Mold In Your Home? Now What?

1/15/2020 (Permalink)

While responding to a water damage, our technicians located growth behind this clients saturated vanity.

Imagine this. After a great night's sleep, you wake up, walk into your bathroom and find a small pond on the floor. Immediately you contact SERVPRO of Wesley Chapel to come out to your home to start a water mitigation. While examining the area they locate some microbial growth behind the vanity. Now what do you do?  

This is the same scenario faced by one of our clients in her spectacular waterfront condo in Dunedin, Florida. Luckily SERVPRO of Wesley Chapel arrived promptly and – as a firm licensed by the State of Florida as a Mold Remediator – we knew exactly what to do. Microbial growth and the dreaded threat of mold sounds overwhelming, but with a team of trained professionals behind you, it doesn’t have to be. Our technicians and project managers are trained to handle such issues so its “Like it never even happened.” 

Here’s a play-by-play of the procedure we use when dealing with any kind of microbial growth. Our No. 1 priority is safety. This is both for our client and our technicians. We protect onsite workers with proper PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) first. Our next step, which is equally important,  is placing containment to separate the uncontaminated area from our work zone and minimize the chance for spores to spread. Next we removed all affected material such as the vanity, bathtub, and even the mirror mounted to the wall. It’s crucial to remove anything that could be affected, and if being saved, we clean and treat it before placing it back. It’s worth noting that while working with mold in any situation we always have air scrubbers in place and negative pressure to ensure that we don’t contaminate anymore of the space. Drywall was then detached, all studs and framing treated and cleaned, and the air scrubber was left overnight to get anything that may have been left behind. The final step in treating this kind of disaster is an independent clearance test, in which an independent environmental hygienist collects air samples to confirm any issues have indeed been remediated. This step provides a confirmation that the property is safe for occupancy and that the procedure was successful.  

So while mold might seem like a reason to panic, rest assured when you use a firm like SERVPRO of Wesley Chapel.