Inside a sample report

This is the one page summary, and it's usually the page people read first. It tells you which Group the sample falls in, which molds stood out, and what kind of moisture each of those molds needs to grow.

Each answer points you to the section that explains it in more detail, so you can dig in wherever you want.

This is where the report pulls everything together. The box at the top lines up the Group, the pattern of elevated molds, the climate zone and what the sample covered, so you can see it all in one place.

The paragraph under it explains what that combination could mean for the building, and the rest of the section walks through the moisture problems that commonly sit behind a pattern like this one.

This is a printable checklist you can take with you on a walk around the building. This one starts outside and then works through the roof and attic, the walls and windows, the rooms, and the heating and cooling.

Each item tells you what to look for and why it matters. The one we pulled out is written for a house on a slab, since that's what this sample described.

These are the topics worth looking into, roughly in the order people usually tackle them.

Each one tells you what part of the result it comes from, and most of them tell you what kind of professional usually handles it. The one shown here comes from the sample’s two elevated condensation molds.

All 36 molds, lined up from the ones that need the most water at the top to the ones that need the least at the bottom.

The sample’s highest mold, Aspergillus niger at 65 times typical, sits down in the bottom zone, and for the molds in that zone humid air is enough.

The same mold result can mean different things in different places, so the report reads it against the location’s climate zone. This sample is in 2A, which is hot and humid.

The box sums up what that climate usually means for a building: where the moisture mostly comes from, when it peaks, where it tends to get in and where it tends to condense.

The report also looks at the actual weather for the sample’s ZIP code over the year before the sample was taken.

For this Houston sample it found the sample was taken in the peak humidity season, and that roughly 146 days in the past year had outdoor dew points above 70°F, which is where humid outdoor air can condense on AC-cooled surfaces if it gets to them.

The weather here is real data for Houston’s 77001 ZIP. Only the mold numbers are made up.

Every one of the 36 molds gets an entry here. The ones found in the sample get a full card like this one, with how much was measured, how elevated it is, the mycotoxins it can make and where it’s usually found.

The ones that weren’t found get a short note and a link to the full write-up on our species pages.