Mold can lurk in the unseen nooks of your home, thriving in dark, moist environments where it’s invisible to the naked eye yet capable of colonizing any surface with an organic food source. Sounds scary, right?
Understanding the presence of mold is crucial for safeguarding your home’s indoor air quality.
Mold testing isn’t just about finding mold; it’s about ensuring the air quality in your home is healthy.
Mold spores, which are a minuscule part of the Earth’s vast fungal biomass—constituting 25% of all biomass—can proliferate if conditions are right. Testing for these spores is a key step in maintaining optimal indoor air quality.
You basically have two options for mold testing: DIY mold detection kits, which offer passive mold capture, or professional testing with calibrated equipment that delves deeper into environmental analysis.
Let’s see which testing method can help you pinpoint invisible mold growth more effectively.
Some people prefer DIY at home mold test methods to check if their homes have this annoying fungus or not.
DIY home test kits for mold have risen in popularity in recent years due to their accessibility through e-commerce sites like Amazon or Home Depot. This allows for a private snapshot of mold conditions in one’s home, at a fraction of the cost.
Costing $24 to $150 on Amazon, these kits help you conduct mold assessment checks without getting professionals involved. They include:
These mold detection kits also come with instruction manuals that help you conduct this test entirely on your own. Here’s how the test will go:
But the real question is, do mold test kits work?
Generally, mold testing kits do not provide a conclusive or meaningful answer. In some instances, they might help you figure out if your house has mold growth, but you might still have doubts.
Also, mold testing kits come from various manufacturers. They all have different accuracy rates and quality standards.
DIY kits usually contain petri dishes that you leave exposed in your home. After a period, these kits will inevitably capture mold spores, due to the omnipresence of mold in the environment.
These kits often require further analysis in a lab to identify the type of mold, which adds to the cost and delays results. The kits themselves capture mold but fail to provide comprehensive environmental data about why mold is growing.
DIY mold testing kits also fail to provide any insights into the concentration levels of mold spores in your indoor environment.
The nature of these passive petri dish tests doesn’t allow for determining airborne concentration levels, as there is no mathematical component to the testing process.
Additionally, dead mold spores that may be present in the air may not grow on the petri dish, allowing for data gaps that can help you make informed decisions about your health or property.
When certified experts conduct specialized tests to see if your house has mold growth or not, it’s called professional mold detection.
These professionals have the expertise and equipment to identify mold growth and the conditions that are conducive to its proliferation. Professionals use calibrated air pumps to actively sample the air.
This method captures mold spores more selectively and efficiently. The professionals then analyze the samples under a microscope to provide you with a conclusive, science-backed answer. Non-viable spore trap analyses, for example, require no incubation period, and certified results can be ready in a few hours.
Here’s how they check for mold:
Beyond mere detection, professionals assess various environmental conditions conducive to mold growth:
In this section, we’ll compare DIY mold detection kits to mold testing done by certified laboratories or professionals. That way, you can decide which method to choose when evaluating the presence of mold in your home.
DIY mold testing kits generally cost less, which is the main reason people get attracted to this option at first.
While DIY mold detection kits might seem like a cost-effective solution at first glance, the necessity for laboratory analysis and the lack of detailed environmental data can make them less efficient in the long run.
Professional services, although initially more expensive, provide a thorough analysis. This analysis not only identifies mold but also explains why it’s there, offering solutions to remediate existing contamination issues or to prevent future growth.
Choosing between DIY mold detection kits and professional testing should be informed by understanding both the immediate and long-term benefits.
If your goal is to not only detect mold but also to understand and mitigate the conditions allowing it to thrive, professional mold testing is the superior choice.
Remember, in the battle against mold, data-driven insights is power.
DIY mold detection kits might primarily detect the presence of mold. However, they aren’t made for a comprehensive evaluation. If the sample gets contaminated when you’re collecting it or transporting it, these kits will give you inaccurate results.
Similarly, many DIY kits don’t come with control samples for comparison, which further compromises accuracy.
However, professional mold inspection equipment used by certified testing agencies happens to be very advanced.
As explained above, professionals use moisture detection tools to ensure accuracy and collect multiple samples to reduce the chances of false positives/negatives.
They also have access to accredited laboratories with trained microbiologists. They do it to precisely identify which mold type is present in your home and in what concentrations.
Apart from health risks, mold can silently destroy your domestic architecture as well. Therefore, you need to comprehensively check your home for mold growth.
DIY kits will give you basic information about mold growth at best. But it’s not possible to use rudimentary mold detection kits to evaluate the extent of contamination or even identify moisture sources that led to mold growth in your home.
Professional testing delivers a complete assessment where you’ll learn about moisture sources. Professionals will evaluate indoor air quality and determine the type of mold present in a house. Their detailed reports will help you take appropriate action later on.
Also, DIY mold detection equipment lacks a professional touch. These kits don’t allow you to interpret what your findings mean.
You have to rely on your own understanding to check which mold types you have in your home. That’s why officials have this to say about mold testing:
“Health Canada recommends that a qualified professional assess and clean up large areas of mould.”
(Source)
Contrary to mold detection kits, professional mold testing services help you with their expert knowledge and experience. Certified inspectors not only conduct thorough evaluations but also provide valuable insights into remediation options and preventative measures.
A mold testing professional also knows where to collect samples so that results are less adulterated.
For example, a homeowner using a DIY kit may not think about the placement of the air sample, leaving the dish on a living room table, beside 3 potted plants. Well, these potted plants will have fungus present in the soil or on decaying leaves.
Mold will inevitably grow on the petri dish. However, it may not be reflective of the indoor environment. It’s localized to the micro-environment surrounding it.
Mold testing pros know this and will ensure their samples are collected in areas that yield the most amount of accurate data.
Imagine you’re trying to count how many fish are in a lake. If you just scoop up some water with a net (that’s like using a petri dish for a mold test), you might catch a few fish.
But you wouldn’t know how many fish are in the whole lake because you didn’t measure the volume of water you scooped. You might miss a lot or catch more if you netted a school of fish by chance.
Now, compare this to using a professional air pump for mold testing, which is like using a pump to draw a known amount of water from the lake through a fine mesh:
So, with the petri dish, you get a rough idea of what’s in the air, but not how much. With the air pump, you get precise numbers on mold concentration, much like knowing you have 2 fish per liter of water.
This makes air sampling invaluable for understanding not just what mold is present, but how much. This is critical for health assessments and remediation decisions.
Professional mold testing services like Axxonlab specialize in identifying this fungus in hidden and visible parts of your house. Why resort to DIY methods and take a risk when you can get an accurate diagnosis?
Don’t rely on mold kits. Get mold detected by professionals at Axxonlab!
We have state-of-the-art technology and seasoned mold detection professionals familiar with the signs of mold under hardwood and other types of flooring, including laminate and vinyl.
You can contact us at Axxonlab to be sure of these spores lurking in the corners.
We ensure that no mold, mildew, or asbestos symptoms will be left undetected on your premises.
