Background
An elderly widower decided to sell his Cape Cod home and move to a retirement home in Florida. His daughter often commented that she detected a musty odor whenever she visited. The realtor urged the homeowner to arrange for a mold/moisture inspection before putting the home on the market.
Investigation
Nauset Environmental Services (NES) was retained to provide a mold/moisture inspection. Upon surveying the basement, we discovered that the basement dehumidifier was not working because the circuit breaker had switched off. We observed a considerable amount of paper and textile items (mold nutrition) in storage in the basement.
We learned from the homeowner that after his wife passed, he stopped using the home’s air conditioning and routinely left the home’s windows open. We explained the importance of keeping windows closed on high dew point temperature days and leaning on the home’s air conditioning equipment to prevent an excessive amount of “invisible water” from entering the home.
Air Monitoring & Lab Analysis
We collected fan-disturbed air samples in 1) the basement and 2) the ground floor living room and shipped them to a properly accredited mold lab for analysis. We compared the lab results against NES’s health-based clearance guideline of 1,000 Pen/Asp (“moisture indicator”) spores per cubic meter of air (S/m3).
The basement air sample registered a Pen/Asp spore concentration of 73,000 S/m3 (some 73 times NES’s guideline) and the living room sample recorded an in-air concentration of 110,000 S/m3 (some 110 times the NES guideline.)
Remediation
NES wrote up a detailed Scope of Work for a professional remediation contractor and provided the names of four local contractors who typically do an excellent job when following our cleanup protocol. The homeowner retained the services of one of the four contractors and then had NES come back in after them to provide post-remediation verification air monitoring.
Result
Both the basement and living room air samples were completely void of any Pen/Asp spores post-remediation [see below table] documenting a successful remediation. The home sold quickly without delay.
