HMA - The 4 Basics of Home Mold Assessment!
How to find mold growth without expensive pointless lab samples - No ERMI!
HMA Summary and Sampling
What is a proper Home Mold Assessment (HMA)?
The most important thing is the assessment. A proper Home Mold Assessment must include 4 things. With the findings from these steps, the assessor can use deductive logic and reasoning to find and locate building problems, water damage, and mold growth. Often, perhaps 90% of the time, if these four steps were carefully completed, no sampling will be necessary to locate unwanted mold growth. Even if it’s hidden in wall or ceiling cavities, under or behind flooring, or concealed in other places.
HMA Steps:
1. Physical inspection of every nook and cranny of the home;
2. Building history review of water intrusion, damage, odors, repairs, rehab, modernization, remodel;
3. Building function/operations assessment. This is like Functional Medicine - is the building working the way it was intended? It makes sure all the pieces and parts in the right place;
and
4. Occupant health survey.
Putting these 4 things in place first will get you more answers and better info than any sampling by any method.
There are so many reasons not to do a home test of any kind. Just do not try to analyze or test your home. No home test is reliable. None are valid.
There are equally so many reasons not to pay an inspector to do tests of any kind.
Once you do the four HMA Steps, then you can figure out an "hypothesis". The hypothesis is a question - if you can't predict the sample results will answer a question, any question, you shouldn’t take the sample.
All sampling must increase the power of your decision-making.
The Home Mold Assessment steps will always find nearly all the problems and answer nearly all the questions.
J. Scott Armour, 5/15/18