The Thrift Diving Podcast

MOLD! Is Your Home Making You Sick?? - #15

May 14, 2021 Serena Appiah Season 1 Episode 15
The Thrift Diving Podcast
MOLD! Is Your Home Making You Sick?? - #15
The Thrift Diving Podcast
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Show Notes Transcript

Did you know that bleach doesn't kill mold? Did you also know that each home as 5-10 locations where mold can grow? Mold could be threatening the indoor air quality in your home and could be making you sick, even if you had water intrusion or a flood years ago. Learn about common "mold myths" and how to protect yourself and your family.

In this episode, I deep dive into the topic of mold with author Michael Rubino who wrote The Mold Medic: An Expert's Guide on Mold Removal (and is President of All American Restoration). 

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Serena: [00:00:12] Hey, it's Serena Appiah from ThriftDiving.Com, which is a podcast, a blog and a YouTube channel that helps you decorate, improve, and maintain your home using paint power tools, and of course, thrift stores, without sacrificing your budget, the environment or style. Welcome to Episode 15 of the Thrift Diving podcast.

And today we're talking about mold. What are those things that you think you know about mold, but you really have no idea. You think just a little bit of bleach is going to solve your problem. Well, in this episode I learned, and you will learn, that's not quite the case today. We're talking to Michael Rubino, he's an author of a book called The Mold Medic.

It's actually not even a long book. It's more of like a guide for homeowners who live in a home that may have had water damage. He tells you all the things you need to know to look for mold. And we're going to talk about that today. And also, we're talking about places where you may not even realize there's mold. And are all these particles floating around, is making you sick?

How do you handle the mold once you find mold? So we're going to talk about all of those things today. He's a mold remediator from a company that he owns called All-American Restoration, and he gave us about an hour of his time to sit down and talk about this very important topic called mold. So let's take it away with Episode 15.

So I am talking with Mike Rubino today. He is the president of All American Restoration, and I'm really excited to talk to you today, Michael, because everything that we do here at Thrift Diving, it's all about the home. You know, I was telling you a little bit before we started is here at Thrift Diving.

It's about decorating, improving, but there's a little part that I don't talk about enough. And I've noticed that I've been having more conversations, it's about maintaining your home. So just to give you an idea, we've talked about in previous episodes, we've talked about home insurance, and I know that's something that you have in your book.

You wrote this amazing little guide here. It's called The Mold Medic an Experts Guide on Mold Removal. And we will have links down below for that. But you talk about insurance, and you've got some important information that you're going to share with us about mold remediation.

What's real. What's not. What are the myths surrounding mold and how that relates to your health and also maintaining your home, and insurance may or may not cover some of this. So here at Thrift Diving, it's really about all of these things that make home safe and healthy and really being the oasis that you want, especially in this time.

Right? So let me welcome you to The Thrift Diving podcast. 

Michael: [00:02:47] Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. 

Serena: [00:02:50] Yes. So tell me a little bit about why you got into mold remediation and how did you become the President of All-American Restoration. So you must love mold. Tell us about mold and how you got started. 

Michael: [00:03:04] What do you mean everyone doesn't get into mold remediation? 

Serena: [00:03:07] No, we only freak out at the idea of like, oh my gosh, I just found mold in my house. What do I do? 

Michael: [00:03:13] Yeah, no, it's true. You know, I've been around construction my entire life, and that's really, how I got my start into this journey here. My dad's been a restoration contractor since I'm five years old. He started off as a master electrician, became a general contractor and was working a lot on restoring homes that have had fires. And if you can imagine, they put out fires with a ton of water and we know water equates to mold typically.

So, um, when I started working with him just on and off between, the schooling, younger years, high school, and then after college, I came back and started working for him full time, I really got to see that side of things. Just in, in all the interactions that I had working there, I quickly realized that there was a big missing piece to mold as it relates to people's health and just the overall, way that the insurance industry handles it. I started seeing people get sick, especially considering right after college is when hurricane Sandy happened in the Northeast where I'm from.

So I got to see, unfortunately, too many tragic events to where I just started to become obsessed with it. And, um, you know, like anything else, when you become obsessed with something, you start to learn every little detail about it until you can, you know, build a better mouse trap if you will. Mm. 

Serena: [00:04:32] So what were some of the things that you were finding after Hurricane Sandy?

Because I can imagine there's all these people who didn't have insurance. Now they've got all this destruction, they're trying to rebuild. They're trying to salvage, not just their home, but all the belongings in their home.  What did you find with that and how did you help people?

Michael: [00:04:51] So for seven years after Sandy, I was still getting calls from people who had been quote unquote, remediated. 

Serena: [00:04:58] Wow. 

Michael: [00:04:59] That were not feeling well. And we're like, I need some help. I understand you guys do remediation. I have a feeling that, there's still mold here. And so I began working with mold inspectors that can help locate it.

And then I was working under my father's company's umbrella. I was doing mold remediation.  I became certified through the ACAC. Once New York state issued the license, I became licensed through the New York state.  That’s how I started getting the ball rolling. What I started realizing was very basic elementary science that was being totally missed in the restoration space. 

And it's basically, they thought that just by removing the dry wall and spraying a chemical like bleach for instance, that you were solving the problem. And so they were doing that really fast, putting drywall back. And what would happen was a year or two down the road, you know, the, as a client started to notice a health decline, they started to basically get people in there to identify what was going on.

When we reopened up these areas that were supposedly remediated, what we found was black mold all behind the drywall. On the front side of it, it looked fine, you know? And they're like, I don't, I feel like something isn't right here. I just, I don't feel well. And so we opened it up as an investigatory basis.

And what we found was that the mold had come back and honestly, probably tenfold with a vengeance and, um, you know, to me, it didn't make sense. Right.  So I really started diving into what are we missing here as an industry? There's something here that we're missing. And I started really diving into the fact that I think most remediation companies don't realize they're dealing with a living organism, believe it or not.

I think they just think it's this thing that you remove it, you spray some chemicals and it's gone.  They certainly don't understand that mold as a living organism, it's constantly reproducing by methods of spores. I love this analogy. It's similar to how weeds reproduced by methods of seeds, right?

 They both get aerosolized and wherever they find a spot of moisture, they begin to grow and colonize again. So it's just exactly like weeds, except the weeds are happening on your front lawn. Mold happens inside of your house. Right. So look at it as the weed of the home that you do not want involved right. 

And so when I realized that, like, okay, we have these spores, you know, I start looking at all the guidebooks. I'm like, you know, they really don't talk about, removing the contamination. Like there's no mention of, if you have mold in your living room, you should probably clean your HVAC because your HVAC likely has these spores from your living room.

They don't talk about that. They don't talk about really dealing with the contents of the home. They just talk about the one little room, just deal with that room and you're good. And it couldn't be further from the truth. And so, as I started realizing this, I'm like, well, we're not remediating properly.

That's why people are, are getting sick because mold is coming right back. And we're certainly not dealing with the stuff in a preventative measure. So that again, mold doesn't grow back. And so when you look at all these pieces, I'm like, there's a big problem with this industry. So I started really creating my own protocols.

And from there I've helped over a thousand families who are sensitive to mold, get back into their house. These are people that were told before, set the house on fire, walk away. There's nothing you can do. You are just one of those unfortunate people. And I've realized that that is not true. It is the industry that has failed all of these people.

Serena: [00:08:18] So what are the things that people complain to you about that they're feeling?  I know in your book, you know, you, you talk about leaky gut, and you talk about the immune system. And I think we'll touch on that a little bit here, but the first question that I thought about as I was reading your book was, how do you know that you don't feel good if you don't really even know what feeling good is?

And the reason why I say that is because, if you think of it from a food perspective, if we eat, I don't want to just say junk food, but let's say there's foods that you're eating that you're sensitive to, that you don't even realize, oh, that little bit of pain that I have in my wrist or my knee,

oh, I didn't realize that was from something I'm eating that I'm sensitive with. You just tend to get used to it and you don't realize you're having an effect. So, if you're living in a house that has tons let's not even take tons of mold because from what I've learned, it just takes a little bit and you could be extra sensitive, but how do you know that you are having symptoms that's related to mold?

 How does someone determine that that's what's causing their problems? 

Michael: [00:09:21] Well, it's very difficult as you mentioned, 

Serena: [00:09:24] Because you can't do an elimination diet unless you leave the house for 3 weeks.,

Michael: [00:09:26] You can't do an elimination diet. Right. It's very, it's very difficult to diagnose because the symptoms are so much like so many other symptoms, you know, chronic brain fog is something that I hear a lot about where, you’re struggling to put together to string together words into a sentence, you’re like doing something and losing your train of thought and not even remembering what you were looking for, what you were trying to do, things like that.

 You have allergy-like symptoms where you constantly feel like you're having some sort of allergic reaction, which, allergies in general just means any foreign substance that comes into your body that produces an adverse reaction. You got skin issues, skin rashes, the onset of a cold that just never goes away.

You have chronic headaches, chronic fatigue, these are joint pains, stomach pains, 

Serena: [00:10:14] Those, yeah, those describe a lot of symptoms that the first thing that comes to my mind are two things, food sensitivities, and also too with COVID. People who are having these long hauler experiences.

Brain fog and possible skin. I mean, I don't know if skin rashes as a COVID thing, but now you have all these other confounding things that makes it even more difficult. So where would a person start if they're like, you know what I know for a fact in the past I've had problems with water.

Cause I can tell you, my experience. I have had leaks in my basement, and I've had a little bit of, well, I say a little bit, but it could have been a lot of molds that I tried to clean up myself, which after reading your book, I should have had your book first. But if someone wants to start there, is there like a checklist?

Like, have you had water intrusion before? Yes. Did you notice mold? Yes. Like what are the questions that people would ask to decide? Okay. I think I need to get a mold test. And how would that actually work? 

No, that's great. I'm actually putting together a checklist for this very reason.

 It's a really good idea. Um, we're going to have like a free checklist. We're going to put on our website online. Basically.  there's a couple of different things. One, you want to look for those coffee-like stains that are either on your ceilings or walls.  If you've ever been to an office that had a leak or something, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Yes. It looks like you spilled a cup of coffee. That's a sign of water intrusion.  If you have any musty odor at all, anywhere, that's a sign of water intrusion, which, you know, typically water intrusion is going to lead to mold growth. Now that one of the myths about mold is that it takes weeks or months or years for mold to start growing.

It can grow in as quickly as 24 to 48 hours. And just to give you an idea, because normally people think, I had a minor leak, it was very minor.  It definitely dried within 24 to 48 hours. Well, let's go back to science really quickly. If you take a wet sponge and you leave it on the counter, that moisture stays in between two substrates for a very long time, likely longer than 24 to 48 hours.

So all of our houses are built with either metal studs, two by fours, concrete walls, anything that's resting against another substrate is going to trap the moisture there for far longer. So that one little quick leak could have had, if you didn't specifically force dry it with like a dehumidifier, it could have stayed wet longer than 24 to 48 hours.

So I wanted to touch on that really quickly. The other amazing sign, that I love and, uh, it brings a really good visual is check your toilet bowl. Go over to your toilet bowl, lift the cover of the tank off, flip it over, look on the underside of the tank. And if you see any mold growing, that's usually a sign that there's mold somewhere in the house.

And again, as it provides that opportunity, what happens is when you have mold growing in your house, it's producing those spores at a specific rate, depending on how big the colony is and the more that's in the air, the more opportunity where you have more sure water such as a toilet bowl tank. If it happens to land in there, it's going to start growing.

So if it's growing inside the tank or on the underside of the lid, that's a good sign, hey, there could be mold somewhere else producing at that rate where the opportunity falls in there. So you'd want to take a look at that and get an inspection at that point.  Also you want to, you know, probably check your HVAC, make sure the HVAC is clean.

 A lot of us don't even remember to change the filter every three months like we're supposed to. Um, so, you know, the HVAC is like the lungs of the home. It's super important to maintain and pay attention to the HVAC because once that gets contaminated, that becomes a mold factory fairly quickly because the coil, it constantly condensates.

So it’s a constant source of moisture and water, where if mold gets to that coil, it starts to grow around it. I've seen it a hundred thousand times and it just becomes a mold factory. Now that's the air you're breathing in primarily. So, you know, those are the main points you want to take a look at.

If you have any of those issues, definitely get a mold inspection. 

Yeah. Those are good points. Now with the HVAC you know, how you get those calls, I don't know about you, but I get calls all the time from people who've come and serviced the HVAC years ago. And they still have you on the call list. And they're like, hey, we're going to be in the area.

We're going to come by and do an inspection. Those inspections that we get with the HVAC company, let's say every season or twice a year. Is that something that they come in to do? Are they coming in to clean? Is that part of their routine inspection or is that something separate that maybe a mold or mediator will come in to look but is there something that they're doing in order to clean that if there's a call if there is a problem.

Michael: [00:14:53] In theory, I feel like they should be, but I don't really think they are.

I've heard some good stories about clients telling me, you know, so and so pointed out some mold in their HVAC, recommended or a mediator come in, but for the most part, I don't really think that they are. And I think that's part of the problem. You typically need to search out like a NADCA certified duct cleaning contractor in order to actually get the ducts cleaned appropriately. And NADCA is the only real certification that I know for duct cleaners that has anything to do with mold at all, that teaches them, the negative air pressure that's required to remediate ductwork and machinery.

So it's really the only, thing that I know of certification wise, that that actually teaches people and certifies them properly for duct cleaning. Do you remember the Sears $99 duct cleaning forever? Let me tell you, those guys were not NADCA certified and if you've ever experienced one of those things, it was almost comical.

These guys like actually the knack of people actually come in and do it like really, really, right. I mean, if you Google some of their videos and stuff, you'll see, they set up containments around each area. They're putting a negative draw. And as they're cleaning the system, they're sucking it out so that it's not escaping into the environment.

Now we all know duct work. If you know, duct work at all, duct work is not a hundred percent sealed. It's not a hermetic seal.  There is typically, somewhere between one to 3% duct leakage. So, even with the negative draw, even with them doing the best that they possibly can do, you're going to get a very minor amount escaping into the environment, but still it's far better than if somebody haphazardly just goes in with a vacuum and starts cleaning it.

Serena: [00:16:33] Okay. And what is that acronym? 

Michael: [00:16:37] National Air Duct Cleaning Association - NADCA 

 If you go on their website, there's usually a link at the top right-hand corner, find a professional. You click that and you put in your zip code, it'll tell you all the people certified in your area.

So I love that tool. Like I give it to people because I help people all across the country. So I constantly am giving that to people and saying, hey, look, find someone on here.  Obviously make sure you still want to do your due diligence and make sure that you like them. And you feel that they're a good fit for you, but at least you know that they're technically savvy.

Serena: [00:17:06] So you recommend doing the duct cleaning by someone who's NADCA certified. And how often should they do that? Once a year? 

Michael: [00:17:14] You know, I would say once a year, you know, I would say once a year, once every two years, you can get away with. Sometimes it could be a little expensive, it could cost, you know anywhere between a thousand or $2,000 to clean, depending on how many systems you have, et cetera. So if you want to space it out every two years, that's fine. Just be aware of it. Look at your duct work, make sure it looks clean from at least from the points that you can see.  Cause if you're noticing dirt and grime at the registers or the supply lines, that means that all that stuff is getting in your duct work. You know you need to get it cleaned.

Serena: [00:17:48] Right. Right. So what are some of the common myths that people have about mold? Cause I can tell you one of the myths that I had that in reading your book, I was like, oh, I didn't know. So if you think about the fact that something leaks, you clean it up, but remember like you said, two or three days, you've got mold. 

Let's say the refrigerator, it's not leaking anymore. We cleaned that up. We're good. We're good to go. There's no more active leak. The mold is gone. And your book said, that's not true. And you said it to seven years later, people were still calling with these complaints of not feeling well and there was still mold in their house.

So that's one that I discovered in your book. Are there some other ones that people generally think about mold? That's not true? 

Michael: [00:18:32] Well, to kind of add to that, a lot of people think that if you solve the source of moisture, that whatever mold is there, it just dies. Like it's gone, you know, that's not true, right?

You know, it's not true at all. As a matter of fact, it can go dormant where it's producing less into the air than if it were constantly active, but it's still there. Right? And anything can trigger it to reactivate such as, it's a hot humid day and your HVAC is down or you turn it off and you want to open the windows one day, right?

Like all of that. Now you're adding that humidity factor and it just starts growing and colonizing again. And so, if you have mold, you want to remove it. That's the key. If you remove it, it's gone. If it goes dormant, it's still there. It still can impact your health. And you know, it just may be impacting it less than it previously was.

Another myth is like people using bleach to kill mold. Even on the EPA website, it'll tell you basically, the objective is not to kill mold, it's to remove it. This myth of killing it and, using chemical products and spraying, or they have this new technology that they're utilizing in our industry called this fogging process where, oh, we'll fog your entire place, ayurvedic acid or you know, or vinegar.

Right. And it'll kill everything. And it's like, all it does is it breaks down the outer protein molecule of the actual mold spores itself and just breaks it into smaller particles. And so, in order for you to understand why that's not good, we have to take an excerpt out of the American Lung Association.

It's also on the EPA website as well when you look at the particulate matter section. Any particulates smaller than 10 microns is a real danger to the health because it's so, so small that it passes right through the respiratory tract system, which is our self-defense mechanism blocking particles out and it immediately enters our bloodstream.

So mold happens to be between two and four micrometers. So it is smaller than the 10 micrometers. That's why mold impacts people, right? Forget about the allergy side of things or the toxicology side of things, just from that basis alone, we know that mold is not good for our health. So, that's really the big problem with that.

And so we want to be conscious of the air that we're breathing. Right. We want to make sure that these particles are not there. And how do we do that is, we don't kill things that produce particles. We remove them. So they no longer produce particles inside of our environment. And that's really the key to having a healthy approach to the home.

So my first question, or not my first question, but I'm thinking from the standpoint of being a DIYer and then, and being a homeowner, and I'm thinking about my audience and I'm thinking about who I am when I moved into this home, someone that doesn't have a lot of money, someone who just bought a house.

In fact, we actually had a mildew smell for years, and I know we had some active issues and I tried to treat it myself. But for people that are homeowners, that don't have a lot of money, are there some parts of this that they can do themselves? I know that we wanted to remove it, but let's say for example, maybe they had a leak from, I don't know a refrigerator or something, and it came down through the basement and this was actually something that happened to me. If I remove, let's say that section of drywall in the ceiling, replaced that within two to three days before it actually starts to create a problem, could I then be assured that, okay, I'm not going to have a mold problem because of this incident.

So does it, is it a matter of people just moving more quickly. And being able to just treat immediately? But what if they actually don't treat immediately? What if they're listening to this and they're like, oh my gosh, we did have that leak. And we thought that we could just put a fan there and everything would be fine, but now I'm listening to this and I'm a little scared.

Can I treat this myself? Is there something that I can do as a homeowner that doesn't have a lot of money to pay thousands or hundreds or whatever, to have someone come in. Can homeowners treat this and how do they treat it? 

Sure. So like if a water episode happens and you're home and you're catching it, remove all of the wet material, just cut it out.

If you're a DIYer, you get a utility knife, you're cutting out the wall assembly, exposing the actual cavity. And again, if it's on an exterior wall, you're going to have insulation, that installation is going to get wet. Take that wet insulation out anything that's going to trap moisture and allow it to dry.

Now I recommend using a dehumidifier. I mean, even if you go to Home Depot, I get like that a hundred dollar dehumidifier, that you have to empty out the bucket. I mean, that's better than the fans. Because all the fans do is blow stuff around. Right? And so we don't know where the source of water came in.

What if the source of water had some bacteria with it? Right. If it came, you know, depending on where it comes, comes in from, and we're passes through and think about it like this, what if you had a rodent infestation, you were not aware of, and that water passed through the ceiling cavity and pass through some, rodent feces.

Now it's got bacteria with it, and now you're blowing that bacteria around the house. You know what I mean? So the fans are a no-no. We need to get rid of those fans, honestly, and people need to stop buying them. They need to go out of business. It's no, because you don't know what you're blowing around, you know, and I think that’s the real kicker.

And then the dehumidification is what they're going to do is it's actually going to pull the vapor out of the air and convert it to water and drain it out. So the amount of air that's being moved through there is very minimal compared to these fans that are just blowing the air around.

So I think it's a much, yeah, much better option in terms of just trying to have the best air quality we can in the process. You cut out the wet building materials, you dry out the space. But just remember, like if the floor gets wet, now you have a floor on top of a floor typically, right?

There's something called a sub floor. So the only thing that's going to pull moisture through the wood floor in that scenario, is it going to be a demystifier? So, you know, some sort of dehumidifier, there's a, a floor extractor, I believe water extractor for the floor, I believe that you can rent from somewhere like Home Depot, too, that you may be able to put on top of that space, but again, just getting the water out.

And if you do that within 24 hours, you know you're in the clear. 

Serena: [00:24:52] And I think that's the key for a lot of homeowners is acting on it quickly, as you had said. And I know for myself, when I moved into this house and I had shared this story back in Episode One, but when we moved in, I was so afraid, Michael, of addressing anything in this house.

So when we moved in there was actually, I can tell you the story here. They had actually found mold on the sheathing of the roof. My house has two roofs. We've got like an upper hip roof and then we've got a lower gable roof and they are during the inspection, there were some mold found on the sheeting.

We didn't know anything about mold. We didn't know anything about owning a home. And so they said, well, the roof is a little old. The homeowners are going to go ahead and replace that everything else is as is. Yeah, we bought an as is home. I would never do that again, but they said, okay, we'll go ahead and remove the roof.

But nobody had said to me, not even the agent, Hey Serena, you should probably get a mold remediation company in here to make sure that it was done properly. Make sure that everything was put back where it needed to be, that there was no more mold. So when we moved in, we still smelled like a mildewy smell.

And of course, during the warmer months, you would smell it more than you would during the cooler months. And we also had some problems in the basement, and I did a video on my YouTube channel where I tried to address it myself and I sprayed it down. But I also had removed about 12 inches of drywall.

Okay. Um, even though there was, I think there was only just, it was, it seemed like it was concentrated towards that door. So I tried to remove the sub floor part, uh, not the sub floor part of the, um, oh gosh, my words are escaping me. Um, the bottom plate, the bottom plate of the framing and I realized that the doorframe had some mold on it.

So I said, oh my gosh, I had to take this thing out. It took me two days to figure out how to get the door in myself. But when I did, I did a happy dance. I was excited. But still it just in reading your book, it made me a little fearful because it was ongoing problem for years and we didn't want to address it because we knew that it was going to be expensive.

So we just kind of kept a fan down here. We kept a dehumidifier and whenever it rained, we just ran downstairs with our fingers crossed. Please let there not be water in please. There's still some sealing, some exterior sealing that I have to do. I feel comfortable though, because of the water is not coming in.

Like it's not coming in anymore. We may get it if it's a really heavy rain, but generally we don't get water in. But it makes me a little afraid of all the mold that had been in the house or could still be in the house, up in the attic because of not having proper mold remediation. So if there's someone listening to this, even myself, who's had issues in the past,

what's the next step? How do we find a good mold remediation company to come in, to do an inspection? Because from what I'm understanding for so many years, it's been done wrong and there's still companies that are doing it wrong and you're obviously doing it correct. So what should people like myself and other people who've had problems or who may actively be in the middle of a problem?

What should we be looking for? Even if we feel like we've solved the problem, which I feel like I've solved the problem, but after reading your book, I'm not so sure. What should we look for in, and having a company come in to make sure that they're thoroughly doing an inspection?

Michael: [00:28:07] So I think it, it really ultimately depends on what the objective is. Right. And I'll give you some scenarios to back that up. I had a gentleman recently call me and was like, hey, can we get a price? I'm redoing my kitchen. And as we pulled the cabinets back, we found some mold just want to remove that mold.

And, you know, and, and so for that, it's like, okay, well, that's pretty simple. Let's cut open the area, remediate what's there and put it back. And I started asking, like, is there any ongoing health effects that you're concerned about? Have you had a mold inspection done?

And it was like, no, no, no. I, you know, I don't think I have a problem. I think it's, you know, I would just have it there and I just want to get it removed there. So I look at that and saying, okay, so from that standpoint, you're really looking to remove mold from a cosmetic perspective, not from, not from an optimizing your health perspective. It's two totally different things.

Right? Cause at that point you're just focusing on making sure the colonization of that mold has gone from the kitchen. We're not even addressing the fact that that mold in the kitchen was producing spores the entire time it's there. It's getting in other places. He wanted nothing to do with any of that.

Right. And so from a cosmetic standpoint, no problem. This is what you need to do. And that's it right now. When you're talking about this like holistic approach, I call it like this whole house holistic approach. What you're trying to do is you're trying to remediate any sources and typically a home is going to have anywhere between five and 10 sources, and that's going to be an alarming figure.

You're thinking like, what, normally it's just like this one thing. No, typically, a building it, for instance, I live in this, this house now it's been built in the seventies. Right? So that when your house is built in the seventies, you figure typically the statistic is one leak every 10 years at a, you know, at a minimum.

So you're looking at five leaks at a minimum. Typically it's more than that. If your house is built, last year, right, there could be mold in it because when they were building, they didn't dry something right. Or, they had a leak, but again, even builders know very little bit about mold. It's mind boggling.

And so they could have done the same thing that homeowners do. Right. They just cut it out, put a fan on it, put drywall back. It's done. So no matter how, whether it's brand new or, 50 years old, you're going to have some sources. And I would say the average that I go and see is five to 10.

Now you want to remove all those sources and then remove any contamination that can be created by those sources. And by the way, we haven't even touched on toxins yet, which certain species of mold produce toxins called mycotoxins. And those, again, need to be removed and could impact your health in a whole different way.

So. There can be a lot to mold remediation when you're specifically looking at it from a health perspective, but it could be very elementary when you're looking to just remove it from your kitchen, but even that should be done properly so that it doesn't grow back behind your brand-new beautiful cabinets.

Serena: [00:31:03] Right. Right. So talk a little bit about the toxicity of, mold. There's a lot of varieties of molds, but are there certain ones that are worse than others? And are there certain places where you find the really bad mold showing up more than others? 

Michael: [00:31:18] So, yeah, there's 60 to 100,000 species of mold.

I mean, we don't, we don't even know. And, and, and we've studied mold very few, I feel in comparison to where we need to be. The main molds that we know about, you've heard toxic black mold, which in reference to Stachybotrys. There's catomium, which is kind of Stachybotry's cousin. Those two are called toxigenic.

It means that they're toxic themselves and both of those molds can produce mycotoxins, which are, now again, toxins are toxic as well, but totally separate and apart from the mold itself. Then you have allergenic species, like Aspergillus. Aspergillus is closely related to what we know as mildew.

It's both from the Ascomycota family. We can talk about mildew. 

Serena: [00:32:07] So if we're finding in the bathrooms, right, like in the bathroom shower.,  

Michael: [00:32:10] That's the stuff we're typically finding in the bathrooms. Unfortunately, I'm here to tell you some bad news, that mildew is just a nice way of saying mold. It's specifically a family of molds that we happen to call mildew because really the reason we call it mildew is because there's something called powdery mildew that grows typically on plants, which again is from that Ascomycota kingdom.

And, basically, it's just closely related to, but the most common form of Ascomycota, we find indoors is actually aspergillus. And it's typically a white powdery mold, which is what we kind of look at as mildew, these white or gray powdery mold. So that's typically what we're seeing when we think of mildew.

The bad news about that is Aspergillus is a mycotoxin producing mold, meaning that it can be toxic, but it is part of the allergenic species of molds, meaning that it produces typically more allergy-like symptoms, skin, rashes, things like that. But if it does produce mycotoxins and believe me, we know very little about what makes mold produce mycotoxins. We only have some theories, but if it does happen to produce mycotoxins for one reason or another, it can be toxic.

So I think it's very confusing when you look at mold and we've had so much misinformation out there for so long that it's really hard to put the record straight, but basically if you have any of a hundred thousand species of mold growing inside your home, it's going to be producing particulate, again, smaller than 10 micrometers, that's going to impact the body, you're better off, remediating and removing it. 

Now, there is no set standards on how much particulate is too much particulate. We're probably at the 20-year stage of where we need to be in terms of, when I relate this to smoking cigarettes, like it took us 50 years to say, smoking cigarettes is probably not good for us.

Right. I mean, doctors were recommending cigarettes, like literally forever 50 years. We're like at 20 years into this mold cycle, the way I look at it. We still have 30 years of studying to go correlation of health. And then, just how do we deal with it? Right. And so, I'm glad to be a part of that cycle and helping push the needle forward.

There's a lot left of life here that we need to figure out. 

Serena: [00:34:29] And I think it's even more important now because of how much time we're spending indoors because of this pandemic. And that's why I think that this pandemic is going to impact us in so many ways that we didn't even imagine, because, for some of us that have mold in our homes, if we then go to work,

I mean, I work at home, but for most people listening to this, if you're working outside the home eight hours a day, or whatever, five days a week or more you're not at home all the time in that toxic environment but being home all the time or working from home now, you're just exposed to it and you're breathing it in, and you don't even know.

And some of those symptoms, you're right, that you're having, you don't even attribute it to mold. You attribute it to seasonal allergies or, yeah, my knees always felt like this, and you just don't put two and two together.

 One thing I wanted to go back to, those five to 10 places where you said, okay, if you're, let's say, if you're living in an older home, you're going to have five to 10 locations.

Are there some locations where people have a problem that they don't even know? Cause I know one of those you mentioned was like the front-loading washing machine that I've seen that in some of the things. So where are some of those places where people have mold that they're not even aware that there's a problem with mold.

Michael: [00:35:39] Yeah. So, household appliances is definitely one of them and, we can go into each of them separately. I put HVAC in there, even though it's not really an appliance, but HVAC, coffee makers, washing machines, especially the front loaders. Um, and you know, what's interesting about the front loaders too, is you have this compartment where you put the detergents, those can get pretty nasty and a spot where mold can grow as well.

But it's typically around the gasket of the frontloading washing machine. If you go on my Instagram and follow me @themoldmedic and you see, I did a post on it, it's actually a real-life picture of me. That's my finger in there. I'm pulling back the gasket to uncover a mold that was hidden on the crease because you know, again, when you open the door, it looks fine.

It's, what's going on right underneath that. Right. Right. So, they make these like washing machine cleaners, dishwasher cleaners, and dishwashers are another one that harbors not only mold, but bacteria as well. And you know, you wash your plates with this stuff, your utensils, and then you put it right in there and it's spreading more and more bacteria.

It's not good. These are all things that we don't think about on a daily basis. The coffee maker, depending on what you have, but they all have these hoses and gaskets. And what happens is these gaskets are designed to stop the flow of water. It tells the coffee maker decides it's, you know, put all the water out there that it's going to put out.

And it turns on this gasket to stop the flow of water. Well, it also traps moisture and water, right, in between where the two services are touching. So over time, can take years. For me, it took four years for my coffee maker I decided to have it go. It probably had mold before that point, but it got to the point where I really noticed it.

I mean, I took a sip of my coffee and spit it out and was like, oh my God, I'm drinking a cup of mold right now. And it's crazy how, the day before I had a normal cup of coffee. And then it's just all of a sudden one random day. 

Serena: [00:37:36] Is that something that you could actually get to? I mean, I know in the wash machine you could get to the gasket and clean it out, but in the coffee maker, can you get to that part or is it just, if you've had your coffee maker after a certain number of years, it's probably time to replace it because you can't get to those parts that might have mold.

Michael: [00:37:54] Yeah, you typically can't get to those parts. I mean, every coffee maker is different obviously, but typically their hoses that are hidden behind, either metal or plastic, depending on what coffee maker you have. And they're not serviceable, unless you literally take your coffee maker to, the service department that the manufacturer recommends taking everything apart and make it like new, which at that point you just bought herself a new coffee maker.

It sounds like a lot of headache. Right. Um, you know, I, I think, I think, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a time thing. It's not necessarily like how X amount of cups of coffee. I just think that the problem with mold is the opportunity, right? We know there's a water reservoir. We know that this water passes through these hoses, and we know that, oftentimes you're going to have an opportunity for a mold spore to get into that apparatus and eventually find that water and start to colonize mold. So there's not a lot we can do about it. It just it's going to happen at some point in time. You know, whether it's two years, three years, four years is really going to depend on if you have mold growing inside your home already.

Or if we're just talking about mold coming in naturally from outdoors, you know, it's, that'll really depend on how long it actually lasts. For me, like I said, with knowing that I didn't have mold for four years, it took four years and it just happened. Wow. 

Serena: [00:39:14] So what about things that actually get mold on them?

And you had mentioned about some things being, like a sponge that can suck up that mold. And then there's things like, a stainless-steel table where you could just clean it off.  So are there certain things that we should keep or throw away if it's already gotten mold on it? And the reason why I'm thinking of this is because here at Thrift Diving, we love old furniture, like going to the thrift store. And I can't tell you how many times when I've been walking around the thrift store, I see amazing old vintage pieces of furniture and they have mold maybe on the side or in the drawers.

Is that something that, I mean, speaking in terms of all of the materials and, belongings people can have, but specifically with furniture, if you find a piece of furniture that has mold on it, can you clean that mold at off, or are there certain parts that maybe you should replace? What are the things we can keep and clean up?

And what are the things that you definitely say, look, just to get rid of it. Once there's mold, you don't want that thing in your house. All right. 

Michael: [00:40:15] So you have three categories. You have what's called nonporous means that there is no porosity to that item. So that's going to be something like glass, metal, or plastic.

You're going to have semi porous, which is going to be wood. And then you're going to have porous, which is like fabric, cushions. Anything like cardboard, anything where, you know, if it got wet, it would hold water like a sponge. Right. And so that's what you want to look at it. Like we know wood, if it gets wet, it does hold some water. Not a lot, not as much as a sponge, but it will hold some water. We know that if you spill water on a metal or a glass table, the water pools on top of it, it's not being absorbed into the material. So that's how we look at it. 

Now, mold has roots called hyphae that grow into, materials and that's the real harm with that.

So anything that mold could be potentially growing into you can't just wipe it away. It would be like going back to that weeds analogy, it would be like, if you just cut the stem off and walked away, thinking that you solved your weed problem, the weed would go right back. Right. It's the same thing with mold, that'll just grow.

So if you have mold inside, let's say a wood dresser and it's an antique. You have to ask yourself, is the wood finished? Because if you finish it with like a lacquer or polyurethane, something like that, you're going to turn that semi porous substrate into a non-porous substrate. And that point you can literally wipe it away.

Cause it's just, it's on the surface at that point. But if you have like, um, I mean, typically antique furniture, they didn't have cardboards, everything's solid wood, which is amazing. Um, but you know, 

Serena: [00:41:49] Which is why we love it here at Thrift Diving.

Michael: [00:41:51] , Right? So if you don't have, an antique and you have a traditional modern piece of furniture, which has a cardboard back, that cardboard has mold growing on it, you got to replace the back of it, and if everything else has finished wood, you can definitely wipe it away.

Now, if your furniture happens to be like MDF or that particle board that we just love so much today, that stuff, again, it's too porous. If molds growing into it and you got to toss it. So it's really about just kind of paying attention to the different porosity of the objects we have. And then knowing if molds growing into those items, if it can be wiped away or if it can't, or sometimes it is questionable.

Serena: [00:42:30] So let's talk really briefly about insurance. I know we only have a few more minutes. This is something that was really interesting to me because, we had a discussion about insurance, I believe it was episode six. I had an insurance person on, and he was talking about all the things that your policy could cover, but if somebody has a water leak and starts having mold growing everywhere, and let's say they've got some belongings that were in a room and suddenly now they've got all these things that are wet, that are porous that need to be thrown out.

What are the times when insurance will cover it and when are the times when insurance will not cover it? 

Michael: [00:43:06] So, you know, it's really interesting because, I always go back to this, like what happened first? Well, the water happened first, then mold grows second. And so I've had a fight with the insurance adjusters about this. They're like, well, we only have a $10,000 mold cap and this is more than 10,000.

So we're just going to cut the check to the homeowner for 10 grand and they're going to have to deal with the rest. And it's like first off, horrible customer service. Second off. But the water came first. They have water damage up to policy limit. So shouldn't they be covered under the water damage?  I understand the physical treatment part of mold removal is separate and apart from that, but shouldn't, they at least get the demolition, you know, the replacement of their items that got soaking wet and damaged as a result under the water damage.

And then you have a $10,000 max, right under the mold removal part to do the physical mold remediation. So I always have this argument and that, depending on I think in a court of law, I think that arguments is sound one, but unfortunately, you don't want to sue your insurance company?

I mean, you don't want to sue anybody. It's a costly endeavor in and of itself, you know, so it's like having to do that, and then just to get covered is like almost ridiculous. So you end up  getting stuck. Now, enter the friendly neighborhood public adjuster, which is kind of like hiring your own attorney and they get a percentage of whatever they get you. Now, when they come in and fight for your behalf, typically they know that  this guy knows his stuff legally, so they can't really pull the wool over your eyes on that regard.

So I always recommend if you have an insurance claim, just hire a public adjuster.

Serena: [00:44:50] Could it also be looking at your  policy maybe 10,000 for mold coverage is very low? Like that's the bottom that you could have, you know, so maybe it could go up to 50,000 so that you would be able to have enough to get your items replaced, because like you said, $10,000 that might not even be enough to cover the mold remediation. So again, going back to your policy and making sure your policy's kind of up to date.

Michael: [00:45:16] Yeah, I totally agree. I recommend bumping up your mold remediation  coverage as much as you possibly can because you never know. You'd rather have it and not need it than not have it and need it. Right. I mean, I can tell you out of the 10 projects I've done this month, only one of them was less than $10,000.

So 19 one of them would have had to come out of pocket if they weren't properly covered. Right. So that's a big figure. It's typically much more, but especially if you've had those, five to 10 sources, it's five to 10 areas that you have to remediate, which are basically projects in and of themselves.

Right. So you have to look at that. You want to make sure you're properly covered. And the other situation is, it has to be a covered gloss. So they're very crafty the way they write their insurance policies, you know, it's like, you have to like to be standing on your left foot, with one eye open at this exact hour to get coverage. It gets almost-- 

Serena: [00:46:13] On this particular day of the week! 

Michael: [00:46:15] It's insane. But basically, it's like, if this happens, you're covered and it's like, okay, so what about  if you have a leak, right? What if you have an appliance leak, well, only if the appliance leaked here, not here, it's like, what does that mean?

Right. They carefully write it because they know if they write it a certain way, they're going to save money. Right. And let's be honest, right? An insurance company, their objective is to make money. Any business in America. I don't care what it is. The objective is you have a fiduciary responsibility to make money.

Otherwise, if you don't, you won't be there to service anybody. Right. So, there's supposed to be a give and take. I think if the insurance company, and this is I'm writing a second book, so this is why I'm talking about this. Insurance is a big part of the second book. If the insurance company spent a little more time educating people, they could save money.

I feel like you could save money with educating people not to make the mistakes that cause havocs instead of, instead of limiting them when they need you. Right. And I feel like that's where we really missed the mark.   If I were a lobbyist, I'd be lobbying for change there, 

you know? 

Serena: [00:47:18] Yes, you were so right. You were so right because it's not that people don't want to do the right thing. It's that they just don't know. When I moved into this house, I literally walked around for probably about two months with this ball of anxiety in my stomach. What if something breaks? Well, what do I do?

But if there was something that people got when they moved into the house and they knew what are all the things that I need to make sure that I'm current on, because even with insurance companies, you had spoken about what they're going to cover and what they don't cover.

Well, if you weren't servicing let's say your HVAC. Or something like that. And something happens. They're like, oh, well, you weren't getting routine maintenance done on that. Or maybe your refrigerator was too old. I mean, we can't cover that. You know what I'm saying? So if people knew exactly what they needed to do, I think they would do it.

Michael: [00:48:05] Yeah, I agree. 

Serena: [00:48:07] , It's all about prevention really. Right. 

Michael: [00:48:09] I mean, honestly, a what do they say? An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure or something like that?  I think we've seen that at the pandemic too, like wear your mask, wash your hands. Right. All that stuff. Prevent is really affected it.

Same thing with houses. You're supposed to spend 4% of your home's value every year in maintaining your home. That's-- 

Serena: [00:48:28] Wow! 

Michael: [00:48:28] That is the number that you're supposed to spend. No way do we spend that. I know I don't spend that. Right.   I almost wish that when you bought a house and this should happen, like the home insurance companies that you insure with should give you a: We Are Now Insuring Your House.

This is your guidebook protecting your home. Right. Because , even if you're covered, who wants to go through a remediation or a water mitigation, right. Nobody. Who wants to have to go buy new stuff and deal with all of that, like move out of their house. Nobody wants to deal with that.

So I feel like if everybody got a book like that, when they first bought a house or even moved into a rental, right. They would be like, oh, I will do all of this stuff because I definitely do not want to have to deal with the consequences of not doing it. People give us the keys to a house and say goodbye.

You know, that's, that's the thing. Good luck. You know, that's like, here's a, here's a coffee maker. Yeah. 

Serena: [00:49:25] You only think about decorating it. But you don't think about all the other things that you have to do. In fact, episode, I believe it might've been episode nine. We were talking about, termites and the guy that I had on, he was a wonderful guest.

He's actually my bug guy. And he had said every home that you buy, it's not a matter of if you're going to get termites, it's a matter of when. And if you take that preventive measure and just get a routine inspection every year, every two years, and just treat your house, you won't get to the point where you've got thousands of dollars of damage from termites that you didn't know until they came through the drywall.

Like what you were saying, you might have mold behind the dry wall, but you don't see it. You may not see it until it's really bad and it's coming through the dry wall. So I'm glad that you had come on because it's driving home, this idea of maintaining and prevention. And I really wished that I had taken more--

I'm getting goosebumps as I'm talking about it, because I see the  error of my own ways by not doing more things to prevent some of the problems that we've had in his house, or even at the very beginning, when we came to look at the house and put our names on the contract, like, what do you mean you didn't get mold remediation? There was someone that was supposed to be in here and we didn't do that. 

There's so many more things we could talk about, but I know that we're just over time, but you have so many more things in your book that I highly, highly, highly recommend everyone to get this. It is on Amazon. And I know that you do have a website.

There's some other things that you talk about with preventing what to do when you find mold, but you also even go into  taking care of your health and, the reasons why some people have more symptoms because of leaky gut and some people just have these damaged immune systems that make them more perceptible.

Is that the word I'm looking for? I think that's the word I'm looking for.

Michael: [00:51:10] Susceptible. Yeah. Susceptible. 

Serena: [00:51:12] Susceptible! That's the word I'm looking for. And more susceptible to mold and environmental damage. 

Michael: [00:51:17] Yeah. There's individuals that are carriers of the HLADR gene, which is, people call it the mold gene as a nickname. But if you're a carrier of that gene, you're not methylating basically, you're not detoxifying the way you normally should. And so these particles that enter your bloodstream, they just start to accumulate and accumulate, and they just don't detoxify. So you literally are just adding so much inflammation in your body until you just get really sick.

And so, you know, that this other thing about is any, when you have an overload of particles and mold just happens to be one of the easiest things to enter our homes, as far as contamination goes. But when you have an overload of particles, it does, it reacts to that,  anti-inflammatory response in our bodies, because it adds so much inflammation having these particles in your body.

You start to develop, fat around the organs. You're holding onto water. You're trying to basically dilute the toxicity of your body and your body's--

Yeah, it's true. Yeah. If you have any auto immune disease disorder, any pre-existing conditions, it's just going to exacerbate the problems , and make it so that you're not healing one thing, because you have this constant attack from, these particles in your environment. It's crazy. Like you said earlier, the COVID , has definitely increased the awareness of, air quality because we know that the main transmission of COVID-19 is through the air.

And so  we've all become more conscious of air quality. We're wearing masks, but you know, we're not wearing masks indoors, nor should we need to, but we do have to be concerned about the air that we're breathing. I'll leave you with this. You know, the average person takes 20,000 breaths per day.

That's a lot of air, right? You're consuming more air than you are water, more food, but what's interesting is considering we consume more air, I find it very odd that we never look at air quality in terms of optimizing our health. Right? Like if we're sick. We're like, oh, well we got to drink more water, take more vitamins, or eat better food.

We never say we got to breathe better air. And it's like mind boggling to me. Cause we know that's the number one thing that comes into our bodies. 

Serena: [00:53:29] Yes. I did have one other question that came up since we are talking about improving our air. What do you think about using some of these air purifiers?

Do they work or are there certain types that work better than others or are they just spewing things back into the environment? Is it something that's really helping us improve our air quality since we know that we need to do that. 

I do like them. It's like, you know, if you drink filtered water, you're filtering the contaminants out of water before you drink it.

Michael: [00:53:56] It makes sense to filter your air. Because you want to be able to open the window every now and then enjoy some fresh air, get a nice cross breeze, right? You're going to have pollen. You're going to have allergens. You're going to have things come into the environment. I think it's good to have, a process that filters our air.

You could do the same air purification system with inside your HVAC. I love this system. It's a Intellipure system. It's called the HealthWay Super V. It's. It's a heftier purchase than a typical, $20 filter. It's a twenty-five hundred dollars component, but it last three years, you don't have to change your filters for three years.

You install that on your machine, and it turns your HVAC into an air purifier, which is amazing because you're just--

Serena: [00:54:37] So the whole house is the whole house, not just your living room in your bedroom, which is where we have them now. 

Michael: [00:54:42] Considering,  those one little units can be hundreds of dollars, spending , one amount to have the whole house done. And it acts as a second thing too. It stops mold from being able to get to that coil and contaminate the HVAC system. So it does two purposes in one. I love that thing. 

Serena: [00:54:59] What is this called? 

Michael: [00:54:59] Intellipure is the manufacturer. The Healthway Super V . , I love it. I love it because it  filters out as small as seven . Nanometers, which is roughly the size of a virus by the way.

So in terms of technology for a homeowner, you can't find better specs out there. I think it's good to filter your air just like you would filter your water. 

I think it's an important-- I think that the one caveat to that is if you have a mold problem, the solution is not put air purifiers everywhere. It's to remove the mold. So just keep that in mind. You want to have it as a supplementation or another line of defense. You don't want it to be the band aid solution that solves your remediation issue. 

Serena: [00:55:41] This has been such a great interview. I, I enjoy it. You know, I really enjoy talking about mold. I know you said at the beginning you were like, hey, isn't everybody excited about mold? But no, it actually was a really good interview. And I think there's things that people are going to be able to do now, even just going and checking their toilet lids to see if there's mold underneath there.

So, um, again, your book is called The Mold Medic an Expert's Guide on Mold Removal,  Michael Rubino. Where can people find you?

Michael: [00:56:08] So definitely I'm most active on Instagram. , It's my favorite, . Via of communication, I would say in terms of social media. If you go on Instagram @themoldmedic, I do have a Facebook, Michael Rubino, the author page on there as well, where I'm pretty active.

Most of my Instagram posts make it on there. So if you're not on Instagram and you're on Facebook, it's another good way to follow me. And then, go toAllAmericanRestoration.com. There's a ton of free information on there, such as how do I find a good mold inspector? How do I find a good mold mediator?

There's some checklists on there and things like that. The history of mold, if you're curious about mold, I've put together a timeline of when we first thought mold was discovered to where we are today and all the lawsuits in between that have changed some of the ways that we do things.

So it's a pretty cool little  thing I put together and,  TheMoldMedic.com. If you were just sitting, looking at the book it's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. So if you have the Nook and you want to get it on there, go ahead and pick that up on Barnes and Noble. 

Serena: [00:57:08] Awesome. Yeah, I'm going to tell everybody to get this book.

The link will be down below .All the show notes links will be, down there, but I highly recommend people read this. It only took me probably about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. And I was taking notes as well. 

It's a short read. It's only 150 pages and it's written, I mean, I, I didn't write it in complicated terminology.

Michael: [00:57:29] I wanted, I wanted people to really be able to understand it. so I tried to write it as simple as possible. It's a, it's a very quick and easy read and it's very informative. 

Serena: [00:57:39] Yeah. Well, when you're done your next book, we'll have to have you come back to talk about the 

insurance company aspect.

Michael: [00:57:45] I'm about 30% through I think so. 

Serena: [00:57:48] Yeah. Well, good luck on that. Thank you so much, Michael. And I look forward to having you come back again. Thank you for joining us. 

Michael: [00:57:55] Thanks for having me. 

Serena: [00:57:56] So if you're like me, you probably got done listening to this, went around your home to each bathroom, pulled off the top cover and checked to see if there was mold there.

Right? Well, that's a good start. I think what this episode has taught me is that we need to take mold seriously. And also if there's any times, when you do have any water intrusion, maybe a toilet flooded and you've got some wet dry wall or some wet floors, the main thing is to treat it right away.

Instead of doing what I know that I've done in the past is to just put your head in the sand and think, well, it's going to go away. It's not really that big of a deal. It's just a little bit of wet drywall. No. We need to be more proactive. And I think that's why this podcast is so important because we're not just talking about decorating and improving.

We're actually talking about the maintenance things that we have to do, and we can't ignore those things. And I know for myself, since we've lived here 10 years, there's a lot of maintenance things that I ignored for years because I was afraid it would cost too much money. I would be afraid there'd be more problems that would arise, and I just didn't want to deal with it.

But I think listening to this, we can all be certain that if we are proactive and I think this is a general theme that's come out of all these episodes. If we are more preventive and proactive with our homes, we are more likely to identify problems before they even begin to even just prevent them. Or if there is a problem, then we're catching it when it's not a huge problem. 

Because as we've seen in other episodes, when you wait to something gets to be a huge problem, it's more expensive. So even though the preventive is also expensive, just imagine it can be three, four, five, six times as much once it gets to an advanced stage.

So let's be more proactive in our homes. Let's be more preventive and let's do some of these maintenance things. So definitely get the book, The Mold Medic, you can find the link down below. I highly recommend it and just be vigilant in your home and make sure that if you do have a water intrusion or a water leak, handle it right away.

Don't assume that once it dries out, everything is okay. That's not the case. 

Hopefully you've enjoyed this episode and that you're finding these episodes to be valuable, that there's something you're learning in these episodes that you're applying to your life, to your home. 

So I would love to know you can send me an email. You can hit me up on Twitter, Instagram, any of those places you can use #thriftdivingpodcast. And I will see it. And let me know, are you getting something valuable from this? Is there something that you learned that you were able to apply to your home, to your life?

I would love to know. It helps keep me going sometimes, like I said, it feels like I'm talking to myself, but sometimes people will email me and say, no, you're not talking to yourself. I'm listening. So it's always great to hear back from you. I love it. And you can also give me a review on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Go ahead and give me a review. Leave some feedback there. I'd love to hear it. Next episode, Episode 16, we are talking about seven thrift tips that I have learned over the years at the thrift store. So if you remember, we talked a little bit about some Thrift. Tips on Episode seven, with Jamella Wallace, but we're going to be talking about more thrift tips next week, just you and me.

So be sure to come back for Episode 16 so that we can talk about thrift stores and just leave all the mold and bugs behind for just a little bit. All right. I will see you next episode.