Ep 64. Mould myths busted!
In this episode, Michelle is joined by Certified Mould Testing Technician and founder of Break The Mould Inspections, Tracey Seymour, to dive deep into one of the most overlooked risks in Australian homes: mould. Tracey shares her personal story and professional insights, arming buyers with the knowledge and tools they need to protect their families and investment.
Here’s what you’ll learn from today’s episode:
Why new homes and renovations can still be mould traps
The difference between a building & pest inspection and a proper mould inspection
Five key things to check before stepping inside a property
What not to be fooled by in property listings and open homes
Why bleach won’t solve your mould problem
Speakers in today’s episode:
Michelle May - Michelle May Buyers Agents
Tracey Seymour - Break The Mould Inspections
Follow Us:
Enjoy the show?
Don’t miss an episode, follow via iTunes. If you like it, please leave a review!
Or, find us on the podcast app of your choice, such as Spotify.
This podcast has been produced and edited by Snappystreet Creative
Please note that any views or opinions presented in this podcast are solely those of the speakers, and do not necessarily represent those of any business. These views and opinions are general in nature, and do not take account of your personal objectives, financial situation and needs. Please consider whether it applies in your circumstances and seek professional advice wherever appropriate.
Listen to the Episode Now
Michelle May
Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Buy Your Side podcast, the property podcast to help you make smarter property buying decisions. Now, I am the principal of a buyer's agency, as you know. We buy property all around Sydney, and when I speak with clients, and I've said this on the podcast before, I always talk about the health of your home and that really starts under the house and in the attic all the way through, It'll affect the health of yourself, but also the property itself and its longevity. And I happened to be on social media the other day, and I came across Tracey Seymour's Instagram of Break The Mould Inspections and I was intrigued to learn more. So I've invited her onto the podcast today. Tracey, welcome. It's so great to have you here.
Tracey Seymour
Thank you.
Michelle May
Now, let me run you listeners through Tracey's background so you can understand what it is we're going to be talking about today. So Tracey is actually a Certified Mould Testing Technician. who was trained through the Australian College of Environmental Studies. She's based in Sydney and serves Sydney, Central Coast and regional areas on request. She is a mother whose life was turned upside down when her son developed neurological tics and digestive issues linked to mould exposure. Tracey embarked on a relentless quest to uncover the root cause after facing numerous misdiagnoses from medical professionals. So no better person than Tracey to understand the risks and harms that it can do to young lives and older people as well. I am so grateful that you've taken time out of your busy schedule to come and speak with me today, Tracey. Thank you so much for coming on.
Tracey Seymour
No, thank you. Thanks for having me. I guess it's my life mission now. As you said, my life and my family's life was completely turned upside down by mould. And it is my mission now to educate, firstly, as many people as possible about the dangers of mould. I think we've grown up in a world where we've just been told, bleach it, hide it, get rid of it. It's not that bad. And hopefully there's a lot more education coming out now, but I really want to be able to teach as many people about mould and then going off and doing my qualification to become a mould inspector so that I can actually go into people's homes and help them identify that mould, and there's so many different varieties of testing and things that you can do but it is amazing to be able to do that testing, see the testing from a health perspective as well or some of the symptoms and conditions and match those two up and then sort help people who potentially like us were just having misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis when really the hidden culprit was mould all along.
Michelle May
Yeah, it's fascinating. And I think particularly in this, the climate is changing so much. I've lived here since 2008 in Sydney. I was previously in Brisbane where the climate was much more subtropical. I find that Sydney has become wetter as years and more humid as as years have gone on and obviously all around the world things are changing, which then comes with it mould on the rise as well because they thrive in wet, warm, humid conditions right?
Tracey Seymour
Sydney's awful. Sydney houses, they really do. Sydney and the Central Coast are just this humid little hot pit where, if you're not on top of managing that humidity within the home, mould is just inevitable. It’s that climate is just the perfect conditions for mould.
Michelle May
And there is a misconception out there that it would be somehow better or non-existent in new properties, right? Just from my experience, my parents are in Europe and my parents bought a new house off the plan a number of years ago now. And as they moved in and in the first three years, my parents both started developing headaches and actually they had the property tested and it turned out that there was all these elements from these new materials and things like, concrete and things like that were emitting I guess gases. So they were actually physically affected by it, which we had no idea about. So back to my original question, new homes…
Tracey Seymour
New homes are just as bad, if not worse in some cases. So you've got to weigh up each house individually, but a brand new house, the way that they're built these days is all about conserving energy. So making them super airtight, but a house is living almost, It needs to breathe. So by making them so unbelievably airtight and they're knocked up in record time these days and I'll drive past a building site sometimes and just almost have heart palpitations because you can see these frames, these wooden frames sitting out in the elements, getting wet and then very quickly plasterboard being chucked up over the top of it and they're not dried out properly or the concrete hasn't had enough time to truly cure and then that moisture is going to eventually have to come up.
So a newer house isn't necessarily “mould safer”, if that's a word, but it does definitely present other challenges as well. You don't have the historical leaks and moisture issues, but you do have those other issues about ventilation and unfortunately the way that the building industry is with putting things up so quickly, there's not always a lot of care taken and I've seen everything now from brand new houses with no waterproofing membrane at all behind the tiles. Tiles and grout are porous. It's your first line of defence, but it's never going to be the foolproof method to avoiding moisture so things like your waterproofing membranes and things they have to be spot on and unfortunately with trying to get everything in these package homes for cheap sometimes there's corners cut and that is the danger of a new home build as well.
Michelle May
Oh, look, and that is a massive bugbear of mine, particularly the fact that the people who are signing off on these projects, the certifiers are paid for by the builders and developers. There's a massive conflict of interest. And I don't know if you know the TikTok inspector on TikTok, he goes through building sites and he wears camera gear and you can see the shocking state of affairs where people have just been left homes that are really not fit for your dog, let alone for humans.
Tracey Seymour
Yeah. And I think it's also not just a new build, but what appears to be a new build. Renovations which are now on the surface level, they look beautiful. They look like these shiny new homes with gorgeous kitchens and backsplashes and new tiles. But the truth is, what is behind that? I personally have lived in a house myself that made my son very sick, which looked like a doll's house. It looked immaculate. Beautiful, shiny new kitchen and when I discovered a leak on the exterior of that kitchen cabinetry wall, we pulled that cabinetry out and the entire cabinetry wall where the brick met the back of the cabinetry was black, thick mould. But you have no way of seeing that just from the naked eye because you've got all this gorgeous cabinetry in front of it. So there is that element too, just because it looks beautiful, avoid being sucked in by the aesthetics.
Michelle May
Yeah, I 100% agree with you. I recently walked away from a $5.5 million house that we had considered for our clients because our building and pest inspector came through and he was able to put a drone up and he said, I don't know how this house got signed off on. And it looked beautiful. You can imagine $5.5 million can buy you a nice house. We walked away and the vendors were so shocked, as was the agent. They asked for a copy of the report and, I think, are now in the process of pursuing the builders. And there were things that were...
Tracey Seymour
And I guess it is important to note too that a building inspection and pest inspection, yes, they can bring up a lot of things, but they're also not a mould inspection because they're sort of looking at things on a surface level. They're not doing the tests that show the DNA of the home.
They're not able to tell you what's hidden behind those walls or under those subfloors necessarily or in the crawl spaces. A freshly painted home is always a scary point for me. And I know that it's really hard for you as a buyer's agent and your clients buying a new home. Nearly every vendor paints their house beautiful and fresh to look great, but that can hide an absolute multitude of sins. That's why I personally would prefer looking at a house that hadn't been freshly painted because you can see the history. You can see what's in there.
Michelle May
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So now that I've got you all to myself for my listeners to pick your brain, so to speak, talk me through the things that people can do when they're house shopping, apartment shopping, before signing on the dotted line and making a massive mistake and ending up sick from their property.
Tracey Seymour
Yeah, I think it's really important and it's part of my mission too, educating people on what they can look for before even spending a dime with anybody, me included. There's so much that you can do for yourself. So I've got sort of five things that your listeners could do for themselves before even stepping foot inside a building. Obviously you're going to be attracted by what you see online. That's that aesthetic. That's what's going to get you hooked. But before you even step foot in that building, try and take your mind out of that, the glamour of what you're seeing. And then let's look at the basics. Let's look at the real fundamentals of what protects your home.
So the one thing that I was always taught was, does your house have a hat? This is your roof, your roof and your eaves. This is your home's first line of defence against the elements and it's what's going to protect your building from water damage.
What you want to do as much as possible is direct water and moisture away from the building envelope. So a house with a nice big eaves, that really helps to protect not only the windows, and the walls because we do get cracking in our walls we do get gaps around the windows and things and when you've got that wind-driven rain and and stuff like that it's already doing a big job to try and protect itself and if you've got a nice house with a nice eaves it's just giving that extra bit of protection just moving that water away from the property so that would be i guess sort of my number one like first and foremost you can see that online when you're looking at a house. Again, there are a lot of more modern houses these days that have flat roofs. Lots and lots of problems with flat roof houses. I see lots of mould issues and water intrusion.
Michelle May
And does that include box gutters too?
Tracey Seymour
Yeah, and even even to the line of balconies. A balcony that's got nothing underneath it, amazing. But if you've got a balcony and you've got a room below that and you're reliant, it's almost like a flat roof house, you're reliant on that balcony and the tiling and the grout and the waterproofing and everything to be amazing because otherwise that water is going to sit on that balcony or that rooftop, whatever that is, and it's just going to sit there and pull and it's going to protrude into the rooms down below.
Michelle May
Yeah, so it needs adequate drainage, the right angle away from sliding doors into the bedroom, all that kind of stuff, which sounds really logical, but you would think that the building industry has that gut under control. However, it's not so much to be the case, right? Okay, so next point to start with. What is your next point?
Tracey Seymour
Number two would be evaluating the external drainage. So It'll take a little bit of time, but you want some time to walk around the exterior of the property and have a look for certain things. So is there actual drainage? Can you see drainage points yourself? I know I've lived in a house once that the stormwater drain went absolutely nowhere. It was collapsed. It had all grass growing over it and everything. So water was just pooling underneath the subfloor. So you want to see that, if your driveway slopes down towards the garage, What kind of drainage is below that? Are you talking about a long grid that just has one tiny little hole where it's all going to flow through in a heavy downpour that's going to overflow and it's going to flood into the garage and potentially into the house.
You're looking for signs of water pooling. So what are those things that tell us that there's persistent water there or water doesn't move away from that building quick enough? So moss, muddy patches, signs against the building where it looks like water has risen and you've got a bit of sediment and things on the building, on the brickwork there. You're looking at all of the drains around the exterior of the property. Where are they placed? Do you have, the next point is on gutters and downpipes, but are they adequate around the base of the property to be able to remove that water away from the building envelope? So, is there a garden that has multiple levels that's got tiering, which means that that water is going to flow down at some point?
Where does a drain need to be to make sure that it is moving water away from the building as much as possible? So just taking a walk around, are there garden beds? These are another one of my bug beds. They look pretty, but you've got these garden beds, which are quite often built right up against the building envelope under a bedroom wall or what have you. And quite often they're actually built above the weep holes in the building. So there's no ventilation being able to get out. You're also allowing water to protrude below. You're also making sure that water, depending on the type of garden bed, if it's got lots of mulch and things, you're keeping moisture held up against your building. It's not been drained away.
I've seen just the other week in Bondi, I saw a house that had this beautiful big gum tree and I really do feel for the owners because they have tried really hard to get council to allow them to cut this tree down because it's really affecting the pathway around their building and it's really quite close. It's about a metre away from the bedroom. And you can see that the root system is growing up and pushing the concrete to the point where water can't actually flow past. So there's no drainage allowed to go through there, which means that water is pooling around that corner of the building. And when we did an inspection, we went under the subfloor into the crawl space and you could see that the wall was all wet and there was all moisture coming through with active condition-free mould on there. So really having a look at how the water around the property is able to escape and not protrude into your building.
Michelle May
You mentioned this term, which my listeners may not be familiar with, weep holes. What are they? What do they look like? And why do you need them?
Tracey Seymour
Sure. So you'll see, very easy to see, but along the the bottom of the building, you've sort of, you've got your foundation and you've also got, not really sure how far, I'm not a builder, I'm not sure how far they're supposed to be spaced, but you've got these gaps within been two bricks.
So all the bricks are joined, but then you'll find in some of them, they've got a gap in there.
And what that is, is the weep hole that allows moisture, it allows airflow, it allows ventilation to come through that level of the building. And if you're building up on top of that, it's not allowed to come out. It's all staying in and underneath the building.
Michelle May
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Now with older homes also, they might have those metal, what is it, those bricks that, usually built…
Tracey Seymour
Got the grate kind of thing in it.
Michelle May
Yeah, that's the one where it allows the air to flow and in the subfloor. That's a similar reason, right? Yeah. Okay, those are very valid points. When it comes to drainage, one of the things as a buyer’s agent that we look at is floodplains. Overland flooding is the property actually in a flood zone. It now has to be part of a contract of sale to say it's flood affected itself or it's in an area that is flood affected.
But, a lot of councils are now publishing their flood studies online. I would never buy in a flood zone.
Tracey Seymour
Yeah. Well, that's actually my next point so you've skipped to number four. So number three is actually what we call topography.
Michelle May
I am sorry. Let's go to number three.
Tracey Seymour
So where-abouts is the position? Anytime I do an inspection on a building, I'll always do a search online first. So this is something that your clients can completely do for themselves. And it's amazing what details you can find out about a property online, you can sort of look at a house online and sometimes even if you click on realestate.com or one of those like on the house types of websites they've got a lot of historical data on there sometimes a lot of historical photos as well so they're really good points but you can do a search of that address and type in all sorts of random things but you can type, has there ever been a fire has there ever been a flood is it in a floodplain area so the topography is really really important this is something that
Sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean that the house is a no-go. It doesn't necessarily mean a deal breaker, but it does mean that you need to be aware that it is increasing your risk of moisture ingress into the property. So things that I like to look at, like you said, are the floodplains. Is it built on wetlands? A lot of developers these days will take sites that technically probably aren't great, like wetlands and things, and mechanically build them up to make sure that they can put houses on there, but they're prone to flooding. That's naturally what they're supposed to do. That's why they're wetlands. And so you will find a lot of the time in those areas that you get moisture ingress, you get sinking, you get lots of different things from those types of areas. But it's not just that, let's have a look at your neighbours. Is your neighbour's backyard, front yard, their foundation, is that a lot higher than yours? In rain, you've got to think about where the water is coming from? Are you positioned at the bottom of a hill? Are you on a rocky surface that's built into the landscape and therefore some of your rooms are subterranean, and there's no actual guidelines I guess that the builders have to adhere to with regards to the waterproofing and things for subterranean rooms but it can really create a problem when you've got a lot of water coming down.
I looked at the house the other day on the beaches and it's built on a rocky slope on the cliffs. It looks beautiful but when you get down to the last level you can actually see underneath is almost moss covered all over the rockery and things like that that means there has to be prolonged water. You know, moss doesn't just grow quickly overnight. You know, that's a prolonged water issue. And so that's flooding down underneath the house. It's on rocks. It's coming down under the house slowly as well. So big risk. You need to look at where your building is positioned. Do you have rooms that are, for example in Sydney, are they south-facing? And does it have proper drainage around there? Are there things in place that you can do that don't have to be for sale right now and ready, but are there things that you can do to mechanically engineer different changes to make sure that that room doesn't stay wet and doesn't stay damp? Do you remove the gardens from around there and put, rockery or, you know, something that is gravel, something that will drain the water away, more drainage. Really having a look at the position on the land, what's around the building and what the historic geographical or nature issues that have been.
So you can quite often check for things like if there was a fire, I mean, personally, if it was my house and it was a fire, I'd let it burn because the damage that drowning a house in chemicals and water and things like that you would need to put out a fire oh, there's a lot of remediation that would need to happen for that to be able to adequately ensure that you're not just creating another problem of mould. So, have a look. Has that house had a fire before? Has that house been flooded? Has the area flooded? Is it backing onto a creek? Is it at the bottom of a hill? Lots of different things you can look at and you can actually search on Google for yourself as well.
Michelle May
Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, actually. I got a call this morning from an agent who's selling 16 lots of land within the 10K radius of the CBD here in Sydney, vacant lots. And I said, oh, I know where that is. That's a floodplain, and he went yeah it is. And they're selling, I think the guides are $1.6 or $2.6 million dollars just for the land alone and, of course, people are desperately buying houses, there's a massive shortage. So people are cutting corners. Is it worth it? I don't think so, right? Now, your point to orientation is one that I make all the time as well. Sun rises in the east, sets in the west. If you have a unit south facing west or or or south facing, if you don't get direct sunlight all, not only are you going to be stinking cold in winter and really hot, it's going to be a hot box in summer. It also means that the sunshine can't actually penetrate into that room, right?
Tracey Seymour
Yeah. Mould doesn't like sunlight. UV light's not great for mould and it needs very little, very little sunlight. So it thrives in those conditions with no sunlight, moist, damp, can't air out. You're just giving it everything it needs. Mould needs very little. It needs a water source, either from moisture in humidity, or occupant behaviour. Are you cooking and cleaning a lot? Are you bathing in long hot showers with not enough extraction fans? What are you doing with the humidity in your home just from living inside of it? You've got to be constantly making sure you're getting rid of that humidity out of your home, particularly somewhere like Sydney. And if you've got something like a unit or a a house that's got a room in particular that's that south-facing, that doesn't get a lot of sunlight, it doesn't get a lot of airflow, they're the ones that you've really got to put a lot of attention into to manufacture a way to get that sorted.
Michelle May
And like you said, it doesn't take much. Like if you take off your shoes and you pop them straight in your wardrobe and you close the door, that's not great, right? I've always been told to leave your shoes. We don't wear shoes in the house anyway. Leave them outside so they can dry off if you like. You don't have to even have particularly sweaty feet. Now we've turned a corner in this conversation, but it's something that people don't even think about and then you put it in a closed environment like wardrobe a cupboard and you're you're already starting to generate that kind of environment I guess right
Tracey Seymour
Yeah. I mean, all mould needs is a water source and a food source and mould is nature's greatest decomposer that's all it wants to do is decompose everything and so anything that is porous or semi-porous is an amazing food source for mould. And the funny thing is, one of the things that it loves the most and the reason why we get a lot of mould is dust. So dust is made up of skin cells. It's made up of organic matter and things like that. So you can have a surface which is non-porous like glass or a wall or something that's metal, but it will still grow mould if it has a lot of dust and you give it a more moisture source like humidity.
Michelle May
OK, that's interesting.
Tracey Seymour
So keeping a dust-free home is really important to making sure you're reducing that ability for mould to grow. It just needs a little bit of moisture, a bit of Sydney humidity and it's thriving.
Michelle May
Yeah, absolutely. So do we skip to point four? Do we go back to point three?
Tracey Seymour
I wanted to talk about gutters and downpipes because these are another thing that you can do visually while you're walking around. Ideally, what you want to see is roughly every six metres or so is a downpipe or at least when the roof changes direction. So not only do you want a downpipe, but you want a downpipe that's in good condition. It's not rusted out. It's not showing signs of minerals and salts leaking through and stuff like that. And it must be connected to the drain pipe, not just sort of spilling over and hoping to go in the hole, actually properly connected to the stormwater so that it can bring it off the roof, straight down the pipe and straight into the stormwater and not allow it to pool around your building envelope where you're going to get rising damp. And quite often I do see drain pipes, they're in a good condition, but they literally just sort of L-shape off the bottom of the building and the water just pools all around the bottom and the clients are wondering why they've got rising damp in that part of the room and quite often you can't see it.
When we're using the moisture meters on the walls and things it's coming up so high those walls are super super deep and unfortunately the mould is on the other side so it's hiding and that's the scariest part about mould and how it impacts your health is because you don't necessarily have to see mould for it to be there and to be causing a really big problem. A really important thing with your gutters and downpipes is making sure that they are regularly cleaned. And I know that it seems like such a simple thing to say, home maintenance, clean your gutters and your downpipes. We think, especially in Australia, we think of cleaning out our gutters as an issue with bushfires and things like that. But it's actually so much more than that. And again, it comes back to what's around your property at the time as well if there's lots of trees and things as well, because what can happen is your gutters are full, when you get a heavy downpour of rain, those gutters spill over back into your roof. And I've seen that happen a lot of times as well. So those gutters are overflowing, they can't escape quick enough, especially when we have those really heavy downfalls for prolonged periods and they're all locked up with sediment and leaves. So they're spilling back into the roof and before it, the clients have got mould on their roof a few days later because the water was just dripping through and that's a big job. Once it's there, you've got to remove it. But you can't just bleach it, you have to remove mould.
Michelle May
Bleach doesn't actually work on mould, does it? It makes it look fine, but it’s still there.
Tracey Seymour
Actually, I'll try and make this a really quick bit for you, for your viewers. But, okay, so it's not mould itself really that's doing the damage to our health. It's the mycotoxins. So mycotoxins are those chemical toxins that mould produces. And that's what makes us really, really sick. That's what gives us things like neuroinflammation, mood swings, mental health issues, damaged gut, irregulated immune response, heart palpitations. You've got an endless list of, sort of side effects, respiratory issues, so many things that these mycotoxins can do and they can be hiding or easily misdiagnosed. And then you'll find, you might have a child who's got eczema and they're constantly getting eczema and the creams aren't working anymore. And why? It's because they're constantly exposed to these mycotoxins. That's the root cause of the problem.
So mould continues to produce mycotoxins, whether it's dead or alive, whether it's viable or non-viable. So that's the important point. So we can't really look at killing mould as a solution.
It has to be removed. So when we bleach something, bleach is predominantly actually made up of water. So mould needs to be removed, you need to make sure that you are removing the mould so that it’s not producing those mycotoxins anymore which is making you sick. And bleach, all it's doing is giving mould more water because it's made up predominantly of water.
So you're giving it that moisture source. Essentially all you're doing is you might be killing some of the surface mould a little bit but mould has really deep roots. Okay, so you've got to think of it like a tree. You can wipe off or you can remove the surface mould but by the time you see that mould its roots have gone way further into that substrate, way further into that wall, that wood panel, that belonging. So the only way to really make sure that it's not going to continue to come back and grow, it's not to just sit there dormant waiting for its next moisture to heat or the next bit of dust and humidity. The only way to make sure that you truly remove mould is to remove it altogether from the building, which is why it's such an expensive issue if you find mould in your home because it's not easy to sometimes remove ceiling or to remove walls or floors. So it's really important that you do these checks for yourself before you're actually making one of the biggest financial commitments.
Michelle May
Hey, so then you can help me with this question then, because I knew that bleach had no effect on removing mould. But what about, I heard about clove oil. Is that an urban myth?
Tracey Seymour
Look, there is clove oil, vinegar, all of these sorts of natural remedies. They're biocides, okay? So again, what you're doing is you're only removing the surface level. You're not actually removing the root structure that's sitting within that substrate. So I would be more inclined to use those products, and I do use those sort of products like natural vinegar and dish soaps and things like that, as a maintenance, keeping on top of your, not more removal, but maintenance to make sure that mould’s not coming into your home. One of the best things you can actually use is a microfiber cloth. Microfiber cloths move way more bacteria and mould spores than your regular sort of chucks cloths and things like that. So you can use a microfiber cloth and some sort of surfactant, so like dish soap, super easy. A bit of dish soap, either in a spray bottle or on a microfiber cloth, and it can help remove mycotoxins and bacteria and things really easy. But they're the sorts of things that you need to be doing as a maintenance, not as your sole medium for mould removal.
Michelle May
Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense.
Tracey Seymour
And that brings me also to fogging, we've got a lot of companies out there who will come in and do an assessment and see a house that has active mould and they say, we're going to come in and we're going to fog it, we're going to spray it, we're going to mist it with this chemical bomb, basically.
Michelle May
Oh, okay. I was like, what's fogging?
Tracey Seymour
What it does is it just sprays a chemical with water, moisture, into the air, it only lands on surfaces. You can't get in behind walls where a lot of that mould is actually hiding. It doesn't get into the windowsills or, into the skirting boards or behind the skirting boards where the mould is actually majority of the time present. It's not normally just sort of sitting around on the surfaces. So they come in and they'll say, oh we're going to spray it, we're going fog it. All it does is, it's designed to weigh down mycotoxins. It's designed to capture in the air, those mycotoxins that we're talking about, or those mould spores, I should say, in the air and bring them down to the floor. So weigh them down, make them heavier and bring them down to the floor so that they can be cleaned up and removed. But as I said, they can't get inside substrates.
They don't penetrate deep to where the roots are, growing and waiting and sitting dormant. They can't get inside and behind wall cavities and behind tiles and things. And all essentially, most of the time, all you've really done is you've actually given the mould, like a freak out. So mould, as soon as it feels threatened in any way by either another type of mould, light source, a movement, anything, mould freaks out and it goes and releases all of these spores and things into the air and, all you're doing by using those chemicals and those substances is you're scaring them out and making it freak out and put all of these extra toxic chemicals. So what you were experiencing health wise beforehand potentially just got a whole lot worse because you've just put a whole heap more spores and things out and mycotoxins and things out into the environment that you're living in.
Michelle May
Oh my gosh, Tracey, that sounds quite frightening. and you haven't really fixed the issue, the root cause, while the mould is there in the first place.
Tracey Seymour
Not at all. Exactly. And that's exactly what happens. So you're giving it more moisture. You're not necessarily getting into where the actual root cause is. And then people are sort of, going about their lives and wondering why is this still sick? Why are they not getting better? Or why is the mould popping back up again in different places?
Michelle May
Yeah. Yeah. No, and I get it now. Hey, and so, your business. You come in, people have an issue or non-issue, they're like, oh, we're going to call Tracey, let's get her through. You come and do your investigation, then what happens? Do you also fix it?
Tracey Seymour
No. So similar to what we're talking about in the building industry earlier, I believe that if you're the mould inspector, you shouldn't necessarily also be the remediator. You know, it should be independent. And once you've had it remediated, you should have an independent mould inspector to come back and assess the works that's been done. So I don't want to make money out of telling someone that they've got to get something remediated and getting that work myself.
I want to find the problem for people and I want to drill down and find that root cause because I know what it's like. I know, as a mum, what it's like to see your child, in pain and suffering in some sort of way and being misdiagnosed and thinking that there's no mould in the house, but really it's there. So I want to make sure that I find that, help them find that, connect the dots between the issues that they might be having from a health perspective in their home to the mould that we find in their home, and there's a number of different ways that we do it. And again, we can work with clients on their budget because, like anything, the more testing that you do, the more results that you're going to get back, but also people have a limited budget for this sort of thing as well, so what we want to do is find out as much information as possible for free.
So I sit and I do a questionnaire, a really detailed questionnaire with the clients, and it talks about literally everything that they know about the history of the home, how they behave inside the home, are they running a business from home where they're using a lot of water all the time? Are they cooking things all the time? Are they got a lot of people in the house with not proper ventilation? Lots of different things. So we spend a long time looking at the history of the home, things that we talked about before, like the topography, the floodplains, all of that. We talk about the health of all of the individuals within the home as well. We talk about are they using air conditioning? Are they using dehumidifiers or humidifiers? Are there people that are sick within the home? It's one of the things that I'll also say, when your buyers are looking at a home, if they're really considering it, try to get nosy. Try to find out as much as you can about the previous occupants or the people who are selling.
Because I do know of stories of people, for example, where a lady, she moved into a home, was having a lot of fertility issues. Could not fall pregnant, multiple miscarriages. She found out the previous people before her had the exact same issues. They moved out of the home, she's fallen pregnant. So there's a lot that can be told, it might not be a definitive answer that you're getting, that this is what's causing it, but can certainly be a red flag. So definitely find out as much as you can, find out about the owners, what are they using that property for? Has it been used as a business before? Are they cooking all day every day and adding to that moisture content within the home? There is a lot that you can find out and we work with the clients to make sure that we're getting as much of that information as possible. Because I want to find out, Oh, you have a leak in the bathroom. Oh, when there was that heavy rain fall in Sydney two years ago, there was a roof leak. It got fixed, but there's still dampness in that room. So there's so much that we can find out for free for you in the initial consultation that can just alert people to, oh, that might actually be a problem.
So once we've done the initial consultation, I will go out and I will do the assessment on the property. We do everything from looking at the external of the property in a lot more detail to what I've just explained in this segment. We look at visual clues on where does it look like there could be a moisture issue, there has been a moisture issue, is there signs of efflorescence or water staining or, broken pipes, things like that. So we do a really detailed look at the external perimeter of the property, the history of the home. I then do air samples. So we can take air samples within particular rooms. We can do it in the whole house. It really, again, depends on the budget for the client as well. And what is their concern?
After our big consultation and a questionnaire, does it look like this is an isolated issue in a particular area of the home, or do we think that we've got a systemic issue within this building and we need to do a lot of testing. So that's something that we can work on with the client as well. We can do swabs. So we take little swabs or little tapes, which give a little tiny indication what bacteria or what mould spores are sitting within the home. So lots of different testing. I would do a lot of visual inspections, things like I will ask the client, can we pull out this dishwasher? So I know for a fact that everything can look beautiful. It’s happened in my own home previous to becoming a mould inspector where I pulled out the dishwasher that's probably not been pulled out ever, and the wall behind it was all black toxic mould. Showing the water damage and showing a previous leak. So we really get in and we have a look, we look under the crawl space, we look at subfloors, checking for proper ventilation.
And this process, depending on the extent and the issues, this can go from two to seven hours. It really just depends. Anyone that comes in and says, I'll just do you a really quick inspection, I'll do a free inspection, run a mile, because if they're doing a proper inspection, they're not going to give it to you for free because they're there for too long if you're there to do a proper inspection you're there for a few hours. So you want to make sure that we're covering off everything. I want to spend time in each room moisture mapping each wall, moisture mapping the floors, we've got equipment and tools that show us how much moisture are in the surfaces, is there variances. Looking at a floor where the moisture is really dry just until we get to the bathroom. And then when we get to the bathroom, we can see that it's really damp near where the bathroom is. So things like that, they're giving us visual clues that there is an issue, like there is definitely a difference in the moisture. So lots and lots of things that we can do.
What we want to see is that, because first, before we do that inspection, we take an outdoor control sample and we want to make sure that…because mould is everywhere. Mould’s every part of life and in the environment. So I want to make sure that what's outside and what's inside aren’t completely different. Because if you've got, a really high level of, let's say, aspergillus inside the house, and there's not really much outside, that's telling me that there is water damage issue or there is moisture and mould within this house that's not the same as what's going on outside so why do what's the what's the root cause that's where we've got to look at it and we've got to dig down so quite often people will contact us just because they want to have a look at the mould report they got done from somebody and it says oh that's within normal range and I understand it. I understand that that must seem on a test result that must seem like, oh, we've got no problems. But normal range doesn't mean that you don't have a problem if it's completely different to what's outside in the normal environment.
So they're the sorts of things that you really need to be getting from your mould inspector that level of detail, that level of drilling down and sort of saying 50% of this room has aspergillus spores. And there's only 10% in the outdoor environment right outside. So where is that moisture coming from? Where is that mould coming from? What is making that difference? And you really want your inspector to be drilling down and finding that information, going through that consult with you and helping you, telling you, okay, there is active mould or visible mould on these curtains or on these blinds. Before you do any other sorts of remediation, these need to leave. You need to get these out of your building right now. I did one not long ago and a cot, a baby's cot, when we lifted back the mattress, it was all black mould. So do not let that child sleep on this mattress tonight.
That has to go before we look at building works and, all of that sort of stuff, you cannot let that child sleep another night on this. But it's about working with the client to go, what can they afford to do? What are the steps that they can do right now to help? So that might be adding an air purifier. It might be adding a dehumidifier if there's a lot of condensation within the house. It might be something as simple as, let's replace the obstruction fan because it's not working to remove the moisture out of the home.
So we give lots of little tips on what you can actually do right now, not just the big scary picture of building works and remediation as well. So they do get a really detailed report at the end of it, which they can take to builders, landlords, anyone that they need for professional help. And it's really good to be able to then use that report as well to take to health practitioners because I know myself when you match up to say this is the kind of mould exposure that my son has had in this house and these are his symptoms when you go to a health practitioner, it's really easy to connect the dots.
Michelle May
Yeah. Hey, you just mentioned landlords, do you get engaged by tenants then a fair bit?
Tracey Seymour
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle May
Yeah, I can imagine.
Tracey Seymour
Unfortunately, it's really a really hard one and I've been there myself. You've got some really great landlords and you've got some real doozies. And unfortunately, not a lot of people, well, not a lot, it's becoming more and more popular, but there's a lot of landlords who don't understand the dangers of mould, who think that you can just fog it, bleach it, get rid of it. There are some that blatantly just don't care, cover it up. So it really depends on who you've who you've got as a landlord and your estate agent. But I guess by having these reports, it gives you some grounds because, obviously each law is different in each state, but under their tenancy acts and things, they have to provide a healthy living space, a habitable healthy living space.
And if you can prove through mould testing that it's not and they're not adequately addressing that, that can help you with things like getting out of your lease without breaking it and things like that. So there are some clients that I've had where, it's easier just to say to them, if you can, I would leave, it's a big job. If you can leave because your child is really, really sick or your husband is really, really sick, this is not a healthy environment. Look at this mould in here. This is going to be a big job. This is going to take those owners tens of thousands of dollars to remediate. I don't know that that's going to happen quickly for you. Here is your mould report. Take that with you and see if you can get out of your lease.
Michelle May
Yeah, brilliant. Oh, that's such a good aspect of what you're doing as well. I mean, you're helping people across the board. But just listening to you explain what it is that you do, it's incredibly comprehensive. And obviously, you're incredibly passionate about this, which is wonderful to see and listen to you giving us all these tips. I wanted to ask you for the one thing, the one tool that you should have in your back pocket that you can buy yourself that would help you investigate this a little bit further, what would that be?
Tracey Seymour
Yeah, I mean, all of our equipment is so bloody expensive. But there is something that you can do if you are a tenant or if you are a potential home buyer. It's really, really great if you've got two of you going out to an inspection and you buy yourself, off Amazon, they're normally somewhere like $10 to $15, called a Hygrometer. And what that does is it shows you in real time what the humidity levels and the temperature levels are in that particular room. So quite often you can get someone to go and distract the estate agent and have a chat with them in another room and you just walk and place it down somewhere in another room and just let it sit for a minute and you can actually see. So if there's really high levels of humidity in that room, that can be a red flag for you. It doesn't tell you necessarily that there's mould, but it does tell you that there is an issue with humidity within that room. And then as you go through the rest of the house doing that, that can also show you, if it wasn't consistent, like if it's consistently high throughout, it potentially could be that they've just got the whole house open today for the inspection and the outside weather is coming in. But if it's really high in one room and not in another room, that can actually be an indicator that there could be a problem in that room. So, for $10 to $15, you take it with you and then that gives you a little bit more information on what you could be looking for.
Michelle May
It's called a hygrometer.
Tracey Seymour
Hygrometer. Yep.
Michelle May
So as soon as we hang up, I'm going to go Google it and get one.
Tracey Seymour
Yeah. Amazon. It'll be delivered the next day.
Michelle May
Absolutely. Great. Thank you so much for coming on today. I've certainly learned a lot because we always get independent building and pests done for our clients, but the pest part of it, mould part of it is only such a small component. And it has always worried me in my private life as well. Just, having children and having clean air, et cetera. I'm so glad I stumbled across your Instagram page. Now, if people who've been listening want to get in touch with you, And what is the best way to do that?
Tracey Seymour
Yeah, absolutely. So you can, number of ways, our Instagram is really good for learning a little bit more about mould. If you're not quite ready to take the step yet in terms of getting in touch and you want to just learn and educate yourself a little bit more, it's Break the mould Inspections. So that's our Instagram handle. Or you can get on the website www.breakthemouldinspections.com.au. And just bearing in mind, Mould in Australia is spelt M-O-U-L-D. A lot of people don't realise that. So yeah, getting onto the website and getting in touch and booking a consultation. And the first step is always that chat. So you can always have that free chat with me on the phone to talk about what your concerns are. And then if you want to take it to the next step, then we can go and book in a consultation and then potentially the testing down the track.
Michelle May
Thank you so much, Tracey. It's been a pleasure having you on. Break the mould In Sessions is where you need to go to chat with Tracey further about your concerns. As always, you can always email me at hello@buyyourside.com.au if you have any questions, if you've got an idea for another episode, if you want me to invite someone else that you're desperate to hear from, by all means, send me that email. I hope you have enjoyed this episode. Thank you, Tracey.
Tracey Seymour
Thank you so much.
Michelle May
I am desperate to hear more from you and I will certainly be stalking your Instagram for more of your posts. Thank you for listening everyone And until next time.