Professional Car Mold Remediator Vs. Detailing Mold Pretender
Your health is at stake so we encourage you to do your own research. Verify if the information you’re getting is solid and will lead to a safe car.
When your car develops a mold problem you need a professional not a pretender. However, it can be confusing to figure out one from the other. This guide is designed to empower you to navigate through the difficult process of determining who is the professional and who is the pretender.
It’s all in the process
The Professional Car Mold Remediation Process:
Professional car mold remediators follow well established mold remediation best practices. These proven processes were developed by home mold remediators and have been tested and proven effective over many decades in eliminating dangerous mold contamination. Car mold best practices include:
Solving the water intrusion problem (Find and fix all leaks)
Removing all materials that can’t be remediated (carpet padding that has gotten wet and moldy), cabin air filter)
Extracting all excessive moisture, and drying all areas to less than 3% moisture.
The Car Mold Best Practices process consists of:
- Knockdown (knocking the mold out of the air)
- Denaturing (chemically dissolving mold cell walls
- Binding (keeping the mold from going airborne again)
- Low impact clean
- Gas oxidation with Chlorine dioxide
- HVAC system purge
- Deep clean
- Encapsulation (Mold inhibitor to prevent regrowth. There is no off the shelf product for common car surfaces. Car mold guys makes their own plant based encapsulator that can be applied to all car interior surfaces.
Unmasking the Pretender
It’s simple, if at least some similar version of the the above processes aren’t practiced, then they are a detailing mold pretender.
Does it really matter? Maybe the detailing process isn’t perfect, but at least the mold will be way less and my car will be safer right?
NO – Most detailers go right to step 7 the deep cleaning step. They often use steam and carpet extractors. By skipping the first six steps, they blast the mold into mold fragments creating 100 to 500 times more microscopic particles. Fragments are smaller and are far more biologically active than the whole mold spore.
Most pretenders use steam, and claim stream kills everything.
In addition, they use Ozone gas to kill the odor and mold in the areas they couldn’t access physically. Ozone gas is an ineffective mold oxidizer
In the end the result is you get a cleaner car that smells better, but is far more contaminated and unsafe then before the cleaning process.
Again do your own research
Type these questions in google or any competent AI tool
Can aggressive cleaning of mold in a car before going through the proper steps create mold fragments?
Are mold fragments more biologically active than whole mold spores?
Can improper car mold cleaning processes produce a more unsafe result?
Ask these questions to service providers you interview
Ask them to explain their process i.e. what they do first etc. what is their process based on?
Ask if they provide a warranty against return of mold, odor, and water intrusion
Ask if they can find and fix the leak, or will you have to find a repair shop to do it. If they can’t find and fix the leak, then how are they going to offer a warranty? water leak in a car = mold in a car
Ask them how many mold remediation jobs they have performed
Ask them how long they have been providing car mold remediation services
Check their reviews and see how many actually mention mold remediation and not just traditional detailing