Mike Conroy Consulting

Up with the sun, gone with the wind.

Well just a little before sunrise, Checked Weather Underground, 74 degrees in Lillian, AL.

It’s Almost Autumn at seventy miles per hour.

My ride this morning is my 2018 Husqvarna 701 Super Moto. It’s my twenty-minute motorcycle. Quick, two-wheeled concentrated fun. It’s a good thing because the seat feels like an upholstered anvil after about thirty minutes.

Rode from my house to Faircloth Field Road just about a mile away from home into three nice ninety degree turns and then off to the Lillian Boat Launch.

The Husqvarna is a single and at higher speeds the rear-view mirrors are worthless. Think Star Wars scene going to light speed. Something is behind me, but I don’t know what. I suppose blue flashing lights will solve the mystery. ( no not today)

As you can see I got to the boat launch just at sunrise. The place was quiet, just one truck and trailer and a mustang.

On the way back home, I rode North on Highway 91. The road drops down into an area that is heavily wooded and swampy. It’s probably five degrees cooler at the bottom of the hill where the road turns into Gardner Road.

In a car or truck you don’t get to feel the temperature changes or realize all the various odors, on a bike you do.

By the way the 701 is ridden on the track when I can get away. Maybe I can do more soon.

Reprieve from the Heat.

Mid-Summer in South Alabama. It’s been hot awhile and ya know it’s going to be hot awhile longer.

Seeking a reprieve, I was up and out on one of my bikes before the sunrise. I looked on Weather Underground and the temperature was 71 degrees in Lillian.

At 71 degrees and 60 plus miles per hour there is a pleasant felt reduction in temperature.

Put on my mesh jacket that allows the wind to blow right through and off. I took the photos at about 5:45 am in front of the Elberta volunteer fire station on 32.

I realize I need to be aware of wildlife all the time but certainly early and late in the day. Saw four deer before I was a quarter mile from my house and a total of eight on the ride.

Rather than a dark jacke,t I wear the white one for visibility. In sixty plus years of riding I ‘ve noticed the drivers of cars and trucks are a lot more distracted. Cars and trucks with tablet size screens on the dash, heated and cooled seats to be controlled and concert quality sound systems and ever present cell phones ringing, texting and other wise making me invisible.

Ya know shifting gears and stepping on the clutch at a least kept drivers awake in the past.

Rode my fourteen-year-old Triumph Tiger 1050. A somewhat obscure bike in the USA but still in production and desirable in Europe.

The bike has low miles and is still sixty-one years younger than me.

Staying Cool this morning.

We Never Knew We Had a Leak. This sort of thing happens a lot, especially in seldom "lived-in" properties. Sometimes things leak and no one is home or someone above has a leak and has no idea how far below the water may go. We found this after a report of a bit of water on a tile floor. Owners rarely stayed in this property but as we investigated further, the leak from above was present every time the shower above was used. The top right photo shows near the "tiny" leak after we removed baseboards. As you can see, it didn't stop there. 🤔

And now for something a bit different.

These are thermal images I captured in a building in NW Florida. The roof had a leak and ceiling is fifty feet above the floor.

The EXIT sign is on an adjoining wall three floors up.

These images are in GrayScale. I prefer grayscale to color due to in my opinion that there are too many distractions and distortions when the imager is moved or the angle changed.

The darker areas are "wet" and the surrounding "dry".

BTW some of you may have heard my "Ghost Hunting"story. Imagine how creepy if one had decided to show up for a portrait.😉

Do people in Duluth, MN or Buffalo,NY look for snowless winters? 🤔 You know sorta like looking for no storm tropical seasons on the Gulf Coast.😉

Two story metal building. Lower office was warm, condensation would collect on the wall and the ceiling was warped. The second floor above was "unconditioned space" ( No heat or AC).
Well, not totally unconditioned. 🤔 Misplaced comfort.😉

These photos were taken in a Gulf Coast hotel. Serious moisture issues. They solved the moldy window sills with granite but just more problems a bit lower on the wall. I'm not a big fan of PTAC Units. Yes, the lamp bases like shown were in many guest
rooms and the ceiling photos from meeting rooms.

We investigated this new construction a while back. Seems home owner and home builder did not see eye to eye and lots of South Alabama rain fell and pooled on the subfloor of the great room. Down below was a moldy disaster. Check out the amount of water on the ground.😱

Quick Quiz
What do you see in this photo that makes you think the mold development on the drywall may have occurred before yesterday?🤔

I found these books while assessing a condo property in Destin. Before the internet , and the world on everyone's fingertips there were places called libraries. They often had a very distinctive odor. Mold needs three condition to develop. Proper temperature, an organic food source and MOISTURE. Plenty of moisture along the Gulf Coast.

Saturday April 13. My daughters decided a few months ago to have a family event each month. We were at my daughter Cristin's Saturday. This was I think event four so far. All five daughters were there (two live away but were in town). Ten of thirteen grandchildren. I look better due to my surroundings.🤔 😉

You’ve Got to Know when to Hold Them
and Know when to Fold Them

The Traveling Mold Guy (aka Mike Conroy) assessed a condo a while back. Seems the owners decided that turning the HVAC temperature up when no one was in the unit would reduce the power bill.

They were correct!

It did reduce power consumption but substantially increased the cost to remediate, replace and restore everything in the unit.

Thousands of dollars lost, plus the downtime for loss of rental income for not having a usable property during the peak season.

One Hundred degree heat in a condo may
melt some candles and crayons.

75% humidity will destroy everything.
Your HVAC is your only dehumidifier in most cases.

This book provides ample information that help the reader understand it may be a mold problem and then again maybe not.

There are many potential causes for similar symptoms.

Call us to help you sort it all out. 850 777 6655

Management said Maintenance had turned off the water.

Well the water damage guy ( Expert Dry) came in the next day and found this.

Not funny, but answered the question why things kept getting worse.

Think for a moment that the filter comes before this in the airflow.
Would not matter, mold spores go right through most filters.

All the stuff on this coil has little to stop it or slow it down from here to your bedroom or maybe your child’s room.

It may not be all mold but you can be sure some is in that collection of air flow choking “stuff”.

We don’t do HVAC work but we check for this sort of condition when we perform indoor air quality testing.

Consider having your HVAC system checked by a competent professional.

Here's another adventure of the traveling mold guy.

I was in Orlando, FL downtown.

I remember where I parked my truck because I was rewarded by Orlando parking enforcement with an expensive ticket that day.

I was asked to go as a consultant and went to a brand-new apartment complex.

Beautiful building !
Not renting units yet maybe because of mold??

Yes! they had a mold problem, and the photos will show that it.

It seems that that they had hired crews to do post construction cleaning and there was mold in some units and not in others.
WHY?

We determined that the construction cleaning crews as a last step in the process of cleaning an apartment would mop the floor.

One person would stay behind to mop as most of the crew would move on to the next unit.

If the floor mopping technician felt the water wasn't “dirty” enough to require a change they would go to the next unit and maybe even another one. When the water was sufficiently filthy enough the bucket of dirty water was dumped in the kitchen sink and the crew person would immediately walk out the apartment door.

They didn't realize or maybe didn’t care that they were dumping water down the drain of a kitchen sink that had no drainpipe below and the water was just draining into the kitchen cabinet.

A few days later you can see the results.

Doing stupid stuff can be very expensive.

It Only Leaks When It Rains.

I was asked to assess damages in this manufactured home. Seems the roof leaked when it rained. In South Alabama leaking in the rain meant the interior of this place only got wet really often.

There was a blue tarp on the roof that at some point in the previous decade had stopped holding back the water.

I think one of the photos attached appears to look like smoke not mold.
Fortunately, the place was empty and had been for quite some time.
Creepy disaster!

Expert Dry® We Dry Wet Buildings®, but in this case it was way too late to

Dry Out Without the Tear Out®

This was more a haul it on its last road trip to the landfill.

SOLAR ECLIPSE APRIL 8, 2024.

Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024 (Great North American Eclipse ) Total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, 2024: Where and when is the Sun eclipse visible? Path map, animation, and local times.

Do I have mold in my home or business?

We receive telephone calls asking us to and inspect spaces for mold.

My first question is,
Why do you think you may have a problem?

One of my later questions is,
Have you looked around to see if you may have some moisture issues and water damage?

Here are some photos. Look around and see if maybe you have some “tell-tale” signs of water damage.

When baseboards and the drywall behind them get wet the baseboards often swell and pull away from the dry wall. They usually don’t dry back into place.

When you see a gap in the caulk on a baseboard it usually means one of two things
1. Poor installation
2. WATER DAMAGE, Most Likely

Crown molding does it too and windowsills.

Take a look at your cabinet bases also.

Hurricanes, Tidal Surge, Wildfires, Windstorms, Blizzards, Floods.

The bad stuff that happens outdoors and over a wide area are reported Nationwide and Worldwide. Posts on X ( formerly Twitter) Facebook and Instagram and reports on major media share minute by minute and the aftermath.

But mini disasters happen to individuals, institutions, and businesses every day.

The photo shows a failed fire sprinkler system dumping thousands of gallons of water in a condominium unit. This was one in a stack of units and the water went all the way to the building lobby.

A fire protection company was servicing the system when it failed. The system was shut down and reset and it failed again.

We arrived about thirty minutes after the original call just in time for the third failure and got the photo.

If a fire sprinkler fails in your multi story building the Weather Channel does not have a reporter on the ground to hear your story and broadcast it to the world. But it’s a disaster for you and your neighbors. A micro problem for a state or region is a devastating disaster in your location.

No reporters or FEMA representatives but the aftermath is just as difficult but without the aid.

Expert Dry® performs water damage mitigation. We Dry Wet Buildings®

Mitigation is defined as “the act of mitigating something or the state of being mitigated : the process or result of making something less severe, dangerous, painful, harsh, or damaging”

WHAT’S THE FIRST STEP TO MITIGATE A WATER DAMAGE INCIDENT?

Without risking lives, STOP THE WATER! (did you notice the lights were still on, we did too)

Expert Dry® Serving Northwest Florida and South Alabama. We are an independent mitigation company with a network of fellow independents. www.expertdry.com

Adventures of the traveling mold guy

This happened a few years ago I was called by an environmental company as a subcontractor. They asked me to go to South Florida to inspect a shipment of furniture that was being delivered to a new luxury hotel project.

The furnishings were being built in Indonesia. The owner of the furniture company lived in New Zealand.

When the furniture arrived in the USA and was taken out of the shipping containers it was covered with microbial development.

My job was to try to determine the cause and help devise a solution.

The furniture had a live edge that was almost white and as you can see from the photos the finished product was beautiful, but it couldn't be used the way it came in from the shipping container.

In my opinion the wood slabs had not been sufficiently dried when they were wrapped and placed in the containers. That and a container ship trip from Indonesia to South Florida took some time. Conditions onboard a ship from the tropics of Indonesia to South Florida were perfect for microbial development.

Considerable money was at stake. The new hotel was near opening but the furniture could not be duplicated in time.

It was a big enough “deal” that the owner of the company flew in from New Zealand and together we developed a solution.

Just cleaning off the growth would not be acceptable because growth trapped on the wood between the wood surface and the metal frame would likely re-develop and contaminate the brand-new hotel.

( You know sometimes people leave the sliding doors open to listen to the ocean waves and fill the room with warm, humid, South Florida, kind of like Indonesia, AIR)

In the end it was a good outcome.

The furniture was disassembled. The frames cleaned, the live edge slabs were cleaned and re sanded down to a fresh surface. All was re assembled.

I believe the furniture is serving luxury hotel guests today.

Remember mold can grow on things other than your drywall or your ceiling or your cabinets it can grow on the contents in your living space.

Contents represent a lot of items that we must deal with in a mold protocol.
In this post you'll see a wicker flower stand, some boxes, a recliner that looks like a comfortable Petri dish, a tabletop that has a hard surface but also a natural surface woven material around the edge and the back of a piece of furniture.
Every one of these items is growing mold.
Mold needs three things to grow it needs proper temperature, but it can survive at much lower temperature than we are comfortable and a lot higher temperature we desire.
Mold needs an organic food source.
We human beings and the skin cells and hair and body oil that we leave on furniture serves as an organic food source. (check out the recliner)
The key to mold control is moisture control. That can be difficult in our Coastal climate.

CALL US, We solve mold problems.

Happy Birth. . . , I purchased myself a present, NO!
I just needed a new one. My Birthday is not until April, but I needed a new Buck Pump for mold sampling. I’ve replaced three pumps previously and although the rechargeable batteries can be replaced I’m more comfortable knowing my pumps have relatively “Low mileage”.

These devices can be set to collect a specified volume of air for a specified period of time.

In most cases I set mine to collect 15 liters of air for five minutes or 75 liters of air.

That volume of air is passed through a collection device like the Allergenco D cassette shown in the photo.

I ship my collected samples to an independent lab that opens the cassettes and reports what’s found on the microscope slide inside the cassette.

By collecting identical volumes of air through identical cassettes we can compare the air quality in different areas of the same home or building and the outdoors.

Ooh, that smell
Can't you smell that smell?
Ooh, that smell
The smell of “?????” surrounds you

“ It must be mold” a lot of the time it's not.

We're often called to do mold testing. The media and some people that benefit from instilling fear in people regarding mold have done a disservice to the public. Rather than providing facts they often emphasis the “horror” of mold in a home or business. Cooler heads should prevail but reasonable is rarely hugely profitable, so the mis information continues.

When we walk into a space people ask, “can you smell that”?

Humans can sense many different odors but have a hard time describing what they sense to someone else. How do you describe the difference between a wet wool odor or a wet dog odor without using those terms? Soiled laundry or a front load washer that doesn’t drain completely. Trash can or garbage disposal. How about wet carpet and cat urine?

“Can you smell that”? What am I supposed to be smelling?

Well, considering I’ve never been here before I don’t have a clue what it smelled like before.

Grandma’s house odors can vary a bunch if Grandma cooked curry vs. collards.

We do a thorough inspection and try to determine what could be causing the issue. Often that includes sampling for mold.

By the way did you know formaldehyde sort of smells like pickles.

Recently we were a North Gulf Coast Florida home and asked to try to identify an odor. In my opinion the odor was from the beautiful custom-made natural fiber floor coverings on a concrete floor. The backing was degrading I believe due to moisture from the concrete floor. The attached photo shows one in another part of the house but on wood. The client that called us planned to remove those custom-made floor coverings and check the rooms a week later and see if the odor is gone or reduced .

I’ll follow up to see how accurate my nose was.

I was asked to assess a number of potential mold projects in bank owned properties. The houses were located in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. I'd get a call and an address and a code to get inside. My job was to develop a protocol for mold remediation that the seller could present to an interested buyer. Sometimes I had trouble seeing the homes from the road due to the over growth of shrubs and brush. I often questioned myself coming alone,🤔 who knew what or who could be inside. 🤡👻👽🐍🕷 I don't panic when people call to say they think they may have a mold problem. I've seen real problems.😱

With my friend Leonard heading to the Orange Beach Mardi Gras parade. Enough trails in Gulf State Park to entertain two wheel travelers. Backroads, bike paths, dirt roads and race tracks we've ridden many places.

Driving East yesterday heading to Destin to do some mold sampling and develop a remediation protocol for a fellow industry professional. I LIKE fog on the beach. One of my favorite times to walk on the beach, fog. Another is light rain. Still another right before the sunrise. Sunny and hot? No not so much.

Driving East yesterday heading to Destin to do some mold sampling and develop a remediation protocol for a fellow industry professional. I LIKE fog on the beach. One of my favorite times to walk on the beach, fog. Another is light rain. Still another right before the sunrise. Sunny and hot? Don't be looking for me.

Looking through a Haggerty Driver's Club magazine I saw a Mobil 1 advertisment. I liked the caption. "When Life Threatens to Pass You By, ACCELERATE"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a80uUAYpjhc

Invasive Mold Infections in Immunocompromised People and Exposure Risks