Mold Odor Removal in Gonzales, LA

You noticed it in the hall closet first, or in the guest bathroom nobody uses, or in the laundry room when you open the door after a weekend away. Musty, like a wet cardboard box. You’ve run a candle and a plug-in and it’s still there. A musty odor is a recognized sign of hidden mold growth, and in a tight newer house it is often the first sign, because the wall hasn’t stained yet. Call and tell us where the smell is strongest.

The smell has an address

Mold odor is the growth off-gassing, so the smell is strongest nearest the growth. EPA lists the places it commonly hides: the back side of drywall and wallpaper, the underside of carpet and pad, around pipes inside walls, above ceiling tiles, inside ductwork. In Ascension houses the usual addresses are a closet that shares a wall with a shower, a laundry room where the drain pan overflowed once, the wall behind a refrigerator with an ice maker line, and the return-air closet where the air handler pulls from. If the smell moves with the AC, the system itself is on the list.

What we do about it

We follow the smell to the wall that reads highest on a moisture meter, open the material there, and remove the growth we find — the same sealed, negative-pressure removal as any other job. Once the moldy material is out and the framing is clean and dry, the smell goes with it, because the source is gone. Nothing gets sprayed over the top. Then we tell you what was keeping the spot wet and what has to change so it doesn’t start again. If it turns out the smell lives in the ductwork, the job becomes HVAC and duct mold remediation, and we’ll say so.