When gathering information about mold inspection companies, it is important to ask a number of qualifying questions to see if the company being hired is legitimate and qualified to do the mold inspection. Here is a list of several good qualifying questions to ask a mold inspection company.
- How long have you been in business?
- What certification and/or experience do you have with mold inspections?
- Do you have any customer referrals that I could see?
- Do you provide a certified lab report?
- Does your company also do the remediation or repair work?
Some of these questions are common sense, but we should focus on the last two questions. First, let’s address question number four. There are companies out there that use particle counters. A particle counter can tell you how much particulate you have in a space, but it cannot differentiate between what is mold, dust, skin, insect fragments, pollen, etc. In other words, if you are paying for a company to come out and do a mold inspection and they are not taking air quality samples to be read by a lab, you aren’t really getting a Certified Mold Inspection. Some people only want a visible mold inspection to be done, and that is certainly possible. However, most people are really looking for a certified report from a laboratory that gives the precise information about the quantity of mold and the families of mold that were collected in the inspected areas. In short, most people want to know “How much?” and “What kind?” of molds are in their space.
Question number five is important because you want a company that is only working for your best interest, not theirs. What do I mean? We want to think that everyone has our best interest in mind, but we obviously know that isn’t true. Being independent and a “third party tester” means that we have only your best interest in mind. Certified Inspectors of America does not do any of the remediation or repair work because we deem it to be a “conflict of interest” and so should you. A company that does the repair or remediation work may have the interest in the company ahead of yours, that is, after all, how they stay in business. With Certified Inspectors of America, we base our business model on the idea that we are “consultants” of the person who pays us. We do not do the remediation work because it would not be ethical for the same company who does the testing to “repair the problem”.
Keep in mind that paying a bit more at the beginning of a project for “Third Party Certified Testing” may save substantially more at the end. Make the call to have Certified Inspectors of America work for you or you may end up working hard for another remediation company.
