Hey guys before we get to the video, please click that subscribe button. Thank you. Hey guys today we're going to talk about the big bad mean word mold. That is a bad word in a lot of construction or property management or different types of fields to even use that word, and so today i want to talk about mold.

I had a lady actually call me this morning, which gave me the idea of doing this. Video because we had a very long conversation and she basically just real quick to tell you her story. She had had someone even tell her. You have this dangerous mold in your house.

She was getting sick and having headaches and memory loss, all kinds of stuff, and so she had her air tested. And someone actually said: yes, you. This is your problem. You have mold in your home and so this restoration company, if you want to call them that came in her house and they set up all these hepa filters and clean the air and all these different things charged her a bunch of money.

But in this video i wanted to talk about what should you do number one if you have mold found in your home from a heating and air standpoint, or if you think you might have mold in your actual ductwork or hvac system and what you can do About that i've found in my career that people have different attitudes when it comes to mold. Some folks think it's not that big a deal. You know you can you can get it treated, stop worrying, it's not that big a deal, and then there are people that take it very seriously and look at it as a very dangerous problem - and i am more in that category. There are people that a either they've, gotten sick, or even you know, god forbid, died from it or b.

It can at least cause you to get sick. It can cause you to have respiratory problems and develop other diseases because of the presence of mold in your home, so first not to get too scientific. But what does mold need to grow? What does it need to survive and it needs a number of things, but the main things i'm going to focus on are moisture food. They need some sort of food darkness and they need the perfect temperature.

They need it to be above 60 degrees. So, that's why you don't usually hear big mold issues in northern states or canada places like that, because it's too cold, so knowing those four things, if you eliminate those things, sometimes even eliminating one of those four things, you can actually remedy the issue. Now. Let me first say before we go any further.

I don't claim to know everything about mold, i'm not a scientist. I've sat through some classes and got some certifications and things like that. But ultimately, i think that if you do know like, if you've had your air tested - and you know that there's mold in your home that first you should not stay there and that's what this lady - and i were talking about that i was talking to this morning And she was saying yeah, you know i'm staying here, blah blah and i said well, listen. You probably shouldn't you know until this this is actually resolved until you have someone that does know what they're talking about that can say.

Yup, there's your problem. I've fixed it! I've now tested your hair you're good to go. Now you can stay there again, you probably shouldn't stay there, and so the more we talked about that. She even noted to me that she had stayed at family and friends.

Homes stayed elsewhere and her headaches and things like that went away. So that was a huge red flag to me and that told me yup, you know you definitely still have a problem that needs to be resolved. So that would be the first thing if you think there's a problem, don't stay there until you have the problem fixed second thing: you can have your air tested and there's lots of heating and air companies griffin, air being one of them. We have a machine that we can test the air and all that good stuff, but in my opinion now i know that other folks might disagree with us, but in my opinion those things are not good enough.

You need someone that knows what they're doing that has experience, testing and remediating mold and that's going to take this seriously. I'm not just saying call some restoration company and they come in and just do a couple things and throw a mud on the wall. You want to have somebody that you know comes in tests, the air make sure everything is safe before and after any remediation. That is done next.

If your home does fail the test, you know, so they find out that there is mold. I think you need to find that mold. You need to physically find that mold. Where is it at? What's the problem here? Don't just throw mud on the wall, that's what a lot of companies do and we're going to talk at the end of this video about products that you can buy, that inhibit mold growth and even kill it.

But again before we even talk about those products. There's a reason why you have it and there's also a place that it is, you know it's located somewhere. How can you be throwing mud on the wall and knowing that you're actually fixing the issue without finding it until i lay eyes on it and i've eliminated? One of those four things we just talked about, then: how do you know that you've actually nipped it in the bud and we're good to go now now? What, if you do, locate it and you locate it in the ductwork or somewhere in the heating and air system itself? You know we have taken, covers off of units and seen what appeared to be mold, and so what should you do if that happens? Well, the first thing is and again i'm this might be controversial. But in my opinion i don't care how good a company is at duct cleaning they're, never going to clean that ductwork well enough.

If there is ductwork that has mold in it and they bring in their machines and they clean those docks and they go ahead and treat that ductwork with some microbial treatment and all the stuff that they can do. In my opinion, it's hard for them to guarantee 100 that every mold spore is gone from that ductwork. Now again, you might have somebody that disagrees with me on that, but you know they've been wrong before and they'll be wrong again. What i would like to point to is i've been in houses where, for example, they had a flood, so they had some sort of leak in the house, or maybe it was an actual flood from outside the house and they've got this mold.

That's now, you know started to grow in the house, maybe at the bottom of the walls right so where the water came up to. There appears to be mold on the walls, and i've actually been in houses where they have cut the entire house. The bottom part of that house, they just removed it. So if the drywall had mold on it, they don't treat the drywall or clean the drywall like this duct cleaner is going to try to say they can do they remove it entirely and that's my argument when we're talking about ductwork if you've got mold, that's been Located in the ductwork itself, you need to get that ductwork out of there, in my opinion, remove it entirely, replace it get new ductwork in there that you know is mold free, and that way you know you've gotten it next, if you've got mold in your heating And air system you can have that cleaned and treated and then the other thing again we're going to talk more about, but you can install uv lights and ionizers and all that stuff we're going to talk about that stuff more in a second.

But if it's located in the heating and air system, in my opinion, you need to have a qualified hvac contractor in there to resolve that you don't want to have a duct cleaner somebody that does carpet cleaning but also does duct cleaning or whatever you want to Get somebody in there that knows what they're doing, because you could have more issues regarding that anyway, right, if i had an issue with my car, i wouldn't have somebody that worked at a car wash work on my car just because they work at a car wash Too, to me: there's it's a totally different animal and you need to get a specialist in there to get that stuff resolved, get it cleaned up and then install your uv lights or whatever it is you're going to install next. Let's talk about humidity, if you're having mold in that house, then you have humidity that has gotten usually above 60 percent for a long extended period of time and it's allowing that mold to grow. So if you do have high humidity in that house, you got to get that taken care of that's one of the four things that we talked about and when that mold has moisture and a place that it can grow, we need to get that humidity lowered. You can install dehumidifiers whatever it is.

You got to install and get that resolved, and no, i'm not talking about going to your big box, store hardware store and getting one of those little ones that roll they look like a piece of luggage. I'm talking about getting an actual whole home dehumidifier that can remove pints of water on top of pints of water a day. The other thing, i would say is if a heating and air company or a duct cleaning company, or someone like that, has located mold in your ductwork or your heating and air system wherever they located it. In my opinion, there's a chance that it's growing elsewhere too.

So i think again getting back to what we were talking about before getting an expert in there getting a remediation company, someone that knows what they're doing get in there and check the attic the crawl space, if you have one any closets or mechanical rooms, even if They're, if it's possible, if they have a way of inspecting inside the walls, cavities whatever there's all kinds of things, that they can do other than just visually testing and just testing that air. I used to work at a company that we had a humidity probe, that we can actually stab different parts of the home, whether it be wood or drywall, and see what the moisture level of that material is. But there's all kinds of tests that they can run and make sure everything's, okay, make sure everything is safe, and so, once all that's out of the way, let's say they found mold they tested they've. Now you know tested again and everything seems to be kosher.

What can you do to make sure that you're doing your part to try to inhibit that mold growth? Again, we already talked about humidity, but there's three main products that most heating and air companies will be able to provide you and each one of them, because we we offer them at griffin, air and sometimes people will be like well, which of the three do. I need you know well the answer to that question. Is they all three do something different? You know it depends on. Do you want to go ahead and install all three and make sure you're definitely good to go? Do you want to install one of the three and just attack one problem there or so on? So let's talk about the three, the first being, i would definitely get a filter in there.

I would say one of those four inch, maybe like an april layer or a lot of the big manufacturers have their own, but just some sort of four inch media filter that will filter that air. I would definitely not go any lower than merv 11.. I know there are filters on the market with lower merv ratings that will still catch mold spores, but i wouldn't really go any lower than merv 11. merv 11 is usually where a lot of those companies will guarantee that your evaporator coil stays clean and then, if It does end up needing a cleaning, they will sometimes pay for it.

Get you a nice whole house, air filter installed. The next thing, i would say, would be a uv light. I've got uv lights in my own system. In fact, i have all three of these.

In my home, but uv lights are one of those things that when they first came out, people kind of thought they were snake oil and now everybody knows that they're not that they're the real deal, in fact: they'll even use uv lights to clean water. Of course clean the air, and then in this case we want to install them as many as you want to as many as you can afford to put in your heating and air system. I would definitely say one on the return side of the coil of the evaporator coil uh, but i'd like to see one on each side of it and then sometimes i'd like to go ahead and see one on the supply. As it's exiting the air handler as well the more light you can shine in that system, the more areas that that light can hit the less areas that mold can grow, so uv lights will keep that heating and air system good and clear and then finally, i Would say ionizers and i'm going to put links down into the description if you look down below to all three of these products but ionizers the good thing about them is they're going to ionize the air, and you can look up all kinds of videos.

If you want to know the science behind it, but ultimately it's going to kill mold in your home. A lot of products are zero maintenance or at least very little maintenance. When you're talking about an ionizer in your home, you can install it in your heating and air system and as the air passes through that it's ionizing the air in your home, you can get them to where they don't create ozone. They're not gon na hurt your family, you know what they're breathing or give them headaches or whatever and again i put one of these in my own home.

I think that the more you can do to protect yourself and to do your part in making sure that it doesn't come back if there was mold. Do your part making sure it doesn't come back. These are ways that you can attack it and make it not come back all. That said, i hope that helps if you're dealing with a mold issue.

Please don't stay there. Let's get the problem fixed and go ahead and call somebody that knows what they're doing get them in there and get this straight and keep your family protected. Thanks for watching hit that subscribe button we'll see you next time.