Mold Remediation in Spokane, WA

Mold remediation in Spokane, WA starts with the calendar. The 1991 to 2020 climate normals for Spokane International Airport put average snowfall around 44 inches a year, December is the wettest month, and January is the most humid. Furnaces run from October into April with the windows shut, so a house that took on water in the fall holds that moisture inside for months. By the March melt, the patch you can see in the basement is usually the smallest part of the problem.

My Pure Environment is a licensed Pure Maintenance provider based on Spokane's South Hill. We treat mold with the patented VaPURE process, a two-stage vapor that reaches the framing, wall cavities, ductwork and air of the whole house, and an independent accredited lab tests the air before and after. This page explains how the job works in a Spokane home, what changes from room to room, and where to go next if your problem is in one place.

Spokane's housing is old by western standards. Census survey figures put roughly one home in four inside the city limits at pre-1940, and the median city home was built in 1961. Manito, Browne's Addition and the Perry District have houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s: full basements dug to the frost line, stone or rubble foundations, and lath-and-plaster walls with an open cavity behind them. When a foundation weeps during the March melt, that cavity is where the mold grows, often without a mark on the paint.

The post-war ranches in North Spokane, Spokane Valley, Five Mile, Indian Trail and Comstock have a different weak point: a vented crawl space built to looser ventilation standards than the current Washington Energy Code, often with ductwork running through it. The newer homes in Liberty Lake, Post Falls and Hayden are sealed tight for energy efficiency, which traps the humidity from showers and cooking that an older house would have leaked away.

That is why we treat the whole house rather than the patch. In an old South Hill home the growth is in the plaster cavity and the joists; in a new Kootenai County build it is in a bathroom with a weak fan and the duct that serves it. What you can see is a fraction of what is there.

The treatment covers the whole house, but the reason mold shows up changes by room, and each page below deals with its own cause. Attic Mold Removal is the winter call: ice dams push meltwater under the shingles, and warm indoor air condenses on a cold roof deck on sub-zero nights. Ceiling Mold Removal is often the first sign of that attic problem, a stain that appears months after the ice is gone.

Basement Mold Removal and Crawl Space Mold Removal are the spring calls, after Chinook winds turn the snowpack into runoff that finds the low point of an old foundation. Water Damage Mold Removal covers the sudden version: a pipe that froze and split in a January cold snap, a failed water heater, a washer hose that let go while the house was empty. Carpet Mold Removal usually follows one of those, because carpet on a concrete slab holds water long after the surface feels dry.

Bathroom Mold Removal and Shower Mold Removal are the closed-up-house calls. Daily steam, a fan that vents into the attic or barely pulls, and windows shut from October to April give mold what it needs on grout, caulk and the drywall behind the tile. Wall Mold Remediation deals with the cavity behind the surface, whether the water came from a window that sweats on cold nights or an ice dam draining down inside the wall. HVAC Mold Removal treats the ducts and the air handler, which move air through the whole house for the half of the year the furnace runs.

Not sure which page you need? Call and describe what you are seeing.