Can you do it yourself?
Sometimes you have to.
Take the Hernandez family. They lived near a river that had one of those hundred year floods. The river had never flooded before. They didn’t have flood insurance. Their insurance would not cover anything.
They were smart enough to know that chemicals and spraying bleach were not the answer. With help from about thirty family members and community volunteers, they pulled every cabinet in the house out, tore out drywall throughout the house to two feet high. They squeegeed the water out the front door then vacuumed up the rest. They rented dehumidifiers and carpet fans to accelerate drying. During the day they opened the windows and ran the wood fireplace. They even found a $30 moisture meter at the hardware store. They were trying to dry things to 0% moisture. I had to explain that wood absorbs moisture from the air and that 10% moisture content is considered dry. When I showed up to do a mold inspection two weeks later, I saw some dried mud but no mold anywhere except one small spot under one cabinet. These folks did a better job than most mold remediators do.(My apologies to those few good mold remediators out there.)
Mold laws are a bad thing
Note: In states such as Texas, it’s illegal for a contractor do mold remediation unless they have a mold license. This doesn’t prevent a home owner from doing their own mold remediation. The Texas mold law is the worst thing to happen to the people in Texas in terms of mold. It’s causing more harm than good.
Let’s say you’re in state with no mold laws and you have a general contractor you like and you think he can do a good job. Can he/she? Maybe. Certainly perhaps better than a lot of “professional” mold remediators. Probably not as good as those few good professional mold remediators. But if a general contractor is all you can afford, this section is for you.
Every situation is different. That’s why I offer DIY Mold Remediation Coaching — to help you decide what’s best for your home, your health, and your budget.
Scared?
No matter how much you and your contractor screw up, odds are you are doing as good or better job than some professional mold remediators. That’s how bad of shape the industry is in. If I have not worked with a company before, odds are good that I will find mold they didn’t remove. And they will blame me for finding it and complain that they never have this problem with other mold inspectors.
You want a good mold consultant to hold your hand though this. If I’m not in your neck of the woods, I suggest a CMC (Certified Microbial Consultant) from The American Council for Accredited Certification (ACAC.org). Go on their website and enter your zip code.
The downsides of using a general contractor:
- They will not have an air scrubber
- They will not know how to operate an air scrubber correctly (such that a negative air pressure is created in the work area).
- There’s always a learning curve - they won’t get it right the first time and sometimes the 2nd or 3rd.
The upsides:
- As long as they buy an air scrubber and you make sure it’s set
- up and running properly (so that a negative air pressure is created in the work area) and they use nothing but soap and water for cleaning - they can do no harm. (None I can imagine but then I can’t always imagine what they might do).
Follow these suggestions:
Have your general contractor charge their regular rate.
Buy an air scrubber. When you are done you can sell it on e-bay.
Containment is the most important part. Make sure the scrubber is set up in the work area and exhausted outdoors (typically through an opening in a window using a template made out of cardboard where a hole is cut in the cardboard for the duct to pass through). Make sure the work area/room is sealed off from the rest of the house (with plastic hung floor to ceiling) so a negative air pressure is actually created in the work area. When you turn the scrubber on you should see the plastic sucked in towards the work area.
Call a professional consultant like myself to check the containment before work starts. That is important. Do it before the contractor starts.
Most contractors are good (and fast) at tearing things out. They are bad at cleaning. You could have the general contractor do the bulk of demolition and then hire a professional mold remediator to do the sanding, vacuuming and final clean up.
Every situation is different. That’s why I offer DIY Mold Remediation Coaching — to help you decide what’s best for your home, your health, and your budget.