Ten Places to Check for Mold and How to Prevent It

Just because it's dry doesn't mean it's gone.

Welcome, everyone. My name is Kendra Seymour and I'm joined today by one of our foundation strategic advisors and original co founder Corey Levy. Thank you so much, Corey, for joining us today.

Kendra, I'm so excited to be doing this with you. Thank you so much.

Yeah, no, I'm so excited because today you're going to talk to us about science, signs of hidden mold and water damage and what we should be looking for, as well as some prevention things. And I think this is a topic literally everyone, whether you rent or own, absolutely needs to be aware of. So I want you to jump right in because I don't want to take any time away from all the awesome things you plan to share with us.

Awesome. Sounds good to me. I'm going to share my screen and I'll be the little floating head in the top right moving forward. And as I do that, I'm just going to kind of echo what you just said. And that is that, yeah, at the end of the day, I'm going to be talking about these little hidden mold issues, but they're actually kind of secrets. And that's how I roll it in moving forward within the presentation. Because people don't really want us to know about this. There are a lot of, let's call them, lobbying bodies that minimize what we're going to talk about today, which is one of the main present premises of why we started Change the right was to get good information to the right people that is accurate. And so today I'm going to share the secrets with you that these other larger organizations don't really want you to know about. So if you have a pen and paper handy, this is going to be really great information. And I'm just going to jump right in. So the first thing we're going to talk about are what these secrets are. Right. There's three main ones that I want to really focus on for this. The first is where to look. Now, this may seem the most obvious about the secret parts of mold. It's a. Yeah, I never know where to look, but it's actually a lot easier than what people think because all houses are really the same. So we're going to dive into what I mean by that in a little bit. But it's super simple. If you have time and you live in a building, you're going to be able to find problems. The second is what to look for, knowing what past and present damage looks like, specifically from water and how to discern if Those are problems are going to help. You know, okay, I'm in the kitchen where we find some of the biggest problems, right? And this is what bad looks like. And I need to do a further investigation, further testing within this area or know that this could be a major source within my environment. And then finally, I think we get this question all the time. Kendra and I know the foundation does, too. It's like, how do we prevent these problems, right? How do we make sure that if I fix these issues, that they're not coming back? And with the theme mold needs three things, right? Three secrets, three things. Food, temperature and water. Right? Those are the main aspects of what it's going to require in order to grow. And if we can control those things, then we are gravy, right? So it's about setting the proper standards in place and preventative measures once we know we've gotten the issues within their environment. So I'll jump into that and dive into that in a little bit more detail. But let's start with secret number one, where to look, right? And I just mentioned this. It does not matter. It doesn't matter if you're in a big home that's 7,000 square feet, good for you. It doesn't matter if you're in a small house. It doesn't matter if you're an apartment or condo. While these all look different from the exterior of the house, the concepts of these homes are all the exact same. So what does that mean? We need to understand how a home is broken down, right? There are essentially different types of rooms within each building. So back here you may have in your bigger home, three bedrooms, in the smaller home, one bedroom, and in an apartment, a studio. But they're all built similarly. Same with bathrooms and kitchens and all these things, right? So what we were able to do in our process and why we've been able to help so many people is we actually break these room types down into categories almost, right? Or types of areas. So when you think of a finished area within a room, what we're taught with within this whole plan, we're actually talking about our bedrooms. Think of your bedroom at home, right? It's typically four walls. There's windows. And, you know, maybe in some fancy homes, you got a fireplace or something else going on, right? But if you think of your living room, it's the same thing. It's four walls with some windows, maybe a fireplace, right. The construction design of those rooms are all the same, right? And so when we break it out that way, then looking for things within these rooms are going to be the same. How we analyze where problems can come up from within these different room types becomes quite easy if you're really only thinking, I've got about 10 different types of rooms or environments or areas where mold or bacteria or the contaminants can form from water damage. So let's just break this out a little bit more to, to make it fairly easy for everybody here. Decent sized home here. You've got a couple of different bedrooms. Looking at this floor plan, it can feel overwhelming. This is a lot of space to cover, but if you break it down in the manner that we're talking about, it becomes a lot easier. Right. So the finished areas idea almost takes up 90% of the house. Right. And it's all the same, right. The owner suite, the bedroom one here, bedroom two, the den, the dining room, the great room. All of these areas are built similarly where it's drywall over framing with insulation, a couple of windows. So understanding how to scan those areas is going to be the key. Looking at ceilings, looking at walls, looking around windows, looking at baseboards, and we'll get into some examples of what those damaged areas look like. But when you're in these spaces, it's not like there's much more than looking at it with a fine eye within spaces. Right. So your dining room treat as your owner suite, you know, the, the bedrooms, the same thing, go in scan with a fine eye on the items that we're about to show. So bathroom, similar thing, bathrooms, a lot more to look at because there's a lot more going on there. There's plumbing that's running within the environment. You know, you have typically a bathtub a to a sink and then the surrounding areas that could be impacted by those water event areas that can cause more problems. And we talk later in the presentation about the areas that we most find issues. Bathrooms are typically up there on the list. Right. And so if we're regularly checking these things and knowing what to look for, we can prevent problems, we can find them a lot quicker and make sure that we're living in the healthiest home possible. Kitchens, about seven areas to look. Again, this is something we're going to dive into in greater detail in the presentation. Kitchens are its own kind of anomaly, right. Or building structure within the building, similarly to bathrooms because of the amount of plumbing that's running in, but also a lot of appliance stuff going on there. Right. And appliances can bring their own contaminants within the environment as well and become sources themselves. So it's not just looking at building structure, but what are we bringing into the house that could be also contaminated in and of itself? Garage. Garages can be finished. Garages can be unfinished. There's a variety of different things we're going to look for. Some of them have ventilation systems in there, some of them have different things. But at the end of the day, there's about eight different areas to kind of talk through. It's around any appliance areas. It's looking similarly to what you see in a finished environment. Ceilings, walls, baseboards, around windows. Right. A lot of these different rooms have the same through point during the inspection. What that means is even though it's a bathroom, you may only have three additional things of those 10 things you needed to look for in the other room. Same thing within a garage, if it's a finished garage. Well, it kind of applies similarly to the den and the owner suite and the bedrooms and all these other areas. So you're going to be applying those same looking practices through that process. Looking at the ceiling for the different damages. We're going to see looking at the baseboards, looking at the walls around the windows. And then because it's a garage. Oh, we also have a water heater in here. Oh, we have a ventilation system. So we need to do these things around those areas. We need to look around those places to verify if there's any damage there as well. Now, exterior places are really interesting. You know, a lot of people think, ah, it's outside, right. No big deal. Unfortunately, that's not the case. And I talk in greater detail about the importance of maintenance in a home. What things that you should be doing on a seasonal basis, on a yearly basis, from a preventative measure. But these, let's call them, cover patio areas, even decks that aren't covered, front porch places, a lot of times are constructed of building materials that foster mold growth. And if not treated appropriately, even in the early beginning building process, mold can grow on them very easily. Right. And as they age, some of the sealants that they use, the protectors that they use, they. They weaken. They're outside in the elements, and so mold can grow on them. And the significance here is that depending on your climate, like most of us, I mean, I'm in sunny San Diego, so I'm lucky. I leave my windows open a lot of times throughout the year. Um, but, you know, depending on where you are, you may open your windows, your doors to get fresh air in, which is good. You should. But if you have a source outside of Your home, then that is going to be brought into the environment. Right. And so when we're assessing these areas, we want to look for the bad. Is there water damage on there? Is there visible mold growth on these things? And you'll get a handle on that when we talk through some of the water damage. But if it looks weird to you and it shouldn't be growing there, then it probably shouldn't be there. Right. And so you need to set the right strategy on keeping that regularly maintained because it is an outdoor space. Right. It's not something that you can cover up and control the elements all that much. So it really falls into a maintenance plan, exterior on exterior buildings that will allow for these preventative measures moving forward. Now, just looking at the finished room area, which is typically where people become the most overwhelmed. Kendra, is this part right here, it's like, all right, attic spaces. They're just like big open spaces. Typically, there's a bunch of insulation up there. If you go up there and look around and there's a problem, fairly easy to see water damage and mold and all these other things when you're up there. Right. Basements. If it's a basement and it's finished, this applies to a basement. It's the same construction. So you're going to be looking for the same exact things within that environment. So it is still the assessment of the baseboards, the walls, the ceilings around windows, all those things that we need to be looking at for these damages that we're about to talk through. And then in an unfinished basement space, or a crawl space, which, you know, next to bathrooms, kitchens, I'd say subgrade areas like basements and crawl spaces tend to be the next that have a lot of problems. Many times you're going to smell it, you're going to see it. It's either a water damage, like we're about to see, or, you know, you're going to see black. You're going to see white spots on these different areas that indicate there's a bigger problem going on down in that space. But if we're just looking in the living areas, which people are most concerned about when coming through this and assessing whether or not there's a problem within their general living areas, it's really just broken into five different rooms, which makes it so much more digestible in this process to understand if there are problems there. So, you know, depending on goals and different things which we're going to get into here, this will help at least begin the guidance on knowing, okay, I may have problems in all these different spaces, how do I address where the worst problems are, how significant those damages are? Do I test, do I not test all these different things that we as homeowners, as renters, as people that may be potentially moving into a new environment, need to know, to know what we like to call the next step, actions within our journey, right? It's all about information. If you have good information that change year has been so implementative in pushing into the environment for people, right? It's about getting solid information. To know those next steps is really the foundation for healing, for understanding the safety of the environment. That, that, that tends to be swept out of the way and minimized in many areas. Just because, ah, that looks like old something or other, it's not a big deal. Right? So now that we know where to look in these general living areas, I want to talk about what it looks like. Okay. And that is probably the hardest thing to train. So I'm going to push it down to like five different signs of water damage and then understand that if we un, if this, this diagram makes sense here, if we know where to look, what it looks like, we can identify the hidden mold problem. Okay, so secret one that I just shared, in the general living area, there's only five room types. Doesn't matter if you're in a 10 room house, there's only five. That's it. Okay. And then if we think about secret number two, which is what to look for. My wife always tells me I'm like, I'm like Superman of mold. But my kryptonite is water, like anytime. Like if, if my kid spills a glass of water, she's like, I've never seen you move faster in your entire life to go wipe it up. It is the fastest thing if water is involved. I am afraid of it. It's just, it's what it is. You too, right, Kendra? So it's, it's because it is the evolution of life. But the confusion boils down to the fact that it needs to be current wet to be a problem. And the reason why there is such a big thought process behind all of this is because what we're taught and the amount of effort it takes to look and use eyes diminishes the amount of properties people can get through in a particular day. And you know what I mean by that is a lot of times it will say, okay, well if it's dry to the touch, it's dry to my meter, then then there must be nothing there. But unfortunately that is, that is not the case. And because in a lot of businesses and a lot of professions, they need to move through things in a certain manner and they need to get through things quickly in order to do a certain number of, let's say, inspections or whatever in a day. They're just looking typically for what is wet. Because we've always been told wet is bad, right? Which it is. But dry, wet, or previous damage is, in my opinion, even more dangerous than current wet. And the reason being is because as things dry out, it begins to. They begin to fragment. So let's use an example here. Let's just say that we had a dishwasher leak, okay? And we stopped the leak, which is important. You have to stop the source of the water. And the plumber just pushes the dishwasher back into the area. But right next to that, you know, is your cabinets, right? And the other side is the sink. And. And so we've just left all this wet building material that we didn't properly dry out. Which, by the way, mold will begin growing within 24 to 48 hours of any water event. So if you don't catch it immediately and dry it out immediately, mold bacteria is already forming. Bacteria can form in easy as 12 hours, depending on the water type. So now we've got this living organism mold example that when it grows, it grows root like structures into the surface that it's growing on. So think of a tree, right, growing roots out mold, grows these mycelia into the substrate, the building material that it's on. And then just like a tree puts out branches and leaves, molds put out hyphae, and the spores sit on top of that. So let's just say we stopped watering a tree. Is that tree one day just going to pick up its roots and move to another spot where there's more mold? No, it's not going to do that. It's going to start to die, it's going to decay, and those leaves are going to fall off. And what happens to those leaves? They become super dry and super brittle. And when you crunch that leaf, it breaks into a million different pieces, right? The same thing is happening with this mold. It starts to shed its spores. It becomes a lot lighter. So when you open that cabinet door or you open underneath the sink, that's moving air within and out of that space. So it's going to disturb it, it's going to move it. And it's not like these spores know boundaries. They don't know a boundary. It's not like they stop at the kitchen threshold and Say I'm a kitchen mold spore. I should not leave here. I should stay. No, no, no. They go all over the place. And now they're fragments. So they float higher, longer. They get absorbed into ventilation systems. And for the population of people that are watching this, that are hypersensitive, they get in our body easier, they get in our nose, they get into our stomach. They affect us systemically from this. So we have to address problems not just about stopping the source of the water, but then dealing with what was impacted. So let's take a look at what this is going to be. Okay. What this, what these examples look like. Okay. So there again, I love themes. If you haven't caught on three secrets, you know, three things. Mole need five room types in the general area, five types of water damage. Okay, five. So there are so many things that can look weird in a building. Okay. But when it. When water soaks into a particular building material, it shows itself in this form. So it's not like you're going to see, for example in this photo, black mold crawling up the sides and all these things. You don't see that. I. I've been doing this for close to 13 years now. 11 years. Well, I'm getting old. And the. The amount of times that I've walked into somebody's house and I've seen black mold crawling up all the walls, I could probably count on two sets of hands. Right? It doesn't come in the. That form. It comes in this form and it hides in these areas. Okay. Mold's been here for a long time before us. They're evolved. It's evolving species, so it understands where. Where to hide to. To live. Right. And so in this particular case, you're seeing bubbling. And now this can be very, very difficult to see sometimes when you're looking at it, for instance, with no light. As you see a light shined here, you're going to not even notice it, depending on the color of the base of this cabinet. The key thing when looking on cabinetry, and we'll talk more about the detail of this in a bit, is holding a light at the right angle so you can see these things. Even the water damage hides from us. It's crazy. Everybody's hiding from us. So if you. If you angle a flashlight like this straight down, right. It's going to be very hard because it's going to cast shadows differently than if you hold a flashlight on its side and you're able to see shadows and bumps and valleys. Right. Think about flying in a plane. If you're flying in a plane and looking out down those mountains don't look as big as if you're driving alongside of them. And you can see all the valleys and peaks and all these different things because you're seeing it from different angles. The light is hitting it different. Right. So we need to create that environment when we're inspecting our home. Your flashlight is the most important tool in your tool belt. Okay. There's another secret we should have thrown. Throwing that one up there. In this process, if you have a flashlight and you're holding it right, you are going to be able to find more damage than you even know. So bubbling is the first one I'd say you're going to see bubbling in most cases underneath sinks. So think vanities of bathrooms underneath kitchen sinks because they're made of a building material that is press particle board. Okay. The best way to describe this, it's like all the leftover sawdust that they press together with glue, and then they put this veneer on top of it to make it look pretty and nice. Right. And so what happens is there's all these different capillaries inside of this pressed particle board. So when water hits it, it really expands all this little sawdust in there. And typically, this is what you're going to see. Okay. But it's not just the base of the cabinet. It could be the sides of the cabinetry or vanity. It could be on the exterior. So if you see that those bubbling are going to be a sign of water damage. And where there's water, there's likely mold. So, two buckling and separating. This is one of the most deceiving ways water presents. Water damage presents itself within the built environment. Because many times what you're going to hear from assessors and inspection companies don't really thoroughly understand the extent of the problems from previous water damages. Oh, that's just a settlement crack. Don't worry about it. That's the house evening out. No, no, no, no. Does that happen? Yes, granted it does, but it's not typically down at a baseboard level. You may see it randomly on a ceiling. Right. Or somewhere with. On a wall. But if you're seeing a baseboard buckle out, and literally, if this is, you know, the baseboard, this is the wall and this is the baseboard. But if we're looking at it from a top angle and it's kind of bowing a little bit and separating, that's water damage. That what happened to that baseboard is it got wet and it changed how it is now it has dried, and now it is. It is a different shape because of that. Right. It absorbed all this water and dried out. So this can be a bit easier to assess because you could kind of separate it a little bit and even see behind there sometimes that there was water damage on the drywall, or in some cases, you're going to see mold back there. Right. But the bowing effect that comes with this is not just the home separate settling, it's literally water damage. Now, places that we're going to see this a lot of times in thinking of those five rooms in the finished rooms, bedrooms, living rooms, dens, all these areas that don't really have their own plumbing supply. It's. Are they sharing a wall with a bathroom? Is it underneath a window? What's in the room directly above it? Right. These different areas all are going to give you tiny clues that, hey, you know what? There may have been a water event here at some point that ultimately caused this Boeing, but at the end of the day, likely a mold problem behind or within those spaces because it wasn't appropriately addressed. Okay. Now this is another difficult one, I would say, but cracking and peeling is something we see a lot of times in heavier water damage environments that weren't properly dried from like a newer building perspective. And then a lot of times we see it in older buildings, which is. Which is where I think a lot of this idea that it. It's just old paint, don't worry about it, kind of came from versus, hey, that was water damage at one point, and they had a bubble that formed inside of that water inside of that paint, and then it broke as it dried. It got super brittle, and that's usually what the problem is. Or there's some sort of temperature difference going on within the wall cavity that's creating the paint become to become wet, then dry or cold and hot through the change of seasons and make the material of the actual paint become more brittle. All in all, what this is a sign of is almost like a rot that could be happening within the space. Right. So if you're seeing this cracking, this. This peeling of paint, good chance old damage happened within that space and ultimately needs to be further inspected. Another big one in this one is going to be rust and efflorescence. Rust is fairly easy. People kind of get that. Right. It's a fairly easy coloring to see when you have metal around. The hard part in finished rooms is that typically these. These nail heads that we're showing here in this photo, they're hidden. They're hidden behind that baseboard molding to make it look nicer. Right. So this is actually somewhere where the baseboard molding was pulled away. And you could kind of see there's a little bit of black right there. Actually, guys, that's just dust. That wasn't even mold. Right. The problem was interior in the wall. And this was actually something from an exterior water event that had happened. And the moisture was stuck inside the. In the wall cavity here. But if you see rusty nail heads behind a baseboard molding, or let's say you have carpet, and you have that carpet tacking that holds the carpet down, and you move that carpet away, and all those. Those little nails on that tacking are rusted, that's going to be a sign of water damage. And the. The confusing part, I think, that people think through this process is, well, why is the drywall not looking like this or this or this? Right. Because it may be a different type of moisture. Moisture comes in a variety of different forms. It comes as a liquid. Like we all think about moisture, where all of a sudden all this water comes out of a pipe and, oh, my God, it flooded my basement. Can happen. It also comes in a gaseous form. Right. In higher relative humidity. Okay. And it can condensate, which is still liquid, but not as much. So that's what's going on in an environment like this, where it's more. Higher relative humidity. Right. Where there's moisture within the air. That can create environmental conditions that. Let's say you have a cold slab floor of a basement and you're heating it up in the environment. What happens to a glass of water on a warm day? It condensates. Right. So the steel, the metal nail head's going to be cooler. Water is going to form on that nail head wick into the building materials around it because our humidity is too high in that environment. Okay. And we'll talk about proper ranges and stuff that we should keep environments later in. Later in the presentation. But at the end of the day, it ultimately is a sign. Now, efflorescence, and I don't have a picture here of this, but it's fairly easy to spot. Efflorescence is a white mineral that's produced by foundation walls or stones. Sometimes you can even see this on a slab. It is noticeable. It is a. It looks like salt, right? It looks like salt. It looks like on an actual brick. It could be on brick. It could be on stone. All of this is sign of water intrusion into the environment. Example here is what we have Written down, it's a white powdery substance. It really does look like, like, like salt. If you live in an area where, where you have snow, it's it, it many times you'll see this during the winter months when they salt the sidewalks and stuff and you'll see that that chemical, the concrete or the building material. Now the final big, I'd say probably the biggest one that we see is staining. Right. Staining is just a full on sign of a water event. That's, that's easy to, to point out. Now this one's pretty significantly obvious but you can notice that a couple things are happening with this one, right. You have some swelling that's happening. You have some cracking that's happening that, that bowing effect and you have the discoloration. Okay. The discoloration is typically seen on white building materials. You can sometimes see it on raw wood in the environment. But this one is always going to, going to be an easier one to spot on baseboards. It's going to be an easier one to spot on door framings, white ceilings, you know, around windows. Many times we see that problem. Any plumbing areas that may be a bit older, like water cooler, water heaters, excuse me, platforms that they're on, those things over time they begin to give out and they can leak a little water and you'll see the staining effect that can happen most of the time when we test these type of things are coming back as a mold issue. So if you can master these five problems. Master understand what to look for in these five problems and understand the different environments in which to look like with them. Remember the five different room types, very easy. And the five different types of damage that we see. Then you're going to be able to point out these different hidden areas within the environment. So I want to talk about. And when I came to Kendra or Kendra was like hey, can you do this presentation on hidden problems? She said and throw a couple of areas in there that you commonly see problems. And that's why Kendra is who she is so intuitive to talk through this because is really two spaces that we see it the most. Now granted there's other areas in the house, but if you think about where water spends the most time, which is in our kitchens and our bathrooms, then we know that there's a high likelihood that it's going to be there. So let's just quickly take a look at what that means. So I'm just going to get out of this real quick. Stop sharing so you can see me and then I'M going to quickly share my screen again here. Share screen. Where are you? Okay. Kendra, can you see this?

Absolutely.

Awesome. So we'll start in the bathroom right now. If you remember, in the beginning of the presentation, we talked about the different room types within side of the main living areas of the house. And then on the right hand of that side of that graph, the number of different areas that you need to look in in order to identify those five hidden mold problems. Okay, so again, secret here in the bathroom, while we said there's 10 things you need to look at, there's actually only five that are unique to a bathroom. The rest are the same as the finished areas. Look at the baseboards. Look around the window. Right. Look at these. Look at the ceilings. But let's just take a look at some sink vanities and kind of run through this quickly. I'm not going to spend too much time on each of them, but I want you to get an idea of each of these different areas. So the sink and the vanity are probably top notch. We find problems under there all the time, mostly because we shove a bunch of garbage under there to store it. Right. And to hide it. And what happens is, over time, these things slowly drip and it gets down underneath there. That's why it's so important to have coverings for the base of your sink cabinetry, so that if things do leak, it's not impacting the actual materials, but being caught by some sort of a basin within that environment. Okay, so when you're looking at a vanity, you want to take a look at a couple of key areas. The outside of the vanity, at the base of it, underneath the vanity, looking up at the sink, at the base of it itself and on the sides and then at the top of it, around the grout area, because that's many times how water gets in. Okay, so the same premise is going to apply right here. You see some separation. Okay. Again, look at this. The slight nature of the bubbling. And look at it from this angle where the light is being shined. If that light wasn't there, we wouldn't even be able to see that. Okay, again, here's a really easy one to see, but hard to really see it from this angle. But when you shine that light on the side, it's a lot easier to see. Okay. Looking behind the vanity, sometimes vanities will have a gap back here. But look at the backside of this thing. Right. Look at all that water damage. And this is that press particle board we were talking about. When that water gets in there, Mold is. Grows very easily within that space. This is actual mold on the vanity. And. And this is significant water damage on the side of a vanity. Okay. So I'm going to kind of skip down to the sink area here. So the way that a lot of these sinks work is that they're actually placed inside and they're grouted. Okay. Grout, Great for protecting moisture from getting into particular areas. But over time, they will mold or. Okay. So you really need to check around the base of it to see, number one. Do you have any infractions, or is it a place where mold is growing? Okay, so here's another way. On the top of the sink that is grouted. Again, here, top of the sink, where it can be growing toilets, is the next big one in the bathroom. It usually will grow in a couple of areas. Toilet tank itself behind the wall around the toilet or on the floor. That's where the water is going to be. So literally pop that toilet tank off. Look at this. Okay. Reason being, you have a tank of water under there. It doesn't mean that the mold in that toilet is the problem in the house. This is one thing people always ask me. Why are you checking the toilet tank? I don't live in that toilet tank. No, you don't. We know that. But when you flush the toilet, what happens? Air needs to suck in because all that water is dropping into the toilet, disturbing the mold that's in there. And it's typically a bigger sign of a problem with the home. Okay, so just some more examples of that. You know, sometimes it will grow on the back, but it could also grow on the plumbing inserts within there. If you see that there right now, around and behind the toilet, is something that blows people's mind all the time. These tanks, depending on the ventilation within there, will condensate, and sometimes that can rub up against the wall and cause that to get wet and mold can form. So you want to look around the actual toilet tank itself. Again, baseboard moldings. Look at the swelling on this. We talked a lot about this. That typically happens because underneath here is a ring where all the sewage can come out. Okay. And that, if it's not sealed properly, will leak water into the surrounding building materials or areas. And there is also a fresh water supply back there that could leak from time to time. So this is what it could. Look behind some of those areas. Here's that fresh water supply that I was talking about. Look at the rust on this. Look at the efflorescence. Right. This is it. On a. On a wood floor, a lot harder to see than you see on stone here. Right. But there is dark discoloration. Look at the rust on the bolt for the. For the toilet. These are all the signs that we're talking about. Okay, I'm gonna skip forward here to the shower and tub. The shower and tub require quite some time. Okay. There's a lot of places that things can happen. So let's start from the top. You know, usually what we see up in these environments, depending on the design of the shower, you can have mold that grows on the wall between the tile up to the ceiling or on the ceiling itself. This is chalked up to a ventilation problem within the bathroom walls and ceilings. Condensate water stays there. It eventually, over time, gets absorbed by the building material. The next one is the shower head itself. Right. It is spewing water out so it can leak, it can grow mold on the shower head. Gotta be cleaning that thing on a regular basis. Then you've got the tile and the grout work and the soap holder. All areas where grout is used to prevent moisture from getting through to the building materials behind there. But like I said earlier with the sinks, grout fails over time. So you need to make sure you're properly doing that. Checking over here as well, around the handle, the spigot to the tub. And then the big one is the surrounding areas outside of what we call the enclosure. This is the enclosure. Okay. And that's the walls adjacent and next to it. And you're going to take the same approach as you would with the finished basement areas. Okay. The finished living areas where you're looking for the swelling and all those things. So here are signs of damage on grout work. You can see the efflorescence behind there. You can see the separation here of the grout work. Looks like they tried to seal it up, but you can see that there's. There's cracks in that grout work. This is all area where water can get through to the other side. If you have those doors. Grout line doors a lot of times can grow mold very easily. So I'm going to skip down to around different shower heads themselves or shower spigots themselves. Again, areas where water can get in very easily. This one's missing a screw. I just noticed here. Water can get in there underneath the actual soap dishes. Look at this. Right? All spaces out. Just because you're seeing mold on the outside, the moisture is getting into that building material behind there. Okay. And this is on the outside of the tub. Here's the staining, the cracking, the swelling that we've talked about. So you want to look in these key areas on adjoining walls. Bubbling is a great example of bubbling here. Okay. And this is the top of the showers that we were talking about. There's going to be some sort of a ledge. Moisture's building up and dripping down and forming. Okay, so I'm going to quickly mention just tub accesses. If you have access into a bathtub, it's always good to open that up and look at the staining on the different building materials in these spaces. Rust damage, water damage here. Okay, two more and then we'll quickly jump over to kitchen. So you ventilation, which is key in a bathroom to move that moisture outward. Typically it comes in two forms on a window. That's the oldest school version of ventilation. But if you're not opening it up, condensation will form or it can become a problem in and of itself. So look for damage on and around the window, even in the grout work. These are different supply vents that can rust within the bathroom. If you have air conditioning, it can build up. If you're taking super hot, steamy showers and not actually letting the bathroom ventilate, it will begin to rust. And that's going to be a sign of a mold issue. Take a look at this inside the vent itself. Exhaust fans are great at sucking air out, as mentioned, but they build up a dust. Dust is a food source with mold. It's wet, it's moist in that bathroom. You need to be cleaning this on a regular basis. Here's a really old and gross one for you, Kendra. And then depending on where you're located, same thing can happen with radiator heats, heaters. So another point of heating or a bathroom up can rust very easily. Okay, so again, all signs of problems. The final are going to be fixtures. And I think this is one of the most overlooked things in our industry is changing out Your filters should be done yearly. They're not too hard to do. You unscrew this with a, with a wrench and you can buy these things off Amazon, their filters just look it up. Look at the shower heads that, that really should be cleaned. You know, some of this is hard water, but you a little white vinegar, you let it soak. You do that on a regular basis, you're going to really extend the life of this. So I'm going to stop there and just quickly send over to to jump over to kitchen. But before I do, Kendra, did you have any questions on what I went through so far.

No, this is great. And I think you hit it on the head when, you know, once we understand what we're looking for, for it's. It's not rocket science. It's just understanding, you know, how mold grows and. And where we want to be spending our time. So. Yeah, show us. Kitchen.

All right, so kitchen area. Again, similar to the bathroom, only actual two places you need to look outside of the general areas. Okay. So the first is a sinking cabinet. I'm not going to beat this one because it's very similar to a vanity you're going to be looking for. Okay. But again, utilizing the angles of the flashlight is going to help things show more. Here's staining. You know, part we talk about the leaking of the pipes, but the contents underneath are sink. The cleaning supplies. They have water in them and they leak over time, so they themselves can become a source of problems. This is the backside of the sink. These sinks, when they're put in, they're actually screwed in from the bottom and then grouted. And so this is water coming in from the backside of the sink. So you may not see it on the base, but it could be water damage up here. That's why it's important to look upward into the sink. Okay. Some staining and buckling on here. This is mold underneath and behind a cabinet. Okay. These different holes where water lines come in and out, what's underneath and behind these areas are so important to peek into. So I'm going to kind of skip ahead here because we did vanities with the bathrooms and move on to appliances, which again is another major overlooked one. Appliance driven areas that we typically see. Refrigerators and dishwashers. Okay. Why? Because typically they have water running to them. Sometimes they don't. If you have a refrigerator that doesn't do ice machine or water, there's still condensation that forms. So let's take a look at the dishwasher first. There's typically subtle signs on the exterior as these things age. The seals on the outside fail, they drip, maybe even a little bit of water. The water line going in or the drain line going out behind here maybe gets knocked loose when you're opening and closing the door, and they can become problems. So always look at the surrounding areas, the flooring, the cabinetry around them. Are you seeing bubbling, buckling, staining within those spaces? Can you pull the dishwasher out safely and look around it? Because those can be big signs. Take a look at along the side here. Okay, now moving on. To the interior of it. Again, these seals that form here, they fail. And so you have hot pressurized water inside this dishwasher and cool environmental air on the outside. What happens, Condensation is going to form in those areas and molds going to grow. Okay, so over to the refrigerator, it's going to be very similar. If you could pull it out, it's always better because you're going to see some of the water damage around it are on the sides of it. So always look at the surrounding areas for that staining, bubbling, buckling. Here's a real gross one. Underneath these refrigerators, you have these. This is one right here, a drip pan that forms from condensation. There's a machine in there that's running kind of like an air conditioning unit, smaller version of it, and so it drips. Pulling this out regularly and cleaning it is really important and could be a sign of a problem if there's a lot going on. The other big one that's missed are the seals. I mean, this happens so often with refrigerators because it's used so much. They open, they close, the seals just fail over time, and mold will grow in those spaces. The other one, and I. I'm. I'm just scarred from being in this industry for. For the amount of time, I will never use a water dispenser or an ice dispenser from a refrigerator. I don't care how new it is, because the water and ice just sits in there. And 90% of the time, when you look up into your dispenser, you're finding a problem. All right, so two main areas where you can go in and take a look around and pretty immediately find any issues. Kitchen and bathroom. I'm going to jump back over to the presentation here and the. The back half of this. Are you seeing the presentation now?

No, just your files.

Just my files. All right, let's go here and try this again. How about now? No, you're not. This is. Let's try this again. All right, here we go. Now I got it.

There we go.

There we go. Okay, so we talked about the two key room types. I'm gonna mention this really quickly. Cause I think it's really important. Visual aspects of finding hidden problems are great, but depending on what your goal is, testing is needed to really achieve that goal. It's kind of like knowing that you shouldn't eat gluten if you're. If you know, you don't feel well. But going and confirming that you may have celiac disease is important because it could be expanded beyond that. Right. And so we're identifying all these hidden cues. So ultimately these areas should be tested. And Kendra and I have actually done a presentation on testing methods and stuff for Change the Air. And it's a really great one if you haven't seen it, if I do say so myself. Go watch it. I think it's awesome. And it dives more into how to develop the appropriate testing plan for your goal. You know, if you're a renter, if you're a homeowner, if you're leaving, if you're staying, if you're litigation, whatever it is, we really break down how to develop the proper testing methodology around that. And I wanted to reinforce it here because having data is going to drive the next steps in the decision making process on your goal. So that's all I'll say about this. Make sure you go take a look at it. And I'm going to move on to secret number three, how to prevent molds. Okay. Before I get into this, I'm going to say this with a asterisk. If you do all these things, it doesn't mean that you're not going to have a problem. There's a saying, things happen, right? You fill in the first word there. But you could have all. You could do all these things and things will still happen. But these are going to help you be ahead of the curve in that. And the second thing is reflecting back on what we talked about earlier. Just because it's dry doesn't mean it's gone. Okay, so let's jump into this. So first, keep it dry, right? You have to keep things dry. It's going to be key to making sure that you're getting rid of or preventing any problems. We talked about controlling moisture controls the problems. So what does that mean? That means in subgrade areas, basements, crawl spaces, we got to keep the relative humidity low, bringing in dehumidification, keeping it, you know, between 30 and they say 30 and 50%. I like to see basements lower than 40% relative humidity. Okay. And that's going to shift with season. That's going to be. If something happens that doesn't mean let it dry naturally 24 or 48 hours, you got to get on it and you got to try and dry out that building material as quick as possible. Here's what we talked about here. In basements and building materials, always be aware of the five signs of hidden mold growth. If you're seeing these things are going to be issues, you got to act quickly on it avoid dust and debris is something that I think people always just go, it's dust. No, the spores that we release into the air fall and become our dust dust. And in high relative humidity, mold proliferates within the dust in those environments and eats the dust. Because there's other things, there's insect fragments and particles and all this gross stuff. And so you, you want to avoid heavy dust. So cleaning on a regular basis is so important. And the more debris and contents and all these other stuff we have in our house, the more dust is going to accumulate. So implementing a regular cleaning schedule, hands down, most important thing you can do, right? HEPA vacuum. If you want to go beyond hepa, there's something called ULPA U LPA vacuuming that's even higher standard than HEPA for vacuuming surfaces off. But at least at a minimum, get a hepa. All that means is it's when it's exhausting air out of the of the vacuum, it's capturing a certain amount that's coming back into the environment. So, so vacuum means key wet wiping, not just dry dusting to really get things off of surfaces. And part of this is things beyond cleaning that you may do yourselves. So we talked a little bit about exterior, right? Taking out window screens, wiping down window ledges, inside window tracks, cleaning those. I do them at the change of every season. When it is time, once a year at a minimum for me to start opening windows again, I go around and I clean all. I have somebody clean all my window windows, the screens, the tracks, everything needs to get done. Changing the filters on your H vac systems and ventilation systems on a regular basis. Standard rule of thumb, minimum three months. Now, there are certain purifiers and things that you can get that will extend that life. But you need to be doing that again back on the exterior. Forgot to mention this as well. On those spaces, power washing. Power washing on areas that aren't getting sunlight because moss mold will grow in those different areas. And keeping up with that, I typically tell people to do that on the summer month side of things. When there's that change of season again, it's a little hotter out, things are drier a little bit more often and easier to control. And the final one is a use of technology to warn you of problems. And I don't think there's enough of this going on. We all have our air purifiers and things to help reduce what's in the air. Some of them are real fancy that have meters built into them that will detect the changes of poor air quality. But those aren't really the cutting edge, I would say, that are going to warn you they're not detecting everything. So it's good to have air purifiers, but there are things you can do to get ahead of the water damage. So we talked a little bit about putting pads or rubber silicone underneath the sink. There's actual metal ones that can cover the base of the sink. So if things hit, they're caught. They're not getting into the wet building materials. There are actual alarms you can get off Amazon that you put underneath high water areas or around high water areas, like washing machines underneath the sinks, water heaters that will some tie to your app, to your phone, but they'll send an alarm out. If a water hits down there, they'll send an alarm out getting an RH reader or relative humidity, a homographer. Put it in the basement or crawl space. Put it in your living areas. Like bathrooms, you can get super fancy. And when those get to a certain point, they'll kick on a dehumidifier, which is something you should always have in your basements and your crawl spaces. And then I'd say probably one of the bigger nice to haves is going to be an actual flow meter that attaches to your pipes where your water gets pipes put into your house. Flow is a brand that I've seen a lot of clients use. It gauges water pressure in your home. So if you have a major drop in water pressure over a certain amount of time, it'll actually cut the water off to the house. So it minimizes the amount of water that's coming out of a pipe. So if you're living in a home that's built 20, 30 years ago, copper piping, these things get pinholes. Okay. I've had it in my own house. And so having that extra step that it would have noticed a continuous drop in pressure, it would have shut my water off sooner. It wouldn't have caused as much damage as it did. Okay, so big rule of thumb here. The first one, if you see something, do something about it. Okay? That's number one. Number two. Number two with this, regular cleaning is a big, important one. Keeping it dry, cleaning with a regular basis, and then using technology to take that extra step. So that's it for me. Kendra, I don't know why you love listening to me talk so much, but you've asked me to do this again, and I would love to do it again with you. And I'm just so glad that this information is Being talked about and it's getting to. To people that need it. So thank you for being the champion for change the air and getting this whole thing put together.

No, I absolutely love this. Thank you so much for coming back. There was so much helpful information. Let me see if I have this right. 3, 3, 5. 5. So 3 secrets, 3 things. Mole needs to grow 5 different types of rooms with 5 signs of water damage. Did I get it right?

Correct. You got it right. You nailed it on the head.

A plus trying to make it easy. I do have a quick question though. So you see somebody finds these signs, who is the first person they should call if they're ready to kind of figure out what type of person are they going to start to want to connect with to get more answers?

Yeah, great question. If you're seeing this, there's an order of events in operation. I typically will say contact a mold inspection company to come out and do a thorough assessment. You don't want to jump directly to somebody that cleans up the problems in our industry. It's a conflict of interest, actually illegal in some states to do both the inspection testing and remediation on the same project. So you really want a company that's focused on one thing or the other. Right. And you don't want somebody that's a jack of all trades. You want somebody that really knows how to go through a house. So you want to start with the inspection company and then from there what they're going to do is develop the action plan on how to clean the problem, which then goes to the people that actually do the cleanup. The remediation.

No, that's super helpful. I know the first couple of times we had issues in our home, I didn't do that and I went straight to say remediation company and the outcome wasn't as good. So for anyone listening on our website, we have other interviews with Corey along with Brian Carr, Michael Strand's other IEPs. We even have a document and it's, you know, I think 19 questions to ask when vetting an indoor environmental professional. So check that out. Corey, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, let's do it again.

Absolutely. You know, we will. And for everyone listening, thank you so much for joining us. Do me a favor. If you haven't, head on over to changetheirfoundation.org and sign up for our newsletter because it really is the best way to get great interviews like this directly to your environment box. We'll see you next time. Thanks so much.