Is Mold Making Me Sick?

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this is the Dr Haley Show podcast today we’re going to talk about how to know if mold is in your home affecting your lives today’s guest is Brandon fa who owns a company in Clearwater Florida mold Solutions he’s the founder an industry leading indoor air quality company specializing in top tier remediation atomized sanitation and duck cleaning

Brandon thank you for joining me on the Dr Haley Show podcast you’re in Tampa area Clear Water Florida

that’s correct yes

I’m a little curious about that how did you end up in Tampa Florida I actually went to University of Tampa many many years ago oh did you yeah how’d you end up there and how long have you been there

so I’ve been um in Tampa Bay since 2017 and uh my wife is Venezuelan and uh she has lot of family in the Tampa Bay Area our son he’s 6 years old and we moved here with the intention of having a family with The Supporting Cast that was available in Tampa we decided that this was a good place to do it so couldn’t be happier I love it in Tampa Bay

you got there right about the good time to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan then with your quarterback what was his name that was so great

Mr Brady I believe

yeah the greatest of all time Tom Brady it’s funny because I became a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan again for those couple years and wow what a show but

it’s true it’s true we were able to make it to a few games with him playing so definitely felt like that was a fortunate experience

yeah oh that would have been awesome questions about the whole mold remediation first of all how did you get into it what happened in your life that made that important to you

initially it was just fortuitous a friend of mine asked me to come on board to help him with his company and my background was definitely not in mold you know I had worked in the construction industry at a young age cuz my dad run ran a construction company on the west coast when I was initially approached on it I actually told my friend I wasn’t interested but then he said look there’s Equity involved if you do get involved and with the baby on the way I said you know what that might be a good idea

we got going and quickly on I realized that this was a really important subject and specifically it was after my son was born at a month-old he was waking up with a really hard time breathing almost like an asthma attack 3 days in a row and my wife was pretty much ready to take him to the emergency room and at at that point in time I said look totally fine but let’s just make sure that it’s not environmental because one of the things that can occur due to mold or mold toxins is respiratory issues so I started looking for the environmental triggers and I moved this one shelving system and there was two feet up of mold twoot wide so basically 4 feet four squ feet of mold in the same room where the air handler was pulling air from and that was Distributing all throughout the house

so we fixed it handled the leak that brought about the mold in the first place cleaned up the contaminated material and the next day he slept an hour longer and he had no trouble breathing at all so that was really the point where it switched from a opportunity like a business opportunity to uh a mission and something that I felt really passionate about because I thought about what would have occurred had we taken them to the emergency room they would not have found the actual cause of the breathing issues in the first place although I don’t disagree with obviously getting treated if you need treatment but you also want to find the actual thing that’s causing it to begin with

right right yeah chances are if you go to a doctor for the symptoms they’re going to say okay well things are runny so let’s give you something to you know solidify that stuff so you’re not running so much and your drowsy will wake you up or you can’t sleep will put you to sleep they’re not getting to the cause of the problem what’s causing these allergy like symptoms

correct yes

I got some very Broad questions first because sure and a lot of my audience will have mold issues right and when they go to the doctors it seems like they’re treating them forever and ever and ever which probably means they’re not getting rid of the problem or maybe they’re stuck in their environment so before we say what can you do about the environment I’m curious about how to avoid it to begin with what are some things to look for

and I’ll give an example my wife and I were searching for a new home about five years ago and we found one we absolutely loved it was underpriced it was you know a small mansion and on a huge property much nicer than everything in the area sizewise and and the property was much larger than all the neighbors properties it was huge surrounded by this big extra area of land that was owned by the city that they could not do anything with so it was like having additional property wow

we walked in the front door and for me there was this instant sense of there’s something wrong with the air in here almost like a little bit of a burning in my nasal passage that my wife didn’t experience and there was a a fountain right in the main entryway there that was empty and turned off but I suspected okay this place in Florida which already has too much humidity mhm they were probably breeding mold and it’s probably in the walls and I happen to be sensitive to it I’m wondering could I have fixed that house and really made out well or did I do the right thing and say let’s just go look at another home

well that’s a good question I wouldn’t ever turn away from a a home because of a mold issue but it’s also because I’m extremely confident in our ability to handle any size mold issue but it also is how much money are you going to potentially have to put into it to really resolve it because if it was a slow leak and it had been going on for a while there’s a good chance that that entire bottom section of that home would need to be gutted and properly treated and then you would have to make sure that the Ducks were properly cleaned and potentially in some cases uh removed and replaced and then you would then need to do a whole home detox for that particular structure

so there’s a lot of steps that go into it and depending on the size of the home and depending on how far and wide that problem is it could be rather costly so if you’re able to get you know a credit for what it’s going to take to handl it and you’re able to get an accurate estimate which is also not necessarily an easy task especially when it comes to mold because in a lot of ways it’s the tip of the iceberg you’re actually looking at something and then you find out that it actually goes way deeper or way further

so I have the ability to handle any sort of situation with my team especially if it’s residential unless you had a pretty large credit you probably were correct to walk away from

well I do think it was built into the price of the home and they must have known something um but at the same time the other thing is is okay well how long is it going to be before I can even move into this home you know gutting I’m assuming that means removing drywall possibly taking up laminate floors and you mentioned the duck work probably almost like a complete

biblically there’s something in the scriptures that talks about bringing the priest out to inspect it after you know treatments and at some point in time they say just burn it down

that’s true it does talk about that in the B it

right so you know that that’s why I ask these things now obviously we have technology that wasn’t available then and we have scientific testing and we know what kills what um so I guess we probably have ways of avoiding burning the house down

you know it’s funny it was kind of but my wife had come up with a promotional item that she thought would be good for our company mle Solutions and it was a matchbook box of matches they would say in case mold Solutions can’t handle it right to your point it does talk about burning the house down which really hopefully that never has to happen at this at this juncture and you can find a company that properly remediates knows what to do to really make sure that all of it is gone

and that really is the task that is difficult because you’re talking about a microscopic enemy and you’re talking about mold spores that are seven microns and to put that in sort of real world perspective you can fit 10 mold spores on the tip of a human hair so the human hair is 70 microns in diameter so it’s impossible to see it with a naked eye and then the gas that it releases which tends to be poisonous is even smaller

so when we’re doing a mold remediation project we’re basically trying to get rid of and remove as much as possible something that is completely invisible and the only way to really do that is through redundancy and having multiple Avenues of removal to make sure you cover every aspect every square inch every nook and cranny of the home that could impact the air quality and you’re also dealing with certain aspects of the home that in some cases are unreachable like the middle of the Ducks so how do you deal with that and none of it is absolute

I wish there was something that was 100% handling but at this point in time I don’t know of anything that’s 100% when it comes to mold REM mediation that’s the unfortunate isn’t this unless you remove the original material but sometimes you’re talking about structural material as well so I tell clients the only way to really handle like a duck system for example completely is to remove and replace the duct system and the HVAC system now we can take an advanced approach to remediating the Ducks and cleaning the ducks that will get probably 80 % of it but even then it’s not absolute it’s not a total handleing

I understand what about people that are shopping for condos where maybe each unit has its own duck system but you have Sloppy neighbors that leave the windows open and have high humidity in Florida does it jump from one unit to the other

you know usually in the the condos they have a firewall or they have something that separates the actual units one to the next but in some cases that’s not always the way it is we’ve definitely had condos where there was damage from the kitchen of the other unit it is now moved into your unit and the only way you’re going to get them to properly handle it is by removing all of their kitchen cabinet

so what happens if they refuse

your only option at that point in time is to clean it as best as possible remove it using like hepo vacine and wipe down and treating the actual material and probably then encapsulating it then you would need to address the building envelope of the unit that you’re actually living in which I strongly recommend doing like a whole home sanitization we use a non-toxic product for that that is fantastic at removing Airborne mold spores and actually dissolving MotoX sins and then in some case we even uh double it up with an ozone treatment

the most important factor of all is what is the source locating any sort of water intrusion issues and removing the actual colonized mold CU even mold that may be the Water Source may be gone and it’s still there it can reactivate through humidity alone in some cases where it’s over 60% humidity and you’ll wind up with a problem where the mold actually starts to activate

the other aspect of it is the mold could become dry which will make it more brittle and it will release more spores and it can actually actually cross contaminate the house when it becomes dry

yeah I understand because the spores are sort of indestructible what you need a a blue flame or what kills them

they are microscopic they are of course part of the microbial Kingdom that you know was really a fungal Kingdom but in terms of dealing with microbes and microbial contaminants or pathogens it is one of those things it is Tiny and through vinegar or hydrogen peroxide you can actually break break it down and oxidize it so there will you can actually destroy them and that’s truthfully what you’re doing when you’re treating it the appropriate way

but the most important factor to keep in mind is that mold is a living breathing organism so when you attack it it actually wants to defend itself and attack back so it will release more spores and it will also release the mot Toxin and Mico is the Greek word for fungus and toxin obviously something that’s poisonous that’s released by an organic you know material

so this organic you know existence is sitting there wanting to make sure it’s territory is protected so when you spray it with bleach or you spray it down with even if it’s a product that is a better product that’s not as toxic in itself you’re still going to get some sort of a release

similar to taking you know kicking a hornet’s nest you know if you’re if you’re going to mess with a hornet’s nest you don’t want to just kick it you don’t want to just spray it with a hose you know you probably would want to put on personal protective equipment and go gently remove it you know or put it somewhere else so that you’re not agitating it and even then you know you want to have the pp the personal protective equipment or you’re going to get stung

now imagine if you’re allergic to hornets and you go ahead and you try to do that it can be really bad for the enduser

so the way that we’re doing it through removal and agitation we’re also following up afterwards with a you could call it almost like a fogging system where it lingers for about 30 minutes so that anything that is Airborne and anything that has been released by the mold the colonized mold is actually being shot into a fog that destroys it

it sounds kind of like treating a home for termites only it’s not going to necessarily get into all the cracks like treating a home for termites would which is why in some cases you have to remove flooring maybe or walls or

so I got into the industry under the impression or you know the the or company that I was part of started out as a demolition free molder mediation company and I just found out within the first year that maybe there were limitations to that process and then in fact there were major limitations when I got sick in 2019 after I had treated my house and the air samples were fantastic

and it wasn’t until my AC overflowed 6 months later so I was removing the continuous flooring and I got got to the master bedroom popped a baseboard and there was a toxic mold called kium behind the baseboard and I was like well I know what I’m looking at so I’m going to have to remove this and started to open up the walls and sure enough it went up about 2 feet and so I had two different molds that were fighting it out in my master bedroom where I thought it was a safe Zone and in actual in actuality it was a biological warfare Zone

well you said you were removing continuous flooring I’m assuming you’re talking about something like laminate floor

correct like a luxury vinyl plank

yeah and in your case because you had this instance of water damage you had made the decision okay I know what happens when you have water damage I’m getting this floor out of here

of course because they say it’s waterproof but the thing that they don’t tell you is it well what happens if you get water underneath it what if the water goes underneath the flooring well that it stays there so then you basically run the possibility of having water that can is stagnant and you know can get bacterial growth occurring microbial growth occurring and I’ve opened up enough lvp to tell you that it it definitely can get you know pathogens caught underneath and it can impact the health of the homeowner right

so I had one homeowner I had gone to this house earlier and didn’t know I had forgotten that I had been to this house earlier and had done like a water damage assessment and had been basically helping out a friend who is a real estate agent and was doing an initial inspection for her on this home um because the homeowners wanted it done so I go in there do it I say look the floors are going to need to be removed I’m detecting you know high moisture especially in this area but there’s a chance that all the flooring in this house is going to have to come out and they had wood on SLAP

I write my proposal in terms of what needs to happen and the agent basically tells him Brandon’s a little bit you know extreme don’t really worry it it’s just that old Florida smell not that big a deal right and they move ahead they move ahead and they buy the house

so 2 years later I’m at the same house not realizing it was the same house and they had put down luxury vinyl plank on top of this wood flooring they covered up the the wood flooring with the lvp and what they did was they basically put a moisture barrier on top of the wood flooring and then once it was opened up it was 80% of the home was covered in a mold called kium and it’s a very it’s a highly toxic mold and then there was some other stuff too aspergilus as well but they created a problem unwittingly unknowingly you know by putting this moisture barrier or this Vapor Barrier on top of their flooring and they had been fatigued and sick and headaches and respiratory issues for over a year and they couldn’t figure out why and once they moved out of the house all of that stuff started to dissipate within four days so the question is you know can your home make you sick and the this unquestionably and resoundingly the answer is yes

wow at what point do you actually choose to remove the luxury vinyl flooring or whatever it was called the LV lvp luxury vinyl plank or or the drywall you know are there tests you can do where you you know make a small opening and and test or

there is so probably one of the most precise methods of testing is actually doing a cavity sample behind a wall you create a hole probably the size of a pin you put a tube in there and you run your suction pump for 5 minutes or whatever it is the the inspector kind of can tell you exactly how long they want to run it for they send it to the lab and they tell you what’s going on behind the wall to whatever degree

so the a lot of testing in the methodology with which is used is they actually put a pump in the middle of the room which actually tends to be the least exposed area because the majority of the time the mold is going to be Behind the Walls under a window near pipes or something along those lines where there’s some sort of a water source the sampling methodology which we use I feel is lacking in many respects and to determine if there’s actually an issue

and then the the other aspect of it is it C certain spores are heavier than others so you might have for example stacky botus which is the technical term for black mole and that Spore is a heavy Spore so you could have it where there’s clearly black mold in large amounts of it in that room and then you do an air sample and it shows up that it’s completely clean and it’s not necessarily an accurate test at all

and then on top of it they’re really just looking for the spores when you have this testing or the suction pump it’s a Spore trap so the thing that actually makes people sick is the MotoX and the mot toxins are not tested in that type of sampling methodology

now the mot toxin is the toxins that are released by the mold spores themselves or the mold colony

colony yeah so you basically have three stages of mold to kind of be aware of the colonized mold which you can see clearly it’s like fuzzy or it’s black or it’s white or I mean it comes in so many different colors honestly it’s like the rainow but you can see it then there’s the spores that it releases that the majority of time you cannot see and then it’s the mot toxin which is the poison or the substance it’s almost like a chemical that mold releases to defend itself and it’s like a skunk or a snake it’s got Venom or it’s got a a perfume or a gas that it releases to you know to fend off people that might attack it

I’m wondering if that’s what I smelled when I walked into that home then if it was the Mot and not the mold

very possibly I mean it’s some sort of a VOC it’s some sort of a volatile organic compound right microbial volatile organic compound that you’re smelling

and the thing that’s interesting is that you can’t always smell it you know like when it was in my master bedroom there was definitely no smell there was no visual signs it was just not something and I had done the air samples that came back clean and even as a professional mold guy there was no indication that it was

I had even because I was fatigued and because I had a pain in my chest that wouldn’t go away because I was getting fevers once a month and had been sick for about six months I thought you know is this mold and I did a test um through Mosaic at the time it was uh Great Plains laboratory they have a microt toxin test so I did this test and I came back highly elevated in a number of different Micco toxins and I thought because the air samples came back clean that it must be from going into other people’s you know moldy homes

sure enough once I opened up the walls and found what I found it was clear that at least half of it was because of being in my own my own bedroom and the the proof is that within three weeks of removing the contaminated material and doing the detailed cleaning and the micro cleaning within 3 weeks 90% of my symptoms went away

all right I want to clarify something um because when we’re talking about testing did you just say you were tested as as opposed to the air in your place so it was a a test as a person I’m sick what’s wrong with me do I have mot toxins

correct so there’s a number of different companies that do it but it’s a urine sample and I think there’s some blood s blood testing that you can also do that will give you some sort of a concept if you’re being exposed but in my case I did a test with Mosaic DX um.com or mosaic Diagnostics and you basically you know through a practitioner um they basically give you the test you pee in a cup and then you send you freeze it and send it off to the lab and then they you know within a couple weeks tell you you have this amount of MOT toxins and this is considered elevated or this is considered within a normal range

so you know for me you know 5 to 50 was considered elevated I was at 1,215 so I was like off the charts in one particular MotoX in

in some cases the people that are have a difficult time detoxing they actually might even hold on to it and it’s clear that they do have a mold issue there’s mold in their home but if they are one of those that don’t detox at the same speed they may not even show up in the microtox testing that’s actually for the human body compared to the testing that gets done in the home

I know there’s a big facility out there spanogle Wellness near you I don’t know if you’ve run into that Dro

yeah if you go to their website the first thing they have on there is mold you know people that we help people that are have been exposed to mold and then other things like lime and um all those weird symtomatic things that tend to linger and you know people struggle with year after year

I did notice you also have a perfect five-star rating on Google with 175 reviews very well done there

I like to think I do a good job

I know what it takes to be a 4.9 let alone a 5.0 so well done

we do have one two star review uh although we worked on getting it rectified he just wasn’t you know every once in a while a technician has a bad day and truthfully um I think that our rating comes from our willingness to communicate and resolve issues because I would love to say we’re as perfect as our ratings look but we live on planet Earth and things happen right

but we we we strive to do an exceptional job we are Health Centric molder mediation companies and with my own personal Journey on this with my son and with myself I really try to make it clear to my technicians that hey look this is the health of people that is at stake and uh we’re not just a normal remediation company so we have to up our game

absolutely absolutely every challeng is an opportunity to learn how to do things better the next time

so whenever I’m shopping for a company I like to go to the reviews and reverse order them and start with the worst

yes and for my company we don’t have that perfect 5.0 we have some that are less than five stars but it’s usually like I gave you a four because your aloe vera doesn’t taste good I can’t I can’t fix that I’m sorry

yeah you can’t fix it yeah absolutely

it is what it is we we sell something right from the plant but uh so it’s almost impossible to have perfect five point0 across the board I get that

we definitely work on it no doubt about it

I’m curious about some of the treatment I’m not going to say chemicals because you didn’t mention chemicals you talked about vinegar for example and you mentioned the ozone right is treating with vinegar the same as treating with bleach obviously vinegar is acidic bleach is alkaline so they’re opposite ends do they both work or is one better than the other

I I would never use bleach to treat a mold situation bleach releases toxic fumes in itself so you’re adding toxicity to the house rather than removing it and the whole goal is to make the home as safe and clean as possible safe and healthy as possible so I’m always trying to use products that I would be willing to use in my own home you know and I have a six-year-old and a 5-year-old and a boxer you know so I want to make sure that everybody’s okay my wife and myself included

the other aspect of it is you’re never going to aize bleach right to me just the sound of that is terrifying uh as far as an option

so the way that we do it with you know air azing our product or creating a a fog is it needs to be potent enough that it’s going to break down the mold spores and help to dissolve mot toxins but safe enough that you know you can be back in the home 3 hours afterwards

and we’ve treated over 3,000 homes in Tampa Bay and really have a pretty impeccable record in terms of the satisfaction with our clients and also the the feedback and the feedback that we get on a continual basis is I had the best night sleep that I’ve had in years the home felt fresh first time I was able to take a deep breath the air felt lighter these types of things

I had one of my clients who her husband runs a really well-known a Wellness Center here in in clearw they were doing a duck change out and the Ducks had quite a bit of uh contamination and growth in the Ducks and while they were doing the change out it basically cross-contaminated the home and she had this cough that would not go away it was this lingering cough you know like this dry cough

she said I need you to come in and do an a quick handling for me and we did it I reached out to her the next day hey just wanted to check in on you she said the cough is gone you know

so you know we’re not doctors of course we’re just mold people but when I look at our purpose and our job we’re helping people because if you can’t clean the house or if the house is toxic those people are going to have health issues no matter how good the doctor is you know they can do all kinds of stuff to basically repair the body fix the body or treat the body but it’s similar to like if you know your hand is burnt and it got burnt by putting it on the stove and you go back home every night and you put it back on the stove it’s never going to heal so similarly if your home is what’s causing the issues due to toxicity or environmental triggers or bacteria or whatever it may be if you keep going back into the toxic environment you’re never going to get a recovery

Brandon I got some uh questions about the business side a little bit

okay how often is Insurance involved

that’s an intriguing question truthfully the majority of my business is actually retail we focus on a particular clientele that is uh looking for um Solutions in terms of air quality and the insurance end of it is going to cover a water damage event so whether it’s a leaky pipe or a leaky roof or something that occurred that is tangible that you can see it was at a particular time this is what happened that’s usually what they cover

so although we do do some insurance work it’s about 10% of the work that we’re doing is actually Insurance it it’s involved and it can be but the unfortunate part is a lot of the companies that work on an insurance basis especially if they have a relationship with the insurance company they are working for the insurance company and it’s probably similar in the healthcare industry that they are going to cover more traditional methods that are not necessarily kind of your holistic or or alternative approaches

and that’s unfortunate because that’s really where you get to kind of root cause and what’s actually the issue

so we do some of that work but it’s not our Mainline at all we really want to be far more thorough than what the real estate or excuse me the insurance is going to basically want to cover and they basically cover it at a real estate transaction actional level like the testing that they do is based on the air samples which are not necessarily a good yard stick it’s just a different level of remediation to be honest with you

you talked about ageback which I’m assuming stands something along the lines of air conditioning um

heating ventilation and air conditioning

okay okay good how do you deal with it and why can some mold remediation companies not properly handle the hbac system

another great question in the State of Florida legislatively they created a massive problem or potentially it was a good call I’m not 100% sure because HVAC is a technical subject mold is a technical subject you do not want amateurs performing work on those systems

but in the State of Florida an HVAC person cannot say that they handle mold it’s actually against the law and it’s against the law for a mold person to go into an HVAC unit

so my company mold Solutions also has a sister company called real duck cleaning and it’s a company I own both of them and uh in one of them I have a partner who has been doing HVAC stuff for 25 years and he trained all of our guys on how to do proper remediation on an HVAC un or an air handler in the ducks in the whole system so we’re we’re really one of the few companies in Florida that actually have both licenses to be able to do it

the HVAC unit is really the heart of the home and those Ducks is what those are the veins kind of feeding the rest of the body if you will or basically supplying what it needs so when you when that’s contaminated it’s absolutely going to impact the air quality as a whole

so you can’t do a proper mold remediation job without addressing the ducks in my opinion because if you had a hot spot that was releasing mold spores and mot toxins and impacting the health of the home and the people that are living in the home who’s to say that that didn’t cross-contaminate with the various pressures that a home gets put under on a daily basis whether it’s the bathroom fan going on or the kitchen hood fan going on or doors opening and closing you’re going to have pulling and pushing that takes place which these things are microscopic so the air flow alone can add to cross-contamination

so we always address The Hot Spot the Ducks and then the entire body in that entire building envelope to have a a complete solution and that’s what I tell you know my guys look at mold Solutions we provide the complete solution because there’s not that many people that are doing all of this but it’s because of the indoor air quality as I as our priority you know that is our that is our product that we’re trying to give over and turn over to our clients

how do you feel about the ozone makers that attach to the HVAC unit

you know some people don’t mind ozone um I get a a slight irritation from ozone especially if it’s on a continual basis

now with that said I actually am a fan of ozone as a as a tool when it’s used appropriately and properly

so for example when we do like a full ozone treatment on a home we’re wanting to all people pets and plants have to be out of that home during our treatment um and there’s also certain types of oone that you want to use versus others okay

so there’s two different types of ozone one the corona ozone is the the better ozone we use it but it’s when nobody’s in the home

so when you have the purification devices it continually put out ozone I don’t particularly like it because it can cause irritation for some people

and then what I would recommend is I do think the purification devices are fantastic and Ne and necessary the ones that do like ionization where they put out positively charged or negatively charged molecules that make the other particles in the air stick together I think that’s great uh I think that UV is fantastic and it’s necessary to have in a system

there’s other you know units that and there’s different types and different technologies that each brand has but overall I think having a purification device in your HVAC or in your air handler is really vital

and you know be before I forget you actually for your listeners they can actually download um it’s a free download it’s an ebook right it’s a mold ebook preventing mold in a humid climate you know mold living preventing mold in a humid climate

so you can find that at mold ebook.com and it basically has 15 sections that goes over that exact point like what would be for example what would be the ideal setup for purification in your air handler

you know cuz if you don’t have it your your chances of getting a moldy mess is a lot higher and it will happen a lot faster you know so it’s one of those things it’s not a matter of if it’s a matter of when when you’re dealing with humid air you’re dealing with porous material and you’re dealing with mold spores you know in basically a swamp area right there’s a good chance that you’re going to wind up with mold in your Handler in your air handler and in your Ducks

so these purification devices the UV I would put that on the coils and on the blower wheel and then the purification device I would put that in the box that connects the air handler to the Ducks themselves called a plenum so I would plug that in and it’s one of those things that is very important for preventative uh maintenance

and these are things that don’t typically come with an air conditioning system when you have a new system installed in your home I’m guessing

they do not and they should and whoever comes up with a um an HVAC system that dries itself out you know and figures out how to put together a plenum without the poorest material is going to be a very wealthy individual

because it’s a it’s a massive problem and I would say it’s probably in 80% of the homes in uh in Florida and most people have no idea that it’s actually sitting there lingering in their mixing boxes

the so basically you have the air handler itself in most homes you have uh a split unit where you have the package outside the condenser then you have the package inside your house usually in a closet and attic or in your garage

okay and that connects to the Ducks so in that box you have the coils that get very cold right and then you have the blower wheel that is basically blowing that cold air throughout your home and that’s usually connected by a box called plenum

so the plenum then you know has these ducks that usually Flex duck sometimes metal duck sometimes duckboard that are connected to it and it shoots off into the various rooms

and in some cases you have another square box or a tri triangular box that is an offshoot that shoots off other arms into other parts of the rooms and those mixing boxes are made of duckboard and it’s fiberglass porous material and those tend to be a real safe haven for microbial growth

so we see a lot of those that are highly highly contaminated and you basically are breathing in a mold called cladosporium all through the night while you’re sleeping or while you’re in the home and most people have looked at cladosporium as a mold that’s not particularly very concerning yet Recent research has determined it does release a myotoxin it does lead to respiratory issues it does lead to skin issues and it does you know cause toxicity issues that you really don’t want to be dealing with

well this has been a very informative um nearly hour is there anything that I missed that was important um that you wish I had asked

I mean you had some great questions I think that you know this industry is really in its infancy in terms of the actual understanding um many of the traditional um you know remediators or guys that have been doing it for a while they got their training early on and you really just like anything advances and Technology advances you have to keep digging deep and looking for the most effective ways to solve the problems

and um I think that’s crucial for any industry but when there’s it’s one of those things that there’s not a lot of awareness on it you know it kind of goes un undetected or un people are not seeing what they don’t know what they don’t know right and that is such an important element

I I would also like your listeners to know that there’s a group called um mold and talk healing your home and Body on Facebook that is a fantastic resource

you know I have no affiliation with the the group but I um have seen the the administrator for that particular group her name is uh Kendra Seymour I believe I’ve never met her um

but I can tell you that she’s trained in the same level of remediation that I got trained in there’s not that many of us that were trained on remediation for sensitized individuals

and although she’s not professional remediator because the pass the subject is so such a passion for her she’s actually taken it that next step she’s actually the um founder of the change the air foundation and she’s put this resource together and there’s so much information about mold in the proper remediation techniques and I can tell you from what I’ve seen that it’s a pretty good resource in terms of information for people that might be dealing with a mold problem

okay and I’ll make sure that there’s a link to that group uh below this content whether it’s the video on YouTube or the the actual podcast on iTunes or wherever you’re seeing it if you’re on the blog page links will be below in the resources area we’ll have a link to the ebook for the 15 tips and probably to your website too

is it easy to get you to come out and test a home you know if we’re in the Tampa Bay area

so we really specialize in the remediation so in the State of Florida you can’t actually test and remediate on the same property within 12 months

so we have a number of different inspectors that we work with with you know and help we go there with them and make sure that nothing’s getting missed so we put two sets of eyes on it and we also then get a good idea of what we need to handle if the report does come back elevated or hot

but it’s it’s really important when you’re choosing an inspector to pick one that knows where to look what to look for is not just kind of putting a pump in the middle of the room is doing direct samples on top of air samples and they might even want to you know partake in some sensitive testing as well you know

and the the cutest form of testing that I know of is a k9 going in and sniffing for mold in your home

so it’s actually pretty

yeah it’s a pretty effective way because you know it’s very difficult for the traditional sampling methods to get to you know all the spots in a room quickly right but the canine has been trained with his sniffer to basically pick up smells that we might not be able to pick up so that’s one way of also doing it

ah I want one of them to come to the house

yes that’s great that’s great I love it

Brandon hey thank you so much um I’m truly blessed by the time you spent with me today and I know my listeners will be also

I appreciate you having me on honestly anybody that’s doing this type of work and making people aware of it it’s a it’s a fantastic [Music] thing