Gonzales, Prairieville, and the rest of Ascension send us the same questions over and over, and most of them start with some version of “but the house isn’t that old.” Here are the straight answers. When the answer for your house isn’t obvious, call and describe what you found.
Yes. Mold needs a wet surface, something to feed on, and a day or two. New drywall, new subfloor, and new flex duct feed it as well as old ones do. EPA’s guidance is that any material wet for more than 24 to 48 hours can start supporting growth, regardless of when the house was built. A newer house in Dutchtown or Prairieville has fresher paint, not a different climate.
Usually the same signs as anywhere else: a stain on a ceiling seam or around a window that comes back after you wipe it, baseboard that swells, paint that bubbles, a closet or bathroom that smells musty, and a dark ring around one AC vent. In a tight newer house the smell is often the first clue, because the wall doesn’t breathe enough for the stain to show early. Call and tell us what you found.
Mildew is a common name for surface growth on a hard, damp surface — grout, a shower door, a window sill — that usually wipes off. Mold that has gotten into drywall, wood, or insulation doesn’t wipe off, and it comes back. CDC says the type doesn’t change the response: if it’s growing on a porous material, that material comes out.
It can be. A vent sweats whenever its surface drops below the room’s dew point, which in Louisiana is most summer days, and the dust on the vent gives growth something to hold onto. Dark speckling on the grille itself is small and cleanable. A ring that keeps reappearing, or a musty smell that arrives the moment the system starts, points into the duct. Rather than guess, call and tell us where you smell it.
Condensation. Cold glass meets warm, wet air, water collects at the bottom of the frame, and the sill stays damp. In a newer home a window that wasn’t flashed well can also leak into the wall below it during a hard rain. Growth on the sill alone is a cleaning job. Growth on the drywall under the window is not, because the wet material is inside the wall.
In an attic: dark staining on the underside of the roof deck, discolored insulation under a bath fan that vents into the attic instead of outside, and water marks around the air handler. In a crawl space: a musty smell that rises through the floor, a soft spot near a bathroom, and insulation hanging loose between the joists. Ascension is mostly slab, so most of our attic calls come from newer subdivisions and most crawl space calls from Donaldsonville and the river-road communities.
CDC lists stuffy nose, sore throat, coughing, wheezing, burning eyes, and skin rash, and it also says exposure may cause a variety of effects or none at all. People with asthma or mold allergies may react more strongly; people with weakened immune systems are at higher risk of infection. We can’t tell you whether the house is behind your symptoms. We can remove the mold.
They can still cause allergic reactions. That is the reason the goal of remediation is removal, not killing. A spray that leaves dead growth inside a wall hasn’t solved the problem it was bought for. Porous material that was moldy comes out; hard surfaces get cleaned and HEPA-vacuumed.
For most single-room jobs, yes. The work area is sealed in plastic and kept under negative pressure, so the rest of the house stays usable. For work that covers several rooms, involves the HVAC, or where someone in the house is already reacting, staying elsewhere for a few days is sometimes the practical call. We talk that through before the job starts.
If someone in the house is having symptoms, see the doctor — that’s not our lane. What you tell the doctor will be more useful if you can also say what you found in the house and when it started. The mold side doesn’t wait on the medical side; wet material keeps growing either way. Call and describe what you’re seeing, and tell us who lives in the house.
Not long. EPA says to dry water-damaged areas within 24 to 48 hours to prevent growth. CDC says materials wet for more than 48 hours will generally support visible and extensive mold. LSU AgCenter says new colonies can form in as little as three days. A wall cavity in an air-conditioned house doesn’t get a dry day, so the clock runs out fast.
Yes, in two ways. Spores move on air, and a running HVAC system moves air through the whole house; EPA says a contaminated system can spread mold through a building. Water moves too — a leak on the second floor shows up in the ceiling of the room below. That is why the work area is sealed before anything is cut, and why fans are the wrong tool once growth has started.
If the water got inside the wall, the mold starts there. It isn’t on the surface first and then working inward — the back of the drywall and the framing are wet before the front of the sheet shows anything. EPA lists the back side of drywall and the area around pipes as common hiding places. If a wall feels cool or soft, or the stain keeps returning, call and tell us where it is.
If you weren’t here, ask the neighbors and look at the property disclosure from your purchase. The August 2016 flood put water into homes across eastern Ascension — St. Amant, Galvez, the low ground toward Sorrento — and most flooded homes were outside the mapped floodplain. Only about 23 percent of Ascension homes had flood insurance, so a lot of drying was done fast. If a room has never smelled right, that history matters.
For any job over $7,500, yes. Louisiana requires a state mold remediation license, issued by the State Licensing Board for Contractors after board-approved training. A general residential contractor without it is limited to about twenty square feet of mold work, and advertising mold remediation without the license is illegal. Ask for the number before anyone starts.
No. Louisiana law requires the company that assesses a property for mold and the company that remediates it to be different companies. That rule is why we do removal only. If you already have a report from an assessor, keep it handy when you call; it helps us plan the work. If you don’t, you usually don’t need one — CDC does not recommend mold testing, and Louisiana’s Department of Health says visible growth makes sampling unnecessary.
Look the company up at lacontractor.org or call the State Licensing Board for Contractors at 1-800-256-1392. Ask for the license number, a certificate of insurance, and a written scope of work before anyone cuts drywall. That applies to us and to anyone else you call.
Not for the removal. CDC says it isn’t necessary to identify the type because all molds should be treated the same way and removed. Cladosporium, Penicillium, and Aspergillus are the most common indoors; the greenish-black one people call black mold needs constant moisture and shows up after long leaks. The job is the same for all of them: contain, remove the wet material, clean what stays, dry it.
EPA’s guideline is about ten square feet, a three-foot by three-foot area, on a hard surface. Above that, or on drywall, insulation, carpet, or inside a cabinet, EPA says to bring in a professional. Louisiana’s Department of Health adds two more cases: mold in the HVAC system and anything involving sewage or contaminated water.
A general contractor in Louisiana may do at most about twenty square feet of mold work without the state mold remediation license, and jobs over $7,500 require that license outright. Beyond the legal cap, a handyman rarely seals the work area or runs negative pressure, which is how a closet problem becomes a hallway problem.
The wall looks fine for a while. If the growth was in the drywall or the insulation, and the moisture that fed it is still there, it comes back — often in the same spot, sometimes a little further along. Cleaning the surface without containment also puts spores into the air of the room. If it keeps coming back, call.
It depends, and a phone call alone can’t settle it. What moves the number: how far the growth has spread, whether it reached inside walls, insulation, or the HVAC system, how many rooms are involved, and whether it’s a house or a commercial building. Prices vary widely for that reason. The real answer comes from a visit, or from an assessor’s report if one has already mapped the problem. What doesn’t change: waiting turns one wet sheet of drywall into several.
Sometimes. Homeowners policies generally cover mold that follows a sudden, covered event and exclude mold from a slow leak, humidity, or neglect; many policies also cap mold payouts. What your policy pays isn’t something we can promise. What we do is photograph, log, and itemize the job so your adjuster has what a claim needs. If you’re already in a claim, say so when you call.
One appraisal study found that a large share of buyers wouldn’t bid on a house with a mold history, even after remediation, and buyers here can pull CLUE and FEMA claim histories that show water damage. A problem that was removed and documented with the written report Louisiana requires is a much easier conversation than one that surfaces during a buyer’s walk-through.
Yes. The Louisiana Real Estate Commission’s property disclosure form asks about mold, mildew, water intrusion, and flooding. A seller who conceals a known problem faces rescission or a price reduction claim, plus damages and attorney fees if they knew. Removed and documented is the line you want to write on that form. If you’re listing soon, call and tell us — we write the report with the buyer’s questions in mind.
Yes. Calling costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Describe what you’re seeing and where, and we’ll tell you whether it sounds like a job for us or something you can handle yourself. Not sure whether it’s enough to worry about? Call.
We answer at any hour. Tell us where the growth or the smell is, what got wet, and roughly when. Give us your ZIP code and a callback number. If we’re free you’ll be talking to us right away; if we’re on a job you’ll get a scheduled callback, and we’ll tell you which number to watch for.
Contain, remove, clean, dry, document. The work area is sealed in plastic and put under negative pressure. Wet porous material — drywall, insulation, carpet pad, ceiling tile — is cut out and bagged inside the seal. Framing and slab are cleaned in place and HEPA-vacuumed. Nothing is closed up until the wood reads dry; LSU AgCenter’s guidance is below twenty percent moisture. Then you get the written report.
Containment is the plastic, the zipper door, and the machine that keeps the sealed room at lower air pressure than the rest of the house. EPA’s remediation guidance calls for it so that spores stirred up by the work stay in the work area. Without it, cutting out one moldy wall seeds the hallway, the return vent, and the bedrooms.
If the drywall itself is moldy, yes, that section comes out. Drywall is paper and gypsum, mold eats the paper, and once it’s inside the sheet there is no cleaning it. How much comes out depends on how far the moisture ran, which readings on the wall tell us. Framing behind it usually stays and gets cleaned.
No — we remove mold. But the removal won’t hold while the water keeps coming, so every job includes finding where it came from and telling you what has to change. EPA and Louisiana’s Department of Health both say to stop the moisture before cleaning up the growth. We’ll talk through what that means for your house on the call.
It depends on the duct. Sheet-metal duct and the air handler cabinet are hard surfaces and can be cleaned. Insulated flex duct that has gotten wet or moldy can’t be effectively cleaned, according to EPA, and Louisiana’s Department of Health repeated that after Hurricane Ida — it gets removed and replaced. Most Ascension houses run flex duct through the attic, so that is usually the answer here. Look at HVAC and duct mold remediation for the full picture.
The pink film in a shower is usually a bacteria, not a mold, and it cleans off a hard surface. Orange or pink growth on drywall, a ceiling, or inside a vanity is a different matter, because it means the material stayed wet. Color doesn’t tell you what to do; where it’s growing does. Growth on the ceiling over the shower is bathroom mold removal work.