What the equipment in Lighthouse Point can and cannot remove
Split systems retrofitted into houses built before central cooling was standard, with the air handler squeezed into a converted closet or the garage and duct run through an attic that was never designed to carry any. The commonest single failure in this town is a condensate line routed the shortest available way rather than the best one, so that when it blocks, which it does every few wet seasons, it discharges into a wall or a floor rather than somewhere a person would notice.
The reason that matters is a gap between two numbers, both from the Florida Solar Energy Center at the University of Central Florida. Through the hot months, with cooling running, indoor relative humidity should not exceed 55% during the day on a regular basis. And the great majority of mold species need a material moisture content corresponding to a relative humidity of at least 70% to grow at all.
Note where that second number is measured. Not in the room. At the material. Air holds less moisture as it cools, so the film of air against a chilled surface sits at a far higher relative humidity than the room average. A wall at 68F with 78F room air at 55% is close to saturation at its own face, and it does not need a leak to get there. That is the mechanism behind almost every complaint where nobody can find a source.
So in Lighthouse Point we read surface temperatures with an infrared thermometer alongside the room air, calculate the dew point of that air, and record the margin at every surface that has one worth recording. FSEC also give the point at which cooling alone stops being enough: sustained readings of 70 to 75% mean dehumidification rather than a colder thermostat, and turning the thermostat down at that stage chills the surfaces further and makes it worse.
The commercial position in Lighthouse Point is the one published on every page of this site, because the rate card is not a Fort Lauderdale rate card. A flat price by property size, agreed before anyone drives out, with the accredited laboratory fee already inside it. It does not rise if the samples come back positive, nothing is added for the drive, and we take no payment of any kind from anyone who removes mold.

What Lighthouse Point itself changes
The buildings in Lighthouse Point
Lighthouse Point is a small town of 6,316 units at a 1967 median, 56% single-family detached and 77% owner-occupied, laid out almost entirely along a network of finger canals cut for boat access. The characteristic building is a single-storey concrete block house on a slab, frequently with a terrazzo or tiled floor, built at a time when nothing resembling a modern vapour strategy existed. There is no capillary break under most of these slabs and no perimeter insulation anywhere.
Where the water comes from
The canals are the defining physical fact and they are tidal, connected through the Hillsboro Inlet to the ocean. What that means for a building is a groundwater level close to the underside of the slab and moving with the tide rather than only with rainfall. A slab in that position stays damp underneath permanently, and the floor becomes the coolest large surface in the house through the cooling season. That is exactly the condition that produces condensation at the floor and at the base of the walls without a single drop entering from outside.
Where it hides in these buildings
Slab-edge moisture is invisible until flooring is lifted or furniture is moved, so the survey here concentrates on the lowest 300mm of every exterior wall and on the floor covering itself. The signature finding is a dark line at the skirting on a wall that reads perfectly dry at chest height, and it is routinely missed by an inspection that takes readings where a person naturally holds a meter.