What Your Mold Remediation Contractor Isn't Telling You

What your mold remediation contractor isn't telling you could be costing you thousands in unnecessary repairs. Drawing from years of experience in crawl space restoration, Michael Church exposes four dangerous myths about mold treatment that continue to circulate among homeowners and even professional remediation companies.

The first misconception involves contractors claiming they can treat mold while leaving insulation in place between floor joists. This approach makes proper treatment physically impossible, as disinfectants cannot reach wood surfaces behind insulation. The only effective protocol requires complete insulation removal to ensure all affected surfaces are properly treated and inspected.

Perhaps most alarming is the widespread practice of treating mold on wet surfaces. Professional remediation requires thoroughly drying affected wood before applying disinfectants – a process that takes time and cannot be rushed. As Michael puts it, "If your crawl space company starts on day one and finishes in day four, without dry time in between, they're doing it wrong."

Through a compelling real-world example, Michael demonstrates why addressing structural issues before solving moisture and mold problems leads to inevitable failure. Ten years after structural repairs were made without proper mold remediation, the new wood had become completely compromised by existing mold. This common mistake guarantees recurring problems and wasted investment.

The final myth – that dehumidifiers kill mold – persists despite lacking scientific support. While reducing humidity certainly slows mold growth, it doesn't eliminate existing contamination. As Michael explains, dormant mold is still living mold, ready to resume growth when conditions become favorable again.

Ready to finally solve your crawl space mold problems correctly? Check out Michael's comprehensive guide, "Crawl Space Repair Myths Busted," available in English and Spanish, to arm yourself with the knowledge needed to make informed decisions about your home's health and structural integrity.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Mold Myths
• 1:18 Myth: Leaving Insulation During Remediation
• 2:19 Myth: Disinfecting Wet Wood
• 3:23 Myth: Structural Repairs Before Mold Treatment
• 4:23 Myth: Dehumidifiers Kill Mold
• 5:34 Conclusion and Resources

Transcript

Speaker 0: 0:00

Hey, michael Church, crawl Space Ninja. Today I've got a compilation video of four myths that I've done in the past and we're gonna focus on mold today. There's a lot of mold myths out there. Whether you're addressing mold in a crawl space, basement, attic, living space, there's a lot of mold protocols that you should follow that I feel like do not get followed properly by our mold remediation professionals that are out there. So today we're gonna talk about our mold remediation professionals that are out there. So today we're going to talk about specifically with the crawl space should you do any structural repair before doing mold? Should you use a dehumidifier to address mold? Should you apply mold disinfectants to wet wood? And those of us in the crawl space industry love to leave that insulation in place when addressing mold. Make sure you watch all this video and at the end of the video I'm going to put a link to the playlist that shows all 13 videos. And also, if you'll check out my book, crawl Space Repair Myths Busted, I actually have eight mold myths listed in here that are good for anybody that owns a home, whether you're on a slab, foundation, basement or crawl space, be great information. You can go to my. Buy me a coffee page and you can pick it up. Just go to here and then click on extras. You can get it right here. We even have it in the Spanish version available, or you can go to amazoncom and get the audio version and the print version as well. Let's get started.

Speaker 0: 1:18

Today, we're going to talk about the myth of leaving the insulation in place between the joists. Is it a myth or not? So just to be clear, we get a lot, a lot, a lot of homeowners that tell us that the crawl space contractor that was there three days ago looking at their crawl space says they're going to leave all of that fiberglass or rock wool insulation up between the floor joists whenever they address the mold. We think that is a big no-no, because how in the world do you know if there's any mold back there, or how can your mold treatment get behind the insulation in order to properly disinfect it? So what we do is we take all the insulation out, all of it. We get rid of all the insulation in order to address the mold. Okay, that is the best way to handle it. So somebody that tells you that they're going to leave their insulation in place to address the mold okay, that is the best way to handle it. So somebody that tells you that they're gonna leave their insulation in place to address mold, they're only really addressing the part of the wood that's sticking out from underneath the insulation, and we call that a myth. We don't wanna leave the insulation in place when addressing mold, and if your contractor has, you might wanna get another opinion.

Speaker 0: 2:19

How to disinfect mold while the relative humidity and the wood is still wet. So mold protocol actually requires you to lower the humidity and dry out the surface that you're disinfecting. So imagine you're in your home and one of these big mold cleaning water damage people comes in and says hey, mr Homeowner, we're going to spray your drywall down with disinfectant, even though you still got a plumbing leak behind it and the drywall still wet. Well, after you kick them out of your house and get somebody else to do it, right, then they'll take care of it correctly, right? Well, why do crawl space companies feel like that? They can address mold without drying out the wood first? You have to lower the humidity, dry out the wood, then you can properly address the mold. So that's a myth. Don't let anybody disinfect the mold without drying it out first. If your crawl space company starts on day one and finishes in day four, without dry time in between. They're doing it wrong.

Speaker 0: 3:17

Today we're going to talk about foundation repair or structural repairs in the crawl space without addressing mold. Okay, now, I'm not much of a door knocker, in other words, I don't normally go up to people's homes and knock on the door and introduce myself and ask to inspect the crawl space. But I did do it this one time. The people were very nice and they let me go into the crawl space and check out their crawl space. What had happened was one of the local pest control companies wound up fixing the structural problem of their crawl space 10 years ago without addressing the mold and humidity problem first. So guess what happened? All that mold that was all over that old rotten wood took over the new wood that was installed 10 years ago. So all the wood was rotten, all of it. So if you're going to address structural problems, if you're going to put in post jacks, if you're going to do all those things and you don't control humidity and remove the mold first, you're going to have a problem. It may be 10 years down the road, but why didn't they do it right 10 years earlier. That would have been the best thing to do. We consider that a myth to address structural damage in a crawl space without addressing the mold and humidity first.

Speaker 0: 4:23

Today we're going to cover the myth the dehumidifier killing mold. So we hear this a lot. Mr Homeowner, if you install a dehumidifier, it's going to kill all the mold in your crawl space. It's going to make it go dormant. Well, which is it? Does it kill it or does it make it go dormant?

Speaker 0: 4:37

Well, guess what? Nobody knows. Even the microbiologists I've talked to don't know if mold actually goes dormant by putting in a dehumidifier. They say it's possible, but since there's so many different thousands of types of mold out there, they can't really tell which molds will go dormant and which molds won't.

Speaker 0: 4:55

But even if a dehumidifier did make mold go dormant and it certainly does slow the progression or the growth rate of the mold, because if you take the humidity and the moisture out, the mold isn't going to grow as rampant as it would before but even if it does make it go dormant, just think of a groundhog. When a groundhog hibernates or goes dormant, they're still alive. So would you rather have live mold down there and it be in dormancy waiting for moisture, or would you rather just go ahead and kill it? We're going to leave that up to you, but we call that a myth. If a person tells you that the dehumidifier kills mold, that is a myth. I'm Michael Church Crawl Space Ninja. We hope you make it a happy and blessed day and we'll see you later. Thank you.