How Is Mold Tested?
When mold infests a home, there’s a lot of talk about testing and identifying the mold to find out what’s the best way to deal with the situation. This is something AA Action Waterproofing has a lot of experience in, but what happens when the professionals come in to test for mold? What is the process?
The Hidden Mold
Being able to see mold on walls is an obvious problem, and one that already indicates the situation is very serious. In such cases, there’s only one solution and that’s an extensive mold remediation program. Before that however, if you smell something musty in the air, or your or other residents are experiencing allergy symptoms with no apparent cause, it may be because of mold you haven’t found yet. There are actually tests that many professionals can do not just to detect mold, but help track it down to the source, but what does this involve?
If you want to be thorough, tests will need to be conducted at multiple times, as the results—especially for the air—can be different at different times of the day. Multiple tests will help build up a clearer picture of what’s happening in the home.
Surface Test
In these tests, samples will be collected of different surfaces throughout your home, with cotton swabs wiping areas, or tape applied and then pulled away to see what comes with it. The results will be brought back to the lab for analysis to check for the presence of mold. This is a good test to tell you whether there is mold present, but it lacks the detail of an air test, which can actually tell you what the concentration of spores is in the air.
Air Test
This is where a test is conducted to gauge the quality of air in your home. This is especially important as mold sends spores into the air, and areas with higher concentration obviously mean that there may a significant mold presence in that area. This is one of the best ways to confirm whether there is mold in the home even if you can’t see it yet.
Bulk Test
This method actually takes pieces or samples directly from your home for testing. It’s similar to the air test in that because it’s dealing with actual home materials, this can give more detailed information about mold concentrations.
Culture Test
When mold is detected in your home, a culture test is conducted to grow more of the mold and analyze the results to identify what kind of mold is present. This is important not just for health reasons, but to see what the best course of treatment is for the mold remediation.
These kinds are best conducted by mold testing experts with access to lab equipment. It’s not recommended that you simply read up on how to conduct the tests and try them yourself as a certain amount of experience is required to interpret the results correctly.