Hey guys, Im trying to push mold inspections, any advice?
is most of your work commercial or residential?
thanks
Create a mold specific website. It’s very easy to get to the top of the search engine rankings when targeting something specific like mold.
Go meet with the local mold remediation companies in your area and let them know you area doing testing. Some ethical remediators would rather remove themselves from all testing and rely on a third party once they have prove that they know what they are doing.
Also…get your presence on the internet. That is where most people are researching about mold in their home before they decide to get an inspection.
Talk to your local doctors and allergy specialist too. They can be a great referral source.
Talk to all your local plumbing, roofing, siding, and window contractors too.
Do that for a couple of months and you will probably get more mold inspection work that what you have home inspections. I do at least 3 mold inspections a week anymore because of the contacts that I have made.
Stay away from clearance testing until you are able to fully intrepid lab reports. I have a case where the inspector is receiving an early retirement, do to him clearing a job and after the occupants of the home are still sick, because he did not know what he is doing.
Now you got me freaked out, My first mold job is supposed tobe in a couple weeks as a mold clearance…I called Pro-Lab and they told me to just take my 4 air samples, one on each level and one outside.
Are property managers a good source for mold inspections?
Most sampling cassettes are good for around 750-1000 square feet. You can not combine living spaces with one sampling cassette. What this means is that if you have two bedrooms side by side, you can not sample at the doorways to get a representative sample of both rooms. Sampling has to be done in the center of each living space. One sample per floor will not give you anywhere close to accurate results, especially for a clearance test. The purpose of a clearance test is to ensure that everything was remediated properly and that all elevated mold levels have been removed. By just going in there and having a looksie and not taking enough samples to equate it with going over everything with a fine tooth comb would be setting yoruself up for huge problems.
I would advise you to learn a little more about remediation practices and sampling methods before even offering clearance testing. Whoever told you at Pro-Lab that 4 samples would be enough for clearance testing seems like they are just trying to make a few bucks from you and doesn’t really care about the accuracy of the sampling methods.
The more mold inspectors I talk to, the more I hear that have dropped Pro-Lab like a hot potato. Most newly certified mold inspectors and samplers use them because they get all kinds of coupons with their training materials and think that is a good place to start. Pro-Lab tells you in their reports if there are elevated levels present and give you their interpretation. Personally, I don’t want a lab tech sitting behind a microscope telling me if there are elevated or not elevated levels of mold in a home if they were not there at the sampling site to see what the conditions were and to get an overall picture. My best advice to you would be to find a laboratory that your local industrial hygeinists use and set up an account with them. Asside form that, I don’t want a lab that sells consumer products that are available in Home Depot and Lowes that tries to compete with my business by selling consumers petri dishes that will almost always come back positive for mold growth.
Just my opinion, others may vary.
Thanks for the advice.
Is most of your work, commercial or residential?
Most of my work is residential properties, but the clients are both private and corporate if that makes any sense. I do work for property management groups and private home owners.
Also, do not perform any clearance testing with Z-5 or M-5 air traps. They are just for preliminary testing.
How do you figured that Z5 &M5 are just for preliminary?](*,)
Please read
http://www.reliablelab.com/store/
Notice the word “preliminary” in the description.
The reason is the volume of air is only (5 liters for five minutes) 25 compared to normally (15 liters for 10 minutes) 15O cubic meters.
Great tips, any other suggestions for increasing mold inspections?
Should I put an ad in the paper?
Yellowpages, website, and referrals from previous work works great for me in my area.
Also, The guys at Pro-Lab told me I should charge $125/sample…
Does this sound right to you guys?
I would love to inspect a school for mold, any tips on how to land a job like that? I dropped off my marketing info to the local school board in my city but havn’t heard from them. Anything else I should be doing?
No offense but even this close to holloween your post is scary. Glad my grand kids are not in Canada.
Be nice to the newbie, Doug.
Unless you have a lot of training and experience, stay away from testing schools. They are an entirely different animal. They even make me nervous.
Home inspectors in my area are charging $125.00 per samples.
Be nice to the newbie, Doug.
People seem to think I’m hard on new guys or “mold Inspectors” in general.
I want people to do their best and know what they are doing.
I’ve had more than six guys over the years ride along with me, they are my competitors. How many people that complain about my attitude have taken six “newbies” along to show them the ropes.
I will try to be nice.
It’s Monday, everyone have a good week.
Doug is in my area and competent at what he does. I agree with him 100% and KNOW what your doing before getting into mold inspections. And please do not call them MOLD inspections because it sounds as if you are doing air samples. Go and educated yourself. The IAQA is a great source of education. I am not bashing new guys, but come on…
I have no idea how it is up there or anywhere else, but if I mentioned PRO LAB to a mold remediation company I think they would laugh at me and throw me out of the office. Like everything, they have their place in the world, but I do not know of ONE properly licensed and insured mold remediation company in my area that would allow for their samples used in anything they do.
If you want to appear professional and educated then GET professionally educated. Have the proper credentials and education, not only to keep your butt out of the sling, but to provide the consumer with adequate and competent service.
If you want to learn to do good quality mold inspections and sampling, you have to look outside of what the general courses typically tell new inspectors. Do a search for books dealing with Bioaerosols and start reading up on what industrial hygienests have to say about developing sampling protocols and interpretaing results.
I would also suggest looking into learning about mold remediation so that you know what goes on in that field and have a more rounded understanding.