Some houses don’t have a mold spot. They have mold. Water came in through the whole ground floor, or a leak ran unnoticed under a slab for a year, or the house sat closed with the power off through a hot September and every soft surface in it grew. That is a different job from a bathroom wall, and it needs a plan instead of a patch. Call and tell us how far it goes.
Order of work. Rooms get contained and worked one after another so the finished ones stay clean while the rest are opened. Everything wet and porous comes out — drywall to a set height, insulation, carpet and pad, cabinets that soaked up water, the bottom of the doors. The framing is cleaned and left open to dry, and nothing closes until the wood is under 20 percent moisture. The HVAC gets its own look, because EPA says a contaminated system can spread mold through the whole house, and a whole-home job with the ducts left alone is not finished.
The 17th Street Canal breach put water into the east side of Metairie in 2005 — Bucktown, the low blocks of Old Metairie, the streets along the canal — and CDC found visible mold in 45 percent of the New Orleans-area homes it looked at afterward. Most of those houses were gutted to the studs and rebuilt. Some were dried and closed. Ida in 2021 didn’t flood the parish the same way, but it put roofs and water into a lot of attics on both banks and left houses without power in the heat for two weeks. If a house has never smelled right since either one, that is a reason to call.
We don’t know what your policy will pay, and we won’t guess. Homeowners policies generally cover mold that follows a sudden covered event and exclude mold from long-term leaks or neglect, and flood damage is excluded from them entirely. The National Flood Insurance Program excludes mold that could have been avoided by the owner, so speed matters. What we do is photograph, log, and itemize every room so your adjuster has a full record, and give you the written report Louisiana requires. If you are in a claim now, tell us when you call.
Standing byTell us where it is and what got wet. If we’re available, you’ll be connected with the person who handles the work while you’re still on the line. If we’re on a job, you’ll get a scheduled callback, and we’ll tell you which number to watch for so you know it’s us.
Staining on the roof deck and rafters from a roof leak, a bathroom fan venting into the attic, or an air handler sweating all summer — cleaned in place with the attic sealed off from the living space.
A ceiling that stays spotted over the shower, a soft wall behind the tub, a cabinet floor under the sink. The dampest room in a house that never gets a dry day, and the removal that holds once the water stops.
Metairie cooling systems run almost all year, and the smell that shows up when the air kicks on has a source. Growth at the coil, in the plenum, or in wet insulated duct — cleaned or replaced so the system stops moving it around.