Black Mold All Over the Basement Walls in Holmdel, NJ

Challenge

We were sent out on a service call to a homeowner in Holmdel, NJ to conduct a mold inspection. Sometimes mold can be subtle and some detective work needs to be done. Other times, you know immediately. With this home, there was nothing subtle. As soon as we opened the basement door, the smell hit us like a ton of bricks!

If you ever walked into an enclosure with a mold problem, you know the smell. Mold, with its microbial volatile organic compounds (mVOCs), has a distinctive, nauseatingly unpleasant muggy, musty, pungent odor. Over time, inhaling this living, spreading organism of destruction causes headaches, nasal irritation, dizziness, and fatigue.

For this residence, this black mold developed from stagnant water caused by a sump pump back up that was not detected by the homeowner for a couple of weeks. To compound matters, the well-intentioned homeowner opened the windows to improve the "airflow" in order to dissipate the smell and start to dry out the basement. This all sounds good, but the opposite happened and made the mold problem worse. Outdoor humid air entered the basement bringing in even more moisture for the mold to grow.

Solution

We treated every square inch of the basement with our EPA-registered antimicrobial solution called Mold Abatement Polymer Solution 1, or MAPS 1. This product attacks mold on a cellular level and kills it instantly. We then used our mold stain remover, scrubbed away all the excess mold staining, and then applied our patented sealant MAPS 2. This application encapsulates the surface mold is growing on and renders it harmless and non-allergenic. MAPS 2 is also moisture-sensitive and will reactivate whenever it gets wet to prevent future mold growth.