Condo Mold Inspection Fort Lauderdale, FL

A flat $325 for a unit up to 1,000 square feet, which covers most one and two bedroom apartments, and $425 above that. The laboratory fee, the outdoor control, the moisture survey and the thermal imaging are all inside the number. The outdoor control is taken at the building rather than at ground level where the floor makes that meaningful, because air at the twelfth floor is not the air in the car park. Nothing is added for a high-rise and nothing is added for the drive anywhere in Broward.

Not for your own unit. Everything we do inside your front door is non-invasive and requires nobody's approval. What does require the association or a neighbour is access beyond your boundary: into the unit above, into a riser chase, onto a roof or a balcony that is not yours. That is a separate conversation and it usually happens after our report, because a specific written finding is what tends to unlock a door that a general complaint did not.

It depends entirely on where the source is, which is the question the inspection answers. Damage appearing inside your unit says nothing about where the water came from: a facade sealant failure, a riser leak in a shared chase, a roof or balcony drainage failure and the unit above you all show up as damage in your unit. What the report establishes is the entry point and the direction of travel, with readings and photographs. What your declaration then makes of that is a legal question, and it is one you can only ask usefully once the facts are settled.

It is a common position and it is not the end of the road. The gradient across your ceiling, the pattern of the staining and thermal imaging along the path can establish the direction the water travelled and, frequently, the approximate position of the entry above you, without ever entering that unit. That written finding is what an association or a management company can act on, and in practice it is what produces access where a verbal complaint did not. It is also the document that matters if this ends up somewhere more formal.

Not the thermostat at 80F, which is the commonest arrangement and the reason for a large share of these calls. At that setting the system almost never runs, and a system that never runs never dehumidifies, so the unit equalises with outdoor air at a dew point in the low seventies. Either leave the cooling at a setpoint it will actually reach regularly, or better, run a dehumidifier on a humidistat set around 55%, which controls the right variable directly and costs less to run than cooling an empty flat.

It changes it considerably and it is worth establishing early. Damage in a vertical line through stacked units points at a riser or a stack. Damage across one elevation on several floors points at the facade or the window perimeter, which is a building envelope matter. Damage on the top floor points at the roof. A pattern across units is the strongest evidence there is that the source is a common element, and coordinating a small number of unit inspections is a far cheaper way to establish it than each owner arguing separately.

Yes, for two specific reasons. The first is the exterior wall: facade sealant and window perimeter detailing of that era has had fifty years of salt and ultraviolet, and driven rain entering a wall assembly is a routine finding in this stock. The second is what is on the wall inside. Impermeable interior finishes, and vinyl wall coverings in particular, were common in that period, and the Florida Solar Energy Center is explicit that they can cause severe mold problems in hot humid climates because the assembly cannot dry inwards.

Yes, where the association commissions it. That is different work: a corridor, a riser chase, a roof or a mechanical space is a building assessment rather than a unit one and it is quoted by area and complexity. What we cannot do is inspect common elements on an individual owner's instruction without the association's agreement, and it is worth being clear about that at the outset rather than discovering it at the door.

If anything about it suggests moisture, yes, and the window is usually short. A unit that has been vacant through the wet season with the air conditioning off is a different building from the one that was occupied last winter, and a general home inspection does not include sampling or a full moisture survey. What matters most in a block is whether the problem is the unit or the building, because the second one comes with an assessment attached at some point and no seller is obliged to have noticed it yet.