Mold

Do you have concerns that there may be mold in your home or business? Most of our competitors will pray on your fears to convince you to spend your hard-earned money to solve a problem you may not even have. Our goal is to educate you and eliminate the fear so you can make sensible informed decisions for your home or business and budget.

Golden Glove addresses potential Mold issues with the following:

1. That we protect the health of the occupants and the value of the asset.

2. That we remediate the mold as fast as possible, the least invasively as possible, the least expensively as possible.

3. We accomplish this by following the IICRC (Institute of Cleaning and Restoration Certification) standard S520.

You are not sure if you have mold or not?

1. Have you had an unchecked water issue in the space? You can have a water issue and never have mold. But you will never have a mold issue and not have a water issue.

· Leaking water or waste line?

· Water from the outside in?

· HVAC leak?

· Uncontrolled humidity?

2. Can you see what you think are mold colonies?

· Take a flashlight and hold it parallel to the flat surface and shine it down the surface. Does it illuminate like a mountain range growing off the surface? Mold grows like coral and will look just like that in a smaller form.

· As a point of fact, visual inspection is only an indicator for further investigation. As an example, just because you see mold and it is Black does not mean you have Black Mold (Stachybotrys chartarum). There are over 150,000 strains of Mold and many of them are Black but are not as nearly as harmful as Stachybotrys chartarum.

3. Have occupants of the structure shown adverse health issues while in the structure that seems to clear up when they are out of the structure?

· Use your nose and eyes. If something smells or looks likes mold or mildew there is a good possibility that there is something to consider. If you have allergic-type, itchy watery eyes, stuffy nose, headaches are reactions in the potentially affected area that seem to improve when you leave that structure is a potential indicator of mold.

· Have occupants been dealing with reoccurring respiratory illnesses?

At this point we have a few options to establish a clear starting line and finishing line:

1. Per IICRC S520 Standards an Independent Hygienist can be brought in to perform surface and or air quality testing. This is a sampling that is sent to a lab to provide documented proof of the presence of mold. If this test comes back positive, this will establish a starting line and confirm that remediation will need to be performed. Once remediation is complete a second test would be performed to confirm the success of the remediation efforts.

· The goal of remediation is not to make a space sterile, rather to make the mold equal to or less than the mold counts outside. The standard is to take a sample in the potentially affected area, an unaffected area, and outside. The results from the inside are then compared to the outside. As an example, if you mold spores A and B if A is outside and equal or less in all areas inside, this is considered a pass. If you have A is outside and A is equal or less inside, but you have B inside and none outside that is a fail and would require remediation.

2. Based on a visual inspection it could be agreed upon that what looks like mold is and will be remediated with the same standards. Some will want to agree that once the remediation steps are completed that a visual inspection using is deemed as complete. This is not a recommended protocol. We strongly suggest that once the project is complete an air quality test is performed to confirm the success of the remediation.

If you have further questions please feel free to Call Golden Glove for a free phone consultation.