to be a tool that's going to be available, incredibly low price point, accessible anywhere and it's sharing knowledge, right? So it all goes back to those three things and I looked at it one day when I was thinking about it, I was like, man, the first letter of all these words, they spell pak, P, A K, right? That's what they spell. Price, access, knowledge. And then that created this whole sort of spinoff on our. Now, anything that we do moving forward has to fill. Imagine somebody's imaginary pack that they're carrying, and everything in their pack is one of those three things. And so the analogy that I. That I gave when we were at the meeting was, was this. And those of you who know me know I love analogies. I use them all the time. But this is basically, I said, I was like, imagine you're getting ready to hike up Mount Everest. Like, what do you have with you, right? Like, if you're going up there, what do you have? You probably have a backpack, right? And in that backpack probably has all the tools and stuff you need to actually make it to the top, right? You have food, you have water, you have camping supplies, you have your tent. You have your whatever you need, right? And. And if you didn't have that and you went on this journey up Mount Everest, you pro.

Wouldn'T make it. And I mean, get a little more graphic. You're on Mount Everest, you might die, right? Now, I'm not saying that you would do that here necessarily, but that's. That was kind of the vision, right? So if I'm saying, okay, so let's imagine you have this pack. So let's go back to these three ideas that we talked about. What if you couldn't afford a specific tool that you needed to put in that package, yet you still were forced to go up that mountain, right? But you didn't have the tent or whatever because you couldn't afford it. You're forced to go up this mountain. You have to sleep at night, you have no shelter, you're going to freeze, right? That sucks. You should have access to stuff that's going to help you, right? So that was the first thing. But what about this? What. What if you couldn't find a tool that you needed to put in your pack? So let's say you knew that you needed, I don't know, a flashlight or something, but for whatever reason, you literally couldn't find one anywhere, yet you're still forced to go up the mountain. Now it gets dark now you have no flashlight, and you're screwed again, right? So that's the access piece. Like, you couldn't find something, you couldn't get access to it. And then the last piece is, what if there was Something that you really, really needed in your pack, and you just had no idea that you actually needed it in your pack until you got to the point where you needed it and it was too late, right?

The thing that this brought up for me is once I went to Alaska once, my cousin lives up there, and we went fishing one day, and we, like, hike up into this, like, mountain area, and there's like, this lake is beautiful, like, runs through these mountains or whatever. So we brought. We filled our pack, right? We brought our fishing equipment, we brought the lures, we brought the bait, we brought all this stuff, went up, did the fishing. We were terrible at it, but we tried. And then we left. We get back to the house and.

Hi, honey. My daughter just walked in. We get back to the house and we're unloading the pack and. Or the pack, the truck, and. And we unload everything. And then my cousin and the family that's up there, they're like, where are the guns? And I was like, what are you talking about? Where are the guns? Why would I bring guns to go fishing? You expect me to shoot the fish in the river? What are you talking about? And they look at me, they're like, no, I expect you to shoot the bear that's going to come try to kill you while you're fishing for the fish. That's what I expect you to shoot. And my mind was completely blown, right? I was like, wait a second. I was supposed to bring a gun to go fishing, and I had no idea. This is the knowledge piece. If someone had told me that before I went fishing, then I would know that when you fish in the middle of Alaska in the woods, you bring a gun so you don't get killed by bears. Like, I would know that. I would have a gun, right? So that's kind of the knowledge piece, right? So this is like this analogy that I shared with the team while we were there to describe what we are doing moving forward and every effort that we make and every communication we have, every podcast episode we put out, every product that we make, and every service and platform that we provide is.

All about filling people's packs so they can succeed going up this mountain, right? And so that was kind of the idea of what the meeting was and where.

Like, a lot of blame on myself where it's not necessary. I just feel like while we did a lot of good last year, I feel like we maybe kind of missed. We missed the shot a little bit in some cases, too. So that is the overview that I just wanted to share. With everybody. Did I leave anything out? Rachel, does that kind of like wrap everything up? That was the main highlights.

No, I think you, I think you covered everything.

Yeah, so. So that was kind of it. I wanted to bring Rachel on just because, you know, she's been with us for a year and she was. I just wanted her say hi to you guys. You're probably going to start seeing her a lot more and just kind of share where we've been. So that's a quick sort of background on where we've been, where we're going. As far as the emails that are going out, those of you that have been with me for a longer while, remember I used to email basically every single day. And then that kind of stopped when Baby Gate happened. So we're gonna start kicking that back in. If you guys want to get all these emails that I sent out, I just sent out so, so much free stuff that I think is valuable anyway. You could just go to yesweinspect.com join and you can join the email list there. You can just kind of tell us what you want to learn about and we'll start creating stuff for you. So that's kind of that. All right, so now let's get into.

How to know if elite caused mold, which was kind of the topic of today. I just went on a tangent for a little while, so let's get in this. So I told you I was talking to my client in the pre inspection call, right? So on the call they basically say, they're like, yeah, we.

This leak in the sink area, I think it was in the laundry room, but we got it addressed right away. And I've heard this so many times. I've heard people like, yeah, but we got it right away. We caught it right away. So there's no way there was a problem. And I'm like, I'm like, okay, explain to me what right away means. What? What do you mean you got it right away? What happened? Like, well, so it started leaking overnight and then we saw it in the morning. I'm like, okay, so like started leaking like 8, 9 o' clock at night. They're like, yeah. I'm like, okay. And then you got to it at what, 8, 9 o' clock in the morning? Yeah. Okay, so we're already 12 hours in to a leak. Okay, so.

That was going on. Then they found it. So then they immediately shut off the water source. So there's basically 12 hour.

Of some sort of moisture or some sort of water issue. They shut off the water source. And then a couple hours later, they had a, like a water restoration company come out and start the drying process. So this is something that happens a lot. So you say, you think to yourself, you're like, all right, I found this leak. I turned off the water right away. We called the water restoration people out. They came out, they started drying everything. We were on it as fast as we can. Like, okay, how long did it take the drying to actually dry? Like, well, the dryer, the. The drying machines were there for a couple days. Like, okay, so you had a leak, go for 12 hours, you stopped it at that point, and then you had somebody come out. It took maybe one to two days for it to actually get dried out. You're talking 24, 48, or what's 48 plus 12 or 60 hours maybe combined of issue, right? So here's the thing. Mole can grow in as little as 24 hours. So even though that we feel like that we addressed the leak immediately and we stopped it. If it took two days to dry everything out after you stopped the leak, keep in mind, you had a 12 hour head start when the leak was actually happening, there's still a pretty good likelihood there's a mole problem there. Even though in your mind, you feel like you addressed it as fast because you address it as fast as you could, it's not like you didn't address it as fast as you as you could, right? So in your mind, you're like, I got to it immediately. I did everything I could right away. We addressed it immediately. But, you know, as far as the water is concerned, and maybe the mold that's growing back there, they have plenty of time. They had plenty of time before it was stopped and it was dried, right? So it's not that they did anything wrong. It's not these people, okay? They did everything as fast as they possibly could. Listen, you're sleeping overnight. You're sleeping overnight. You don't know if there's a leak, right? You wake up in the morning like, holy crap, there's a leak. I gotta get this fixed. So, I mean, that's not crazy, right? But at the same time, there's a lot of time that passed. And in that time, mole could have grown. And it's just, it's just fact. It just could have grown at that time. So what we need to do is sort of relook at how we kind of view our response time on things and understand that it doesn't take very long, you know, especially if you have dryers that are coming in and These drying processes, they usually take. They usually take some time. You're not drying stuff out immediately, you know, because they're typically not cutting out walls and stuff like that. They might cut like a. They might pop a little hole in a wall here or there and then put a drying machine next to it and say, oh, the dryers are going to get all up behind that wall. It's going to dry everything. Thing is, it's going to take time to do that. Right. It's not an immediate thing. When the. When the fan goes on the wall, it's not dry right away. Right. It takes time. So they did what they were supposed to do. Right. And so in her mind, when I was talking to them about, you know, kind of the history and what's gone on, they thought that there shouldn't be a problem there. Like, we handled this. We don't know if there's going to be a problem. So I explained everything that I basically just laid out here to them, and I'm like, listen, when we come in, we're going to want to test that area and see if there's a problem there, right? Because we need to know it's possible. Again, if mold grew and then it went away, or. Excuse me, and then the water went away. The mold doesn't necessarily go away. Right. The mold stays there. It's like a plant that has roots that's rooted in that area right now. Right. So that's kind of how it works. So I just wanted to kind of share that just snippet of that conversation I had with my client. This is before we even walked in the house. We haven't even been in this house yet. This is just a conversation I had the other day. So we'll see what everything looks like, and we'll see what the sample looks like there. Does it 100% that there's going to be a mole problem there? No, but there's a pretty good likelihood that if you have a water issue for 48 to 60 hours, that you probably will have a bit of issue that's going on. It's just. There's just a likelihood for that. So. So anyway, so that's. That's one little thing. So just something to think about when you guys, you know, if you do have a leak, it's important, obviously, stop the leak, get it dry, do everything that you. That this person did. But then you need to get it tested afterwards. All right? You need to make sure that nothing happened as a result and not live in sort of, you know, kind of an ignorant bliss thinking that, oh well, I handled it as fast as I could so there couldn't be a problem. Just because you did it as fast as you could doesn't mean that mole couldn't have grown. It doesn't mean there's not a problem. Right. So just make sure that we're diligent on that. So that was, that was one thing on that piece. And then the last thing kind of ties into that that I wanted to touch on today was talking about actually this post that we put out yesterday on Instagram, which was, like I said, a photo from someone who went through Molefinder's method in an area they found using sort of the guided process of going through the post was what, what's the date today? The second. So it was posted on February 1st. So if you're ever listening to this, go back to the post that was out on February 1st. And that's where you can see the post. I'm talking to the post. Basically it's kind of like a reddish color and in big letters it says but buckling is totally normal. Right. That's kind of what you'll see if you look at it. So anyways, you scroll through this and there's a picture of a ceiling here. There's a close up picture of a ceiling. Now the close up picture that you see is basically, I mean, it's hard to tell because I wasn't at, you know, literally at the house, I was looking at a picture. But I would say that this little area of like a little bow or a little bow or buckle in the ceiling is maybe like 6 to 12 inches long. Maybe it's not super long and it's also not super intense and deep and tough either. Right.

So.

That'S kind of what it looked like. Hey Rachel, can you put a link to that, that post up in here in the chat, if we could figure that out.

Cool. So guys in the room, we're going to link this post up here so you kind of see what we're talking about. Anyways, so that's what this looks like. Okay, so part of the process, part of molefinder's method, and when I say that, I don't mean necessarily the program, although it's the program. But it's like this is how, this is how I train our people, is through this program. This is how they are trained, is that you look for these signs of water damage. One of the five signs of water is like this little buckling or separating that you see in a ceiling. Right. So There was a lot of comments that came in off of this yesterday, more than I actually suspected or expected off of this picture.

But. But basically there were questions along the lines of, well, how would you test something like that, right? How do you even know it was a problem? Buckling and these types of little inconsistencies happen all over the place sometimes in houses. Does that mean that every spot that there is one of these, there's a problem? Another question was.

Or if I don't have a direct water source over this area, does is it even possible for it to be a mold problem? So there's a lot of questions that came in off of this. So anyways, that's why I kind of want to talk through it a little bit. So, first off, if you see a sign of water damage, which we call signs of hidden mold growth, because that's really what it is. I joke around all the time. The big secret to finding hidden mold in your house is to not actually look for mold at all is to look for these signs of water damage, right? These are the things that we could see with our eye. You can't see mold. Very rarely can you see it. So you need to be looking for these bigger clues that are kind of like the red flags that are telling you that, hey, maybe there's something going on here. So anyway, so it's to go through and look for these things. And does it mean every single time there's going to be something there? No, not necessarily. But we do know the majority of the time there is something there, right? Through the different studies that we've done internally. So the odds are that there will be something going on there, but it doesn't happen all the time. That's why it's important to test it to understand what's going on right now. So one of the other questions was, well, if there's no water source directly above it, how could that be a problem? So that's a really common thought, too.

It's not always direct like that, right? So I know maybe a lot of us haven't seen, like, behind walls and under floors and kind of what the structural layout of a house looks like. But if you've watched any of these, like, renovation shows, you'll see they open a wall and there's like the, you know, these framing two by four pieces that are back there, right? And so they have those behind walls, they have those under floors. They have different things. So what happens sometimes is water gets onto one of those beams. Say you had a leak, so you had A leak in a bathroom one whole room away from there, let's say. And there was a leak, you know, maybe under the toilet or something. And it basically got into this area under the floor, and it hits one of these horizontal 2 by 4 pieces. And that 2 x 4 piece is just slightly slanted like maybe 2 or 3 degrees one direction, just enough to make a little bit of a slope that water can start traveling down in that direction. And let's say that for some reason there's like some sort of place where it evens out or it kind of drips off of that piece or whatever, and that happens to be one room away in the ceiling, in the area down below where you're sitting in. You look up above it and you say, there's no way this could be a water leak because there's no water source up here. It doesn't always work like that, right? Your house is this interconnected thing, and you can't necessarily see all of it. And it doesn't always directly correlate one to one, as if I'm standing right above this thing. This is the only place where this leak could have come from. It doesn't work like that, right? So what's important is when you see these things, not to immediately dismiss it because you look up above it and say, well, there's no water source up here. There's no human way that there could be an issue here. And then just walk away because you're doing yourself a disservice if you do that. Right. So it's important that you test them just to make sure. And there are times where we've tested stuff like this, when we've seen things like this, and you open up the ceiling, you know, the remediators open it, and all of a sudden you see the path of staining that takes you to where the leak source was. You're like, holy crap. This thing was leaking from two rooms away, you know, or there was a roof leak that came down this wall. And then when it hit this wall, it hit the floor. And then when I hit the floor, it started working horizontally into the room next door. And then it came and dripped down in this bedroom down here, right? So that's. That's how. That's how this stuff works, right? It's not a direct. Like the leak has to be immediately above. Now there are times that that happens, right? I mean, of course, there's times where there's a pipe running in a ceiling pipe leaks. You see water damage right below it. Of course, that happens, but it doesn't have to happen that way. Right. So it's one thing that I want to make sure that we're, you know, we're kind of thinking of when we see things like this. And it's all because I don't want us to dismiss these types of, you know, kind of minimal damage that we see, right. We look at like, ah, it's just like this little thing, this little inconsistency in the ceiling. That little thing could be the tip of an iceberg where there's a much larger problem going on behind there. Right. And so that's why it's important that we understand that you're not looking for mold. You're looking for signs of water damage and what those signs of water damage are and how to identify them. So that's what's broken down in molefinder's method. So if people want to go through their own house, it breaks down all the five signs of water damage, tells you in each room where to look, you know, where these problems manifest, how to look for them, even explains how to test them in the program. So let's talk about like the testing piece, because then there was a lot of questions about, well, how do you test this stuff? Right. How was this tested?

So the way that this is, this was tested again, there's no visible mold on the ceiling, Right. There's not even staining. It's just like a slight sort of inconsistency kind of buckle in the ceiling. Right. So you're not doing any sort of surface grab or swab or anything off of that. So the way that you test these things, you do what's called cavity samples. So basically what happens is they put a little hole in the ceiling. It's about the size of like a Sharpie pen. Put a tube through that hole and you connect the tube to an air sampling pump. And that air sampling pump basically takes air from the top side of the ceiling. You could do it in a wall too, from behind the wall, wherever. And it is collecting the sample from behind that area. That's how the sample is collected. Okay. When you do it that way, you're getting directly next to, to where the source level impact looks like right now. It doesn't always mean when I say source all the time, it doesn't mean where the water source is. Right. Because again, this water source could have been from two rooms over upstairs. It's not where the immediate water source is all the time. It's where that source manifests into where the mold growth is. Happening. So that's the source. We're talking source. We're talking source of the growth. And so when you see these damaged pieces in a ceiling or something like that, that's a clue. Like, listen, if there was a moisture issue, it seems to be collecting here. You have the highest likelihood that this.

Is the most concentrated area, right. When you test them. Because the reality is you can't see behind all this stuff. Right? So you got to be kind of strategic about how you go about these things. So you do this cavity test as close to this space, as close to that little damage area that you can, and you pull that sample from behind. Now, in that sample, if you like, scroll kind of the slideshow on this thing, that sample pulled up 100,000 spore count of stachybotryas, among some other things. That was a huge black mold Stachybotrys problem. In a place where there was no current moisture. Right now it was dry because they did moisture readings on it. It was dry. So there was no moisture right now. But there was a little sign that there was a water issue. They do a switch source level test right at where it is, and they find a massive source of black mold in their ceiling that looks like nothing other but a little settlement. Right. This is how we go through the house and identify things. Again, does everything that looks like settlement. Is there going to be a mold problem there? No. No, there's not. Right. Sometimes it truly is settlement. Sometimes moisture isn't the reason that something happened, but sometimes it is, and the clues and the look of them look similar. So. So if your goal is to go through your house and try to identify where these potential issues are and really understand the full impact of what's going on so you can make remediation decisions and think through the best approach for you, then you need to sample these particular areas that stand out as red flags that fall within these five signs of water damage. Otherwise, if this person overlooked that spot and said, oh, this doesn't really look like much, because it doesn't. It doesn't look like much. We look at the picture, it doesn't look like much, right? This doesn't look like much. There's no water source directly above it. It's probably nothing. They would have missed a massive black toxic mold source that was sitting in their ceiling above whatever the living room or their den or whatever this was. Right. So that's, that's kind of the process on how it works, right? You just kind of do this everywhere through the house. This is how Our inspection process works. The majority of it is going through and looking at things like this. So, listen, I saw one comment in this thread, and I just got to say, because it kind of pissed me off a little bit, somebody, I don't know. I don't have enough for me. Somebody said something along the lines of, of, I want to talk to this person that did this. How do I know that you're not just making this up to sell stuff? How do things along that line, like, listen, I get it. Like, I guess there's haters out there. I don't know if you're listening or you're following me or you're listening to my podcast or you're doing whatever, and you have a thought where you're like, I think that Brian is lying to me, then you should stop following me and you stop listening to me. Right? Like, don't sit here and be, like, frustrated and think that the world's out to get you. I'm not out to get anybody. I'm just trying to help people. So, like, if. If you have that thought about you, then you should probably just unfollow me, not listen to anything anymore. All right? And then, you know, you can kind of try to figure things out in another avenue. My. My purpose is not to create an Instagram post where I make up numbers and throw them out there to. To. I don't know, to whatever, to gain followers. It's not the purpose, right? So anyways, that. That was the last thing that happened on there. So if any of you are listening and you're like, God, I think Brian just makes stuff up all the time, and he doesn't really know what he's talking about. He's just trying to instill fear in people. And I think he lied about this and this and that. Then honestly, just stop listening to me. Like, clearly, it's not helping. And honestly, it's probably creating a lot more stress than need be, which is probably spiking in cortisol levels, which is probably limiting your healing process in the first place. So I don't want to make you not heal from you thinking I'm a big fat liar for whatever reason. So just stop, and we'll all be happier. Okay, so that's me off my soapbox with that. So there's a couple people in here. I didn't even promote this. I think I said at the beginning, I didn't even talk about that I was doing this. So it's kind of cool. There are some people in here. If anybody has A question. I'll take them. I got a few minutes here.

And if not, we don't have to. So I'll kind of hang here for a minute and see if a hand pops up and if not, then kind of wrap it up for the day.

Let's see, while I wait for this, is there anything else that I can end with?

I don't know. The only thing I could think of is that I've been up since 3:30 this morning because my little guy decided he didn't want to sleep after 3:30. And so I've been up for a very long time already. I'm already very tired. But that's the only thing I could think of right now, actually. I'll tell you a quick story about that and then if nobody has anything, I'll wrap it up and leave. So this morning, part of my morning routine, you know, I make coffee, like so many of us, right? So we have like this like stir, like this electronic stirring little thing. I think. I think it's actually for like milk frothing or whatever, but I put like, you know, collagen protein in my coffee and stuff. And so I use that to stir it in, right? So I go downstairs this morning. I'm like frantically searching for the stirring device because I did wake up at 3:30 and never went back to sleep. Not to mention the two or three other times I woke up in the middle of the night to help get him back to sleep. So I was like, totally exhausted. And I'm looking for the stirring thing. I literally can't find it. I start opening up cabinets, I open the refrigerator, I open a pantry and a room away. I'm like, could this have possibly gone somewhere else? When you don't stir the protein or the collagen powder with this thing, it gets clumpy. And I didn't want to drink like, clumpy stuff, right? So I'm like, looking. I literally couldn't find it. I end up just not making the coffee yet, right? I'm like, ugh. I just. I just can't right now. So then a little bit later, my wife comes downstairs and I see it on the counter. I'm like, did you take that up in the bedroom with you last night? Like, where did this come from? And she looks at me like I'm freaking crazy. She's like, no, it's been like sitting here. I'm like, it has not been sitting here. I have been here all morning looking for this thing. And I looked over there and it wasn't over there. Did you take it to play a trick on me? Are you playing a trick on me? What's going on right now? I, like, totally accused her of stealing something from the kitchen to make me feel like I was going insane and then put it back in there, and then she's, like, maniacally laughing in her brain or something behind the scenes. Apparently none of that happened. Apparently the thing was sitting there the whole time, and that is how tired I was the this morning. So that will be how I wrap everything up. All right, everyone, well, thanks for sticking around. Thanks for listening. Rachel, thanks for, you know, sticking around for a year with us and. And helping us do everything that we're going to do kind of beyond this. I'm really excited for all of this stuff. So everyone, Rachel, Rachel, everyone, you guys will probably see and hear more of her, so thank you.

Yeah, thank you. And just real quick before we wrap up, I know we Talked about the five signs of hidden water damage yesterday. Brian and Dr. Joe Carnahan did a really awesome Facebook Live. You can find it on Joe Carnahan's Facebook if you guys want to watch that and learn a little bit more. It's really cool to see two experts, one in the home element and one in the health element, kind of just go back and forth. And there's a lot of great content in there, so you can find that on her Facebook if you guys want to watch that.

Yeah, thanks for that again. I'm tired. I forgot about that. That doesn't seem like it happened yesterday. It seems like it happened last week. We actually even talked about when we first met on there. I met Dr. Carnahan, like, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago at a particular conference. We were kind of reminiscing about that, too, a little bit. So it's kind of cool to see where we've kind of gone and kind of the journey on both sides. So it's cool. So thanks for the reminder, Rach and everyone else, thanks for listening, and we will talk to you next time.

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, and it.