40: Q&A - HVAC filters / Getting out of your lease / Temporary mold fix

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 we're gonna do another Q and A episode today. Yesterday, I did a live Q A with Bernadette Abraham on Instagram, and it was different than these ones that I do because, you know, you guys submit the questions, I kind of look at them and. And pick out the ones that I think might, you know, maybe benefit the most people. But on those lives, they just kind of come rapid fire, which is kind of fun. So I had a good time with that yesterday. If you guys are interested in seeing that. It was an hour long. It's on her Instagram, her IGTV setup. Her handle is Bernadette Abraham, and you can go and check that out. And we had a lot of good questions and a good talk and everything. So let's. That's one thing you could go look at as well, if you're looking for more information and more questions to be answered. Some of the feedback I got from yesterday was really good, so I'm happy to see that. So anyway, I was kind of wanting to do some more Q and A. So that is what we're doing today. So the first question we're going to jump right in. This is from a spoon. It says, is there a filter we could use for the H vac to avoid the spread of mold? So it's an interesting question.

There's not a one thing that's going to stop mold from spreading in your unit. Right. But if you think about specifically what your filter is. Well, before I get to that, there are things you could do to help limit exposure into the H Vac system and how that's going to move around. But the reality is that air has to move through your system in some way. So there's always. If it's contaminated.

There'S always going to be a little bit that's getting out. There are things that you can do to try to counteract it.

If I have clients that are, you know, if we test an air conditioning system and it's not really bad, I'll say, listen, I think we could try to, you know, I think the system's a candidate for cleaning. I don't think you necessarily have to replace this. So we'll talk about that. And then in addition, I'll say, you know, there's also some different technology pieces. That I think that you should attach to the system as well. To kind of help continuously fight the problem, too. And so I'll talk about those things here to answer this question. So.

When we're talking about air treatment technology on an H vac system, there's really two different components to it. And there could be three, actually, depending. One is filtration on the front end of the system. So in your house, you have what's called your return vents. And those are the vents that are sucking air in from the house. And then those get pulled into your air handler unit. Unit, the mechanical unit. Unit. That unit is not what lives outside. The unit that lives outside is called the condenser. Your air doesn't go through that unit. This unit is something that lives inside the house. A lot of times in the attic, could be in the basement, could be in a closet in your house. Sometimes in the crawl space, which is just a terrible place for it as well. Basements, crawl spaces, terrible places for these. For these air handler units, just because of what goes on in those areas. And the air in the space around the air handler unit can actually impact the air handler unit. Because it creates a really heavy suction and a negative pressure when it turns on. Because it's trying to suck air from throughout the whole house. And so while most of the air is coming through the duct lines that are connected to the vents that you can see in your home, There is still a little bit of air that could get in kind of around the gaps and the cracks of the panels on the mechanical unit. One way to help prevent that, which is not totally on topic yet, but we're getting there. It's all related. One way to prevent that is that you can actually get, like, this metal foil tape. That you tape around all of the edges and the seals and the gaps of your mechanical unit, the air conditioning unit. And that tape seals the unit up a lot more. So there are times when I go into a home and I go to do an inspection, and that tape is all over it. I actually have to cut that tape off to be able to open the unit and get in there. And so that's something you could do to help prevent that exterior influence from the space that your unit lives in. So now that we got that, we kind of understand the setup and how it goes. So the filter goes between the return line, which is the. The Vents that are in your house that are pulling the air into the system that are sucking air in.

The filter goes between there and the metal.

Mechanical unit itself, which is that machine unit that's either in the attic or garage or wherever it is. The filter goes there. The purpose of the filter is to try to pull out the mold and small particles before they actually get into the unit, which is then going to distribute them throughout the rest of the house through the supply lines, which are the vents in the house where the air actually comes out of. So if you think you're a mechanical unit, you have return line that comes in. That's where the air is sucking in. It hits the machine in the machine. It either gets heated or cooled. And then when it leaves the machine, there's other ducts that come out at the other end, and those are the ones that supply the air that's either been heated or cooled to the rest of the house. So you have your return line and your supply lines. So the filter goes between the return and the mechanical unit, and it's supposed to pull out. You know, it's meant to pull out these particles. So the type of filter you put in is. There's very big differences in them. I did an entire episode way early on in the podcast that was really talking about.

What you need to be looking for in filters, particle sizes. You want to be looking at all that stuff. I'm trying to see real quick while I'm talking. If I can tell you what episode number that is.

It looks like episode four. I did a lot of talking about that. There's also a couple other ones. If you go through and scan back, you can see where I've talked about H Vac systems a couple times. But anyways, the filter goes on the front end. Summary. You want something that's better than hepa. HEPA is not good enough. HEPA doesn't filter out the small fragments that break off the mold colonies. It doesn't filter out the mycotoxins. If they're floating around, it's not good enough. So you need to get something that filters to a size that's down smaller than HEPA. HEPA is 0.3 microns. So you want something that's lower than that. Kind of the best ones that are out there either go to.007 or.003 microns. So. So that's where you want to be in terms of the filter size. That's where you're going to get the most effect.

So that's the front end of it. But let's think about this. So the question was, is there a filter that you can get that's going to stop the H vacs from spreading mold throughout the house? If your H vac is already contaminated, then putting a filter on the front end is not going to do anything about the contamination that's already in the system. So think about it. We talked about how the flow and the layout of that system is. You have your return line in, then you put the filter. And all that is before you actually get to your system. Right. So if the mold contamination is in your system, everything you do before that, that's not fixing or helping even to counteract any of the current problem. That's for prevention moving forward. Right. So we have to think about that. Filters don't stop the problem from moving everywhere. If there's already a mold problem in the system, you have to do more than just put a filter on, because the filter is just helping to prevent moving forward. Okay, so what can we do? You know, moving forward, Right. What can we do if there's some level of contamination in there? Now, I'll tell you this. That. And I've. And I've talked about this in depth a little bit before, too. H vac systems are incredibly, incredibly difficult to clean.

In my opinion, you're never going to fully clean them. I don't think it's possible to completely clean an H vac system. So if the contamination in the system is significant or if there's toxins in your system, I'm always going to recommend that it be removed and the ductwork to be removed because you can't truly clean all of it. But if it's not heavily contaminated, then what you could try to do is have your whole system cleaned by a professional duct cleaner. You also want them to clean the mechanical unit, too. A lot of times the duct cleaners, they only clean the ducts and they don't clean the mechanical unit, which is weird. Like, it's all connected. They should be cleaning both of it. If you don't clean one of them, then you're still going to be pushing stuff through there. So they got to clean both of them.

And then. So that's the first piece. So I'll tell them, okay, if it's not super contaminated, let's clean it. So they'll clean it. And I'll say, let's talk about some technology you can attach. So the first piece is the filter, the filter which we just talked about. There's also other components that you can attach because you Think what the filter is doing. It's not doing anything for the ductwork. You know, it's not doing anything for the unit. Right. It's all prevention, really, on the front end. So how do we help to try to counteract anything that's left over in the mechanical unit or anything that's left over in the ductwork? And so that's where some other technology pieces could come into play.

There are pieces that you could put in that create ions that flow throughout your mechanical unit, the air handler unit, and they flow throughout your ductwork. And these ions are oppositely charged from biological contaminants. What that means is that they kind of act like a magnet to each other. And so as the ions floating around, if there is mold or if there's bacteria, it will be attracted to it. And then when it gets to it, it'll break it down and deactivate it. Just keep in mind that mycotoxins are not a biological contaminant. Toxins are not biological contaminants. The mold and bacteria are, right? Those are the living things. The toxin byproducts are not living things. So those ions are not going to break those down. Okay. So I just want to be pretty clear about that. But they help to limit and continuously try to fight against the problems that may be in there. And the more the ions go through, the more the systems run, the more times the ions are working through the duct lines, the more things that they'll attach to. And you'll also get those ions that come out of the vents, out of the supply lines, when the heat or the air is coming out. And they'll also move through your house a little bit, and they'll help there, too. It gives more of a baseline for the house. It's not really giving you any sort of, like, concentrated focus in any certain area, because it's air conditioning that's supplying the whole house. But it's nice to have those floating around as a secondary effect. I don't look at an H vac system like this as a purification system for your home. Okay. It is a filter and purification system for your H vac system. And your home may get a little benefit from it, but that's really not what it's meant for. Okay. The further away that you get from the source of the ions, the less they're going to be, the less effective it's going to be. So you really want to supplement that with different portable units that you put in different rooms.

When you're building out kind of the Plan for how you're going to set up your air purification strategy. But for the H VAC system, that's kind of the best you could do to try to help prevent any spread. Now let's get one big caveat here. If you have mold growing in your H vac system, this is a completely different story. You got to replace stuff. Okay. And there are times when I open the air handler units and you can actually see mold growing like on the labels. They'll have like sticker labels on the components in there. Some of them have barcodes, some of them have other things on them. You might see mold growing on those labels. You could see mold growing on insulation that might be in there. You could even see mold growing on some of the dirt sometimes that's in there. If you open the coil area, which is where the heating and cooling actually happens, that area will create condensation. If the area is not draining properly or graded properly, you'll see standing water in that area and like a lot of rust. And if that's happening, that's a bigger issue. It's more of a bacteria concern when you see things like that. So there, there are definitely. If you have actual growth problems in your air conditioning unit, you know, this stuff is not going to, you know, it might help a little bit, but it's, it's not going to be a big effect. You know, these things are meant for maintenance. They're meant to help.

Kind of maintain a system from things that are constantly impacting it. They're really not meant. It's not a replacement for remediation. Right. We always talk about source removal is what you need to do. Same thing happens if you have mold growing on components and air conditioning systems. Source removal is the answer. You know, if it's growing on metal components, you can remove that and clean it and try to put it back in. I mean, that's something that you can do too. Just keep in mind there's like a lot of little gaps and joints where different metal components like screw together or attach to each other and the particles can get into those little gaps. So if you are going to, you know, try to clean the mechanical unit, you're gonna probably need to disassemble a lot of those components so you can make sure you're getting into the gaps and cleaning those areas and that nothing is hidden in there. So.

I hope that that was a good answer for you. One other thing. So if you are looking for filtration technology options, we did create a website. Myself and Corey created a website that we have we really just give to our clients. It's called moldairpurifiers.com it talks about our whole philosophy on air treatment, how you configure your setup for a home. It also we went through and picked out the. The filters and the ionizers, the different purifiers that we think are the most effective and that we like the most. These are the ones that we recommend to our clients. So you could actually go there and see the ones that we're liking. And if you're interested, you could actually purchase things straight from there. We built the site as an informational site initially and then we had to give to our clients because we just kept telling them the same thing over and over again. So we just wanted to kind of give them information they can look through. And then they started asking us, well, if they could buy the stuff. And then so we set it up after that as an e commerce site so people could purchase the items through there. So it's an option for you to look through. You don't have to buy anything there if you don't want to. You only have to look at it if you don't want to. But if you're interested in our philosophy on how you actually create a full home filtration and purification setup, then there is a button at the top that's called air treatment philosophy. You could click on that. And I wrote that up and it's basically words from my mouth on a website of how I like to structure those setup. So you can take a look at that.

Alright, our next question is from Life Fully Joyful. And it says how to handle dealing with apartment people and mold. How can we break our lease? They aren't helping.

Super common, right? They don't want to help. They want someone in there paying rent and they don't want to spend money to fix a unit because it decreases their bottom line. And that's not. They're in the business of making money on the units. They're typically not in the business of creating the healthiest living environment for people. People. So this is why they're not helping. I'm sure you've already figured that out here. I'd recommend going back and listening to episode one of the podcast. This is my mold story. I did this exact thing and I talked about exactly how I had it done. So I would go back and listen to that. Here is the quick Cliff Notes version of that. Is that you have to prove to them that there's a problem. You can't ask them to come in and look at it. You can't bring it up to them without having proof about it because they're just going to downplay it. So. So you have to prove that there's a problem. The way you prove there's a problem is you have to come in, you have to have testing done. You have to validate it. If you go to them and you just say, hey, there's mold in here. They're going to come and be like, oh, no, there's not. That's not mold. And then you're going to say, no, there's mold. You need to come test it. And they're going to say, okay, cool, we'll come test it. And then they'll bring in some guy to come in and take an air sample in the middle of your room. That air sample is most likely going to come back negative. And then they're going to tell you, see, there's no mold problem here. And that's where your conversation is going to stall. And. And it's because you're kind of relying on them to do the work. And I know in our minds, we think that they should be doing it. It's their building, it's their apartment, right? Like, I don't pay for, or I don't own this, this apartment. Why should I be paying for testing? It's because your motivations are completely different. Their motivation is to prove that there's no problem there so that they don't have to do anything for you. Your motivation is to actually show what's going on so you could try to get out of there and be healthy again. Right? Two completely different motivations. We as a company.

Don'T work with building owners, and we don't do it because what they want is not aligned with what we believe in. Right? We believe in actually identifying what the problems are and fixing the problems. And there are so many times that we get calls from, like, building management companies or, you know, whatever. So, you know, people who are managing buildings or landlords, and they're like, hey, I have this tenant who says, there's a problem. I need to prove there's nothing going on. You hear that? Like, I need to prove there's nothing going on. That's what they say. They don't say, hey, we need to figure out if there's a problem and how to fix it. That's not what they say. They see, I need to prove there's nothing going on. This person is annoying. They're crazy. They won't stop bugging me about it. I need something to prove there's not a problem, to shut them up. That's basically what they call us and tell us. And we say, yeah, you probably should look for someone else. We're not going to do that for you. And that's the end. So we don't work with them for that reason. Alright? So that's why that you need to prove that there is a problem, okay? If you rely on them to do it, they're going to use methods that will not prove there or that will show there's no problem. Which I'll tell you right now. I could go in any home and test in a way that shows nothing, right? I could do it. I could literally go in a house, I could take samples from everywhere. I could run up a big bill if I wanted to. And, and I can make the samples look like there's nothing going on. It's all about where you collect the samples from, how you're going through the house and identifying where you're going to collect them from and then what sample types you're using and if you're doing it the wrong way or you're doing it on purpose in a way that's not going to show problems, I guarantee you that that's what's going to happen, right? Because I know I could literally go in a home and do it. I could go in a home and take 20 samples right now and have them all show up negative if I really wanted to. So, you know, that's why you got to do it. So I would tell you, go back, listen to episode one. Basically you need to prove there's a problem. The other thing that's very helpful is getting a, getting a letter from an attorney with you, right? So I've learned that a lot of these corporations, apartment building owners, management companies, they don't move on something unless they're threatened by a lawsuit. And I've had to move from many, many buildings here in la. I've lived in four places. Every place I left because there was a mold problem and every place I had to do the same thing. So I tell that story in episode one. I've done it three times since then. I've literally done it in every place I've been in. I've proven there's a mold problem. I've gotten a letter from an attorney that basically says that this stuff needs to get handled or we're gonna sue you and it needs to be handled the right way. And then they're like, oh crap, we gotta do Something and then we get on the phone because they usually start dodging my calls and they won't talk to me for two weeks. When I start reporting them the information on what I found, what I used to do is that I would do the inspection and I would send them the inspection report and the lab results and what it all meant. And then all of a sudden they start ghosting me. And I'd be like two weeks and nobody would answer me. And so that's when I figured out that I had to get an attorney involved. And so then I got an attorney. Luckily, you know, we work with some attorneys. So I got an attorney that, you know, will write me a letter as a favor and wrote me a letter. All of a sudden I got a phone call within 20 minutes. I got a response within 20 minutes after that. Imagine that. Imagine you talk about suing somebody and all of a sudden that they're gonna, they're gonna listen to you. So that's the new formula. Now the formula is inspect, test, validate, attorney. If you do all those things, I'm not gonna guarantee that you're gonna get out of your lease. But that's what I did every time. And every time I got out of my lease. And on top of getting out of my lease, I also got at least one month's of rent paid for because I had been trying to contact them, typically for a while, and they weren't responding. So I got that and I got moving expenses paid for. So they don't want to see lawsuits. And even more than lawsuits, they don't want to have to spend the money to remediate. Right? When people see mold, they think, you know, the apartment buildings and homeowners and stuff, they think it's just going to be so much money, you know, the management companies. And so when you validate that there's a problem and you show what's going on, and they're saying, oh man, this is going to cost a lot of money. Let's just give this person whatever they want to get them out of here. Otherwise we're going to have to pay thousands of dollars to remediate the apartment. It's going to be out of commission for, you know, a few weeks, if not a month. And they're going to be losing rent and revenue on that, right? They're going to be. It's like opportunity cost for them. They lose money. So they just kind of want to get you out as fast as they can. If they could get somebody to fill your unit within five days, then at least they're getting more money that's coming in, you know, that they're just gonna bring someone in and cover up the problem and do what's going on. And I know that for some of us, we want to try to fight that, you know, and kind of fight the good fight. And if you want to do that, I totally, totally support you and empower you to do that.

You know, the, the problem is there's just so many. There's an epidemic of sick buildings that this is happening to, you know, using your, risking your health and your money and stuff to try to fight that. It's tough. And some people are all for it and some people are not. Some people are willing to deal with the stress of it, some are not. For me, I just wanted to get out, you know, I have a little baby too. Like I'm not willing to risk her exposure to stuff is just, you know, at the time either my wife was pregnant or we had our child, it was like all this was happening during this window. So for me, I was just trying to get out as fast as I could and that was how we did it. So hopefully that's helpful for you. That's the quick Cliff Notes version. I know, seven and a half minute Cliff Note version, but that's what it is. If you listen to episode one, I talk about the whole thing. I talk about how the inspection was done, how we decided how to move forward with the information, all that stuff. So you can go back and listen to that.

Alright, so the last question for today is from Erica. There's like five A's at the end of this.

I actually think you've submitted a question before. So it says, does sealing problem areas in the house help? Until you can remediate and remove mold, it's not ideal. Right. That said, I have done it myself. So I was just talking about how I've lived in apartments that have had mold problems and I've left because of those problems. And I've done this too. Right. It's not the ideal situation. Sealing stuff up doesn't get rid of the problem. It's not going to stop all of it from moving around. But if you try to seal things up, you're creating an extra barrier. It, you know, will make it a little more difficult to come out. And that's, I mean, if that's what you're going for, then that's what you can try to do for short term. Until you're able to remediate or until you're able to move or Whatever that might be. For me, the problem was under a kitchen sink. I had a product bottle that actually leaked, and it created a big mold problem under my sink. So on a quick side tangent with this, when we look under sink cabinets, we're always looking for signs of water damage, and it could be just like, little bubbling in the floor of the cabinet. So, like, if you pull your products out, you might see, like, little bubbles or, like, the floor isn't smooth, right? Like, it kind of. Maybe it humps a little or there's bubbling and that sign that the cabinet has taken on moisture of some kind and water of some kind. And that can mean that there's a mold problem on the bottom side of the cabinet floor that you can't see. I've seen this happen a lot. And then the question I get a lot as well.

It's a product, right? It's not like a leak from the sink, so it shouldn't be a problem. Well, if you look at these products, like, water is an ingredient in all of these products, you know, like, it's in everything, and water is the issue. Right? And so you could have product bottles that leak, and they can create mold. It doesn't have to just be from a water leak. That's from the sink or the. Or the plumbing line under there. It could be a water leak from a product bottle, because products have water in them in addition to whatever other ingredients are in there for that product. And the ironic thing about this particular product that caused a problem in mine is that my wife went out one day and bought like, a. Like a mold mildew tile cleaner thing, which I wouldn't really use, but she bought it. And so it's literally been sitting under our cabinet, our sink cabinet for a while. And I was not doing the maintenance that I should have been doing and pulling everything out of my cabinet every month, which is something we should all be doing, by the way. Okay. Even I didn't do it. And this is what happens. You need to do it to make sure that you're staying on top of leaks. Things leak, product bottles leak, plumbing leaks, sink leaks. And if we don't pull the things out of our cabinet and look at it and keep an eye on it and check it, then it builds up and it creates big problems. So every month, you should really, really be doing that and looking at that. Okay. So that's my public service announcement on that. Anyways. So one day I did go down there. I needed to get a cleaning product out of there, and I kind of saw Something weird. It was in the back of the cabinet because I never used it. I pulled everything out and man, there was a massive water damage and mole problem. Like it wasn't under the floor panel of the cabinet. I was actually seeing it like on the cabinetry.

So ironic. Mold cleaning product mold grew. I thought. I think it's kind of funny. And it just kind of lets you know that there is water in these products. It's not just whatever the product claims to be. Anyway, so our lease was up in it in a couple months on this particular place. And so I was. I think we had like four months left on it or three months left on it. And so at the time we immediately then started looking for a new place. We didn't start the process of trying to move out yet because we need to have somewhere to go. So we started looking for a new place. That's where we found the house that we just moved into. And we found this house about a month and a half prior to when our lease was going to expire. So I didn't want to be carrying two rents. And so that's when I showed them the mold problem and kind of did the whole thing that I do. And we were able to get out of that lease early. And actually some of the moving expenses covered as well. So.

Anyways, all that said, what did I do for like the two months that led up to that? So when you build containments, this is getting to the questions. I always go on tangent, guys. I hope you guys don't mind that I do that. But I think the stories and stuff are helpful. So anyway, when they build containments, when they're doing remediation in space, they use a thick plastic sheeting to create the containment walls. It's called 6 mil plastic. It's 6 millimeter thick plastic. So you could go down to like Home Depot and buy this stuff, right? So what I did is that i6mil plasticked all of the interior of that cabinet. So I did the walls, I did the floor, I even did the back wall, which was not actually a cabinet wall. It was drywall. But in case any water got through the cabinet and maybe spread to the wall behind where I couldn't see it because it'd be below the cabinet floor. I just wanted to make sure nothing was coming up that way either. So I did that too. And I kept it sealed up for two months. And.

Here'S the thought process. If that works in a containment, when they're ripping building materials apart and causing massive disruptions. And it Helps contain that stuff in that space. Granted, there's other components, right? There's negative pressure, there's air scrubbing, there's other things that go on in those containments. But this is the barrier that they build on the exterior. Then it's good then for me, it's good enough for a short period of time to put over something like that while I'm trying to figure out what the plan is or what the next step is. So something that you could do too. Do I have specific, like data on how effective it is? I don't. Right. I didn't test, I didn't do testing afterwards on this one to try to figure that out. It wasn't really my goal. Although now thinking back on it, maybe I should have just so I could have seen the difference, but I didn't. But knowing that containments are actually built out of the same plastic. Right. So if you put that plastic over these areas and try to seal them up for a short period of time until you can remediate, I think it's okay. Right. You want to be careful that you're not trapping moisture though, and like creating more of a moisture barrier that's creating a bigger problem. So you got to kind of try to figure that piece of it out. But if it's for a short period of time, I'm okay with doing that. Just know that that is not a long term solution. Right. So I don't want you to think like, oh, I put the plastic down. Oh man, a couple months have gone by. You know what? I'm just going to leave that plastic there, not do anything about it. Let's not do that. All right, so let's make sure that we still have a plan. There's still a route that we're going to actually handle this the right way. But if you're trying to eliminate, or I should say reduce exposure up until that point, I'm okay with doing that. You may also want to consider moving air filtration units closer to that area, closer to the source of where that problem is. So it could help to try to counteract that a little bit as well. So there's a couple things you could do.

So that's all I got time for today, guys. I got a lot of questions and I also got some non questions in. Just some comments for me, which I thought was kind of nice. Some of them were saying, hey, your ig live was really good with Bernadette today. I have other ones that were like, hey, no question. Just want to support what you're doing. Really, you know, really appreciate it. That stuff is awesome. Thank you guys. If you ever want to leave me little love notes like that on these question things, I will read them and I will be happy about it. So feel free. Otherwise, I'm going to do probably one more episode either today or Saturday, and then we'll start up again next week. So I'll do another Q and A episode next, see how many we get through. Probably another maybe three or four or so. And. And we'll see what next week looks like if I could drag some others over. If we're going to do some other things, I'm thinking about doing a new segment next week with Corey. Some of you may know he's my business partner, my co founder in Weinspect. He's also my cousin as part of our family business. So we have a cool idea that I think might be a nice segment that we do maybe weekly. We're going to see how it works out, so keep an eye out for that. Hope you guys all have a good one. We'll talk to you soon.

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.