I got a call from a seller about water damage in a bedroom closet.  He opened the wall and found mold. When I got there, I found that the seller had removed all the moldy drywall in the closet, laid it in a pile, and had a fan blowing up at the exposed wood in the closet trying to dry it out.

What he didn’t know was that the fan was actually doing more damage than good; it was spreading the dangerous mold spores from the closet out into the entire bedroom.

He should have contained the contaminated closet to protect the bedroom from mold spores BEFORE removing all the drywall.  This seller wasn’t concerned at all about that; he just wanted me to replace the sheetrock so he could sell his house. 

It so happened that the buyer came in while I was there, stated that this bedroom would be for her young son, and wanted to ensure that all of the mold would be removed. The seller assured her that I was taking care of everything.  I called her later and expressed my concerns that the seller would not agree to mold remediation being done in the bedroom and that having a child that young sleep there could be dangerous for his health.

The buyers insisted the seller have me submit a new bid to correctly remediate the bedroom and closet of mold. From my certification in water damage and mold remediation, I was positive that the demolition this seller had done in the closet had indeed spread the mold spores into the bedroom.

The seller still was not convinced there were spores in the bedroom, tried to explain to me that because the boards were wet, the spores could not spread and I could just cover them up. I corrected him and convinced him to have me do carpet dust samples; one in the closet where he originally found the mold and one in the furthest bedroom corner away from the closet.