Mold Inspection of Austin
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What Does A Mold Inspection Report Look Like
What Does A Mold Inspection Report Look LikeIn most cases, Â mold growth on the insulation is found when mold on the roof sheathing is present as well. Â In these cases the mildicide treatment applied to the roof sheathing will also treat the mold on the insulation. Â This will not remove the mold spores or the discoloration. Â Therefore, in some cases it is best to remove the affected insulation. Â This can be accomplished by either removing the top several inches of insulation or removing and replacing the full depth. Â This can add a significant amount to the cost of remediation and therefore, we typically do not recommend it Austin TX TX .
But a bare bones mold-lab report which simply offers some counts or numbers or culture results, when provided by an investigator who was supposed to have performed a screening inspection for mold, but who did not also perform a thorough visual inspection of the building is not a good value.
Visual Mold Inspection Report
These receptacles contain mini-circuit breakers that click off during a short circuit or overload. The home inspector will likely make sure the receptacles are what they appear to be, and not dummies that aren't wired correctly. The inspector will test a portion of the remaining receptacles in the house.
Conditioned attics are great if they are built correctly. Â This requires installed closed cell foam directly against the roof sheathing. Â In this project, the contractor had simply used standard fiberglass batts on the roof sheathing. Â Because these are not vapor impermeable, moisture can easily migrate through the insulation and cause mold and rot on the roof sheathing.
What Does A Mold Inspection Report Look Like
Preventing mold growth on the insulation requires the same steps as outlined in the attic sheathing section. Â The improvements made to address the condensation on the roof sheathing will address the condensation and mold growth on the insulation as well.
Because Cladosporium is perhaps the most common mold genera, and because it's a pretty big family with perhaps 40 or more members or sub species, and because perhaps one of those members or species is toxic, a hasty lab might protect itself by an asterisked note indicating * Some members of this genera are toxic.
Mold Inspector Certification Texas
An ethical mold or environmental investigator should interview the client carefully before the inspection to assist in deciding if such a costly inspection and test process is really appropriate and cost-justified . In cases where there are not occupants at special risk of mold-related illness or respiratory illness, and where there is no building leak history, and where no substantial mold is visible nor suspected, a costly mold investigation may not be appropriate.
Preventative treatments of mold have a limited lifespan. They are essentially rendered useless once a layer of dust settles on top of the treatment. The mold will simply grow on the dust. This is especially true for horizontal attic insulation, which encounters are large amount of settled dust. This timeline varies wildly, but in general you’re looking at a month or so at least.
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Note the plastic backing on the top side of the insulation batts. Â The kraft paper or plastic should always be facing the warm side of the ceiling or wall. Â In an attic, this means the paper or plastic backing should touch the ceiling. Â Note in this image, the plastic backing is facing upward .
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Software often gives inspectors the choice of including photographs in the main body of the report, near the narrative that describes them, or photographs may be grouped together toward the beginning or end of the report.
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The leak’s been fixed. So why does it still smell like mildew?
Q: Earlier this year, a downspout on my condominium came loose, and water infiltrated my bedroom. It took the property manager 3½ months to repair it, so a lot of water came in. After the repair, I waited five months for the walls to dry out, during which there was a strong mold/mildew smell. When I brought in a plasterer, he removed the damaged plaster. A worker applied a white sealant, Zinsser Odorless Oil-Based Stain Blocker, and returned to spray mold/mildew killer. That was five weeks ago. After a few days, the smell was still as strong as before, so I bought the same product — it smells like Clorox — and sprayed the walls every third day. The mildew smell lessened only a small amount. I found a recommendation online to apply vinegar to kill the odor. I have done that three times over the past week. The smell has lessened a bit, but I worry that if I proceed to get new plaster and paint, the mold/mildew will come through. How should I eliminate the odor?
Washington
A: Hire a licensed mold assessor to test your walls and the air to make sure the underlying issue — excessive moisture — has been addressed. A persistent smell hints that mold or mildew (the term for specific kinds of mold) may still be growing because moisture levels are high.
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If you were to hire a company that does assessments as well as remediation and were told more remediation work needs to be done, you may wonder whether the advice was just a way to drum up more business. So hire a company that does mold assessments but not remediation work, suggested Joe Mulieri, owner of MoldGone in Silver Spring (240-970-6533; moldgone.net), which does both types of work throughout the Washington area. He said an assessment might cost a few hundred dollars. The D.C. government website lists licensed mold professionals in two categories: assessors and remediators. To view the list, type “mold professionals†into the search box at DC.gov .
Assuming you aren’t seeing any mold now, the smell could be coming from inside the wall cavities, perhaps within insulation stuffed into the walls, with the smells then wafting into the room through gaps around trim and between the walls and flooring. These air gaps could also be allowing warm, moisture-laden air to settle on a cold surface, where it condenses and raises the moisture level enough to support mildew growth. If the room didn’t have a moldy smell before the gutter problem, it’s possible that 3½ months of leaks soaked the insulation enough to compress it, allowing condensation to occur where it wasn’t an issue before. Or mildew could be in the ceiling or the floor, perhaps in carpet padding.
If the walls in your condo were covered in drywall, the best solution probably would be to remove the damaged materials, see what’s going on inside the wall and start fresh. Replacing drywall makes sense because mildew can feed on the paper that covers both sides of drywall’s gypsum core and because drywall is relatively inexpensive to replace.
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Plaster, however, is less prone to harboring mildew because it doesn’t provide food for mildew, and it is more expensive to replace. “Plaster is more dense and less absorbent than drywall,†Mulieri said. Although it’s sometimes necessary to remove plaster to address hidden issues, it’s often sufficient — once a leak is plugged — to go with the procedure your plasterer used: scraping off the outer layer, then applying an encapsulant. Mulieri said he uses AfterShock, a sealant produced by Fiberlock Technologies that was designed to disinfect surfaces and prevent mold from re-growing.
Many contractors, like yours, encapsulate by using a less-expensive oil-based sealer, such as Zinsser Odorless Oil-Based Stain Blocker or Kilz Orignal. But if you read the technical documents for these products, they don’t mention using them to encapsulate mildew. The Zinsser product sheet says only that it blocks stains from water, fire and smoke damage, while the Kilz sheet says it blocks stains from a longer list of sources and “seals pet, food and smoke odors.†There is no mention of mildew with either product.
There is a lot of confusion about how mildew grows and the risks it poses. People often focus on “killing†mildew by spraying it with bleach or similar products. But that kills only mildew hit by the spray.
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And if you inhale dead spores, the health risks are the same as if they were alive. That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency’s advice for do-it-yourself mildew cleanup focuses on wiping away mildew, using just water and detergent, on hard surfaces. The EPA says consumers can generally clean up moldy areas of less than 10 square feet by following its safety advice, which you can read by typing “mold cleanup in your home†into the search box at EPA.gov. For larger areas, it recommends getting a pro — one that is licensed.
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I’ve Lived in East Austin for 60 Years, and I Don’t Recognize it Anymore
As gentrification reshapes my neighborhood, I fear we’re losing something of real value to our city.
As the cost of living in Texas’ cities continues to climb, gentrification is reshaping neighborhoods across the state. These changes might be starkest in East Austin, where small midcentury homes are giving way to $700,000 duplexes. A Whole Foods will soon open not far from Chalmers Court, one of the nation’s oldest public housing projects. In one pocket of East Austin, a University of Texas report found last year, there are now more dogs than children. The owner of Sam’s BBQ, a longtime gathering place for the East Austin’s dwindling African American community, recently turned down a $5 million buyout.
Fault Lines: Portraits of East Austin
By John Langmore
With Wilhelmina Delco, Michael King, and Johnny Limón
Trinity University Press
$29.95; 176 pages
Buy the book here.
In a new book of East Austin portraits, photographer John Langmore documents the neighborhood’s vibrant Black and Latinx culture. Langmore’s candid scenes show a rapidly disappearing way of life: Two men ride horses under Highway 35 on Juneteeth; patrons chat in a barbershop waiting room; kids squirm in the pews of Cristo Rey Catholic Church during Semana Santa (Holy Week).
The book also includes essays by longtime community leaders Johnny Limón and Wilhelmina Delco. We’ve excerpted Delco’s full essay below.
Fault Lines: Portraits of East Austin
By John Langmore
With Wilhelmina Delco, Michael King, and Johnny Limón
Trinity University Press
$29.95; 176 pages
Buy the book here.
In a new book of East Austin portraits, photographer John Langmore documents the neighborhood’s vibrant Black and Latinx culture. Langmore’s candid scenes show a rapidly disappearing way of life: Two men ride horses under Highway 35 on Juneteeth; patrons chat in a barbershop waiting room; kids squirm in the pews of Cristo Rey Catholic Church during Semana Santa (Holy Week).
The book also includes essays by longtime community leaders Johnny Limón and Wilhelmina Delco. We’ve excerpted Delco’s full essay below.
As an African American couple, we weren’t allowed to live in the University of Texas married student housing in West Austin, so Exalton and I stayed in veterans housing on the Huston-Tillotson campus. We later moved to a house on Astor Place, the one we live in today, on what was known as a street of educators. Dr. Charles Akins, the descendant of sharecroppers who went on to be the first Black teacher and principal in Austin’s integrated schools, was my next-door neighbor. If someone on our street passed away, they would barely be pronounced dead before someone was at your door collecting money so we could have a wreath at the funeral. If someone’s children were thinking about going to college, we all gave them advice and told them what to expect.
Eleventh Street was our downtown. It was full of businesses we cared about, and we all knew the proprietors of each one. Churches, beauty salons, and barbershops were scattered across East Austin and served as gathering places. Our neighborhoods had comfortable single-family homes, green lawns, libraries, parks with pools, sidewalks, and beautiful trees. The full socioeconomic spectrum was represented with no conflict between them. East Austin still has these qualities, which surprises some people.
I certainly don’t begrudge anyone the right to move to East Austin. It’s always been a welcoming place and remains so today. Blacks were ostracized from West Austin for so long, and I couldn’t stand to be accused of that same discrimination. But the more we improve East Austin, the more attractive it becomes to others. It’s inevitable that the neighborhood absorbs the people who move here and their culture, and this dilutes what existed before. I just hope it doesn’t result in the complete loss of East Austin’s Black identity or respect for what the Black community contributed to Austin’s history and diversity. Just the other day my granddaughter, who lives in New York, brought me a bag of kale chips she bought on Manor Road. I couldn’t believe it—in East Austin! I don’t in any way resent these changes, but kale chips and $10 smoothies weren’t made for East Austin’s Black community. It’s for the new folks moving in.
A longtime resident down the street recently passed away, and his children didn’t want to move into the house, so they sold it—for $357,000. That is simply unbelievable. When I moved here you could have bought all of East Austin for that amount of money. Black families who grew up here, with kids who are now comfortably middle-class, have to move out of East Austin to afford a home and schools they can enjoy. It’s happening in my own family. Only one of my three daughters feels she can afford to live here. The others moved to Pflugerville and North Austin.
It is sad to me that when African Americans arrive today they have a hard time finding Austin’s Black community and culture. An executive who transferred here from out of state had to follow a Black family home from Sears just to find the barbershops and Baptist churches that serve the community. Another woman who recently moved to Austin asked me, “Where are we?â€
That change has happened quickly, and I fear we’re losing something of real value to our city, both in terms of a history and for Black people. My plea is simply that all this change not come at such a high cost—that is, that Austin not forget the important contribution East Austin’s Black community made to the city. When the city wouldn’t hook up utilities for Black families trying to move into West Austin, the Black community didn’t roll over. We endured and set up a rich community that in many ways was better than what we saw west of East Avenue (now Interstate 35). Those generations of African American families deserve to be remembered for what they gave to our wonderful city.
https://www.texasobserver.org/ive-lived-in-east-austin-for-60-years-and-i-dont-recognize-it-anymore/
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