Save Time and Money with Mold Treatments
Attics, crawl spaces, and sometimes basements can often be handled differently from the main parts of the house. In the main living areas, we have to be careful with personal things, carpet, walls, and paint. But in attics and crawl spaces, we usually only have to deal with mold on wood, insulation, or sometimes concrete. These areas are often a bit open to the outside, making it easier to get fresh air in. This makes cleaning up mold in these places less of a hassle compared to inside the house.
That’s why we prefer treating mold in crawl spaces, attics, and some basements whenever possible. This approach reduces your costs by requiring less work, and allows us to complete the job more quickly, helping you return to normal life sooner.
What is Mold Treatment?
Our mold treatment process is a gentle cleaning method that uses a special solution to get rid of mold, dirt, and stains. This process cleans mold off surfaces by scrubbing and rinsing. It also reduces or gets rid of stains through a chemical action called oxidation. There are many different cleaners we could use, and we have tested most of them. However, for most projects, we use Dot Professional Mold Stain Remover products.
Our Services
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The Mold Treatment Process
Why Do We Treat with Dot Cleaner?
- Low Odor – Dot cleaner produces less odor than other treatments we have used in the past. This allows you to get back to normal life sooner, without a bothersome smell.
- Less Chemical – Dot uses 4x less chemical than other products. This is great for anybody worried about chemicals in their home, especially those with chemical sensitivities.
- Save Time and Money – Treating your crawl space, attic, or basement with Dot Mold Stain Remover is faster and less labor intensive than other remediation methods.
- Proven Results – Dot cleaner works. It’s easy to be skeptical, but we have had great results on real jobs with Dot. See Below for some of our history.
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Our History with Attics and Crawl Spaces
Hand Sanding / HEPA Vacuuming
We started doing mold remediation in 2001. At that time, the only way we knew how to clean mold off of wood in a crawl space was to sand and HEPA vacuum it all. This involves laying on your back, in a protective suit and mask, with a piece of sand paper, a belt sander, or a vacuum and physically removing the mold from the surfaces.
This method works, but it is physically exhausting, we all hated it, and the labor cost was high. It was also very easy to miss areas, especially in the second half of the day.
Media Blasting
Media blasting is like sandblasting but uses different materials to reduce the amount of wood that gets blasted away. Baking soda and dry ice are commonly used, but we have also blasted with corn cob fragments.
Media blasting works really well. We used soda blasting for many years, and it removes mold and most of the stains. However, it’s also hard to do, messy, takes a long time, requires a lot of labor (but less than hand sanding), depends on the weather, and the equipment can break down often.
Treating with Borates
We were eager to move on to methods that required less expensive equipment and fewer hours, so we tried many treatment methods over the years. Treating a crawl space or attic with borate salts is effective at preventing and killing mold as well as other destructive organisms. Treating with borates also eliminates a lot of the problems with sanding, vacuuming, and blasting. Unfortunately, treating mold with borates doesn’t remove the mold staining. Often, it was even difficult to tell that we treated at all, except for a little glint of borate salt in the light of a flashlight. We tried posting signs certifying that the area had been treated, when, and by whom; but there was still the underlying impression that the remaining mold staining was a problem, and that if you couldn’t tell where we treated, we probably missed something.
Blue Dye
To make it obvious that the mold was treated, and to illustrate that we hadn’t missed anything, we started adding blue dye to the borate treatment. This worked fairly well; you could still see the mold staining, but there was no question that it had been treated by something. Unfortunately for us, the dye was very messy, got everywhere, and was virtually impossible to cleanup. Odds are good that our old shop still has a big blue spot on the concrete 15 years later.
Treating with Bleach
Chlorine bleach is a strong cleaner that kills mold and other germs on hard surfaces. It can also remove mold stains from surfaces like wood if you use enough of it. Strong bleach solutions work quickly to get rid of mold stains. However, there are many problems with using bleach to clean a whole crawl space or attic.
Respiratory Issues
The odor of bleach can be quite unpleasant in large quantities, but even more than that, it is dangerous. Bleach in the air can cause difficulty breathing, headaches, coughing, dizziness, and more. These are not ideal working conditions and are not good for a homeowner who wants to live in their house.
Bleach on Skin
Treating with bleach inevitably leads to some dripping on the ground in a crawl space. This is right where workers are crawling around and working. Even when wearing all the proper safety gear, laying in a pool of bleach can cause it to seep in and make contact with the skin. This can lead to extremely painful chemical burns.
Treating with Hydrogen Peroxide
We tried using hydrogen peroxide to treat mold because it is safer than chlorine bleach. Hydrogen peroxide is a common household cleaner and is less harsh, making it seem like a good choice. However, we found that it just doesn’t work as well for mold removal.
Even when we used higher concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, it didn’t remove the mold stains as well as we wanted. The mold stains were still visible, which means the treatment wasn’t as effective. While hydrogen peroxide might have seemed like a safer choice, at the concentrations needed for effective cleanup, it was more dangerous than some of the bleach-based products we tried later. Hydrogen peroxide that is 10% or higher is very dangerous for workers and can cause almost instant skin burns. Not only this, it just didn’t remove staining as well.
So, while hydrogen peroxide is a good cleaner for some things, it’s not the best choice for getting rid of tough mold stains. We needed something stronger and more effective to make sure the mold was completely removed.
Treating with Dot Cleaner
After trying many different ways to find something as good as bleach without the downsides, we found a chemist named Terry Collins from Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Green Science. He created a special molecule to make a safer way to clean up wastewater using fewer chemicals. We thought this technology could work for mold remediation, so we worked together with Terry and his team. We used an early version of this mold treatment in our business for years. This eventually became Dot Mold Stain Remover, which we now use every day.
Dot Cleaner works with less effort than sanding or blasting, is more effective than hydrogen peroxide, and has lower odor, fewer chemicals, and is safer than using chlorine bleach.
Disclaimer
We are not paid by Dot or any company related to them. They didn’t write any of this, so there might be mistakes or differences from what they say. We still use other mold cleanup methods when it makes sense, even in attics and crawl spaces. Our goal is not to advertise for Dot but to show that we have tried many ways to clean crawl spaces and attics, and we believe we are currently using the best method available.
LaMar CroomApril 23, 2024Polite, professional, and informative are the words I’d use to describe the representative that inspected my home. Thank youAdrienne RiddleMarch 5, 2024Aaron is incredibly knowledgeable!Charlotte EdmonstonFebruary 16, 2024Do you have any pictures to show of completed workM MaurerFebruary 7, 2024Extremely thorough. Brian explained everything very well and definitely had the customer's best interest in mind.Kristin MatherlyJanuary 20, 2024Very helpful in the consultation about what we needed to do. Quick to schedule service and excellent communication with scheduling, arrival and job completion.Ian LJanuary 13, 2024If you need someone that knows what they are doing and talking about at expert level this is who you want. I went through 2 other companies and wish I had called them first.Chris BarberDecember 31, 2023Great service and very friendly guys. Kept me informed throughout the job!Diana GroggNovember 7, 2023I spoke with Brian and he was very knowledgeable so that I knew what my necessary steps were. I appreciated his honesty.Jan LunnOctober 3, 2023Very pleased. The gentlemen were very efficient and thoughtful.
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