18: Post Remediation Inspections and Testing —> Air Samples Aren’t Enough!

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. So today we're going to be talking about post remediation testing. This is a question that came through from Flavorful Fit on Instagram. It was also something I was wanting to talk about. Anyway, so I'm going to make this whole episode essentially talking about this post remediation testing process and what happens. All right, let's start. So what does post remediation actually mean? Well, it's essentially saying that once a remediator comes in and they think that they have actually finished their job, meaning that they've removed whatever building materials are contaminated, they've cleaned all the structural components, and they think that they're done, this is when a post remediation inspection and testing should take place. So here's the challenge, right? Mold is truly a microscopic organism. When we can see it growing, it's a bigger issue. A lot of the times, though, it's stuff that you can't see. And so you could have the best remediators cleaning. The truth is, if they can't really see what they're doing, they're just relying on their process and their procedure and they're hoping that it works right? And hopefully these guys been doing it for a while and they have a good process, and just by following their steps, they know that that will work. The thing is that it doesn't always work even with the best remediators. It doesn't always work the first time around. Locally, we have a remediation company that we recommend out, and we've been recommending them for probably four to five years now. And we worked with them at the beginning to basically build the plan on how it's all going to get done. They understand our process.

This is a company that's not just seeing my protoc for the first time. And it's maybe different than what they're used to and they're trying to execute it. This is literally a company that has been executing my protocols for four or five years. And even they, when they go in and they remediate stuff, sometimes we come back in and for some reason.

Some of the byproducts are left over. Some of the particles and spores are left over on the surfaces and they have to come back in and re clean it. It doesn't mean that they didn't do a good job. It just means that this is a tough thing to do is ultimately what it means. And, you know, the thing that I always tell my clients is that we don't want to go down this road and spend all this money for remediation and testing on the front end and all this stuff, just to assume that it was done properly and then build everything back, you know, put everything back together after the remediation. And what if you didn't get everything out right? Then why did you spend the thousands of dollars that you just spent to remediate everything? Yes, it'll probably be better than what it was in the first, but the remediators are tasked with the job to remove everything, and there's no way to know if they did it unless you test. So this is why post testing is so, so important. Now, from a general industry perspective, the way that post testing is done.

In my opinion, it's not done the right way. So let's talk about from the beginning why remediation is happening in the first place, some of the processes that are going on, and if we understand that, then we'll better understand how we're supposed to validate that it was actually successful. So at the beginning, you're going to have an assessment, an inspection, right? So someone like me is going to come in and we're going to say, let's just say there's, you know, five areas in the house where there was mold growing behind walls or something, right? So let's say there's five places. So for this piece of the remediation.

The remediation company is going to be tasked. Their contract is going to be basically saying that they're going to remove the mold from those areas where the mold growth is happening, right? That's the contract. Okay. So they're tasked with removing mold growth. So when they come in, they're going to obviously remove the building materials, they're going to clean the structural components, like the framing and maybe the subfloors and things that aren't necessarily going to get removed, and then they're going to think that they're finished. So here's what most inspectors do when it comes time to post testing. First off, they don't really look at the work that was done. So the first thing that has to be done in a post inspection is you need to go into the space where the Remediation was done. You need to look at your protocol that you wrote up, and you need to make sure that they executed it. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone into a remediation space and I, for example, have said, remove a wall, let's just say full length from floor to ceiling, let's just say to make it easy. And I come in and they've only removed that wall the full length, but they only removed it halfway up to the ceiling. Right. They've decided that they felt like they didn't need to follow my plan for whatever reason. And this happens all the time, and it happens in different scenarios throughout the house. This is the first big thing, right? If they came in and didn't execute the plan, then they didn't execute the plan. Like it's not ready. Now, in this situation, there's a couple options to take. The first option is we don't do any testing and I come back out and I say, they didn't follow the plan. Get them back in here to follow the plan. And then when it's done, I'll come back out and we'll actually look at it. That's the first step. Sometimes that works. That only works usually with companies that. Just from personal experience, companies that I know, and maybe they just missed something and it wasn't on purpose, right? Maybe their guys just, you know, didn't see that part of the plan for whatever reason. And when I come and point it to their attention, they say, oh, yeah, sorry about that. Basically, we'll go and we'll redo that and then you could come back. So that's kind of the first scenario when this happens. That's the rarity. More often, what happens is a remediation company when they look at our protocols. You know, our protocols are not standard protocols, Right. They're built in a more comprehensive way. A part of it is really follows the industry standards, but then a second part of it kind of goes above and beyond. And a lot of times a remediation company looks at our protocols and they say, that's not necessary. You don't have to do all this stuff. And then they basically convince the homeowner that they don't need to spend the amount of money that they need to spend, which, honestly, the homeowner is really excited about. They're like, oh, cool, we don't have to spend all this money. Maybe the remediator knows more than the inspector that we had.

I'm going to tell you that the reason that you hire us the reason you hire your consultant to come in is because they are your consultant to guide you through this thing.

They're writing the plan for you. This is part of the service they're providing. So if they did testing and they found things that are going on and they wrote you a plan to get rid of it, and then you give that to the remediation company and they tell you you don't have to execute that plan, I'm telling you right now, that is a huge red flag. Don't hire them, okay? Because that's not their job. Their job isn't to put the plan together. Their job is to execute a plan. Why they are doing that is because they're trying to win the job from you, right? They want to do the job, they want the money. And so what they're thinking, they have two goals. One, we need the job because we need the money, and two, we want to be in and out of this thing as quickly as we can so we could then go to the next job. Because their whole business is about churn, it's about volume. You know, how fast we get in and out. And so. And I say that generally there are obviously some remediators that don't look at it that way, but this is just generally, from what I see. So they're going to come in and they're going to look at our protocol and they're going to tell you that you don't need to do all of it. Right. And then, and then you say, oh, cool, that's awesome. I don't have to do all of it. And then I come back in and I'm like, what the hell just happened in here? Like, this isn't good. You have to do all this stuff, right? So what happens in that situation? Well, you basically locked in the contract with the remediation company at a lower rate. Right. Than what you were thinking. But then when I come back in and basically reiterate the fact that you need to do the full protocol, what the remediation company then does is that they say, oh, well, that's a change order because that's not the contract that we agreed on and it's going to cost you more money. It's their way to lowball themselves in to getting the job and then adding the cost on top of. Right. So that's kind of what they're doing to you when they do that. Because I guarantee when I come back in, if they didn't follow my plan, they got to go back and do it. And if they don't go back and do it. Then you and I have to have a conversation and say, listen, guys, they didn't do this, right? Did you tell them not to do this, or did they sell you on the fact that you didn't need to do this? If you told them not to do it because you're trying to save money, then that's okay. We do the best we can. But if they sold you on the fact that it wasn't necessary and your goal was really to kind of follow my lead on this and execute what we had put together, then they basically misled you, and that's not cool, right? So that's the first step. I go in and I make sure that everything that was in the plan was actually done. Then visually, I look at everything to make sure that everything was cleaned. Here is the very, very big misconception about mold remediation is that all you need to do is like, remove the drywall or whatever's impacted, and then you put air scrubbers in the room and you clean the air. And if they do that, they think that they've succeeded. And it's just that, like, it's not even further from the truth. Let's. Let's think about this. Mold doesn't grow in the air. It grows on the surfaces, right? So you can't just go into a space and remove some of the contaminated material. I say some because the structural components, like the wood framing and the two by fours and the subfloors, that stuff can't be removed. I mean, it can, but it's not typically necessary. And they're not removing it. But they're also a lot of times not cleaning it. Right? They're just cleaning the piece that they can remove, and then maybe they're spraying it with something, you know, so. So if we know that mold grows on those surfaces and the actual purpose of them being hired is to remove the mold growth, that's why they're being hired. Then you have to test the surfaces as part of the post testing process. That is the biggest thing that is missed from inspectors all across the country when it comes time to doing post remediation testing. What they do is they go into the containment space, they unzip the thing, they walk into it, they put an air sampling pump in the middle of the room, they let it run for five minutes, and then they leave. And that's all that they do. And they do no surface testing. And I cannot tell you how many times I've seen this where an air sample comes back and it looks fine. But when you do surface testing, which again, is actually where the mold was growing. So that's really the whole point of remediation in the first place. The surface testing comes back and there's massive problems. Right. And so they didn't do their job. And if you don't post test in the right way, then you miss that. And then you put new drywall up over it and you build your new kitchen over it or wherever the remediation is happening. And now you have again trapped mold on the building materials behind the walls, and it's still there, and it's still going to impact the space. So that is the big, big thing that's missed in the. In this kind of first phase of remediation. So air testing is necessary. Right. So I know that I've bashed ambient air sampling on some of these episodes that you've listened to, and in those cases, rightfully so. Right. But when it comes time to doing post remediation testing, it's a little different. If you think about they're removing a wall, they're removing a cabinet, they're doing something like that. Right. Basically what they're doing is they're building a big plastic containment room and then they're ripping out building materials, right? Walls, cabinets, whatever. Well, that demolition is causing a massive, like, disturbance and almost like an explosion of all the stuff that's behind those walls. All that stuff is getting aerosolized. Now, that wasn't aerosolized before, Right. It's all up in the air. Then they bring in a machine that's called an air scrubber. And the air scrubber basically sucks air into the machine and then it cleans it and it kind of puts it back out. It's almost like it's like an industrial air filter, basically, is what an air scrubber is. So they're running this air scrubber to clean the air, and they're cleaning the air because they've created this massive explosion basically of everything that's in there. So they have to clean the air. That means on the post testing process, you have to test the air. Right. Because they essentially created this massive disturbance. You have to make sure that the air has been properly cleaned of that before you take down the plastic walls of your containment. So it is very important to test the air in those circumstances. The other thing that we do when we do post testing, when it comes to the air testing portion, is that we also test the air immediately outside of the containment area. So say you have a big plastic room that they've created that's set up to remove a wall.

That is within that plastic space, well outside of that plastic space. We test that air too. The reason we do that is because workers are coming in and out of that containment zone and you can contain the zone all day long, right? The reality is people are coming in and out. There is going to be a little breach and there's going to be a little bit of airflow that's going to work in or out, even if you're doing negative pressure and some of these other things. So we test the air outside of the containment to make sure that none of that has really escalated or it's probably not the right word. None of it has really migrated out of the containment and caused an issue outside of containment. So our standard post testing protocol is air sample outside of the containment, air sample inside of the containment, and then a surface sample of the actual exposed structural components that are left over from the remediation. That's the plan for post testing. And again, the reason is twofold. One, we have to test the air because they created these big disturbances. We have to make sure it was all cleaned. However, more importantly, we have to test the surfaces, which is what they were actually contracted to clean, right? We have to test the surfaces to make sure that they actually did it properly. And that is the point that is missed all the time. Now the reason air testing oftentimes comes back clear and okay in these remediated rooms where surface tests do not, and I can't even tell you how many times I've seen this in testing that we've done, is because they're running these air scrubbers, okay? So you're in a closed space, you're running an industrial grade air filter.

Machine for days at a time, right? I mean this machine is running 24 hours a day for, I mean, at least two days before the inspector comes back in to look at it. But sometimes that thing is running for five days after the remediation was done in an enclosed space and all it's doing is cleaning the air. Honestly guys, the air better be freaking clean after that thing has been running that long. If the air is not clean, that means there was a huge problem in there and it still needs time to get rid of it. But the reality is that most times when we do air testing in a containment, we find almost nothing in the air. Like a random spore here or there will come up on the air sampling report. And it better, it makes total sense. You're running this industrial grade filtration machine for days in this enclosed space. So of course it's going to come up clean. But you know what that machine is not doing? It's not sucking stuff off of the surfaces and cleaning that. So what happens a lot is that the air tests come back and show almost nothing. But then I can go onto the surfaces and I can actually do a surface test on those, just a swab swipe. And sometimes I could come up with thousands of spore counts of molds that are on there again, because the stuff is small, right?

And sometimes that happens. And so the thing is, if you took that air scrubber out of that room, left all the walls open for a week or two, and then came back in and took another air sample, it would probably fail. But the reason it passes all the time is because literally right before the inspector walks into the containment area, that machine is still going, right? So that thing's been going for days.

It's like you just cleaned. You know, like when you clean your house, you clean your floors. This just happened in my, you know, my house. Happens like every week, right? So on the weekend we'll clean the floors, right? And then we cook dinner, and then the next morning we cook, and the next thing you know, there's stuff on the floors again, right? And then by the time the whole week goes by, the floor's a freaking mess again because we have a toddler and she throws stuff on the floor and we're cooking and all this stuff, right? That's what happens in these containment rooms, right? But imagine if every, you know, every five minutes I had somebody wiping the floor again in my kitchen. Well, of course the floor's gonna be clean, right? Because they're literally cleaning it every five minutes. If it's not clean, it'd be crazy. And that's what's happening when these air scrubbers are working in these rooms, right? So I'm coming into a room essentially after an entire cleaning service has come into my kitchen and cleaned my entire kitchen. That's the equivalent of me coming into a containment room when the air scrubber is running, when I'm focusing just on the air. So that's why the air samples come back like that. The surface samples a lot of times don't. So what happens? So then we do that testing on the surfaces and they come back, there's a problem. You get pushback from the remediation company. They're going to say, well, the air was clean, so that's fine. And, you know, a lot of times with this Conversation. I'm actually talking with the remediator on the phone with my client kind of, right? Because I tell the client basically like, listen, guys, they didn't do their job. They come back, they got to come back in here and clean this stuff. They talk to the remediation company, remediation company says no. The air samples say, everything is fine. We're not doing anything else. You got to pay us if you want us to come back out. Right? And this is always the challenge and the problem with remediators that don't understand it and don't get it. So at the very beginning of your, of the project, you need to be very clear on what the post testing guidelines are going to be on the back end, right? You need to tell them up front, guys, we're not just doing air testing, we're doing surface testing on the exposed framing, on the subfloors, on the ceiling joists. Whatever is exposed, we're surface testing it. So that has to pass and that has to be in the contract and that has to be signed on, okay? If it's not signed on, they're going to push back and say that the air was okay and that they're done and there's nothing. You know, then it's just an argument, right? At that point.

Sometimes they'll do it, sometimes they won't. Sometimes you'll have to threaten them in order to do it. Whether it's legal or whether it's bad reviews, it's just like a super stressful situation.

And you want to avoid that. So the way to avoid that is to tell them up front this is how the post testing is going to go, okay? And our consultant, whoever it is, is going to be the person that gives the yes or the no. Okay? So you need to agree to that right? Now. If you guys need to get on a call beforehand and talk about what that means, that's cool. But we're not hiring you until you actually sign off on the fact that air testing is not enough. We're also doing surface testing and the only person that can tell you that the job is over is my consultant. It's not you. It's not your foreman, it's not your company owner. It is my consultant. Everything runs through him. And so they have to sign off on that. If you get that signed off on at the beginning, then it's a much, much easier process. All right? So that is, that's the basic on post remediation testing. And this is just the initial phase. This is source removal, right? This isn't talking about if you did an ermia in your house or you have mycotoxins in your house. That's kind of a whole different thing. Maybe we'll do that for another day. This is literally, if we found mold behind a wall, we found mold in a cabinet. They have to remove that, they have to clean it. This is what that process is. All right? So again, in summary.

They have to clean the surfaces, not just run an air scrubber. Okay. Mold grows on surfaces. It doesn't grow in the air. So you have to make sure that that part is getting cleaned. They have to execute the initial plan that was executed. If they don't, or that was provided. If they don't execute that plan, then they didn't do their job. Right. And so you have to make sure in the bid that they submit that it lines up with the protocol that your consultant wrote up. So you actually have to look at these bids and you have to check them and write them off. Right. This is a problem sometimes is that the homeowner assumes that the remediator just put everything that was in my protocol on the bid. And they don't always do that. So you have to look at my protocol. You have to look at their bid, and you have to basically cross check them and make sure that everything is there. So make sure that they're signing off on the plan, make sure that they're actually cleaning the surfaces as well. Make sure that they agree and sign off on the fact that the post testing is going to include surface testing as well as air testing. So that's both. Both part of that. And they sign off on the fact that the only person that's giving the go ahead is your consultant. You're the person who came in and did your inspection, is signing off on it. They're the only one that says when it's okay. Right. They got to sign off on that, too.

I think that is all. But I feel like there's one more thing I was going to throw in there, but I think that covers. Oh, I did have one more thing. Okay. So the last thing that you want to make sure that is in these contracts is that they guarantee their work. And when I say guarantee their work, if I come in and I do a post inspection and I get samples back that fail, you need to make sure that their contract reads in a way that says they are going to continue cleaning that same space until it passes. Okay. You don't want to get stuck in a situation where I come in and I fail Something or your consultant. I keep saying it's me because I feel like I'm working with you guys. But your consultant comes in and fails a containment because maybe the surface test came back bad. And, and then the remediation company says, well, you know, we were contracted to come in and do what we did. We did what we did. If you want us to clean again, you have to pay us more. You want to avoid that. Right. So basically you have them guarantee their work in the contract. So it says that they're going to continue cleaning this area until it is said, until the consultant approves it, until they say that it's done. Okay. This might mean that they have to come back a time or two and do extra cleaning. They shouldn't be charging you for that. Okay. And there are companies that you can find that don't do that. So that's the last piece of the equation. So cleaning surfaces is just as important as cleaning the air. You have to test the surfaces and the air. You have to make sure that all that, the, that the plan is written out in the contract and cross referenced with the protocols to make sure they're actually doing everything. And you have to make sure that they'll guarantee their work and that they'll continue to come back and clean until it's approved. Okay. So that is the overview on remediation, post remediation inspections, post remediation testing. I hope all that was very helpful for you guys. I'm recording this on a Saturday, so if you happen to listen to it on the weekend, then have a great weekend. Father's Day is tomorrow. I hope everyone out there with kids, whether you're, you're the ladies or the men, are planning a good day. To help with that, I'm trying to figure out what we're going to do with the whole quarantine thing. There's, there's a restaurant with a patio that we're thinking about going to. That's like social distance and stuff. And they make like my favorite Mai Tais. So we're trying to, we're trying to see if we might do that and see if that'll work. So I'm excited. It's my second Father's Day with my little one and I'm really pumped for it myself. So I hope that you guys all have a great weekend. We will catch up with you guys at the beginning of next week.

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.