81: Michael Rubino - A Remediator’s Perspective on Testing

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.

All right, everyone, what's going on? This is your next edition of Molefinders Radio. This one, this episode is kind of funny because literally, Mike Rubino, who's on the line, text me this morning. And he's like. He's like, yo, dude, we need. We need to talk about something.

I'm like, all right, what do we need to talk about? And then we have a two minute text conversation. The next thing you know, we're recording a podcast.

This is.

This is how it goes.

That's how the magic happens.

I know. So everyone, Mike Rubino, for those of you who haven't heard him on the show before or haven't heard the story, Mike owns the company, All American Restoration. They are literally the remediation company that we recommend to all of our clients. And honestly, probably the best remediation mind that I have have ever come across in terms of how to do this stuff. So everyone, Michael Rubino.

Oh, thanks, Brian. Also, I did write a book called the Mold Medic, so just want to throw that out there for anybody who hasn't read it. It's a really awesome book.

Did you do this just so it could be a shameful plug for your book? Is that what the text?

That's it. I'm like, hey, man, I need a shameful plug for my book. No, but seriously, thank you so much for taking the time to bring this topic to light. And I'm really excited to be here to kind of dive into this, giving that remediation aspect of. Look, at the end of the day, we want to help people, right? And we can't do it if we don't have the data.

Yeah, of course. And just real quick, Mike's book is actually, you should be reading it. So I didn't want to, like, I don't want to say I didn't want it to come off like that. Yeah, I've read it. It's a great read it. And it's not very long either. So, like, it kind of gets to the point, which is kind of nice. So anyways, it is. It's the Mold Medic. Michael Rubino is the mold medic. And there you go.

We'll do sponsorship after this. Well, you can pay us for this.

Yeah. Well, how much are you?

All right, so, Mike, do you want to just kind of. What was the text thread this morning? How did it start? And then we can kind of like dive in all of it.

All right, so, you know, basically I get. I get. I get emailed from my staff all the time with reports, and the reports will, you know, basically my staff will be like, hey, we want to be sure we can help this person. But this is a little confusing. There's a lot of areas that the client did not test. You know, you know, you walk into a room, you find a problem, you're like, hey, we should probably test this to identify what it is. And the client has to choose then whether they're going to go with it or they're not, right? And so when we get these reports that are like, client declines that test this area and this area and this area. But, oh, look, there's an ermi and an actinomyces and, you know, endotoxins, right? And they want all this stuff removed. And I'm like, how are we going to do that if we don't know where all the mold actually is?

And so, yeah, yeah, it's. I. So I. Anyone who's been listening to this knows that I've talked about this concept all the time, right? I talk about the idea that mold is like a factory, right? And so if you drive by a factory and there's smoke coming out of the top of the factory, like that's what you're breathing, right? That's the air pollution. But it's never going to stop unless you shut the factory down. So to. To think that we're bringing in a remediation company to kind of clear all the smoke out of our house, if you will. But we actually, we actually haven't found where the factories that are creating it are coming from, then there's no way it's going to work, right? And I think that's the big thing. And we have, you know, we have this kind of process on our end, and some of you may have seen it, and some of our, you know, the different posts and things that we put out there. But the, the mold finding process is three things. Three simple, simple, easy framework on how you do this. It's called find, prove, remove. There are three steps to actually being able to get this stuff out of your house. First thing is you have to find it. That's the inspection portion, okay? That's where we go through the house. We, you know, I'm not going to explain a whole inspection right now, but that's where we go through the house and we figure out where we think the areas that are impacting. Where they are. Right. Where we think they are. Right. That's the finding piece, is the deep dive. We're trying to find the factories.

Right.

So a lot of times people will do that piece.

Right.

They'll do the find, and they think they found all these things, and then they want to skip the proof part because they just think they're like, oh, I'm just going to remediate this.

Right, yeah.

And they want to go straight to the remove part and to the point that you're making, Mike. If we don't know where the sources were, Right?

Yep.

And then. And. And those aren't going to get remediated because it hasn't been validated. We don't know what's going on. And we think that we're just going to do some sort of full home clean and maybe knock out two or three sources. Maybe we found. Maybe we. During the inspection, let's say we found 10 areas that we were concerned about, and let's say the client only wants to test five of them. Right. So now we have five other areas where we don't know what's going on. And. And then. So you only have protocol, really, for five areas. Right. Because that's all that was tested. Because you can't write protocol unless you validate that there's something there. And just so you guys understand, from like, our perspective as an inspection team, we can't just come into your house and tell you to rip everything up. One, it's kind of irresponsible for us to do that. But two, I mean, there's a liability component to that, too. What if we walk in your house and say, you got to rip up this entire room. We're not going to test anything. We're not doing anything. You just got to gut the whole thing.

Right.

And then you have another mold inspector come in after you've done all the work, and they look at everything and they say, there's nothing here. There's no problem here. Right. That opens up a door from a liability perspective of, well, you guys told me I had to do this, and this guy said there was nothing there. And from our perspective, we have no validation that actually proves there is a problem there. Right. So we have to do at least a minimal level of testing on our end. It doesn't have to be like a full gamut. We don't have to do every single wall whatever, but we have to do something to validate there's something going on in order to even write a protocol. Right. And the other piece is every time you see water damage, it doesn't mean there's a mole problem back there. Right. So the other component of it is the percentage of time where there maybe isn't a mold problem, even though maybe you have some cracking or some buckling or something like that. Maybe there just wasn't a mold problem that was created that happens, right? Well, you know, it costs money to do remediation of places and it costs a decent amount of money. You know, they gotta come set up containments and you can walk through this a little bit more like, what does it mean to do that? Because if we're, if we're gonna look at a place and it's not going to be tested, right? And then let's just say, well, somebody just wants to remediate it anyway, talk about what that actually means. And then the cost benefit of spending, you know, a couple hundred bucks to do some testing versus a couple thousand bucks to remediate something that might not even be necessary. Right.

I actually have a really good example. I have a call with a client later today. And it's, it's an attic. The attic was tested, it was recommended to remediate, you know, just because obviously there was some mold there. But just to give you an understanding, there is 50 spores of Aspergillus, 50 spores of Cladosporium. And you know, no stack, no ketomium. That was pretty much the gamut of what was there. Now. So the process is the process, whether there's 50 spores or 50 million spores, right. It still costs the same because there's still, there's, there's only one way to do it. You have to remove all the insulation, you have to remediate the entire structure. That three step process that we do, and then seal it with an encapsulate. Right? So with that being said, that attic, because it was a very large attic, was a $60,000 endeavor. And you're like, whoa, $60,000, right? Yeah, I know, it's, it's amazing. That's how much it would cost to do it. It would be about a four week project just in the attic. And to remove, you know, 100 spores, the cost versus work just isn't there. Right. So that's why testing's so important, because when you look at it visually, you're like hey, there could be something going on here. We should probably remediate. But without testing to understand, is it worth it? That's really what you need to test for. And so on the flip side, too, like, we had, we have. We had a client who came to us, and this is the report that my team sent to me. And it was like, hey, we didn't test all these areas, but you could see there's visual mold, right? You could see it visually. And I guess that's why probably they felt like they shouldn't test it. But I won't touch that room. I mean, there's no reason for me to touch that room because honestly, it could be much worse than what it looks like visually. Right? We may open up and you know this, we're probably going to open up that wall and it's going to be way worse. So I'd rather knowing what I'm getting into ahead of time than to play this game where we open it up what we can see visually and we miss something. And guess what? It doesn't pass post test. You know, time is money. Time is of the essence for not only for us, but for the client, too. I want to make sure that if you're. If I'm coming into a situation that I know that it's going to be perfect, there's going to be a perfect outcome. Otherwise, I don't like to get involved.

Well, yeah, think of it this way. This is something I, I kind of create this analogy sometimes to help people understand it a little bit. Imagine you're. You're going to see your doctor, right? And they do some initial scans, right? So they're not doing any testing yet. They're doing an inspection of your body, right? They're doing some scans and they see that there's like some sort of weird lump somewhere, right? Let's say you're going in and have a mammogram, right? And they do a scan which is like, you know, kind of the feeling around, and they feel a lump. Right. Does that mean that it's breast cancer? No, not all the time.

Right.

So what do they do? They test it, right? You test it to understand if it's breast cancer. Because to your point, if it is, it's a big thing to get rid of that. Right? Well, this, you know, kind of your explanation in the attic. Well, what if that test comes back and it was benign and it wasn't a problem? Well, then you're not, obviously not gonna do, like the big thing that would be necessary to handle, like A breast cancer problem, Right? Well, that's kind, it's kind of the same thing, right? Like if you walked in and let's just say they found a lump and you're like, okay, cut it off, just cut it off. I'm not gonna, I don't wanna know. Just chop the whole thing off and I'll worry about it later. Of course you're not gonna do that, right? It doesn't make any sense. And it's, and there's so many like, correlations you can make to like, medical side of like why they do testing and why we are always okay with doing testing. Right? But then when it comes to our house, we for some reason don't think of it that way. But the reality is, is our house is literally wrapping. We are surrounded in our house at this point almost 24 hours a day, probably because of, you know, how we're locked up a little bit. Right? And, and so you need to know that, right, like, you would not go in and say, okay, this lump feels a little weird. We're just going to do full blown surgery and who, you know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't, and we're just going to do that. You would never do that. And that's the same reason why you need to do testing in the house. Because it's part of it is about validating, part of it's about prioritizing. Which is exactly what you were talking about, right? If tests come back, you could kind of create priority tiers and try to figure out the best approach for their, for their funds.

Right, Totally. And you know, the other thing that I wanted to mention too is I've, I've gotten this a lot, which I think is, is important to talk about. You'll have the client who denies a bunch of areas and then says like, oh, you know, the army's high and I want to, you know, I want a perfect army, which I still to this day have not figured out what a perfect Ermie is. But.

That'S kind of the expectations that I'm given. And it's like, well, how can I give you a quote, unquote, perfect ermi if I don't know where the sources are? And I think people need to understand that an URMI is a tool, right, to understand what level contamination you have inside your home that's being produced by all these mold factories, as you alluded to. If we don't know where the mold factories are, as quickly as we're cleaning up the contamination, it's just coming right back out into the environment. So you never get that perfect. Ermi. So it's so important to test to find out where these mold factories are so that you can make sure that they're eliminated. Otherwise you're never going to improve your environment on a permanent level, right? On a permanent basis.

Yeah. Because. So let's talk. So let's, let's go into what it looks like, because I've talked about it before, but I like to hear it from your side too. You don't find the factories, all of them, right? You come in, you do some form of cleaning, and let's just like set it straight there. There are, there are ways to do a full home cleanse properly and there are like, really crappy ways to do it where someone comes in, just says, I'm going to fog your house and magically it's all going to be gone. So let, let's even say that you're coming in and doing it the way that it's supposed to be done. What, what actually happens two weeks later, a month later, two months later, the score. What goes on in that house after.

The score goes right back up. Honestly, in some cases, I've learned this the hard way, right, Because I'm a perfectionist. And I think that's why I have such good success doing what I do is when we're going in there and we're cleaning as rigorously as we're cleaning, you know, and it's, it's not a cheap process, unfortunately. It's just very, very labor intensive. After you're done most of the time on that post test, you're not getting where you need to be. You know, there's still stuff present, right? Because there's other sources that are in the house actively producing it. And people, people think that, well, if you just, if you clean really well, you know, it's all going to be gone. They're not. Because mold is invisible at that level. You're not seeing the contamination being produced into the environment. It's really hard to wrap your head around it. And I've been in these situations with clients in the past where they're like, well, you just must not be cleaning well enough. And it's like, listen, I have cleaned this place top to bottom. I've seen it with my own eyes. We've had 10 of our guys in your house cleaning everything, every nook and cranny, and it's still not getting where it needs to go. There's a problem here. And in every single scenario, we had, you know, the Inspector, go back out, do another gamut of testing and find, oh my God, we missed this. This room is contaminated. And it's the room where the H vac system is. And that's gotta be addressed. Right. So we've, in every situation that I've been in, I've found out the hard way by doing this cleaning and losing a ton of money, that there's still a source there. Right. And it's not just me, it's not just about me. Right. We want to help people. And if I'm sitting there cleaning your house for a month straight and it's not getting better, what does that do for you now? That's another month of you being out of your house. It's another month of expense, living expenses out of pocket, staying out of your house and you know, another, another month that your family's displaced from your house. So we always want to make sure that a project is set up for success and just, just so that we can make sure when we say we're going to do, you know, X, Y and Z, that X, Y and Z really gets done. So I think it's super important to understand the parameters of how to be successful in remediation. And the most important part going into it is did we identify where all the sources are?

Yeah. And you know, with that in mind, like truthfully, the, the inspection and testing fees are a fraction of what the remediation costs are.

Sure.

Right. Even if you're having us come in, and I've been very open about this, we, we are, we're not cheap. Right. But there's a reason that we're not cheap. The way we go through the types of testing, the progressive, you know, analysis, all that stuff. Right. So I understand that even from the testing front it can be, it can be expensive. I get that. Right. But still, in the grand scheme of things, you're talking a tenth, maybe less or more or whatever, but whatever of what remediation might cost versus what the testing fees are. Right, right. And, and so if you think about it that way and you know, and the things that you're bringing up, the ermes bad. The actinomycetes are bad. Right. So these are the home screen dust collection tests. These are the things that are not finding source, but this is bas moving through the house. Well, in this scenario, let's just play the scenario out. Right. We'll make an imaginary client and kind of what they did. Right. So let's say I said it earlier, maybe we found ten potential things. They tested only Five of them. But then they still did the more expensive and progressive testing throughout the house, which is the ermi, the mycotoxin, the actinomycete, the endotoxin. That is actually the bulk of what the cost of sampling is, is across those types of samples. They're just more expensive because it's more difficult to analyze and it's just a different process right at the lab. So it's a higher price point. So if you look at it like that and you're the client, you're looking at this bill and you have on the inspection side, not even the remediation side, you're looking at the bill and you've got those samples that are, you know, more expensive. Those samples are probably three, four times more expensive, you know, depending on which one than a source identification sample cost, right? If you're kind of looking at those, right. So if, if you're going through and you're cutting out five source tests, you know, you're maybe saving, I don't know, five, six hundred bucks or something, I. Whatever it is off the top of my head for those five individual source tests, right? That's like the cost of doing one of these more progressive tests, you know. So you shaved off a few hundred dollars. And listen, I don't want to downplay, like I get money is money, right? But what we're doing is we're thinking big picture, like, what is that? What is that fraction of money in comparison to all of the rest that you're going to be spending over the, over the course of the project? Because I think a reason that a lot of times people will decline doing a test is because they don't really know what the cost of the remediation is going to be. Totally right. And so they're thinking that they're going to save. Well, if I could save these, you know, this few hundred dollars on these tests, on these tests, I could apply it to remediation. In the grand scheme of things, the few hundred dollars that you're saving on not testing three or four spots is like super, super minimal, like single percentage point of what the overall remediation cost is going to be. And if you're thinking of it that way, like, and kind of what we're talking about, if we don't know where the sources are, you don't fully know how to attack it. All these other things, if the goal is to get the home to a place that is going to be most suitable for you to start the healing process and kind of as clean a Slate as you can get, right. No one's ever in guarantee per. But as clean of a slate as it's going to be for you, then we need to know all those things. And if you're going to say if we're going to cut out three or four tests and save a few hundred dollars there, that then doesn't allow you to come in and really do your job the right way.

Right.

Then what was the purpose of that really? Because then all the other money they're spending with you in complete honesty, why are you doing it right? If we know that we're going to miss stuff?

You know, that's exactly it. You know, for me when I think about this, I'm like, hey look, if your goal is to get your home to a place where you can heal inside of it, you need to have the data to understand what that looks like and how are you going to know. And I get it, like people want to save money and put more money towards remediation, but the remediation is not going to be successful without the data. So you got, you know, you have to really make that decision to put the cart before the horse or not, sorry, not to put the cart before the horse and just jump right into. I'm going to remediate without really having the data to create the proper plan. And I see it all the time, like I get these reports and it's like Mike, how do we help this client when we're missing so much data? It's like, well they have to call, they have to call, we inspect and get a proper inspection done. I mean, you know, I get, I'll get these inspections that are, you know, two, three pages long. That's just basically like, yeah, there looks like there's mold pretty much everywhere. Good luck. It's all up to the remediator to decide what to do, you know, And I'm like, okay, yeah, that, that report is not helpful. Please call somebody that knows what they're doing.

Yeah. And that actually speaks to the roles that like you and I have in the process. Right. And, and there's a lot of companies out there that toe the line on both sides, I guess. And so I think part of it is that people could be kind of confused. Right. Like there are these inspectors that. Exactly what you just said that give literally a two page report. Just for, just for context, I think our average report size, I don't even say the number. How many pages do you think that our average report size is?

It's got to be 75 to 100.

Yeah, they're all somewhere between 75 and 100 pages long.

So there's a lot of information in there, Right. A lot of photos, lot of different things outlining what we were seeing and what was going on. This is why we spent five, six, eight hours at a house. Right. It takes time. So if you're getting.

Where I was going with this is if the inspector that comes in and does, you know, a two page report, basically there's no photos of anything.

Right.

Part of the two pages are probably the actual raw lab report, which doesn't even count because they didn't even generate that. Right. So they basically wrote a cover letter that says, yeah, this lab report doesn't look good, guys, go figure it out. And, and so their report is now telling you as the consumer, it's making you think that it's actually the remediator's job to figure out where everything is. Right. And it's not your fault as the consumer. Right. Because you had somebody come out, they gave you this report and said, okay, you got some problems here. Have the remediator come out and, and figure it out. And that's not really the true role of, of how it should set up. Right. Like, like as the remediator on your side, talk about where you think, like the line starts and finishes before where we start, where it gets handed off to you, where you go, like, like, how do you see that as the remediator?

Well, basically, like the first two steps that you talked about, you know, locate and prove. Right. I think that that's really where it needs to be. And my job is just to remove. My job is not to be the investigator, it's to be the remediator. Right. And so that's where things start and finish. If I need to know where the sources are, what the contamination looks like, are we talking bacteria or no bacteria? Mycotoxins or no mycotoxins. Right. All that data is going to give me the proper advice on how to work with the client in their best interest to get this place resolved. Right. And that's the way I look at it. So if we, if I get a report, that's just context that tells me where nothing is. And it's like, here's the results. Good luck. Now my expertise. Can I put some things together? Of course. But am I going to put my company through liability to, you know, go out there and be like every other mold remediation company and just take people's money and hope for the best? Heck no. You know, I want a solid plan. I want to make, and it's not just for me. I want a solid plan to make sure that I'm going to help that person. Otherwise, literally, you're taking their money and you're not giving them any finite product. Like, I want the product at the end result to be. This is a family that can now live in their home. And if I do not feel like I could obtain that final product, whether they didn't get enough testing or whether there's just too many challenges that just will not work out in a way where this house is maybe just not. Is not the right house for them. I will not go down that path because we have a high integrity as a company, and we want to make sure that at the end of the day, we're helping people. So testing is the most important part towards setting the stage of helping that person, because you need the data in order to really know at the end of the day when you leave there, that they're going to be able to walk back into their home for the first time sometimes in a long time.

Yeah. And to expand on that.

There are specialties and areas of expertise that you have and that I have. And there's a spot where it ends and there's a spot where it starts. And again, you just think, kind of go back to a medical kind of doctor analogy. Because the reality, guys, is that we basically are the doctor and the surgeon of the house, the team of the two of us, right? One is the doctor, one is the surgeon, and they're going in, and your house has some form of cancer, and we're trying to get it out. That's ultimately what's happening, right? And so in a medical kind of analogy of how it works, the doctor, even if it's the specialist who's very specialized, let's say, in cancer, and just rolling with that, the oncologist, or whatever it is, they're figuring out where it is, has it spread, where's the primary piece, what type is it, how do you attack it? Is this something that could be done through chemo, does that to be removed? In tumor, they're figuring all that stuff out. And then that person goes to a surgeon, and the surgeon now has the plan that says, okay, so the problem is here and here, and it's moved throughout here. And I know when I go in, actually I can attack this from this way, so maybe I want to do it a little differently, but I at least know where the problems are. So then I can maybe talk to the. To the oncologist, again, who put the original plan together and say, okay, so I see everything that you got here. I think that maybe if we, instead of, you know, opening up the person's stomach, maybe we open them up from the leg and go in this way. I think it'll be less damage or whatever, whatever. And. And actually figure out how to do it the right way. Right. It's a team effort. You can't expect the surgeon to know how to run all of the tests and do all of that stuff and still be the best surgeon that ever existed. Right? Because, like, if you've ever watched any of these shows, these TV shows with surgeons on them, like, they're super arrogant. They have to be the best. And all they do is live, breathe and sleep. Cutting people open and taking stuff out. That's what they do, right? That's their bread and butter. And they have to. They have to get the roadmap. And we're no different. Like, we are doing the same exact thing, except instead of cutting open your stomach, we're opening a wall in your house. But then we're figuring out, well, has it spread through the house? That it get into the lungs of the house, which is a heating, air conditioning system. Right. So did the cancer move from here into the lungs? What does that mean? How does that work? It's the same exact thing. And so we have to think of these two disciplines as two separate things. They're not the same thing. They're very, very separate things. And we have knowledge on both sides. Right. And that's great. You should. Right. The oncologist has knowledge of how you do surgery. The surgeon has knowledge of how things kind of move throughout. But there are specialties and areas where they're focusing and putting it together. And that piece is so important. There isn't one person that does all of it. There's not one person that does all of it. And if you don't have the information up front to give to the surgeon, then you know what the surgeon is going to do. They're going to be like, okay, well, there's a tumor here. I'm going to cut that out. I don't really know how the blood cells have moved around. I haven't seen any of that stuff, but at least I know the tumor's right here. Let me cut out the tumor. Well, that's cool. They cut out a tumor, right? But what if it's moved throughout the rest of your body and other places that isn't super obvious to them? Then you just went through this cancer surgery, remove something and you're actually not going to get better because you still have problems. And that's the thing that gets missed without the testing.

Yeah, no, it's exactly right. And you know, to be a good surgeon, you have to have good diagnostics. Right. Of what, what the problem is, what needs to be removed. And I think, you know, the other part of what, what makes myself a good remediator or you know, why a lot of people want to call, you know, me and our company is we've, we've encountered problems and know how to solve those problems. Right. We, nobody has X ray vision. We know we open up a wall that we're going to find something, but we don't really know the extent of what we're going to find. But we've been through this enough times on a really medical grade level here that we know no matter what happens when we open up that wall, we'll be able to solve it. And sometimes we have structural damage that has to, you know, we need to work with the GC to reframe out a portion of a wall or something like that. But, but you know, we always know what to do and how to do it. You remember there was a project in Reno, Nevada we worked on together and it's like, hey man, you're not going to like this. It's going to be a little different. But this wall, this wall is a shear wall. It's, it's, it's developed for earthquakes. It's a structural component. There's mold in between the structural component and this other structural component. What we have to do is we have to remove the top layer, remediate it, but instantly put the shear wall back. So we had to, you know, normally. Right. You want to have access to be able to test that.

Yeah.

But for this particular case, it was like, hey, look, we, we don't have a choice because if I leave this structural component off, God forbid there's an earthquake, the building collapses, we're now liable. Right. So, you know, it's, it's being, being, being in these situations, knowing what you're looking for. My, you know, almost forever background and being in construction with my family, just understanding what structural components are and how to remediate and bringing that building science construction background to the table really helps out a lot in remediation because it's, it's construction, but it's also science kind of brought into one. And yeah, you know, how many remediators have this contractor mentality instead of this, you know, Scientific mentality, that really needs to be done. And same thing with inspectors. I mean, there's a reason why anytime I get the call, I'm like, did you call the mold finders? You call the inspect? Because if you don't do that inspection properly, if you don't find all these sources, guess what? I can be Superman, but I will still not succeed if we don't have the proper data.

Yeah. And that project you're talking about, just so people get like, let's get some concept for that. So that was a bathroom. There was a shower next to that. The wall next to the shower had water damage on it, right? So it looked like the shower had kind of been, like, leaking out the front of the shower, hitting the wall. We did a surface test because it looked like that there was mold on the wall, right. So we did a surface swab test. We swabbed, it came back. It was a problem. I don't remember what it was, but it was not good. And so then the remediation plan on our end is like, okay, so we understand source. We're seeing that there was actually moisture, like, behind the tile in the shower, in the wall. So we know that there was something happening where, like, the shower wasn't sealed properly. It was kind of leaking out to the wall. And so now the kind of. That whole area was impacted, right? So from our end, we said, okay, so the shower has to come out because it looks like we've kind of tracked source water to there. Right? That's what it looked like. And then we said, okay, we know that the wall outside the shower is impacted, so we have to remove this wall, you know, x amount of feet out from where the shower was, and it has to be pulled from floor to ceiling. Because anytime you have a mold problem, that's validated that when you think about what's happening behind a wall, there's insulation back there, there's airflow patterns. To think that we're only cutting up a wall 2ft or 4ft and there's not other problems up the rest of the wall is kind of silly when you start thinking about it that way. So we know that you have to remove the wall from floor to ceiling and you have to go at least, you know, x amount of feet past where we did the testing and then see if there's any water damage. We, as the inspector, had no idea what the structural build behind the drywall was. We didn't know there was a shear wall there. You know, and just so people know what a shear Wall is. It's basically like a big piece of plywood that is put over the framing. So essentially what happened is that they had their framing, then a big piece of plywood goes over it and then they put the drywall like directly on the plywood. That's kind of how it was set up. And so we wanted the whole wall opened up because we know that just like what I explained, if it gets back into the wall bay, that it's going to be a problem. That goes all the way up the framing. All the way up. When you first opened the wall and saw that there were shear wall there and then figured out that it was a code thing and we couldn't keep it open for very long, what happened? You called me and we talked about it and I was like. And the question was, do we really need to take the shear wall off or not? That was the first question that you guys had or that you had.

Yep.

And I said, listen, I think you need to do it because you sent me a couple of pictures, you showed me what it looked like. I'm like, no, man, this is plywood. There's layers. It's going to be back there. We have to get back there, otherwise we're going to miss it. And then, okay, so let's talk about what our restriction is. We can't keep this thing open for more than X amount of hours. Right? So it's like, okay, so how do we do this if I'm not going to be able to go back and do the post and see it myself? How does this happen? Luckily, I trust you guys, I know what you're doing. And so it's like, okay, get back there, clean it, do what you can, and then cover it back up. Right. And kind of get back to code as fast as you can. And then when we came back and did the post testing, everything cleared. Why did it clear? Because part of what was happening in the house was that. And instead of just leaving the plywood there and saying, well, we'll just clean the surface of it because we're not allowed to take it out, it's going to be a problem for us. We have to call somebody and ask about code or whatever it was, let's talk it through, figure out the right way to do it, do it and make it happen. Then when we came back and post tested, we know for sure that source is gone now. Right? Because everything cleared. That's how this relationship works. Works, right. That's how inspector and remediator works. And truth be told, guys, it's a relationship that you have between the two. Like when I'm working with a remediator that's never seen what we do and how we do it, it's not going to go well. I mean, honestly, it's just not going to go well. They're going to think we're over the top. They think that their process is the best process ever and that we were just being, you know, ridiculous and how, how many times you wipe a surface and all this stuff that we talk about and then what happens and we come back in and we do the post afterwards. We look at everything and sometimes just visibly it's a disaster. Like oh my God, like this is bad right before we walk in. Other times we come back in and like visibly it kind of seems okay. But then we do the testing, we realize that there's still a lot of problems and then it turns into this big contentious argument. Well, we did this and we spent all this time in there and we did that. I'm like, listen man, I get it. But you know, we wrote this out in a very, very specific way. And, and the thing is, and you can maybe talk to this too, your guys situation, you handle it differently. I know, but a lot of, a lot of companies, even if we do a pre inspection phone call or a pre remediation kind of coordination call or something like that, just to kind of answer questions and stuff, we'll talk through the process, we'll go through all the steps. You know what all the steps are? It's like fucking like 15 steps. And it's just like wipe it this way, this. Fold the towel like this. Do it like. It's so specific for a reason, by the way. It's so specific, but it's so specific for a reason. Somebody who doesn't know us or hasn't seen this stuff, they look at that and they're like f these guys, like you don't need to tell me how to do what I do. I mean that's what they think, you know. Then we get on a call with them and they're like, yeah, we could totally do that. Like, you know, because they don't think it's going to be a problem because they haven't spent the two years and $3 million of research and development that we have to figure out what actually works, right? And so they go through that and they think that it's not a problem. So then they, they don't relate to their team. The conversation that was really had at the pre inspection coordination call or the pre remediation coordination call. And so the team that goes in never spoke to me directly, really didn't get the proper download from their, from their supervisors or the company owner or whatever. They go in and do things the way that they always do things and guess what? It fails. And then it turns in this big argument afterwards and it's frustrating. You know, whereas on your guys end I'm sure there's this top down effect of like this is the process on how stuff gets done.

Right.

Like maybe talk through like what the internal workings of how that works is so people understand that like even if you're talking to the company owner, it doesn't always mean that your project manager is actually doing it. You know what I mean? Or the, or the day or the actual workers are doing it. You know, like there's just, there's, there's, there's just like, you know.

Chain of command basically where things get lost in translation, right?

Yeah. So you know, like kind of how we control things from, from our crews because we have like seven different crews now that travel all around the US how we control things is we actually, we set up each van, right. With the exact amount of tools that they need. And we're talking like high pressure, low volume spray guns, we're talking paint sprayers. They do not have things that we feel are archaic and do not work. So these guys are trained on. All right, when you're in this location and you're trying to perform step two of our remediation process, you're going to use an automotive spray gun, you know, with high pressure, low volume. Right. And that's going to give you this a perfect amount of dilution that gets sprayed on the building material. Not saturated, Right. But that perfect amount of dilution for application process that's going to do exactly what we want to do and. Right. And that's going to be disinfect, pull things out to the surface so we can remove them. And then there's times we're working in a larger space where we're going to use a Titan spray gun to use our application. Because for something like an attic that's 3,000 square feet, let's say you need something that's going to put out a little more volume than that. So there are situational pieces of equipment that we utilize for each step of the process. And it's really our expertise at the top that has really been through the thick and thin of it. You know, me personally, almost a decade working on projects hands on. Right. And so Jeff and I and, you know, Jeff pretty well have implemented all these types of processes that we then train to our regional managers, and underneath them are going to be our foreman, and underneath them are going to be the technicians, right? So we have this hierarchy and everything gets passed down along, and then we have strict quality control. On top of that, we work with the best mold inspectors on the planet. Right, Brian? So we know that there's a checks and balances system, both internally and externally, to make sure that we're doing the right thing by the client. And what's interesting is the way I say this is pretty funny because you mentioned earlier that we're mediators, and you're like, hey, this is what needs to be done, and then it doesn't get done that way. Then there's this argumentative, you know, process of like, well, you don't know what you're talking about. I've been in business since 1979, right? And for us, it's like, when we fail, it's like. It's not exciting, of course, but the exciting part about failing is like, all right, guys, how do we improve our process so that something like this doesn't happen again, right? And it's that constant adapt. Adaptation, that evolution that happens within our company. And it's like we're. As much as we're, you know, one of the best companies out there, we're also always learning, right? Because a home consists of 50,000 components, not one remediation project is ever exactly the same, right? It's always different. So we get. Every single project is a new set of challenges. We once had to do a project. Brian, I don't even know if you know about this. This was a CMI product in the northeast. The. The client had mast cell activation syndrome. Okay. She was sensitive to light, sound. We had to literally build sound rooms inside the remediation areas so that while we're remediating, we're not generating enough sound to cause her harm. She couldn't. She couldn't leave her room. She had to be. She was unfortunately bedridden in her room, and the room was soundproof. But even still, we had to make sure all of our remediation areas were soundproof. There was one day she was able to hear a vacuum, even though it was on the other side of the house. It got so technical, we actually were building insulated rooms over our vacuum. So, you know, it's when you. When you really just want to be the best you can be, you'll. You'll accept any challenge. And that's kind of how we are as a company. I mean, there is no challenge I will not accept. So I'm pretty polar opposite to the good old boys of mobile remediation. Guys who want to do things their way. They don't think outside the box. They're scared of working with someone who's sensitive, because in their mind, they put anybody who's sensitive into this.

Real people experiencing real pain, and they need help, and it's our job to help them.

Yeah, I mean, listen, you're. You're 100% right that that happens, you know, and that's why the normal journey that I hear when people get to us is that they've had multiple inspectors, sometimes they've had a remediation or two. They've spent already tens of thousands of dollars. And then wrapping back to where we started, it's like, well, we want to save a few hundred dollars on testing here because we've already spent a lot. You know, we've. We're already going to the doctor and all. We have all the medical bills, and we've had three inspectors come in already, and we've had a remediation done already. And, you know, it's obviously hasn't worked, you know, and so any. Any money that we can save because we spent so much, we want to save. And like, listen, I get it. You know, I want to save money where I can save money, too. There are certain things, though. You kind of look at the cost benefit of.

Spending a dollar. Right. And what's the potential downfall of not doing this? What is the potential upswing of doing it the right way? What could it mean if we don't understand what's here in terms of then down the road? Okay, well, now what does remediation look like? Now we have this big open hole that we don't know what's going on. Right. I mean, go back to that, that Reno example, so that the. The mold that we found on that wall is actually on the baseboard. Right. That's where it was. And so, you know, we. If we see stuff on a baseboard, we're removing the wall. It's not like, oh, just take out the baseboard. You take off the wall because water travels, it wicks up, it gets hidden behind things. Right. And there are a lot of times if we didn't test that and some other inspection company was coming in, they probably would have said a couple of things. They probably would have said the water, that the moisture we were picking up behind the tile in the shower is normal. And therefore, it's not a problem. And again, it is kind of normal. It's more normal than you would want. Right. I'd say probably half the houses we go into have at least one shower area that has water penetrating behind the tile. Just because it happens all the time, does that mean it's okay? No, just means it happens all the time. Right. It just means it's a problem. So they probably would have said, you know what, It's a shower. It's normal. There's waterproofing board back here, so it's fine. Right. The. The waterproofing board doesn't stop mold from growing on the front side of it. It keeps water from going through the back side of it. That's what waterproofing board does. So, like, so there's still that piece. And then if it was just on the baseboard, what they probably would have said is, oh, that's just from splashing. When you get out of shower, all you got to do is just clean the baseboard because it's not going to be at the wall. It's on the baseboard. I don't see it on the wall. Right. Like, that's how that would have gone if somebody else. And I just know, because I've just seen it happen.

It's like, hey, just remove, like, one foot of the drywall there and you're done. And, you know, like, that water wicked up. I had to remove the whole freaking wall.

Yeah. And then it would have been. If they see the shear wall behind it, we're like, oh, well, this is a protective wall. It's not going to get back there. So it's fine. We can just. We just. We'll just spray the wall here, and you'll be fine. And you'll anto. So, like, this is. This is why those pieces are important. Right. And then the other thing that we talked about back at the beginning was helping to prioritize. So let's say. And this is actually a big thing for a lot of people, they just don't have the money to do the full remediation. Right. Okay. So if that's the case. Right. And so we're really thinking about trying to maximize dollars. And so then the thought process from the client at the start is like, okay, well, I don't want to test things that I know are a problem. Okay. Because I know I only have X amount of dollars for everything, including testing and remediation. This is all that I have. And every dollar I lose on testing, I can't put towards remediation Right. That's always a thought process and it makes sense.

Right.

Here's the thing though. If you only have X amount of dollars and you probably are not going to be able to do all of the remediation recommendation. Right, then that makes it even more important to do all the testing upfront. Even more. Because you have to know what places are the worst. So at least you can prioritize the worst places in the dollars that you're spending. I have a perfect example of this. So I was, I don't even know how long ago this was. Like last year or something, I did this project and I was in a bathroom. You know how you have like, like towel hangers on the wall, you hang your towels like you wash your hands after you, you know, at the sink. And there's a towel hanger on the wall. Right. And so what happens on those walls? A lot. Some water drips down those walls from the towel from your hand when you splash over there initially. And there's still water on your hand before. Right. And so we saw some light streaking on the wall. Wasn't terrible, but there was some light water streaking, which makes sense because probably they were drying their hands and water was kind of flying off their hands into the wall. Right. There were things in the house that visibly just looked so much worse than that. Right. And, and so they were going to test those things and they didn't want to test this. They're like, this is. I know where the water's coming from. It's just for me splashing my hand over there. It's not a big deal. Look, listen, guys, I really think that you need to do this and for all the reasons we talked about. Right. So they do. So thankfully they do this thing that on the surface looked like really not a big deal because we knew where the water was coming from. It's not like there was like buckling and cracking and all this stuff. It was just like little water streaks from dripping off your hands when you dry your hands. Right. That area had 500,000 counter mass prodigy penicillin in that wall behind there. It actually ended up being the worst sore spot in the entire house.

Wow.

Right? Now if they didn't do that and they said, no, we're not going to test this, they probably wouldn't even have remediated it, to be honest, because they didn't think it was a big deal. You would have come in, it would have been on the report. It was said client accepts no. Exactly what you were just talking about. Right. There's a sample that says client accept sample, and it says no.

Yep. Right.

And then you come in and they're like, okay, we need to get the house fixed and do whatever. And you come in and remediate everything that was in the plan. You go, you do the home cleanse. Ermie's not passing. Things aren't passing. They start getting frustrated. Well, guess what? There's a. There's a wall with a half a million count of Aspergillus penicillium just sitting there that they wouldn't even know about. That's why it's so important. And even in that scenario, let's say they couldn't do all the remediation. Well, there were other areas in the house that really didn't come back as bad. Right. So when I'm talking priorities with clients, it's like, all right, listen, ideally we get all the factories, right? That's. That. That's the best way to do it.

Yeah.

You know, but if we can't get to gold standard all the.

All the.

All the factories, let's start looking through, let's start prioritizing. Where were there areas where there was active moisture and walls and stuff. I would prioritize those higher. Where are there areas where we picked up stacky or catalium or eulogladium or something like that? These, like, higher water damage content molds. I would prioritize those in like a. Maybe a priority one list. And then I go through all of the results and I just kind of look for, like, tear breaks in the. In the quantitative number of what we're picking up. Right. And so in that scenario, that would have been in the top tier, priority one, just because of how high it was, and it was the highest thing in the house, you know, and if that's the case, you could have diverted dollars to that because it was such a heavy source and maybe taken them away from like a cabinet somewhere that was super minimal or something, you know, and if you're not doing the testing, you don't know that. So you're putting. You're putting Mike or your remediation company kind of. You're kind of like tying their hands. Right. You're putting them in a position to not succeed if we don't know all of that. And then you're maybe spending your dollars in a way that didn't make the most sense, because we didn't want to spend $135 on one extra test to understand what was going on. And that was the difference.

Yeah. And look, I get it. Like people, it can get expensive. This whole process, it's debilitating. You're already not feeling well and you're having all this stress and anxiety on top of it. But there's nothing worse than saving $500 on testing, but losing $50,000 in remediation and still not being able to live there. Right? And so it's so, so, so important. Please, if you, if you get any advice from me on this subject, it's going to be spend, spend all you possibly can in getting the data, making sure you have the right data to bring your remediation company. Or it doesn't matter if you have the best remediation company or the worst, you will not get that success you're looking for in remediating so that you can move back into your home. And that's what we want for our clients, right? We want you to be able to move back in. So please make sure you have the right mindset when you're going into that testing process.

Yeah, I think that's. I think that's a great way to kind of wrap. I can't believe we've been talking for, like, I know it's already.

So hopefully the examples, the explanation, hearing it from Mike's point of view, you know, a lot of times people think, you know, well, you're the inspector, you want me to test everything. It's in your best interest to test a bunch of stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I mean, listen, I'm not gonna lie, like, samples cost money, right? So it increases the cost. Like, of course that happens. But I mean, anyone who's worked with me and our company, I think would, would feel pretty confident in saying that. Like, yes, While, while there was probably a decent number, you know, a decent amount of testing that happened, it's more expensive than your local guy that might come out. It was worth every penny, right? And it set the stage for everything that had to happen next. So the point of this isn't about you need to spend money. Like, that's not the point of this. The point of this is really just to understand, like, each stage of the process, like where and more importantly, why the inspector is even coming in. Right? The inspector is coming in. This whole thing starts because you have a health issue. Honestly, that's why the whole thing starts, Right. Otherwise you're not even looking at this, right? So you have some sort of health concern and that's triggering this whole process. Then the next step is you bring in an inspector. Why is the Inspector there. The inspector is there to diagnose, figure out what's going on. So then the next step, which is the remediator can most effectively do their job to get back to the original goal in the first place of creating a home that's going to be a more healthy environment for you, it all leads back to that. So anything in those steps in the middle that we start pulling out that doesn't allow each step to be able to be done most effectively is ultimately going to have a net negative impact on what your ultimate goal was in the first place, which was, I'm only doing this because there's a health problem. That was the whole point in the first place. I think sometimes because the process can take some time, we kind of get pulled out or we get pulled closer into like the day to day and what's happening and project managing and looking at specific things and, and we forget to take the step back of why we even did this in the first place. And at the beginning, before you even had an inspector come out or anything, if you sat down and somebody was asking you questions and they said, okay, so what do you, what do you want to happen? You know, what's the goal for you? It's like, I want to be able to be in my house and not be sick, right? That's usually some version of what the goal is. Okay. And then in that same conversation before, before I've come out, before you've come out, literally before anything, the same person asking questions says, okay, so if that's the goal, what would you say if the inspector came in and found some things and then just told you he wasn't gonna, he wasn't gonna test them for you before you know, Price, before you know any of that stuff, just literally conceptually, how would you think about that? And you'd be like, well, no, I need to know what's going on. Because again, the whole point of this is for me to get back to health, right? He says, okay, cool. And then let me ask you one more question. What if the remediation company comes in and says, well, we're not going to do it the way that, that it should be done because we're just not going to. So what would you say about that? And then the person will probably say, well, their job is to come in and do it the way it needs to be done, because if they don't do it the right way, then I'm going to be. It all ties back, right? If you were asking all those questions at the same Time at the beginning, before all these other external factors started coming into play, the answers would actually be super obvious and clear. But the further we get into it, we get more and more kind of involved in the day to day and the other variables and the stress and the anxiety and kind of all the other stuff that starts to build up and we start to lose perspective on why we started in the first place. And so if you try to think of it like that and always try to tie it back to your why, why was I doing this in the first place? Why was I doing this in the first place? And then every decision you make, you put against that why? And you say, okay, if I make this decision.

Is that detracting from my overall goal? Is that hurting my. Why am I not achieving what I really want to be achieving by making this decision? And if we do that throughout the steps of the process as we're going through, then it's a way to anchor ourselves in really what the most important piece of it is, which is the reason you were doing it in the first place. So try to like think of that original, like imagine you were interviewing yourself three months ago before it started and ask these questions and what would you have said? And then start rationalizing it around that. Right. Try to get out of the immediate, you know, kind of gratification piece of, well, we can do this and maybe cut a corner and save and think about what the, what the whole reason you did this in the first place was.

Yeah, you know, no, that's, that's really helpful, I think, you know, because I sometimes.

Sometimes we're our own worst enemies, you know, and I, I do it all the time. Even as a professional, I know when something should be a certain way, like my diet. Right. I know I should be eating better or something. And it's like, well, just this once, right. It's very easy for us to rationalize or make excuses, but when it comes to doing remediation in your health. Right. It's so important to get the data remediate properly. Otherwise you're taking a big risk in doing something and spending money on something that actually doesn't solve your problem.

Yeah. And there's nothing worse than that. And it goes back to the path that most people have been on when they actually find us in the first place. They've spent probably minimum 30 grand upwards to a hundred or so on average before they find us in the first place. Part of that, and a big chunk of that is the remediation that didn't work.

Yeah.

Right. Which is exactly what you're saying. Like, don't spend that money if it's not going to do what you want it to, you know, And. And the data to what you know, to what you're saying is an important piece for you guys to really be able to hone in on that.

Yeah.

Cool. Well, thanks for taking an hour today.

Yeah, thanks for having me in. An hour. I think it was a great topic. Much needed. It's going to go front and center on my website because I think it's really important for people to. To know, you know, before they even get to me, that they really need to have the proper data so that I can help them.

Yeah, well, I'm glad. I'm glad that. That you're finding it valuable on your end. Hopefully some of the other folks that are listening are finding it valuable. And again, guys, this isn't about telling you that you have to spend money. Right? That's not why we're talking about this stuff. It's, I would say, at the end, just think about that last example I gave. Just whatever decision you make, think about if you were asking yourself that question three months ago, before you got started, how would you answer that question? And if you do that, maybe it can help give you guys some perspective on what is the best move for you. Ultimately, everything is your choice, right? It's not our job to push, force, do anything like that, but we explain pros and cons and ultimately allow you to make the most informed decision that you can make. And so we just want to make sure that we're doing that for you. So that's it.

Absolutely.

All right. Well, thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Brian.

Yeah, we'll talk to you soon, I'm sure.

See you soon.

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