blue collar - 5/19/2012 22:41 we have a house we've acquired that has some mold on the drywall and foundation (drywall has now been cut out and removed) and have had three contractors tell us to spray peroxide on it. some people spray javex but apparently that only kills some kinds of mold but peroxide kills them all. we have now been told by another fellow that peroxide isn't good enuf and we need to get in a specialist with some special spray to do a proper job. have others tried peroxide with success? want to do a good job but don't want to spend a fortune. Notwithstanding the other posts here....Last year my house required an inspection prior to sale to a third company because I was relocating. One part of that required inspection for mold. The inspection company came in and performed air sampling, along with tape sampling where they put tape on surfaces, then count the spores removed with the tape. This was in the attic, and there was NO VISIBLE PRESENCE of mold. Even with no visible presence, the company doing the inspection (an 8 hour on line training certificate was all the credentials required) claimed there was too much mold in the attic, and it had to be remediated. Never mind it was a naturally occuring mold present in the outside air, and the attic was vented to the outside. Sampling required testing the outside air as well to determine if the inside air was similar....but this did not seem to matter. I had to have contractors come in and give bids on remediation for something that was not even visible, yet was naturally occuring in the outside air. Anyway, I had three contractors come in ranging from about $1000 to over $12,000. The expensive one said they would remove everything, fumigate the entire attic and replace everything after spraying all surfaces with chemicals. The expense included hazmat suits, screening off parts of the house and HEPA vacuums. In the end, I hired a separate biological consultant for $300 who wrote a report stating the level of mold present was not a hazard. This after researching mold hazards on the internet and finding there is NO standard level considered to be a hazard, depending on the type of mold found. There was no agreeable limit between several states that would be considered hazardous, and no agreeable limit known that would be considered to cause health hazards. My point is, if you have mold, there are a lot of "companies" out there looking to make a huge profit off of it. Spraying bleach, removing some material, cleaning the area etc., is likely to save you a huge amount of money from this scam. Can it cause problems for those allergic? Probably. Can you get ripped off from companies claiming to remediate a non-hazardous problem? Likely. In the end, I would do my own cleaning with bleach, fix whatever moisture sources there may be, and see if it is resolved. In my case, a bathroom flexible vent tube going to the roof came off, and was enough to cause an issue. Fixing the tube and cleaning the sheeting was enough to fix the problem. |