Black mold
 

How many of you have ever had your house tested for Black Mold or even mold of any kind.
I just had mine done and found out that I have stage one mold in my attic.
One of the problems was found to be that during construction all of the soffits had been blocked by insulation, no air circulation. I had a solar fan installed 10 years but it could no preform as designed because of the blocked soffits. The cooling ducts were leaking and condensation occurred.
today I looked into my neighbors house and it was the same as mine.
Have yours checked black mold in deadly.

I have. Negative result.

I bought a test kit and sent it to the lab for analysis. Came back negative.

Would this be part of a routine pre-purchase inspection?

There is no such thing as stage one attic mold. It is most likely a generic term used by whomever you paid to check your attic. Why did you choose to have your attic checked in the first place???

You are correct in what you say. I just sold my house in Illinois and moved here to the villages before I sold my house my buyers inspector found mold in my attic. I hired a company to clean it up and they informed me that the reason why the mold formed in my attic in the first place was because all of the soffits were clogged up with the insulation and not allowing air circulation. So I say it certainly doesn’t hurt in having an inspector go in the attic to check.

Be careful not to overreact. Before moving to the villages I was a realtor in Ohio and I actually attended a seminar on mold. I was surprised to find out that there are several varieties of mold that are black in appearance. Only one of them is the dangerous variety and it is very rare. A lot of people hire mitigation companies to get rid of a little bit of mold that is not such a big deal and pay a lot of money without having all the proper testing done for the type of mold it is to start with. A lot of times a solution of bleach mixed with water will take care of the problem. Had a friend in Bonita Springs that had some mold that was black in appearance, had a company come in to mitigate it and charged him thousands of dollars. During the process I recommended he have it actually tested to see what variety he had and it turned out it was not the dangerous variety of black mold. It’s easy to get taken advantage of so just be careful! By the way during that seminar the two guys teaching the class said that every house has mold in it. Most of the time it’s of a harmless variety.

Be very careful with "inspectors" who claim you have mold. I hired a company (advertised in our local newspaper) a few years ago. They came out, took one of the ceiling vents off, stuck his head in and quickly said, "You've got mold". Would cost thousands of dollars to fix AND, as part of the "remedy", I would have to vacate the house for 3 hours while they came in and 'CLEANED" the residue from the rest of the house. Nope, not happening! Had someone else come in and, you guessed it, no mold. Again, be very careful who you hire. Cheaters, scammers and scalawags all over the place. As with doctors, always get a second opinion.

Does your home actually HAVE soffit vents? A lot of homes in The Villages DON’T, even if they have ridge vents.

When I started reading Homebuilding magazines in the late 80s, there was a lot about the importance of soffit vents, how much was necessary, how to keep insulation (especially blown in) from blocking soffit vents, how to provide adequate air flow above insulation in a cathedral ceiling, etc. I followed the guidelines when I designed my own house and installed extra vents and careful blocking to keep the 16” of blown in virgin fiberglass in place. However, that was in Pennsylvania.

Mold does not easily grow in a dry attic. Air flow can help dry what is damp. Sometimes. You do not want mold of any sort growing in your attic, wildly dangerous or not. The problem is that for much or most of the year, the humidity in The Villages is around 85%.That’s horrible! (As we all know.) Warm air holds humidity much better than cold or cool air. If you have roof vents that actually work (or a roof fan) and soffit vents, that can pull humid air into your attic. If there are any cold or cooler things in your attic, some of the humidity may condense there and drip. Some building engineers believe that in Florida, NOT having soffit vents means that less humidity gets into the attic. It’s horribly hot up there, and some air gets out when it’s hot, but not much, because there isn’t much air flow through the roof vents if there isn’t soffit venting. The engineers say that instead, put in LOTS of blown-in attic ventilation to keep the living area insulated from that high heat, and let the hotter but dryer attic take care of itself.

HOWEVER, are your air conditioning ducts leaking? They might be! If so, they are leaking cold air, not water. That air has a humidity of perhaps fifty percent, compared to 85% outside, but that is still a lot of water content. That is also your money down the drain, and a lot of it (or up into the attic, rather). That cold air could lead to humid air condensing on the outside of the duct, then dripping through the insulation to the top of the drywall, where mold forms, whether bad or worst. It can also condense at the place where it leaks, and mold can form on that glued fiberglass duct, then perhaps be sucked into your rooms. Some people also have kitchen exhaust fans and bathroom fans vented right into their attic, and that can be a lot of extra moisture that can condense wherever things are cooler.

The best place to have heating and air conditioning ducts is in conditioned space—that is, inside your house—but people tend not to like that. Basements are second best. But we don’t have basements. Unconditioned attics are bad. On the roof is the worst. Traditionally, ductwork was made of sheet metal, but that leaks unless it is carefully sealed, and in a hot attic you would lose a LOT of your air cooling to transfer of heat from the attic. I suspect that all of the main heating and air-conditioning vents in attics and garages in The Villages is fiberglass. This is a mixture of fiberglass and glue, compressed before it sets, then covered on the outside with aluminum foil. This is usually purchased in 4x8” sheets, cut into strips, then glued and taped into rectangular tubes, although it can be purchased already made. (There are also double plastic tubes with insulation and coiled wire inside. Those work well if they aren’t compressed and if they are properly sealed.) These fiberglass rectangular vents are quite fragile compared to sheet metal and can leak if the tape gives way. (Just leaning on them or stepping on them can break them.) They provide an insulation value of R-4, maybe, which is not much, but it is a lot better than R-0 with sheet metal. If they aren’t leaking air, it’s unusual for moisture to condense on them. If they ARE leaking, you can have your air conditioning bill double and have areas in your house that don’t cool (or heat). The plastic ducts with insulation inside are quite a bit better, so long as they aren’t punctured or kinked and are sealed properly. (But a LOT of them are NOT sealed properly, with both HVAC adhesive and nylon ties (like those nylon handcuffs on tv). One place where the fiberglass rectangular ducts leak is in the garage between the air-conditioner and the attic. Leaning on one in the attic can sometimes tear it loose below.

It is certainly possible to tape another inch or two of styrofoam to the outside of these rectangular ducts in your attic. Or, you can buy eight inch thick fiberglass batts and lay strips of it over and around the ducts. As long as there are no leaks, this would stop condensation and virtually stop cold loss in your attic. One warning, though: If you try to do it yourself, it’s easy, providing you don’t have a heat stroke, but if you fail to stand on the joists while working and accidentally stand on the drywall, it can break, dropping you abruptly through the ceiling. That happened to me once.

The exact same th8ng happened to us, it was a scam

AC Ducts do not leak moisture
 

They cause the moisture in he attic to condense on their external surface. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the bathroom fans exhaust only into the attic, not all the way to the outside. The code does not require them to exhaust to the outside,the District Offices.

And don't forget your AC vents. We've only lived here for 2 years and when I had to vents cleaned about a month ago, they found mold & were able to take care of it immediately.

One very important item you missed with Fiberglas duct is that in Florida the code here the joints are required to be sealed with mastic not just tape. So to your point that they are likely to come apart is not true.

Roof Vents
 

Just thought I'd mention roof vents here as we had 3 additional vents installed after hubby researched proper number for our size home/roof and found we didn't have enough. We bought the home new, it's not had any additions, it just wasn't built with enough vents. It's still hot up there but we can notice a difference when going up to retrieve/store items. He also installed a vent grid in the door of our pull down stairs in the garage. Every little bit helps.

So many crooked contractors and no recourse

How old was your house in Illinois ? Meaning when was it built ?

Black mold
 

We too had our attic and duct work tested with a kit. Result showed there was less mold in those 2 areas than in the outside air. We’re in Florida. Of course there’s mold of all types

It was built in 1983

should be

I HAD a friend who was in Mold Mitigation Company. REMEMBER I SAID HAD.
Claiming he used special mitigation chemical all he used was over the counter bleach spray from True Value or Big Box stores nothing special also hired illegals below minimum wage. Just be careful who you hire, Contract, Warranty!

Have an ultraviolet light installed in your ac after sealing the duct work, that will take care of any mold in the duct and ac coils in short time

Ours vent to the outside.

Not according to the Florida building code. All homes built since the early 2000's require outside venting.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...ZVZcqMMPGFGMFd

I absolutely agree. Someone is trying to sell you something.

If you want to know if you have mold in your home, take a paper towel and reach down and wipe around inside the garbage disposal.

We all live in Florida and it is a very high humidity area and unless we run our air conditioner or heat most of the time, things are going to mold.

I had my house checked for mold twice after hurricane Irma when I had to replace my roof due to 8 different leaks in my house. There was no mold.

Who did you have check for the mold?

I had a dark discoloration appear near two A/C vents, so I took off the cover and found what looked like mold to me . Rather than trust someone to tests it who may or not be acting in my best interest, I purchased a mold detection kit from Amazon and tested it vents myself with sticky tape provided in the kit. It was around $35.00 (five years ago), and I mailed the samples to a lab in an envelope provided. The analysis came back about ten days later and showed a couple kinds of mold present, but not black mold or any other "dangerous" mold. But the lab did say that I should contact a mold abatement company to have it removed. I did so, but I didn't have to worry about a company ripping me off since I already knew what it was. The mold abatement company confirmed what I had, and it cost me about $800.00 to have the entire house treated via the A/C system, they physically cleaned out the vent lines too, and treated the lines and air handler so it wouldn't return. I haven't had a problem since. They gave me a five year warranty, which recently expired. I was happy with the service.

Was any line of selling something connected to this ? Frankly, I'd get a LOT of input, maybe even from U. of F. or other public source, before jumping to any conclusions. Having said that, I have no knowledge other than what the average person has read. I built my house 18 years ago now and I probably go to and use my attic more than most. One of the things I have observed is I can definitely see the daylight clearly coming through the eves and I can also "feel" the air circulating when I am there. Don't know if this would help anyone, but one thing I have done on a fairly regular basis when the humidity is high (like it has been this summer ! ) is fold up the stairs but leave the attic entrance OPEN. This does not interfere with our autos or GC at all, and you can certainly feel the air circulation movement.

When we bought a used home 7 years ago we pulled up the carpet and found mold throughout the house. We of course had to take care of that clean air ducts etc. what I later found out was that the original air conditioner was oversized to a 3-ton air conditioner. At first glance this didn't make any sense to me until I realized that when the air conditioner was on because it was so powerful it would get the temperature down real quick to the desired level. However, it wouldn't do anything to reduce the humidity because it ran so short. Hence, mold under the carpet. Our new AC unit is smaller runs a little bit longer no mold.