By Carole Hawkins, Staff Writer
Finding out a home has mold in it is easy. Getting rid of it is hard.
Dennis Williams says he can get rid of mold — and make sure it never comes back.
Owner of Jacksonville’s Mold Detective, Williams backs up his mold-proofing guarantee with a $1 million insurance bond that works similar to a termite bond.
“After we come in and do our thing, mold is never going to get a foothold in your crawl space or attic or whatever, because the coatings we use just won’t allow it to happen,” he said.
That’s good news in Jacksonville, where humidity from the ocean, river and Intracoastal waters create a near-perfect environment for mold to thrive.
There are more than 100,000 different types of mold, but not all are an issue, Williams said.
Some molds eat wood, some cause allergy-like symptoms. Some make home dwellers very ill.
Mold-damaged materials that can’t be cleaned need to be cut out. Even then, without knowing what caused the mold in the first place, it’ll come back, Williams said.
Before becoming a mold detective, Williams ran his own kitchen and bath remodeling business in South Florida. That experience, he said, gives him an understanding of construction methods and how water intrusion can undermine those efforts.
An outgoing person with a curious mind, Williams spent 10 years on the sales side of a mortgage brokerage business his wife owned in Jacksonville.
When the housing bubble burst, it was tough times for mortgage brokers. But, it was boom times for mold. Houses that owners couldn’t sell, bank-owned properties and foreclosures were left vacant for months or even years.
“The air-conditioning wasn’t running and there was no maintenance going on,” Williams said. “Mold became quite the issue.”
Williams’ business partner, Rocky McKindles, could see it taking over in the crawl spaces and attics he worked as a pest inspector.
About the same time, a company approached McKindles with a proprietary mold proof spray it wanted to bring to market. Already busy with his business, McKindles brought Williams on to spearhead the new division.
“I like learning new things. I was interested in the technology of it,” Williams said.
The partners spent a year researching the chemistry and comparing the product’s performance to competing brands. They struck the deal.
Today, mold proofing is one service Mold Detective provides. Most of Williams’ customers initially seek him out for mold inspections, though.
It involves taking air samples to see if there’s a mold problem, but also an assessment to find the cause and outline a cure. That means examining crawl spaces, attics, window seals, plumbing leaks, cracks in stucco and other places where mold might take root.
Williams monitors the remediation — in order to avoid conflicts of interest, he doesn’t do it himself. If a customer buys mold proofing afterwards, he is one of the guys who crawls under the house to spray.
It’s a business, Williams said, that fits with wood destroying organism inspections, which also involve testing and treating problems in hidden parts of the home.
In the future, he hopes to train other companies in mold recovery and to distribute Mold Proof to them. And, though Williams moved through a couple of businesses getting to this one, he expects 20 years out he’ll still be a mold detective himself.
“I enjoy it. Most days when I go to work, it doesn’t really feel like work,” he said. “I like figuring things out — finding out if there’s a problem, what’s causing it, and figuring out how to fix it.”