Transcription:

I think they, they say that approximately 25% of the population is predisposed or hypersensitive to mold, and that you respond, you react a lot quicker to it, as it may not affect me, but it may affect you the same level of mold in the same house. It may affect us completely differently. There’s also toxic load which builds up over time.

If you’re constantly exposed to it. Think of a glass and you’re filling it up with water slowly, little bit by little bit. Eventually it’s full and it’s gonna overflow.

Hi, and welcome to the Home Service Hookup Podcast. I’m Jonathan, and today I’m really excited to have the opportunity to talk to Justin from Envy Restoration out in Denver. We’re gonna talk mold today and we’re gonna learn a lot about mold. It’s something I don’t know a ton about, but it is something that Justin knows a lot about it, so we’re gonna talk about it and how we, how it plays into life, how it can be fixed, and all things related to that.

Justin, as we get started, would you give everybody kind of a short 32nd elevator pitch on you and restoration and the area you serve there north of Denver? Sure. On me personally. I’m originally, I was born and raised in South Africa. I studied construction. I have a degree in construction, a diploma and building.

I moved out to Colorado in 2013 and right as Boulder itself was at the end of the 2013 floods, watching how the floods, the mitigation, and the dry down and the rebuild and what have you. Played out. It led me to believe that there were, there was gonna be a mold issue coming down the pipe. So that sort of got me interested in the restoration field.

MV restoration itself was formed in January of 2022. My business partner and I saw eye to eye on a lot of issues that we were seeing in the restoration industry. And we, both of us have a passion for mold, so we decided to start this. We are a full service restoration company based out of Erie in Colorado.

We are our certified, what our people are C certified. Although mold is our passion and our core business, we do offer full services, water and flood cleanup. Fire and smoke damage, sewer backup cleanup, trauma, crime scene, all that kind of stuff. We do also work with a select bunch of contractors who we can, if the client wants, we can offer a full cutback and rebuild after mitigation is done.

Excellent. And Justin, correct me, I’m right, but you are wrong. You guys serve really the whole Colorado front range area, including Denver and Boulder and the surrounding areas. Is that correct? Correct. We do. We’re all over the place here in Colorado. Perfect. So tell me a little bit what sets MV Restoration apart from other mold remediation companies in Colorado?

Especially when it comes to addressing C I R S or which is otherwise known as, I believe, mold toxicity or mold illness. What makes MV restoration different? So the I R C runs the course, which is the A M R T, which is the applied microbial remediation technician, and that is the mold, their mold certification.

It is the industry standard. The R C sets the standard. However, when it comes to people with servers or crs, that standard is not always sufficient. They need, or they require based on their level of sickness and contamination in their home, they need more extreme method methods. Of remediation. It’s not as simple as a, as someone who isn’t sick.

You can just, standard remediation isn’t just not sufficient for someone who is really sick with cz, and correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s one of the things that MV restoration really brings to the table. Is the fact that you understand mold well enough so that you’re not walking into every situation going, this is a top level needs the most extreme remediation, nor are you walking in and under underestimating the severity of that.

You’re taking a look at each situation independently and determining based on that situation, what type of remediation is needed. Is that correct? Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s a number of factors that play. Inter mold remediation. Do have the clients had testing done? Have they had an inspection done?

Who’s done the testing? What tests have they run? Who’s written the inspection? How thorough was it? There’s a number of ways. Also, we try and get an understanding of their, without going to too many personal details, we try and get an understanding of the level of sickness so that we can, I identify where they fall.

In terms of how far we go with their remediation, we also tend, we try and spend a lot of time with the clients talking upfront before we do anything or what to identify with their, what their goals are, what their outcome that they’re expecting or hoping for post remediation. As someone who’s not intimately familiar with mold, thankfully, does mold affect different people in different households in different ways?

Yeah, absolutely. I think they’re, and I forget the exact statistics, but I think they, they say that approximately 25% of the population is predisposed or hypersensitive to mold, and that you respond, you react a lot quicker to it, as it may not affect me, but it may affect you the same level of mold in the same house.

It may affect us completely differently. There’s also toxic load, which builds up over time. If you’re constantly exposed to it, think of a glass and you’re filling it up with water slowly, little bit by little bit. Eventually it’s full and it’s gonna overflow. Very good analogy. That makes a lot of sense.

Now, I know that MV Restoration is the first and only, I believe, certified radiator for sensitized individuals in Colorado. How does that certification ensure that. You and your team are ci, is it SIRS or c i s? Literate service, sir. Cs? Yeah, for your clients.

The that specific course, and I believe we are the only ones with that certification in Colorado right now, and that’s information I got from Normy, which is the National Organization of Remediators and Mold inspectors.

Have, they have developed the remediation course for sensitized individuals, which is very specific to dealing with on how to deal with people who are sick and affected by service. It builds hor, the I R C A M O T certification, which is the standard, so that is the bare minimum. Then the NCRs. It goes up a next level and talks specifically, it’s not also limited to just remediation.

It’s a whole house course. It’s a whole thing. We are looking at H V A C systems. We’re looking at small, particular teens of the whole house. It’s not limited to just the areas of mitigation. Very interesting. How do you guys stay up to date on the latest research? Methods, protocols, all of that in the industry.

Cause I’m sure there are a number of best practices and all that, but how do you guys stay up to date on that and ensure that, that you and your teams are serves aware so that you can provide, again, that the best level of service to your clients in the Denver and Boulder area? So we work very nicely with professionals who are very so led.

We work particularly closely with a woman at Chiro who’s local to us. She was AEs Surs patient. She has started a company called Mold Mentor Lll C. She is very SURS specialized in what she does. She’s a huge resource for us. We also we’re actively trying to reach out and make contact with other active.

Individuals, like environmental professionals, medical health professionals in, who are active and sos aware and literate. It’s a new field. Of mold research. It’s only recently become acknowledged that SOS is a mobile illness. Okay. And it’s with as with most new fields, It’s developing quickly, it’s gaining a lot of traction.

People are identifying with it and yeah, it’s, we’re just trying to keep up as things develop and make sure that we can stay with it. I know one of the things you were sharing with me early on is that you guys have a, through that certification and your experience, you have a great way of dealing with individuals that do have hypersensitivity to mold.

I’m sure that each case, each mold case is different. Can you describe to me at all what that mold remediation process looks like from MV Restorations perspective? And how do you ensure that it’s tailored each individual client knowing that mold situations and their response to that mold may be different in each household?

So we like to meet with the client and discuss their needs and their requirements. Like I said earlier, we try and find out what their. What their health situation is without getting too personal, but it helps us to know their level of exposure, and where they are with things. We recommend having.

It’s always very helpful to have a full inspection done of the house, preferably by someone who is serious literate so that they understand what they need to be looking for. Excuse me if the, and then the testing is very varied. There’s no one test that covers all aspects of mold. So yeah, we like to meet with the clients when try and understand where they’re at, thoroughly, go through their reports and their inspections and then we work with them to develop a plan that best suits their required.

Results, their outcome that they’re looking for. Excellent. Sorry, go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt you. No, I was gonna say, like you said, everybody’s different. You may have some people who want to go extreme and do everything. There are other people that just don’t have the resources to do that.

But as we were talking, it’s one of the things that really impressed me about the way you’re doing things at MV Restoration is the fact that it’s not a one size fits all solution when it comes to mold. You guys are looking at that situation. You’re looking at how mold is present, and again, how it’s impacting those in the household to make recommendations on how to resolve that.

And as a homeowner, to me, that’s so incredibly important, knowing that you’re not gonna apply the same solution to my house, that you applied to everybody else’s house, and you’re gonna look at my individual situation. It just means a ton to me as a homeowner, as you walk through that to help maybe.

Other homeowners understand it myself as well. Justin, what steps does MV restoration take to ensure that mold problem is resolved? So we work with a third party environmental inspection company. We do not do any of our own P R V or post remediation verifications. We work, like I said, at third party.

They come in and test and test our work that way we eliminate any. Potential or perceived conflicts of interest. I don’t want, I don’t want people’s, the issue is there’s no guarantee in life just because we do the job a hundred percent right, doesn’t mean that particular individual can still get back into their house.

For a number of reasons. They sometimes it just doesn’t work. We may do the mitigation a hundred percent. The home is a hundred percent safe. Just it’s not a guarantee that they. Particular person can live back in their house, unfortunately. So what we do is we don’t do any of our own testing. We have a third party come in and verify that what we’ve done is correct and the mold is gone, and the client will get a copy of that post remediation report.

I really like that, especially as a homeowner, that brings me a lot of, peace of mind, knowing that again it’s Not to blame anybody at other companies, but it’s not the fox guarding the henhouse, so to speak. It’s not a person who’s remediating the problem then telling me it’s fixed. I love that you bring a third party in that can take a look at that and give both of us that feedback to give me that assurance that the job was done properly, address that.

I think that’s really just amazing and I think a great reason why. So I wanted to chat with you today, Justin, just to learn more about the processes that you take there at MV Restoration and hear how you’re protecting the needs of the homeowner along with that, whether that’s through specific remediation or whether that’s through taking a look at each situation, or in this case, bringing in that third party for testing afterwards.

I think that’s very honorable. I love to hear that. Talk to me a little bit. If I’m a homeowner and I. Suspect I might have some mole going on. Is there anything that the homeowner should do about addressing it or is the best thing to reach out to a professional like yourself, especially obviously in the Denver and Boulder area yourself?

But I’ve happened to be in Michigan. If I run into that, should I try to address it on my owner? I’m my best to reach out to a professional who’s got some certifications and experience and knowledge about the situation. Yeah, I don’t recommend DIY mold projects just because of the nature of mold. It’s all around us anyway.

Sure. It’s something that obviously as a trained mediator, I feel fairly strongly about. I think it should be done correctly. Now that said, can you do some mold mitigation yourself? For sure. It’s not advisable, but by the same token, not everybody has the resources to have and have a remediation done, but I would definitely reach out to a professional in the area at the very least to get some advice and talk to him.

And so that you can, you a, you understand what you’re dealing with is there are thousands of mold species out there and all of them have. Their own toxins and whatevers that create, sorry, I’m stumbling here. That’s fine. They’re all, the molds are all different and they canalize and they take over each other and they go, they have their own little biological warfare going on.

Yeah, it, I would definitely recommend getting in touch with a professional and looking at having it done professionally. So that you don’t, a, create more problems in the house, and B, make sure that you actually got rid of the areas that needed to be mitigated. If I’m in the Denver and Boulder area, specifically in talking about dealing with MV restoration, is that initial consultation, is that an expensive or is that something that is relatively affordable that can give me that information to know what the next steps are so I can make an informed decision as a homeowner?

So it, it varies. There are a lot of, like I said, there’s a lot of testing that can be done and there’s a level of inspection that you can have. There’s inspection levels and then there’s inspection levels. Sure. Really depends. If people get in touch with us, we can walk them through it and steer them to the right resources or to resources that can help them, and that’ll be from.

Inspection, testing and then mitigation or remediation down the line. But it, as far as Costco goes, that’s really dependent on what the client fair enough looking for, how far they’re prepared to take it, what sort of testing they want done. Excellent. Good. Tell me a little bit if I’m in that, the Denver, Boulder area and I am watching this and going.

I’ve got some old issues. I think I need to talk to Justin and his team. What’s the best way for them to get in touch with you guys? So my direct cell number is Justin Morris, 7 2 0 8 7 9 0 2 3 5. That’ll get me directly. Alternatively, you can email us at admin mv restoration co.com. And then our website has some information with cyber contact details on ’em as well.

And that’s mv restoration code.com. Perfect. And we’ll make sure all of that’s here on the podcast as well, so easier for people to follow. Parting advice, Justin to homeowners, regardless of where they’re located, if they think they have a mold issue, you’re saying reach out to a professional, get the right information, and so you can make an informed decision.

Versus ignoring it. Absolutely. Perfect. Perfect. I appreciate that. Thank you for joining us today. I really appreciate the information and let me just share that I’ve known Justin now for a bit and I’ve got to know him and his team. If you are in the Denver, Boulder area and you’re concerned about mold or have any type of restoration need, I really want to encourage you to reach out.

To VY Restoration and find out what they can do for you. They serve with integrity and have great honor and are incredibly skilled on top of that. And when anytime as a homeowner we’re dealing with something that we don’t completely understand, at least from my perspective, I want somebody that I know I can trust and that has the experience.

And in the Denver and Boulder areas, I have no doubt that is envy restoration. So please reach out to them if you’re in the area. Without making a great day, and we’ll be in touch and see you soon.