HIDDEN MOLD IN WALLS:HOW TO FIND IT

MOISTURE METERS

I know I recently covered this topic in a recent newsletter but I want to share my experience with moisture meters to help you know exactly which moisture meter is the best for the lowest price.

As I discussed last newsletter, if you are wondering if there is a possibility that there could be mold growing in your walls even though you had an air quality test and a mold inspection and both turned up negative for toxic mold, the answer is yes there is a possibility!

Mold inspectors typically visually inspect your house, do an air quality test and use a moisture meter to check the walls for moisture.

But they can miss a lot depending on how good or bad they are.

I have seen some run so quickly through the house with the moisture meter that it was ridiculous.

And I have watched some see a lit up area on the moisture meter and without even checking passed it off as probably a pipe, when it was later found after cutting a hole in that spot, that the dry wall was wet and covered with stachybotrys on the backside of the drywall!

And the air quality test using an air pump and spore trap is a very unreliable test because molds only emit their spores at certain times of the day that depend on atmospheric conditions. So if you happen to test at a time the molds are not emitting spores, you might not find any mold spores at all.

So, what do you do if the air quality test was normal and the mold inspector did not find anything but you still feel sick in your house and suspect you may have mold that is possibly growing hidden in the walls?

GET A GOOD MOISTURE METER

I recently had a positive experience using a moisture meter in my house.

I purchased this moisture meter off Amazon because my family was having symptoms in the house.

I decided to check around the house for wet drywall.

I ran the meter over the walls in our house and it almost seemed like it was not working because everything read 0%. So I surmised our house was either very dry or the machine was not working.

But then I suddenly hit it.

One spot on the drywall outside the walk in shower in the master bathroom right next to where some of us sleep, read out an elevated moisture content of 29%!

Most likely this means that there is a leak in the tile in the shower and I recently found out our house may not have the required green board that is needed around shower walls but instead has regular drywall.

So, of course I closed off those rooms for us to stay out of and I plan to hire a remediator in asap to get this fixed. Moist drywall almost always means stachybotrys and other toxic mold growth.

So, I am now a big fan of moisture meters! I just wish I had bought it years ago to catch the problem before it made people sick.

Other advantages of moisture meters are that they are a lot easier to find than mold detecting dogs and are a lot less expensive!

If you want a less expensive moisture meter, Ryobi has the same model as the one above,factory reconditioned for a little over half the price of the one above. Click on the link below to read more about it.

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, BE WELL AND BE HAPPY!

Dr. Mary Ray DO