Few findings can change the mood of an inspection faster than mold.
In Episode 73 of The Ride Along, Brad and Matt welcome Jordan Mason of CXR Solutions and Hello Home Inspections to discuss lumberyard mold, common misconceptions, remediation, and how inspectors can handle those uncomfortable conversations when clients start asking tough questions.
The discussion gets into where an inspector’s responsibility begins and ends, why mold doesn’t automatically mean a deal will fall apart, and how clear communication can keep everyone focused on the facts.
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Transcript
Brad Lowery
Matt, we are back dude and long overdue. My friend, how are you doing out in Houston?
Matt Brading
Great. I’m burning up out here. It’s already summer. Like it’s like in the high eighties. I’m sweating my tail off out there doing inspections today. I had a really interesting day. I did a, was one of several guest speakers on a panel of all about healthy homes, which is right in line with what we’re going to be, you know, focusing on the topic of today’s podcast on. And so I’m really excited to just go straight from that into this. It’s been kind of an exciting day, but yeah, a lot going on, man. You can really tell the summer is right around the.
Brad Lowery
Dude, definitely man. you know, there’s been if you guys have been watching all year, we’ve definitely placed an emphasis on healthy homes over the last several months. I mean, we’ve talked about being health home certified about all things building science. First of all, we’ve talked about housing envelopes. We’ve talked about maintaining air quality in your home, everything. And today we’re talking about things that grow behind the walls. So we’re talking about mold.
Matt Brading
That’s right.
Brad Lowery
And nobody better to talk about that than our guest, but let’s roll the intro and then we’re going to bring.
Matt Brading
All right, let’s do it.
Brad Lowery
I don’t know why I played the old intro, but I will splice in the new one.
Matt Brading
First started communicating with Jordan back, I swear it was like 2018 or 2019, right? It’s been some years ago. I’m not real sure. Jordan Mason is our guest today. He’s out in the Tampa area of Florida. Am I correct? we just, we communicate a lot on a social or used to anyway, a lot on social media. Jordan was just, you know, there’s, there’s those people that when they put out content, you can just tell that they’re genuine.
Jordan Mason
It’s been a while.
Jordan Mason
Yes, sir.
Brad Lowery
My old stomping grounds.
Matt Brading
people, good people with on a good mission. And that is always the impression I got from Jordan Mason‘s content that he put out. and I always respected him for that. And me and him have been kind of chatting back and forth about the industry for a long time. we had Ryan wall on last season, Jordan and Ryan work together. I remember when you guys made that merge. actually, I remember you talking about hello home before you guys did that. Like I remember when you, when you were
Jordan Mason
Thank you
Brad Lowery
or do.
Matt Brading
Kind of when you couldn’t do a job or maybe you guys did jobs together. I don’t know. I remember some things kind of before the transition. So it’s pretty cool. So super excited to have you on the show. Jordan Mason. We’re going to say at least today because you’re with Hello Home Still, right?
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Yes, less in the field with Hello Homes, more just kind of as an advisory role, helping the team out, helping to lead the team of inspectors when necessary. But I’ll be honest, they make it super easy on me. They’re all super self-sufficient. So I’m there for a question just as kind of the more seasoned guy in the room, but they do a great job over there.
Matt Brading
Right.
Brad Lowery
Well, speak of the season.
Matt Brading
Well, today we’re more talking about CXR solutions, which is another company that is affiliated with Hello Home or just owned by, what’s the deal there?
Jordan Mason
Yeah, it’s really same ownership, but we have a great working relationship. know, the real estate space, it’s a big community, really. And especially in Tampa, we’ve had a lot of growth, a lot of business, a lot of just craziness over the last five to six years. And we got a lot of really great contacts in there. And a lot of it started as like, hey, we have all these agents who are asking us about repair addendums all the time, but how do we actually help them? And so, you know, as an inspector, you can’t really do much on the back end to help out. So it started with a big idea and a little bit of this, little bit of that, but it’s taken off over the last year and it’s grown probably to places that we’d never even imagined.
Brad Lowery
Dude, that’s awesome. you came from being a home inspector yourself and then moving over here merging with Ryan. So you’ve got a keen perspective on something that I want to tell the viewers about before we launch into the discussion. So guys, do you remember your first year as a home inspector?
Jordan Mason
yeah.
Brad Lowery
What stood out to you the most? Take me back to the biggest pain points that you had back then.
Matt Brading
Jordan, you go ahead.
Jordan Mason
Yeah, for me, was just being very excited to be in the market. I was in the mortgage space. So was still kind of in that real estate world, but I was just getting stuck behind a desk and I was kind of not liking sitting there all day. I wanted to do something with my hands. So I honestly started as like a, hey, I could do a job or two a week just to get myself out and about. And it blew up. the thing that I remember is I’m licensed, I’m super excited. I’ve crossed all my T’s and dotted all my I’s and then realizing, I don’t know that I actually know enough, you know, and having that kind of imposter syndrome and like, man, do I really know enough to do a good job for these clients?
Matt Brading
Man, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. Like the first thing that came to mind when you asked this question, Brad, to me was uncertainty. I was uncertain in myself. Now, in retrospect, I mean, I’ve said it before, I’ve said it on air. I wish I could get at least the first two years of inspection back and do those again. However, I will say that I knew more than I allowed myself to think I knew. know, like I was actually better than I thought I was. You know, I was more competent than I actually knew.
Jordan Mason
We have.
Matt Brading
But I had this fear, like you said, imposter syndrome and just uncertainty looming.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, no, definitely. My biggest thing was I had the technical knowledge, but I didn’t have the business knowledge, right? I didn’t know how to like you come out of you come out of all of your InterNACHI training or whatever your inspector school is and you know everything, you know, book knowledge wise about the house, right? You’ve, you’ve, seen some stuff and you know what it is in the book. You haven’t necessarily seen everything that there is to see. You’ve got a lot more coming on that, but understanding the business fundamentals of your financials of marketing of sales of how to network and actually connect with agents so you can build a book of business. It’s tough and things have changed over the years, but if you noticed, we’ve kind of scaled back a little bit here on the Ride Along podcast over the last two months. And that’s because we’re actually ramping up production on something that’s going to be coming out mid-July. It’s a masterclass for three months, right? It’s two per month from July through September.
Jordan Mason
Thank you.
Brad Lowery
And this is going to be a crash course for first year inspectors or, you know, newer inspectors. If you’re still interested in growing your business and learning the fundamentals to kind of help fill in some of those knowledge gaps, we’re to have some amazing guests that are going to be presenting. It’s going to be webinar style and we’ll give you guys all the details on that soon. So stay tuned on that.
Jordan Mason
Okay. Okay.
Matt Brading
That’s right, because it’s not just about like, okay, I had the uncertainty and you had like a little bit of business knowledge. But the fact of the matter is you have to do both of those things. There’s actually all those things you have to do them all at the same time. And we don’t,we’re usually not just like banging at one and then not at the other. Like there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of, unsureness going into all of those things. So that all should be covered.
Brad Lowery
You do.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, you hear your business owners talk about implementing systems and processes and you go, what in the heck does that even mean? How does what does that have to do with home inspections? I know how to go around the house. We also need to know know your way around an office, you know, even if it’s in your own house. So you’ve got to have things in place to keep things rolling. We’ll have to get there. So that’s going to be coming up. Stay tuned on that. Cheers to that for sure. Speaking of cheers, guys, we can’t get too far into this without doing the drink of the day Jordan.
Jordan Mason
Okay.
Matt Brading
Here’s to that.
Brad Lowery
Welcome to your inaugural drink of the day sponsored by inspection fuel. It’s going to be September 28 through the 30th in Louisville. And Matt, I hear the hosts are pretty awesome.
Matt Brading
Yeah, you know, I heard some pretty good things about those guys too. think, feel like their name might be Brad and Matt, I think maybe something like that.
Brad Lowery
I think so. They’re rather good looking guys, eloquent, you know.
Jordan Mason
That’s what I hear.
Matt Brading
I like to think so.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, so go check that out, but you can go register inspectionfuel.com Jordan. What are you sipping on tonight for your drink of the day?
Jordan Mason
So tonight we got the Golden Road Mango Cart.
Matt Brading
Dig it.
Brad Lowery
Good choices, man. Especially Florida. That’s a good Florida beer, you know. It is.
Jordan Mason
That’s a good choice. yeah, that’s a beach beer.
Matt Brading
Thank you. It’s a beast beer. I, there was one year, every year I try to get a, an ad, a beer advent calendar for Christmas. And, one year it was like, cause most of times I was finding my Costco and most of the time like German, which I love that stuff. But one year was like craft beer or something. And they had a whole bunch of stuff like that. And, and, they some IPA small different places and everything that particular one was in there. It’s the first time I’d had it. That’s killer. Good stuff. What do you drink?
Brad Lowery
It’s definitely good. Matt, what are you sipping on? Yeah.
Matt Brading
Oh, me? Oh, okay. Well, me, I’m sipping on some Cooper Family. This is their barrel reserve bourbon whiskey. And so this is one of their nicer bottles. you know, I was feeling frisky today. cheers. It had to be bourbon. Honestly, a cocktail sounded really good. I don’t think I have a beer. A cocktail sounded really good, but I was lazy. I just wanted to pour something in the cup and let’s go.
Jordan Mason
Had to be bourbon.
Brad Lowery
I’ve still got a little bit of that Cooper film.
Jordan Mason
Ha ha ha!
Brad Lowery
Man, I’ve still got, I think, a little bit left of that Cooper family bottle that you gave me before. That stuff was solid, It is.
Matt Brading
Yes, pretty good. They have a few different bottles. This one in particular, I tend to like a lot, but it’s also like the one that’s the most expensive. So go figure. But I mean, I haven’t had a bad ball.
Brad Lowery
Huh. Yeah, of course.
Brad Lowery
And you are simply a man with a refined palette. Okay. That’s it. Well, guys, I am sipping on something new. you know, usually, gosh, Jordan, you’ve got a Florida beer there. I’m a Florida boy. Y’all know that the Gulf has a place in my heart. But tonight, I am sipping on something pretty cool here. This is a newer product straight out of Nashville, Tennessee, called rhino dart. That is a tequila based beverage. It’s not a heart seltzer, 8 % alcohol by volume, some friends of mine here created it.
Matt Brading
What can I say?
Jordan Mason
Ooh.
Brad Lowery
I’m trying to help them get it off the ground. They’re not sponsoring the show. I just think that you guys if especially if you’re home inspectors in Tennessee should go check it out. And they’re going to be coming to a state near you soon.
Matt Brading
Well, what tell me about what’s in it? I mean, I know it’s got tequila in it, but it’s in a can, so it’s got to have more than that.
Brad Lowery
It’s got agave spirits, citrus liqueur with wildflower honey. it’s pretty good, man. It’s pretty good. I Rhino dart, you know, it sounds a little tranky. But you know, I’m like, if I I drink this, am I just gonna die like, but I haven’t yet. So, you know,
Matt Brading
Okay, so it’s I get it. Okay. Locked it on the can.
Matt Brading
Totally. That’s where my…
Jordan Mason
Okay.
Matt Brading
Well, certainly hope not. And on that topic, let’s go to something that I don’t know. Is it dangerous? Is it not something that I’ve been dying to talk to you about man? And really, because I’ve known you’ve been doing this for a while, but you’ve done some videos on this particular topic I want to touch on. I know that you have some knowledge and not only what it is, but the removal of it and it’s lumber yard mold. I’m going to go.
Brad Lowery
Alright, let’s roll into it guys.
Matt Brading
Lumberyard mold, right? I’m gonna use the air quotes here, because that’s what we were calling it, right? But this stuff, it grows in a house before it’s dried in, even if it doesn’t have anything on it, whenever they start framing the house, so we can call it whatever we want. But it is some type of microbial growth happening during the framing stage. And we need to figure out like, what is it?
Jordan Mason
I appreciate that.
Matt Brading
You know, what is it? Is it? What’s the toxicity level? What is your knowledge of that of that stuff?
Brad Lowery
Do we write it off? Do we report it? Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Yeah, so I think what I’ll say is mold in general is a very hot topic right now. It’s huge on social media. People are really diving into it, which is a good thing. At the base of any real problem is knowledge. And the more people that know about it, the more people understand about it is a good thing. To me,
Matt Brading
Mm-hmm.
Jordan Mason
when I use the term lumberyard mold or I hear it, one, it’s either a builder trying to get out of something, which we’ll probably talk about in a little bit. But to me, lumberyard mold is, that’s gonna be showing up on the wood. That’s coming from wherever, whether it’s two by foursor joists or trusses or whatever we’re talking about. That’s kind of where we put the sort of imaginary line in the build process. This is coming on the wood
from wherever it’s coming from versus maybe some humidity style molds that are growing. mean, math’s the same way. It’s a million degrees in these properties while they’re being, mean, sometimes it’s six weeks, eight weeks, months, who knows? One small wrinkle in the build process can really extend these products and all of sudden you’d have a house sitting there for six months with a couple of windows and sure it’s got a roof, but the humidity alone can grow some things. So that’s a big difference for us. Did this come with the wood? Is it more heavily rooted in there? Or is this something that maybe grew in the last couple of weeks? It doesn’t take long.
Matt Brading
doesn’t matter. I guess like, you know, I guess that that’s part of the question is like, what is your knowledge as to what it is? you like we were calling it lumberyard mold, but I mean, certainly there’s microbial growth that I think maybe wouldn’t be considered mold. There’scertainly things that are a fungus or a mildew. Is that considered mold? I don’t know. I haven’t done any testing on I don’t know. There’s also mold that is, you know, very
Brad Lowery
That’s, yeah, we think it does, right?
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Matt Brading
toxic and other molds that are not very toxic. And I think the reason why mold is such a hot topic is because people are starting to become more aware of this. I mean, I literally spoke with somebody today that I spoke with several times. Her child was diagnosed with autismand this went on for a couple of years before they finally realized it actually wasn’t that they saw a doctor. The doctor said, Hey, well, let me ask you something. When did this change? They said, well, this time, what changed during that time? They found out they moved into a new house. started doing some investigating. They found out their house was literally covered in mold that was causing these problems. And so they moved her out of that house and within three months everything was gone and she’s no longer considered autistic. As a matter of fact, there’s nothing at all. She’s just completely like she was prior to this. so, you know, so what is this stuff? What do you know about it?
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Yeah, so we like to take like a really nuanced approach to every property and for me specifically, I’m there for the property, but I’m also there for the family. so understanding the entire background is really important to me because you could be in a house and you could be sneezing and coughing and you could have real problems. I can be standing right next to you and maybe it just doesn’t bother me. So not only do we have to understand, what’s there, what genus of mold are there, what are we really dealing with, but then also understanding the other side of the equation. Not to say that we would sort of not treat it if the person wasn’t allergic, but we have to understand the whole thing. A good example, we just completed a project last week and it’s new construction, very similar, not quite as extreme as the example you just gave, but they had to sell their house, they’ve moved out and because they had seepage through their foundation and like 3,500 square feet of mold underneath the floor. And they have a five-year-old daughter who was just incredibly sick and her face is swelling up and she’s doing all this. And so they’re, hey, we’re gonna build a new house. We’re gonna build a new house. is the way forward. This is how we can control our daughter’s health. And they come in and there’s mold all over the trusses and, you know, there’s always scrap pieces of wood here or there that get used up from the bottom of the pile that maybe shouldn’t have. That’s easy to deal with. But you know, you’re looking at these trusses and lo and behold, the worst of it was in the room that this daughter was going to be in. Of course, right? So it was just, you know, luckily they’re educated. They understand because they found a good doctor. But you know, the inspection side.
Matt Brading
course.
Jordan Mason
The remediation side, I think, is a little bit ahead of the doctor side right now. There’s not a lot of doctors who specialize in this. It’s very hard to find them. So I think there’s a lot of misdiagnosing going on. I that’s obviously not my realm, but just the stories that I hear, there’s a lot of misdiagnosing happening when it could just be mold.
Brad Lowery
I mean, there’s a double danger in that, right? Where it’s like, if things could be misdiagnosed, on the other hand, they can also be mis-remedied at the same time. You know, you hear people say, well, if it is mold, you know, just put bleach on it, you know, and I’m like, biggest misconception amongst homeowners, how to treat, right? You know, let’s do that. Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Huge pet peeves.
Matt Brading
Let’s go down that rabbit hole.
Jordan Mason
Yeah. Yeah. You know, it doesn’t do what people think it does most of the time. You know, basically what’s going to happen and obviously not every case, you got to put the disclaimer in there, you know, but your chlorine in there is going to evaporate fairly quickly and you’re just going to be left with water. I we literally put a kind of a silly video on our social media about a week ago where we I think we use the catchphrase, you’re bringing moisture to a moisture party. And so that’s kind of how we describe it. It’s like, you know, we’ve had builders say this to us, hey, don’t worry about it. You know, we know you found it in your pre drywall. We’ll spray it down with bleach. No big deal. And we’re like, whoa, hold on a second. Please, please don’t do that. So yeah, I mean, it’s just, you’re left with too much, too much moisture and it’sjust not going to do what you need it to do.
Brad Lowery
Truly. Now, early on in my career, the first home inspection company that I worked for, we had a branch of the company that was also mold abatement. Sounds similar to what you guys are doing. It’s such an easy ancillary. Like if you’re looking to spin off like a side business that’s doing something else that’s adjacent to what you’re already doing as an inspector, it’s a great business to start. because the biggest thing is that I learned, we had a saying in the company, mold is gold, right? For a lot of home buyers that are looking to buy, if you do see mold in the house, a lot of times it is fairly treatable if you know people that know how to treat it properly. but understanding when to treat it and if it needs treatment is another big thing, right? I think about, houses in Florida that we see down there, lot of like old wood bungalows, right? You get down on the crawl spaces. you’re lucky if they’re even properly supported down there, but, you, you can see old mold, right? Where it’s, dry, it’s crusty. And you’re like, do we need to worry about this anymore?
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Mm-hmm.
Brad Lowery
My big question is, should people be worried about dormant mold becoming active again? Does all mold need to be treated or at what point?
Jordan Mason
Yeah. Yeah, so again, everything is everything is is really case by case for us. You know, and I like what you were saying about kind of an ancillary service. That’s that’s how we started. We were an inspection company and, you know, a couple of bad hurricanes roll through. And you’re like, man, people are going to need some help with this. We were already offering air quality testing, but it was really a we’re going to set up our air machine. We’re going to walk away and we’re just going to give you the results and that’s as far as you can really go. In Florida, we do have an assessor license as well as a remediator license. Not every state’s exactly the same. And we kind of said, we want to go a little further. So let’s go and do the coursework and let’s sit for the assessor license. And the idea was we could just have a competitive advantage. While we’re already doing our business, while we’re already doing the inspections, we’re really not doing a lot extra. We’re doing the testing. So let’s just get more educated and let’s have a better approach and it sort of snowballed from there. But, you know, we find something we don’t like. Hey, I think, you know, that’s mold. Maybe it’s old, maybe it’s new. Who knows? You know, then we go into moisture. We’re to check for moisture. We’re going to go through those steps and we have all the tools at our disposal to go ahead and test it, whether that be a swab, an air test, know, tape lift, whatever, whatever the test method that makes the most sense. The struggle is with certain testing methods. You will take a swab for example, the swab tests from the lab are binary. It’s just yes or no. But it doesn’tsay, is that dormant? Is that live spores? That’s the trouble. So there is a little bit of interpretation that you have to make. Why could it be active? Why could it be dormant? And kind of go down those roads. Well, hey, look, I know I’ve got enough humidity here. Like if I’m finding, let’s say, for example, I’m finding penicillium or aspergillus. Okay, well, I don’t need a lot of water for that. That’ll grow with humidity alone. Well, I’m in a pretty hot crawl space. I could take my hygrometer down there. Okay, yep, we’re in the realm. So even if I can’t prove that it is active or dormant, like we have all of the preconditions to make it a problem, let’s just err on the side of caution and let’s take care of it. On the flip side, if we’re finding
Jordan Mason
something that just needs a tremendous amount of water. It’s like, I don’t have moisture anywhere. Something doesn’t quite make sense here. You know, we have a mold that we see quite a lot. It’s called catomium and pretty nasty stuff. Like for example, the lab will fail you on a test for catomium if it finds five spores. That’s it. So they do not like it. But catomium is really tricky because it’s very heavily associated with moisture damaged wood.
Brad Lowery
Wow.
Jordan Mason
and termite damaged wood. Well, one, you’re going to find those two things in the same place. And from the research that we’ve done, as the wood continues to dry and as the wood is brittle now because of the termite damage, those spores are kind of always getting released until you physically remove the wood. So there’s a little bit of interpretation there sometimes. Hey, I’m finding ketomium, but I don’t have any moisture but I also don’t have anything else that would be associated with it. Like you start finding ketomium and stachyvartoustogether, you got a big problem.
Brad Lowery
So ketomium specifically, isn’t simply a spray it and seal it and forget it type of a thing. You’ve got to take the lumber out.
Jordan Mason
Ideally, and that’s a really good point. I think this is one of the biggest misconceptions in the whole mold world. Certainly from sort of people that are maybe on the periphery but aren’t in the remediation space, the main goal should always be removal when possible. Always. Now, not always possible. I can’t pull two feet of a load bearing wall out. So that’s when we’re gonna jump to treatment. for us, it’s remove everything that you physically can first, treat everything that you can’t remove. And I think that’s a big one.
Brad Lowery
So what were you draw the line on that? I mean, because I’ve I went into a friend’s house here in Tennessee. And again, I used to do mold abatement in Virginia, very similar client or climate to Tennessee. And he was like, hey, could you check this out? They you know, we had some water issues. They they did a French drain around the outside interior perimeter drain because it’s an older home. Very, very typical, you know, water remediation treatment system some pump in the back corner kind of a thing. And, but, I walked down and, know, true to form, they cut out drywall four feet up, you know, makes it easy to put new drywall back in, but they also cut the studs behind the drywall in the basement about two feet up. And I looked at it. I mean, they’re dangling in the wall bag behind it. And I’m like, was that necessary? Because yeah.
Jordan Mason
That’s a choice. Yeah, that’s choice. I’ve never thought that that would be the best option because there’s so many ways that you can solve that problem, right? Now, if it’s, I mean, if the water’s, yeah, if the water’s sitting down there for forever and ever and ever, it’s like, okay, well, maybe we have integrity issues anyway, but that doesn’t sound like that’s what’s going on there. I mean, again, if our goal is removal, I guess it follows that, but…
Brad Lowery
I didn’t either.
Matt Brading
Thank
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
I was building a new dad gum wall.
Jordan Mason
that seems a little extreme, especially when wood is so unbelievably treatable and you can scrub it, you can sand it, you can blast it, you can treat it. I there’s so many things you could do. Or if you’re that worried, you can encapsulate it.
Brad Lowery
So it sounds like your removal is like the things that are going to retain water the most. So the drywall, the insulation, tear all of that out.
Jordan Mason
100%. Yeah.
Matt Brading
Yeah, that’s got to go. So I think if I’m picking up what you’re laying down, you know, when it comes to this lumberyard mold, here I go with the quotes again, like, we don’t really know what it is unless it’s tested. It’s not like this particular mold that we see is X mold. And it could be different types of mold.
Jordan Mason
Yeah, no, it’s unbelievably difficult or impossible for the average person to just look at something straight up and identify it. You really need a microscope. But for us, what I like to do is I like to test when it’s appropriate. You don’t have to, but I think it’s helpful.
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Matt Brading
Sure. Well, you know what you’re dealing with. I can see that. And I mean, because like there are too many people that think, well, this is just not really a problem. And for a couple of reasons, I want to go down that for one second. I, there’s a builder out in the Pacific Northwest. Okay. Much different climate than me and you are dealing with. Okay. They’re wet, but they’re wet with like water falling out of the sky, but they don’t deal with humidity. Right. Now have longer winters and where things dry out, you know, a lot, a lot faster. And so like he, you know, without having to deal with the humidity issues, their biggest challenge is just like, you know, keeping things dry enough to get the house put together. Once it’s put together and sealed up, then they can dehumidify the house, dry out the wood, and then they start putting up drywall once it’s dry to like, you 15%. And so that’s great. But he doesn’t worry about the spots and stuff that he sees. Because in his opinion, and a lot of the internet’s opinion, whenever I make a video on this is, you know,
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Matt Brading
Everyone see, and this is true, right? We need, what do we need to grow mold, water, air, food source, right? And so the woods, the food source, air is present. And so all we’re, all we’re missing is the water, right? And so if we, if we dry in the house and put up the drywall and we don’t have any issues anymore, then do we, do we still have a mold problem? And that’s, that’s the internet’s argument. And then the other flip side of that is like, well, I guess not the flip side, but there’s
Jordan Mason
Yep.
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Matt Brading
You know, another side to that where someone says, if you do have a moisture problem at that point, then you’ve got a bigger problem. And I’m like, sure. But we do have those things like how do know when something’s going to leak? We do have a lot of humidity. And unfortunately, even I mean, the guy up in the Pacific Northwest, he’s a high performance home builder. He’s building an airtight assembly.
Jordan Mason
Yeah. Always in.
Matt Brading
I have confidence that he’s building a very good one, but most people aren’t. And so we’ve got a lot of air leakage. That becomes a real problem for us here where you’re at and where I’m at, because that air coming into all of these compromised areas is bringing a ton of moisture with it. And so we can’t guarantee that this is going to stay dry. and I guess where I’m going with this is like, does that being there dormant?
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Absolutely.
Matt Brading
You know, and no water is present. Does that mean we’re not at a risk? And then like, okay, so if moisture showed up and that was, and that was not there, if the house was treated and that was not there, moisture shows up, we’re probably going to end up with a mold problem, right? Does the fact that it’s already there dormant make it any worse, make it grow any faster? Are we at a bigger risk? Like I think that’s about seven, seven or eight questions all in one.
Jordan Mason
Yeah, it it yeah it absolutely can You know dormant mold, know dead mold whatever we want to whatever we want to call it It can absolutely re germinate with the the addition of new moisture and again, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a leak I think that’s another big misconception. Hey, we have to have a sink leak to get mold. Well, not here someplace is short But like you said, I mean if we are finding
Brad Lowery
Let her rip.
Jordan Mason
lumberyard mold in quotes, we’ll do that again. If we’re finding that in an attic space on the trusses, well, that’s gonna be a hot attic. It’s not gonna be conditioned. It’s just getting outside air at, you know, 4 million percent humidity in the Florida summers. And it’s just gonna goright over top of the existing lumberyard mold. And again, we don’t know what kind of mold it is, but in theory, it can absolutely sort of re-germinate.
Matt Brading
Well, then, like if we start going down the rabbit hole of negative pressure issues, I mean, you know, out here in our area with the high humidity we have and with people that absolutely have no idea about appropriate attic ventilation or HVAC, seems, we deal with a lot of negative pressure issues. So it’s like you’re in your you had proper pressure in your house. If everything was dialed in like it was supposed to be, you might have
Jordan Mason
Absolutely.
Matt Brading
an airtight assembly enough to not have any issues. But if you don’t, or when something fails and stuff starts coming in, you know, does having that stuff in the lumber already put us at a greater risk?
Jordan Mason
Yeah, it certainly can. Air infiltration is like the bane of my existence at this point. We’ve done more mold remediations for HVAC closets that are just not sealed. And it’s the same thing, hey, that hot attic air is coming in, it’s coming in no matter what. So you better be sealed, you better be right and tight. It doesn’t take much. It can happen in two, three days.
Brad Lowery
Hmm.
Brad Lowery
See, this is where I think it’s good to plug something that we’re all kind of connected with. And again, we’ve intentionally tried to emphasize building science more over the course of this past year. And inspection fuel is going to be no different. A lot of the topics that we’re going to be speaking on and even our keynote speaker, the king of building science himself.
Matt Brading
Go ahead, taste it.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, we’ll go ahead and say his name. It’s Matt Reisinger, man. It’s going to be awesome. I’m so freaking stoked about this dude. I’ve been wanting to do this since we had him on the podcast in his own podcast studio. Yeah, it is. Yeah. But this is one of the reasons why it’simportant for inspectors to be in the know and studied up on this stuff. Understanding ventilation and air pressure within the home. Because like we all go to BS and beer in our respective community.
Matt Brading
I know man, it’s really cool to see it all come together.
Brad Lowery
Right? Matt, you go in Houston. I know Ryan’s involved with it in Tampa. Jordan, are you as well?
Jordan Mason
Yeah, we’ve got a great one here. Scott Randall runs it and it’s phenomenal.
Brad Lowery
And it’s just started up here in Nashville as well. So it’s if you guys aren’t plugged in with a community, it’s a great network of professionals where it’s a mastermind group where everybody’s kind of educating each other and helping everyone level themselves up so that we all stay ahead of the learning curve when it comes to understanding the science of homes.
Matt Brading
Awesome. BS and beer. If you don’t have a BS and beer chapter in your area, reach out to me because I can get you in touch with the right people to open up a chapter. But if you’re looking to join one that probably already is one, reach out to your community and see if you can meet up with those people. a great place to meet like-minded folks and continue conversations just like the one we’re having today. And so, back to that, I want to know like, so you do inspections and you do.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, I don’t know if you got anything you to add on that, Matt.
Matt Brading
So, what do you think as an inspector, like what do you think we should be doing? You think it’s an overreaction for us to put much of this in our report? Do you think the builders are just underestimating it? What do you think is the proper road here? I I know when I see it, I will admit that there was a long time where I would see it and not really say much about it because it is very common. Right. But, my perspective on some of this, and as I learned has changed considerably and also because people’s opinion has changed. People are much more aware now and now they’re like, Hey, look, I had a mold event. My mom, my sister, my brother had a mold event, very sick. I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. can we just not have any mold whenever we put the house together? And so, I tend to align with that. I’m like,
Jordan Mason
Sure.
Jordan Mason
Yes.
Matt Brading
Yeah, let’s do something about it. And I get it because, you know, as inspectors, I feel like we need to, there’s liability involved, but also like the education is there for us to realize, like people are getting sick from stuff. So we should be calling this out. The only reason whynothing’s getting done about it is because we’re not saying anything about it. And so, but the reason why the builders aren’t doing anything about it and the reason why they’re denying it is because of expense in the solution and whatever the solutions are. And, and so, you know,
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Matt Brading
I guess that’s why I want to try to figure out like what do you think in your opinion, what you think inspectors should be doing and what you think the builders should be doing in terms of reacting to this because you know, they do get quite irritated when we call this out.
Jordan Mason
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, we’ve had both ends of that spectrum. But I think the first thing for inspectors is just don’t be afraid of it. Don’t be afraid to talk about it. going along with that, just know your limits and don’t be afraid of them. Like we all know, hey, this is where my expertise ends on this particular subject. And then just have someone on standby who is an expert in that field, just like we would do with an HVAC system, right? Hey, I know what I know. but like this is my HVAC contractor, he knows everything there is to know, I’m gonnapass you along. I view it as exactly the same thing. So I think don’t be afraid of it, don’t be afraid to talk about it. It’s gonna be worse if you don’t mention it and then it comes up, it’s certainly gonna be worse. And again, it’s a hot topic right now. So I think people are already, they’re tuned into it, they wanna know, I mean, we have other inspectors who we subcontract to just to do their mold testing while they’re doing the inspection. And they’re just like, look, this is my lane. I don’t want to cross that lane. I know what I’m good at. I know what I’m not. Like, please just come in and take some tests and give us what we need. So I think for inspectors, just be comfortable, be confident. There’s also a really good InterNACHI class. It’s actually so good that the state of Florida will allow me to use it as continuing education for both my mold licenses. So it’s a good class.
Brad Lowery
Mmm.
Jordan Mason
It’s got a lot of really good info in there. that I mean again, most of us as inspectors are InterNachi members use the resource So that’s kind of from the inspection standpoint, you know education and then just don’t be afraid of it from the builders standpoint It really depends on the builder because you know last week. Yeah, it really was it’s tough last week We had a phenomenal builder and I want to give them like their flowers when they’re due
Brad Lowery
That’s good to know.
Brad Lowery
That was a deep sigh right there by the way.
Jordan Mason
He wasn’t afraid to talk about it. He came right, I mean, in this particular case, they had already paid a remediation company. They just hadn’t gone far enough. And he didn’t shy away from it. He’s like, look, I understand this family situation. I want them to be happy as well as their project manager. It’s like, great, thank you very much. Now, they weren’t gonna cover the cost of it, but the homeowners, was important enough for them. But even if they’re not covering the cost, they still have to let us on site. And some builders are just not interested in doing that. So I think for builders, I get it, right? Everyone’s got a bottom line to keep. Everyone has to make their shareholders happy. Where’s the line in that? Where’s the line of this is where this needs to stop and we need to now be concerned about people’s health and not just about the dollars and cents. And I get it, you have to think about both, but we gotta think about health as well sometimes.
Brad Lowery
Well, I maintain that it all comes down to managing the client. And this kind of goes back to a, you know, a topic that that Matt and I have had, you know, this, honestly, this might be one of the things where it’s easier to not have the client on site for the inspection. Because when I’ve had the client on, yeah, when I’ve had the buyer there for the inspection, and I’ve seen mold on site, they that’s when you have to manage the panic. And I would always do it was a bit for sure.
Jordan Mason
Sometimes.
Brad Lowery
I was like, okay, you let’s like, let’s all hold hands and we’re gonna say the word real loud. We’re just gonna scream. I just get it out. Right. And bold. but anyway, at that point, you know, when you look, you don’t want to make light of it. But when you set the expectation that this isn’t something to be so scared of, because it can be treated when you know what it is and how to treat it. But we need to call somebody special for that. And it ain’t me, you know, like when you can manage it that way. I find that they’re much more understanding, you know, it’sand it’s not a deal killing thing at that.
Jordan Mason
No, the word or the phrase that I use all the time is everything’s treatable. Now, know, time, energy and money are always a factor, but everything’s treatable from, you know, the job today where it’s maybe 10 feet square to a property that we did that’s 6,800 square feet and we treated most of it. It’s all treatable. It’s just how do you approach it? How do you get after it?
Brad Lowery
Yeah. It depends what you want to pay. Yeah.
Jordan Mason
And that’s, know, hey, you guys don’t have to worry about that. That’s where we come in. You guys just listen, hear what we have to say, and then let us take over. We’ll figure out the logistics, but it’s all, it’s all manageable.
Brad Lowery
Well, that’s why investors, they’re not scared, at least, you know, most of the good ones that are looking for a great deal. They’re not scared of properties with mold. They’ll use it to negotiate. They’ll knock crap out of those walls. And it’s a blank slate to remodel it from there, you know.
Jordan Mason
I agree.
Jordan Mason
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s another key, I think, for inspectors. You know, don’t automatically the presence of mold shouldn’t be a determining factor on if you buy or not. Now, perhaps the cost to remediate is fine. Totally happy with that. But I think some people, you know, hey, there’s mold here. That’s it. Let’s call it a day. We need to move on. Well, you know, maybe.
Brad Lowery
Right. And for some people, they’re super susceptible to health issues, yeah, it makes sense.
Jordan Mason
Yep. Yeah. But don’t, don’t worry about it from a, you know, that has to be it for this house. What if it’s your dream home and what if for like $4,000, you could still make it your dream home. And what if you got the seller to pay for it? Then what’s the problem? You know, you have the problem solved. You have, you know, you didn’t expend any, any money, so it can still be your dream home. You just need someone to know what they’re doing to come in and take care of it for you.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, exactly.
Matt Brading
Right.
Brad Lowery
And with the seller treating it, that’s not like they’re replacing a roof and they’re going to put on cheap, cheap materials afterwards. Right. Because I, in that kind of instance, I tell a buyer all the time, like, look, just see if you can get a credit and then you can pick the material afterwards. But at least with this, they have to do the full abatement, you know?
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Matt Brading
Well, now that we’ve officially probably pissed off all of the building and construction people that were watching the show, let’s talk about solutions. So one, one thing that really intrigued me that I mean, you had a conversation about it pretty recently. And I even, I sent you the sneak peek of the most recent video I put out on this lumber yard mold stuff, which was Brad. don’t know if you saw this, but basically it was actually a combination of two houses, but it was like, it was some pretty severe cases of lumberyard mold. And it was like, all I did was basically kept I kept saying lumberyard mold over and over and over again. But I recorded over myself a bunch with like different pitches. So sounded like a bunch of people saying lumberyard mold. And it was like, it’s not a problem. It’s not a problem. It’s fine. It’s fine. We’regonna treat it with bleach. It’s fine. Like, it was just all this like builders just just yapping it over and over again.
Brad Lowery
Uh-huh.
Jordan Mason
You
Brad Lowery
Yeah, yeah,
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Matt Brading
And it went on for like a minute and a half or something. it like, it was the sheer fact that it went on so long was to prove a point because it’s like, that’s what happens. Like it just, it’s over and over again. hearing this like, so it was all on purpose, right? And the video like was loved and hated by many.
Jordan Mason
It was true.
Brad Lowery
Was one of them? he wear a floppy hat?
Jordan Mason
If you know, know.
Brad Lowery
Well.
Matt Brading
Probably not. But anyway, what I want to know, like I say, what are the solutions, right? So builders at this point are probably angry and they’re like, you know, okay, so you’re telling me there’s all these problems, but this isn’t a problem because I’m going to build a house that’snot going to have moisture issues. So it’s not a problem.
Brad Lowery
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Matt Brading
But what can I do now that you’ve pissed everybody off and got everybody all scared? So what you made this video where you were just blasting this stuff right off and I was like, what is that? Because the first question that comes up every time I find this stuff and every time it comes up in one of my pre draw in spectrum ports, the buyer’s like, what can we do? What can be done? And so
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Matt Brading
You know, and I don’t until I saw you doing that. I honestly didn’t really have many answers and I think there’s a cut. There’s actually a few answers to that, which I think you’ll probably be better at answering than me. So why don’t you go take that away?
Jordan Mason
Yeah, so the cool thing that I’ve discovered about mold remediation is the framework never really changes. The framework’s always the same. The methodology at particular steps is what kind of changes, which is kind of why it’s fun. You can have a real nice rigid structure and there’s just a couple pieces that you move around. So, you know, the containment never really changes. You have to contain whatever space you need to keep the mold in and keep the good stuff out. Every now and then you do a whole property and maybe you don’t have to worry about containment so much, but that’s pretty rare. You know, the mechanical controls don’t really change. You need your air scrubbers. need, you know, sometimes you need drying, sometimes you need dehumidification. It just depends, but your mechanical controls stay the same. Your spraying of your detergent doesn’t really change. Your wiping doesn’t change, your HEPA vacuuming doesn’t change. Really what changes is you need some form of abrasive removal at some point of this structure. And so that’s where the big difference has happened. Hey, is this like pretty easy? Do we need just a wire brush on top of this stud? Cool, we’ll use a wire brush. Or hey, do we need to break out a hand sander on this one? Okay, cool, we’ll break out the hand sander. Or hey, we could hand sand this, but it’s 6,000 square feet. So unless we’re gonna be here for three weeks straight hand sanding, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Okay, well now we’ll break out the soda blaster. yeah, so that’s what everyone’s making all the noise about.
Matt Brading
So that is intriguing.
Brad Lowery
There you go. Now, what are you using for that? Is that, that’s not like just, what is it, the RMR 141 or?
Matt Brading
Yeah.
Matt Brading
No, this is baking soda, man.
Jordan Mason
No, so we have a hundred pound canister that we fill with baking soda and it’s just Arm and Hammer baking soda. It’s nothing special. And then it gets hooked up to one of the largest compressors that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It’s not that it’s crazy PSI. You need about 20 CFM for it. So it has to turn over real fast. And basically you’ve got an extruder on the other end and you open the valves and it blasts this baking soda out at a crazy rate of knots and it basically acts as your abrasive method. So it’s doing a light sanding on the top of the wood in this particular case. at the same, know, baking soda, not crazy, but it has a little bit of sanitizing quality to it. You know, we’re not going to rely on that, but this allows us to cover tremendous square footage at a much faster rate than if we were trying to hand sand. You know, some methods we don’t need to sand. We can simply wipe it down and that is enough abrasive methods. So, you know, after that, process remains the same. We have a vacuum, we wipe, we treat, we have a vacuum again. I mean, our life revolves with a backpack vacuum onmost of the time. And that’s kind of the, you know, the unattractive part of remediation, like the kind of nuts and bolts of it that are really important. It’s mostly vacuuming and wiping down.
Matt Brading
Well, I mean, that’s like, you know, we can make home inspection look sexy, but man, I mean, it is what it is, right? Exactly. But, but I mean, like, I’m just going to go straight for it. That sounds expensive.
Brad Lowery
So.
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Brad Lowery
You look like Ghostbusters in a crawlspace, yeah.
Jordan Mason
It can be, but again, it depends on how you price, I think. For us, our pricing method is based off square footage. So it doesn’t have to be. Again, we’re probably not gonna break out the Soda Blaster unless it’s pretty significant and it’s over a large square footage. If it’s a room, it probably doesn’t make sense. And it would be too expensive at that point. It just wouldn’t make sense. Like we could just do this for half the price with a little bit of elbow grease, you know? And so just wouldn’t make sense. So I think the problem would have to be significant enough where it would be a certain price point no matter what to get that soda blaster out. But it’s fun when we get to get it out.
Matt Brading
It sure makes a video. So after you flashed it, you vacuum it, you treat it with something or spray it with something.
Brad Lowery
No doubt. Now, when do you…
Jordan Mason
We do, yeah. So we treat with, I mean, a really basic house cleaning product first, which is Simple Green. Pretty much available everywhere. It’s the cheapest product.
Matt Brading
Why is that not introducing more moisture?
Jordan Mason
So it is, but it’s temporary. So it’s a pretty light spray, and really we’re using it as a surfactant to help lift grime and dirt and debris off of, usually it’s a wooden surface, right? We wouldn’t need to bother if it was granite or something, we can just simply wipe that down. So it does introduce temporary moisture, but it gets dried out pretty quickly. And most of the instructions on the bottles that we use for the chemicals, it’ll say, hey, it’s gonna be wet for 10 minutes. That’s about it. So yeah, we’d simple green. We spray that down to help lift everything off the wood. Then we would go into using our abrasive method, whether it be a sander, you know, the soda blaster or what have you. And then we start the HEPA vacuuming after that. Now I will say the soda blasting, it is a lot more cleanup because there’s a lot of baking soda that comes out of there. I mean, our last project, I think we used about 110 pounds on that product. you know, you’re, yeah.
Matt Brading
Jesus. How do you even buy it? Do you like clear out the shelf at Publix or what?
Brad Lowery
Mosh. So much, dude. Costco, man, yeah.
Jordan Mason
No, somewhat ironically, Harbor Freight. They have 50 pound bags at Harbor Freight and it’s like a dollar a pound. It’s great.
Brad Lowery
No doubt.
Matt Brading
Wow, that’s the, yeah, that’s bad. Well, that’s interesting. So is there anything after that? Like, there any, after you’ve done that, there, because I feel like I’ve heard of peroxide or something, like what?
Brad Lowery
That’s not bad at all, man.
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Yeah. Yeah, so we try as hard as we can to remain as basic and as sort of health conscious as possible. Like there’s a lot of guys that put some really nasty stuff in foggers and they just spray everything and it’s really abrasive. We like to use the simple stuff. So we use simple green, which is super easy. We then do our abrasive, our HEPA vacuuming. We do use one product, is, it’s called Aftershock. It’s a hospital grade disinfectant. So we will treat the wood with that two to three times depending on the situation. And we like to use the hydrogenperoxide in the fogging machine. So we basically aerosol. And why I particularly like that one, it’s just a great, it’s a great sanitizing agent. The fogging makes it pretty heavy. And so it can weigh some things down, get them down to the floor. We can then vacuum things up easier than, we can’t walk around with the vacuum trying to get everything out of the air.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Brading
Get to him.
Brad Lowery
It does get everywhere, yeah.
Jordan Mason
But what I really like about it is after 20 to 30 minutes, all the molecules just separate and there’s nothing left. So there’s no residue left over. So we do the fogging as like the last stage and we feel totally comfortable doing that in someone’s living room. Even if it’s just, we’regonna fog our way out of our remediation space. I feel totally comfortable doing that. You know, we tell people like, hey, know, take a walk for 20 minutes because it can irritate your eyes or what have you while it’s still heavy. But it’s just, it’s a great product for this application because it just evaporates and you’re left with nothing. So you don’t have cleanup afterwards, which is great.
Brad Lowery
Now that’s awesome. Now dude, we talked about species of mold earlier and you’ve talked about how different degrees of mold abatement needs are going to determine what you’re using. But when it comes to chemical, do you vary your chemical uses based on the specieslike whatever comes back in the test? Okay.
Jordan Mason
No, we don’t. What comes back in the test, we try to understand mycology enough to, because let’s say we walk into a room, walk in totally blind, which we would never usually do because, you know, a lot of companies will take an air test with no context whatsoever. And it’slike, OK, you got mold. But then what? Where is it? Why is it there? Why could it be there? You know, where is it? There’s just not enough context. So that’s why if we’re going to go in and do an inspection for mold – we’re going to do a full property assessment with testing. It to have to be in conjunction with each other. Otherwise you can just have false negatives. you know, little side story, but I went into a property after the hurricanes in 2024 when everybody’s houses flooded and, it was insane. I was there probably seven weeks after the flood and I put an air quality test right in the middle of this guy’s living room came back totally clear.
Brad Lowery
That was a mess, dude.
Jordan Mason
But I had water, it hadn’t been touched, it hadn’t been flood cut, nothing. It was just things were still being held behind the drywall and it wasn’t just readily accessible in the air. So without the property context, we could have walked right out and said, nope, you got no mold, no problem. So you have to have the context, otherwise it’s just silly. So then once we get those tests, we try really hard to understand the mycology behind these different things. Hey, well, this particular genus of mold, where does it like to live?
Brad Lowery
Yeah, yeah.
Jordan Mason
What temperatures does it like? How much moisture does it need to grow? Because really what we need to do is solve the root cause of the problem. If it’s a humidity problem, okay, well, let’s start looking for air leakage. Let’s go to the air handler system. Is it functioning properly? This is something not a lot of people know. A lot of people will leave the fan running on their AC unit all day long. That will increase your humidity like crazy and you will have a mold problem. It will get over 60 % real fast.
Matt Brading
That is region specific, but if you are in, we are in climate zone 2A and that is a hot and humid climate. There are three spots in the U.S. that are more hot and humid than the areas that me and Jordan are in. And it’s the most southern tip of Florida, the most southern tip of Texas and Hawaii. Okay. So we are hot and humid. And so it’s all of 2A and just above it.
Jordan Mason
North.
Jordan Mason
yeah.
Matt Brading
If you’re in those areas, if you’re in anything close to the south, do not put your fan on on don’t do that.
Brad Lowery
Golf areas, man, yeah.
Jordan Mason
Please go.
Brad Lowery
So is it better to just leave it on auto or to manually control it? Leave it on auto, yeah, okay.
Jordan Mason
Please don’t.
Matt Brading
Leave it on all.
Jordan Mason
Yeah, auto is great. You know, unfortunately, one of our first remediation jobs was just that. And it wasn’t actually their fault. They didn’t have an incorrect setting. A part of their blower motor had broken. And so they did everything right, but this little tiny switch broke and all of a sudden they’ve got 68 % humidity in one part of their house and it caused problems. All you need then is a little bit of air that’s directed the wrong way. In this case, the louvers for their AC registers were pointed at the ceiling instead of pointing down, and that small temperature change created dew point and all of a sudden they had mold just because of the excess humidity.
Brad Lowery
Yeah. Well, I mean, you mentioned the hurricanes, man. And I, I did my fair share of damage assessments on houses. I mean, I took a report template. I was doing these for free for people. I’m not patting myself on the back. There were several inspectors that were doing this down there. but I, wasn’t just a normal inspection report. It was literally like a damage assessment, storm damage assessment. but man, like last time I was down driving up 275 in St. Pete, you could still see the piles of debris that are stored from that storm. Like, it’s nuts.
Jordan Mason
Yeah, we were out on the barrier islands and even now it’s just not the same. You drive down there and a lot of the businesses, a lot of the big ones are open, a lot of the big hotels are open, but some of these smaller places, they just couldn’t. The storms are really why we got into remediation in the first place, because we were doing the same thing.
Brad Lowery
No.
Brad Lowery
Well, that’s what I want to talk about. Like, so we’re in a, a, El Nino year this year, which historically means lower hurricane probability for Florida. So inspectors, it’s good to always be thinking ahead about what’s your next thing, right? If what’s your next pivot plan, what are you going to do to reinvest money from your company? Say you’re killing it with inspections this year. You finally got your book of business. It’s rolling. You’re making the best money you’ve ever made. What do you do with it? You don’t just enjoy it. You don’t go to Disney world. Okay. If you want to get ahead of the game, right? El Nino always swings to La Nina the next year. And we know if it’s like last year, we lucked out in Florida. We didn’t have any crazy storms hitting. We might, maybe God willing, get that again this year. But that means this is the best year for you to go ahead and get your certification if you’re in Florida. So that you can be doing the same thing that you and Ryan and everybody are doing with Hello Home and CXR. I mean, think ahead because it’s…
Jordan Mason
yeah.
Jordan Mason
be great.
Brad Lowery
It’s happened before it’s freaking Florida man is gonna happen again, and it’s not just Florida I mean it happens in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas if you’re around the Gulf thinking think ahead so
Jordan Mason
It’ll get you eventually. Anybody who’s lived in any of the Gulf states for long enough, it happens. I’ve been in Florida since I was five. I’ve been through my fair share. We went through 05. I know you’re from kind of west coast Florida. You probably remember 05. It was like three in two weeks. It happens. So if you’re here long enough, one will come your way.
Brad Lowery
Well, it’s, it’s not a matter of being opportunistic either. It’s about, again, the whole point of providing a service is to benefit the person that we’re providing service to. In this case, home buyers is why we got into it. And it’s the same attitude with whatever ancillary service you get into after that. I was here a total of one week. I traded hurricanes for tornadoes moving to, to Nashville. And this Venezuelan guy was buying a credenza off of me. And, and he was like, dude, you need to get your tornado, GC license. I was like, seriously, that’s the thing here. He’s like, yeah. And he’s like, look, you just, you go in when there’s a tornado damage that that’s occurred on a property. you under quote the big guys that are going to come through and over quote, and you have Pablo and Jose come out and do the work. And I’m like, I don’treally know Pablo and Jose. And he goes, I do. You know, it’s just, the work is always going to be there. Know your area and you know, it’s fine ways that you can be
Jordan Mason
Yeah.
Jordan Mason
Yes.
Brad Lowery
Tacking onto your existing skill set, you know.
Matt Brading
So I yeah, I think there’s a couple of things that I want to like just mention before we wrap things up and one of them is You know a phrase that Matt rising or likes to use a lot is If it can’t dry it will die. I can’t remember whose quote that is. It’s not his but he uses that one a lot you know, the drying ability of a structure has to be greater than the wedding and And as long as something can dry we won’t have a problem. And there’s a lot of these builders like the one I was speaking about earlier in the Pacific Northwest, like probably several of the ones that you, cause I know that you deal with some high end builders down there and we definitely do here. There’s several of them that I have a lot of confidence can build a, an airtight and, and a, and a, and an assembly that is watertight. Everything always has some amount of risk, but I mean, you know, I do have confidence in some, but what I don’t have confidence in really is the production builders and the people that I’ve seen that and the way they’re putting these houses together that I expect the most of, I don’t really have confidence that they are working hard to build that airtight and that watertight assembly. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen how poor of a job they’re doing installing flashing or not installing flashing. I’ve seen how these things were not sealed. I’ve seen it. I’ve witnessed it. So I don’t have that confidence. And so if you’re the Calabra builder that is going to dot every I and cross every T, you probably are at less risk with this stuff. But, but most of the builders out there, most homes are not being built to that specification. And, the other thing that I want to say on, in regards to that, and even with the builders that are doing things right, is that whether or not this stuff is a problem, there is only one time to take care of. We can argue about this right now and say, I think it’s a problem. You don’t think it’s a problem. Should we do something? Should we not? We can do that. But if you put up those walls and it does become a problem, it is going to be a much, much bigger problem than it is right now. And there is only one time to do this right. There is look, you mentioned it, Brad, you’ve mentioned it. It’s all remedial. You can remediate all of it, right? It’s all repairable.
Jordan Mason
yeah.
Matt Brading
And I say it all the time. There’s very few things that are wrong with the house that can’t be repaired. Very few. And even this can, if you, if you get stuff growing in your walls and it happened because if we could ever prove it, that it was because of lumber yard mold or whatever, you could pull all the walls down and you could then treat it everything, but you don’t want to do that. Okay. That, that, that is going to easily double, triple, quadruple the expense.
Brad Lowery
Such an expense man, is unnecessary, yeah.
Matt Brading
There is one time to do this. You get one shot at making sure that you don’t have mold when the walls go up. And so I just think that we need to start maybe considering some of that.
Brad Lowery
Now that’s huge. That’s Jordan Mason, what’s one thing that you would give to new home buyers as advice if they’re if they’re dealing with mold in their property?
Jordan Mason
Yeah, again, I think going back to it’s solvable. You know, it is not it is not going to be the end of the world. It’s going to be, you know, a blip on your radar for your whole life and your 30 years as you’re going to spend in that property. You know, it’s going to be painful today. It’sgoing to be stressful. But I think the right remediator and the right remediation team can really help to remove that stress. So do your research, find the right person for you who’s gonna care about you, not just like, well yeah, we remediate it, see you later. Find the one that’s gonna care about you, that’s gonna hear you and understand your problems and your concerns. But 10 years from now, you’ll forget this ever happened. It’s all solvable.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, no, I hear that man. Well, this is a good opportunity for for you to to plug your company with everybody is down in the Bay Area of Florida. So where can they find online?
Jordan Mason
Yeah. CXRsolutions.com. have a great portal on there to ask questions, ask for service. And then on the fun side of things, CXR Underscore Solutions on Instagram, where you can see the fun, but also the silly videos. We try to make it as educational as possible, but we try to make it a little entertaining as well. But there you can see it in action. You can see the process. Hey, this is what the soda blasting is, this is why we’re doing it, and then you can physically watch videos of us removing mold from someone’s house. And I think that speaks a lot of volumes. Yeah, and if we can help anybody, we’d love to. That’s why we got into the business, we wanna help.
Brad Lowery
Now love it dude and I feel like you can be a lot of help to a lot of home inspectors as well. So as you and Ryan are friends of the show, we’ll hook you guys up with a with a free not a freehold trip. I can’t give you that but I can at least give you a free registration to inspection fuel if you want to come on out for that. And Louisville, Kentucky September 28 to the 30th guys sign up for that. Matt any last words man?
Jordan Mason
Beautiful.
Matt Brading
No, man, all I can really say is, man, it’s really great to talk to you. You know, being friends for so long, we certainly don’t get to do this very much. And so it’s been really great having you on the show today and getting your perspective on this stuff. So thank you so much.
Jordan Mason
Thank you guys, been a real pleasure, I appreciate it.
Brad Lowery
Definitely dude. Appreciate you being on here and taking the time tonight. And thank you guys everybody for watching. We hope to see all inspection fuel. Be sure to go register. got the link down in the show notes or in the bio wherever you’re watching or listening. Be sure to subscribe and we’ll see you here next time right on. You got it.
Matt Brading
The Ride Along.