Vancouver Mold Inspection – What’s Included

Mark: Hey, Mark Bossert from Top Local Lead Generation with David Fairbairn of Fairbairn Inspections in Vancouver. How are you doing today David?

David: I’m pretty good Mark, how’re you doing today?

Mark: I’m good. So we’re going to talk about mold and what’s actually included when you do a mold inspection in the Greater Vancouver area.

David: Yes Mark, thanks for asking, so today we’re talking about mold inspection which is probably our most popular service when it comes to mold, once in a while we’ll get somebody who says, o.k. I just need this one wall sampled or whatever it is. Mold inspection is for somebody who basically wants us to come in and basically go through the entire house or the entire condo and provide you with a full report on whether or not you have mold in there and if you do the conditions that are actually causing that mold and what we do is we offer package, it’s a mold inspection and this is a full inspection using moisture equipment, we’ll be going through the whole house, we inspect the inside of the ducts, we inspect behind everything, around the windows, in the kitchen especially and we inspect for signs of mold and if we find it, then sample it. This could be done in conjunction or as a stand-alone from our air quality test and the air quality test is the other half of the equation where we sample the air inside the house and provide you with a lab report that actually says what you’re breathing inside the house. Together, if you get these two done, you’re going to have a full review on the mold conditions inside the house, whether or not it’s safe, whether or not the levels of mold in your house are elevated or if they’re just normal from normal use from say you’ve got a family of four living in a small area, you know you may have mold that’s not the buildings fault, it’s actually because you have a lot of people in there. So what I would like to Mark is to show you the inspection report, we have a sample report right here that shows you what it looks like when you receive it. I tried to actually get a lab sheet, that shows the actual results from a laboratory but they all have the address stamped on it so for privacy reasons I don’t want to do that, but I’m going to show you what an inspection report looks like. This inspection report we did for a government office in the lower mainland, you can’t say too much more than that but what they were basically were worried about is that they had mold, they could actually see it but they wanted to know how bad it was, so this is a full mold investigation and then of course it describes the, I had to remove on here but we’re actually going to on the report illustrate what the results of the sampling are. So as we go down, so basically it outlines areas of concern, in this building here, we had a very old building and they had a number of areas where water was actually ingressing through the wall cavity; can you see that on the screen Mark?

Mark: Absolutely.

David: o.k. so we’ve got water coming in through the walls here, there was actually moisture damage in several areas and our mold inspections include thermal imaging and moisture testing as well as a number of other tools that we can measure how normal the building is and where these problems are coming from. You can see on section 1.0 an outside air sample was collected and what we sent to the laboratory. So we also looked at exterior mold conditions; it’s usually not as much of a concern for owners. A lot of time you get moss or algae growth outside which is sort of normal especially on the north side of the building in our sort of rainy area, this would be something we would expect to see, you know staining and growth and we’re just going to outline these concerns for you. We had again, you know, what we talked about a few weeks ago around the windows, this is something that we really see a lot of as well as we’ve got a number of moisture problems from both from the inside of the building as well as the outside that are actually causing this mold growth buildup on the windows. The windowsills were rotting here. As you go down you can see that there’s a breakdown of on section 2.0 here reveals the presence of Stachybotrys so this is actually what we were talking about last week was the toxic black mold and we give a breakdown of the type of mold found in your house with descriptions of everything. So once we see that, we go o.k. we need to go a little bit deeper here, you know we need a mold abatement company to come in and actually hunt all this mold down and remediate it which can be quite expensive so this is what you need to know about especially if you are selling a property or you’re a renter or if you have a lease with landlord. This is something you really need to know.

Moisture testing, we’ve a number of moisture concerns in this property here as well as the bottom of the walls was saturated with water right next to the bathroom and what it turned out was they had a huge sewage backup a couple weeks before and the owner never had really dealt with it. When you get a flood like this you have to get a professional restore it, you just can’t fix the problem and wait for it to dry out because first of all you can see in the bottom of the left picture, it won’t dry out and the second thing is you can have mold growth. Mold will set up in ten to fourteen days from the initial time that it was wet; you’ll actually get mold growth in that period of time.
We can see a few other concerns; you see there was actually some food equipment in here so this is an investigation into what’s causing this. The back of this box, you know we had definite concerns with this box here in the bottom left, in the red oval, you can see the growth and water damage on the back of the box so this place got really, really wet, not only inside but through a number of leaks in the wall .

The duct work; we’re going to inspect your duct work; we have equipment to do this, snake cameras, hydrometers, things like that, that measure conditions inside the duct work. We had a few problems with the ducts that were disturbing and I think that goes to the end of the report.
So I’m going to switch that back off and head over to, can you see me again?

Mark: Yes.

David: O.k. so that’s a basic report and that’s something we would provide to you within about 24 hours from the inspection. The inspection takes about two to three hours depending upon the size of the property and we charge depending upon the size of the property. This is the full, this is the best way to determine if you have mold in your home so call us in and we’ll go through every nook and cranny in the house to provide a whole breakdown and uncover all the surprises that are actually in your home. It’s really important if you’re concerned about your health, you know if a family is living there, you have tenants if you’re renting a basement suite and they’re complaining about mold you need to bring us in so we can give you an idea about what you’re dealing with and it’s something you should give us a call about. The number is 604-395-2795 and we can also be reached at Fairbairninspections.com and give us a call and we’ll help you.

Mark: Great stuff David, so again if you’re looking for some mold, you have some concerns about mold, you want to make sure that you don’t have or do have and take the proper steps to clean it up. These are the guys to call 604-395-2795 or go to their website fairbairninspections.com. Thanks David.

David: Thanks Mark, see you again.