How can water get into your home? Let me count the ways. On second thought, let me just try to describe many of the ways. Water is endlessly creative in finding its way into things that we think are tightly sealed.

We have a free ebook available, “How to Find Mold and Moisture Problems in Your Home: Secrets of the Professionals.” If you haven’t already downloaded it and read it, now’s the time to grab it. Go here to get it. Inside, you’ll find a comprehensive guide to inspecting your home and finding signs of water and moisture problems. If you find moisture problems, it may be time to test your air for evidence of indoor mold growth. If someone in your home is chronically ill, or just not feeling well, a mold test is imperative.

Water matters, because without it mold won’t grow. Of course, without any water, no life will grow. But humans, pets and plants can get by on lower relative humidity than mold. Mold is happy in the same temperature range people like. And pretty much everything people use to build homes and furnish them is pure mold candy, as long as there’s enough water.

How much water? Well, 50 percent relative humidity or more is adequate for mold. It helps if the air is fairly still, too. This explains why so many schools have mold problems every fall: They are closed up in June with no ventilation or air conditioning, giving mold a nice summer vacation with warm, humid air to grow and get healthy. Healthy mold means sick people. Often they make it even healthier by shampooing the carpets in August, and leaving the windows closed and the AC off. Yow.

So water can come in with the air. Air conditioning dehumidifies, so homes with AC can keep their humidity levels down during the summer. But AC creates other moisture issues. The condensation created in the AC unit itself needs to drain outside the house. If that drain is clogged or leaking, there’s a source of excess moisture. Dehumidifiers can help too, and one advantage is they don’t lower the air temperature outside the unit.

Temperature differentials are another issue created by AC. Even in the driest of climates (think Arizona), you can have condensation forming in wall cavities and attics, where the cool inner wall or ceiling meets the warming outside air, bringing it down to dew point. This can produce enough moisture to support mold growth that’s completely invisible.

Bathrooms are a great source of water (no, duh?), sometimes in unexpected ways. Obviously, drips and leaks create excess moisture where it doesn’t belong. Exhaust fans vented into attics or crawl spaces are another common water-maker. But how about a bathroom with an open window and no exhaust fan (there are a few million of these)? You can bet on moisture in the ceiling space above, or in the attic/crawl space. Water vapor can penetrate almost anything, and even with a properly vented exhaust fan you can still end up with a moldy attic if the fan isn’t powerful enough or doesn’t run long enough.

Tub and shower surrounds, tile and grout all can leak and deposit moisture in wall and floor cavities, promoting mold growth. Kitchens are another obvious source of excess water, as are windows, doors, roofing, siding, gutters, etc.

Then there is concrete. They make swimming pools out of this stuff, so it ought to keep water out, right? Not so much. Basements are notorious for being damp enough for mold growth, but water can also intrude into any space that’s below grade, such as a ground-level room with a block knee wall below grade – very common in split levels. Water in the soil actually bears against anything that blocks it with tremendous, persistent force, called hydraulic pressure. The slightest porosity will allow more water through than you’d imagine.

A slab foundation, meaning a home with a solid concrete first floor, can wick moisture up out of the ground and feed it into wood framing, carpeting, etc., creating a chronic mold problem. Outside grading is also a major factor in water intrusion. If the soil around a structure slopes toward the structure, it carries water in that direction and creates hydraulic pressure against the foundation. Water will eventually seep in.

So we know that mold is everywhere, and water is everywhere. The trick is to keep them apart, and the only way to do that is to be constantly on the lookout for signs of water intrusion or condensation.

With apologies to Thomas Jefferson, the price of mold freedom is eternal vigilance.

Again, if you haven’t downloaded your free copy of “How to Find Mold and Moisture Problems in Your Home: Secrets of the Professionals.” you can still get it here.

Have dry and mold-free day. And of course, if you feel you need to test for mold, remember that not all home mold test kits are created equal. For a comprehensive comparison of mold detection kits, click here.

Every company on the planet will tell you their product or service is the best you can get, or the least expensive, or the easiest to use, or some such superlative. One of my favorite gadget catalogs often said about its too-cool products, “Bestest Best Ever..” whatever it was.

So we think the Got Mold? Test Kit is the “bestest best ever” do-it-yourself mold test kit on the globe. You ask why. And you should. I’m glad you did.

For starters, it works. I can’t say that about some of the best-selling kits on the market, because, well, they don’t. Consumer Reports did a review of a bunch of mold test kits awhile back and basically shredded them all. Unfortunately, ours wasn’t out yet, so we missed a shot at being an overnight sensation. But we were already in development, and none of the flaws CS found in other kits exist in ours.

The non-working kits are the ones that feature “settling plates,” or Petri dishes – little flat saucers of goo that mold spores like to grow in. The theory is, you leave one of these goo gardens out on your counter or table for a few hours, then clap the lid on and wait a few days to see what sprouts.

In most cases, you get a pamphlet with some photos, which you’re expected to match up with the creepy, fuzzy stuff in your goo garden so you know what “type” of mold you have. This is an exercise in futility. Here’s why:

First: Mold spores are everywhere. Everywhere. If you leave a hotdog on the beach, a seagull will eat it. If you place a source of moist nutrition out in the air, mold will grow on it. The only exception might be a “clean room,” the kind where they make silicon chips. Even there, I’d bet on mold over the filters and scrubbers. You can fit 10,000 mold spores on the head of a pin, which makes the old angel trick look silly.

Second: The makers of these kits claim they will tell you if you have what the fear-mongers in the industry call “toxic” or “black” mold. They’re talking about stachybotrys chartarum, which is alleged to emit some very nasty stuff called mycotoxins and is blamed for the big-publicity cases such as Ed McMahon’s dog and the original big case involving Melinda Ballard. Here’s the glitch: Stachybotris spores are wet and heavy, thus unlikely to make it into a Petri dish in a few hours. And the killer is that the goo in these kits won’t grow stachybotris! It’s the wrong formula, plus it needs a lot of time to get established.

Third: You end up with zero usable information. Is mold actually growing inside your home (that is, outside the goo garden)? You won’t know. Is there a higher spore count indoors than outdoors? You won’t know. And those are the only things you need to know, except for where it’s growing if it’s there.

Fourth: Do you really want to encourage mold to grow in your house? A little dish like that with 24 hours worth of mold growth in it will be spewing out spores by the millions. For my money, if it’s not already in my cheese, I don’t want any mold in my house. OK, my shoes are another story.

Other mold test kits offer cotton swabs, or suggest you use a piece of Scotch tape, to get a surface sample. Again, this might be fine if you’re trying to decide whether the stain in your suitcase is mold or coffee (who cares?), but the only important question is: What’s in the air you’re breathing?

Surface sampling has its place, and the Got Mold? Test Kit includes three industry-standard BioTape™ surface samplers, in addition to the three industry-standard Air-O-Cell™ air sampling cassettes.

Then there are the vacuum cleaner kits. With these, you place a filter of some kind on your own vacuum cleaner and go vacuum the heck out of your carpets, bedding, upholstery or whatever, and send the dirty filter to a lab. Guess what? There’s mold! So what? Remember, mold is everywhere. So what you still don’t know is whether the mold in the air inside your house is more prevalent than outdoors. It’s another zero-information game.

There is one type of kit that works. It’s what I call the “rent-a-pump” kit. But these are generally expensive, and entail the hassle and risk of using a very expensive professional air pump that needs to be returned intact, or you bought it. Other than that, they generally use industry-standard air sampling cassettes, so they work, providing of course that the pump has been properly cleaned and recalibrated before you got it.

The Got Mold? Test Kit includes our proprietary BioVac™ air sampling pump, which is cordless and disposable. You can keep it if you like, but it really is disposable. For a peek at what’s in the kit, go here.

So what makes the Got Mold? Test Kit the “bestest best ever” is:
1. It works – industry-standard components and solid science
2. It’s affordable – fully deployed, it’s less than the starter “rent-a-pump” kits
3. It’s easy to use – clear instructions are included; a kid can do it.
4. It’s hassle free – take your samples, drop them in the mail, get your report in 10 business days

We’re already working on the next generation of the Got Mold? Test Kit. It’ll be even easier! Stay tuned.

While striving for long-term goals is common in business, it strikes me as rare for a company’s long-term goal to be putting itself out of business. Oddly, that’s our goal. No doubt it’s an unreachable goal, an impossible dream, but we do dream of a healthy world – one in which no one is made sick by their home, office or school room.

The origin of MycoLab USA, the maker of the Got Mold? Test Kit, was the realization my son Jason and I had years ago that indoor mold growth is a serious health issue for millions of people. The follow-on realization was the fact that there was no scientifically valid, affordable home test kit available on the market.

All this percolated to the surface while Jason was working with his Mold Dog™ Oreo to develop what would turn out to be the model for MycoLab USA’s sister company, 1800-GOT-MOLD? During five years of business building, research and brainstorming, we got a lot of feedback from customers, and lots of unsolicited queries from all over the country, thanks to the internet.

The two most common questions from callers were: “Do you do inspections in my area?” and “Do you sell a home mold test kit?” The answer to the first was often negative, and the second answer was always “No,” but it started the gears moving. Eventually, it became clear: We would have to expand nationally by creating a franchise network of mold inspectors with dogs, and we would have to develop a home mold test kit. So it was that the original company Jason founded, Lab Results LLC, evolved into Mycelium Holdings LLC.

“Mycelium is created when the roots of mold growth join together to form a common structure which helps the organism to extract more nutrition from its surroundings, enabling stronger growth and ensuring its survival.”

Like a good mycelium, the parent company sprouted subsidiaries, including MycoLab USA LLC, 1800-GOT-MOLD? LLC, IndoorHealthSolutions.com and Moldfacts.org.

Okay, to be fully accurate, Mycelium Holdings does not cite “putting ourselves out of business” as its mission. Here’s the actual mission statement:

“Our mission is to improve the quality of the lives of everyone we touch – our employees, our customers, our stakeholders and our vendors – and to improve the indoor air quality industry by virtue of our innovation, our effectiveness and our integrity. We will do this by providing the tools and knowledge people need to breathe freely, one customer at a time.”

The unwritten version of that is: We want to help every person with an indoor air quality problem breathe freely again. If we succeed in that quest, we will have no more work to do. Of course, that’s the same as working for world peace; success is about as likely as getting a sunburn in a coal mine. But I can’t think of a better goal to have when you’re in the business of helping people.

The Got Mold? Test Kit was built from that premise, to be affordable, hassle-free and easy to use, while adhering to industry-standard science. We had to include a ton of information for our customers, to help them understand how to look at their homes and what to look for, before they actually use the sampling devices. We also decided to give much of that knowledge away, in a free ebook. If you haven’t read it, you can get it here.

Meanwhile, I’ll go back to work, putting us out of business.