Day 73 - 18 to go. – Offer has been submitted on our house with the view. No word yet.
Ok, so we had the mold retested and the results are in… Whoa! Drastic! The numbers were so much lower than the initial reading, I’m talking by thousands! Even the NOW-baseline (remember, there wasn’t one before) said the Penicillium/Aspergillus spore count was larger outside! WTF? We had to do a double take… What’s going on here? Did the lab guy stick the decimal point in the wrong place or something?
The mold inspector guy, who I will now refer to as MIG, had no great explanation for why the numbers were so different except to ask if we had run a house fan, opened windows, or sprayed Lysol. Oh, really… is that all it takes? Spraying Lysol? I could have saved myself $1,500.00 with a $2.00 can of Lysol? Really? Come on… I don’t think so.
The MIG then advised us that someone would have to pay for the redone test and his clearance test (yet to come) and wanted to know if he should bill us directly. Hold on, wait… What?!? This was the first mention by anyone that we may be responsible for the cost of further testing. We did not hire this guy and we feel that he should take the matter up with those who had. Why would we hire and pay someone so clearly incompetent? Get someone else to do the clearance test, that’s what I say. Thankfully, our Brit remediation specialist offered to take care of it for us… (for FREE!) In your face inspector dude! However, we don’t know if this is kosher in the Mold World. You know, we have to maintain all those extremely specific regulations and guidelines (being facetious here.)
Well, we still needed to have the mold remediated. The count in the basement was still high enough to indicate a “problem”, and my friends… I can see the damn mold! It’s plain as day (now that I know where to look.) And the buyers can see it too! So, the mold was finally taken care of the other day. An entire day of fogging, spraying and then a day of clean-up… OK, done. We now have to get the “after/clearance” test to see if it actually worked, (well… cross those fingers).
MIG was trying to accuse us of cleaning the mold ourselves or already having it remediated prior to the second test. Now, why on earth would we do that? Obviously, we would be far better served to show a drastic change after professional remediation than meager results from opened windows and Lysol, don’t you think? We just wanted MIG to do his job correctly the first time and show an outdoor baseline.
So, this is what I think happened with the first test. The samples were possibly contaminated by MIG because the air samples were taken after he did physical swabs. Now, I’m not a micro-biologists or anything, but it seems logical that if you swab for mold, scraping it off the surface, some of those spores might end up on your arm, clothes, etc. And then you go and turn on a powerful vacuum to suck in the house air to test that? Don’t you think it might just collect what has gathered on you also? Hell, I do! I think a standard should be set where the air test should always be done before any swabbing. Just using the common sense my parents gave me here folks.
What a pain in the ass this whole mold thing has become. I’m sooo sick of it! I’m sick of strange spore names I can’t pronounce! Sick of people traipsing through my home. I so sick of mold, I don’t even want to go near cheese anymore. “Would you like some roquefort on that burger, ma’am?” HELL, NO!
But don’t you know… When we buy our new house… I’m having a mold inspection done… A competent one!
