May 19, 2025 • 58 mins
Curious about what soda blasting really is and why it's revolutionizing crawl space mold remediation? You'll want to hear this revealing conversation with the experts from Crawl Space Ninja of Charlotte (https://crawlspaceninja.com/locations/charlotte-nc/).
Videos mentioned:
$25,000 Inspection - https://youtu.be/6mOWfJEm6MA?feature=shared
Redo Crawl Space After Walkthrough - https://youtu.be/6mOWfJEm6MA?feature=shared
Most homeowners facing crawl space mold are presented with basic chemical treatments that merely mask the problem temporarily. These "spray and pray" approaches leave you wondering if new mold is growing or if old mold is returning because there's no clean baseline for comparison. The team breaks down why soda blasting stands apart as the gold standard for complete mold removal, literally stripping mold away at its root while making wood look remarkably new again.
The discussion tackles common misconceptions head-on, particularly the widely-held belief that bleach effectively kills mold. The experts explain why bleach's high water content, quick evaporation rate, and damaging effect on wood's structural integrity make it a poor choice compared to sodium bicarbonate, which is both effective and non-toxic. You'll learn about potential residue concerns during the process and how they're managed to minimize impact on your living space.
What truly sets this conversation apart is the holistic approach to mold remediation. The team emphasizes that while soda blasting excels at removing existing mold, preventing its return requires addressing the underlying moisture issues through proper encapsulation, dehumidification, and water management. They share powerful success stories, including one customer whose debilitating health issues dramatically improved after proper mold remediation.
Whether you're struggling with crawl space mold currently or want to understand your options before problems develop, this episode provides clarity on what effective, permanent solutions look like. Don't settle for temporary fixes when your home's structural integrity and your family's health are at stake. Subscribe for more expert insights on creating healthier home environments from the foundation up.
Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!
Schedule a consultation: https://buymeacoffee.com/csninja/extras
Need help: https://crawlspaceninja.com or https://diy.crawlspaceninja.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Church (00:00):
Hey there, michael Church, crawl Space
Ninja.
I had the opportunity to sitdown with the folks over at
Crawl Space Ninja of Charlotte.
I got a chance to talk to DougJames and Mason and we are going
to go through a lot ofquestions that I had for them
about soda blasting and mold andprocedures and indoor air
quality.
I feel like it's some greatinformation.
(00:21):
Sit back and relax and take alisten to these guys explain
exactly what soda blasting is.
Is it cost effective?
How is it different than othermethodologies when it comes to
addressing mold?
Hope you like this content.
Hope you'll subscribe.
Mason, let's start with you.
Tell me I don't know if you'veever done this before.
I want you all to becomfortable, so usually you get
(00:42):
comfortable by talking a littlebit, so why don't you tell me a
little?
Mason (00:48):
bit about yourself and how long you've been with the
company and all that kind ofstuff.
Well, yeah, my name is MasonGordon.
I'm 21 years old.
I'm from Charlotte originally.
I went to high school rightdown the road at Providence High
School.
I went to college at EastCarolina and I'm a little bit of
a unique case.
I'm still in school, um.
I transferred to online schoolabout two years ago, um, and I'm
(01:09):
still taking classes at EastCarolina university.
Um, I started with the companyabout six months ago.
Um.
Doug, our owner um, I know himthrough a personal connection
and so I started about sixmonths ago through that and I've
I've come to know James and therest of our crew, of our crew
and and had a good time so far.
James (01:25):
that's great, james, uh, yeah you're the same, yeah, yeah
, I've been with uh crawlspaceninja for just over three years
now, um, and I've been in thecrawlspace industry for, let's
see, I always forget I thinkit's been uh six years actually.
Michael Church (01:40):
Yeah, very good uh Doug, how you doing.
James (01:44):
What's going on.
What's happening?
Doug (01:46):
I see these two every day.
Michael Church (01:47):
I don't see you every day, so well, you're
probably seeing the best onesevery day you want to see.
Doug (01:52):
Yeah.
Michael Church (01:53):
Yeah so.
Doug (01:56):
Michael.
Michael Church (01:57):
I'm good.
I'm good.
I just got back from Nashville.
My oldest and I went to aconcert in Nashville.
So he plays bass and he's notin a band or anything, he plays
at church.
But he loves all kinds of music, from country to hip hop to
metal.
So we went to a concert out inNashville and it was really good
(02:19):
.
There's a lady called Poppy.
I don't know if you ever heardof her before, but she's a metal
screaming lady.
James (02:27):
Oh right.
It was a really cool venue.
Michael Church (02:30):
Yeah, it was called.
It was a bowling alley.
I've never seen anything likeit before.
It was a two-floor bowlingalley with a venue inside of it,
so it was super cool, small,you know venue.
Uh, it was her and and she hada small, opener band and uh,
(02:52):
yeah, it was really cool.
We, uh we were going to flydown, but the weather wasn't
that great, so we wound updriving down.
So, uh, yeah, we got backyesterday afternoon.
Doug (03:00):
So yeah, good, how have you been, doug, Active bowling
alley.
I mean, it's an old bowlingalley.
Michael Church (03:06):
No, no, they were bowling, it's like you know
.
I'm like, well, do they have topay to see her?
Because they can see her, and Ihad to pay to get in here.
So you know it was a littleweird.
I never seen anything like itbefore in my life.
Doug (03:22):
That'd be a good lesson.
Rent your bowling shoes firstnext time.
Michael Church (03:26):
Yeah, I was like that's pretty cool.
So and then him and my wife aregoing to go see Ghost in July
back in Nashville, but that'd bea little bit bigger of a venue.
I think they're going to theauditorium out there for that
Ghost is a little bigger.
Doug (03:40):
It's a good show.
I saw them about four years ago.
It's a good show.
I saw them about four years ago.
It's like Marilyn Manson meetsBlue Oyster Colton.
Michael Church (03:47):
Yeah, yeah, ghost is pretty cool.
We saw Killswitch Engaged up in.
I always want to say Paducah,but that's not where we went.
It was Corbin Corbin, kentucky.
There's like a small venue upthere and we saw them.
And anyway, it's you.
You know, I'm getting a littleold to be standing around
getting in a mosh pit, so I, uh,I kind of sit over on the side
(04:11):
and get beer thrown on me everyonce in a while.
That's about it, but uh, anyway, pretty, pretty cool, pretty
cool experience.
Doug (04:17):
Don't sell yourself short.
I'd go in a mosh pit with youyeah, well, he was in there, I
wasn't.
James (04:21):
I was holding his jacket there, you go yeah, that's, I
mean you go to the mosh pit.
You're good for the gym for afew days.
Michael Church (04:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he was in there pretty
good.
Apparently, people dress uplike bananas.
I don't know if y'all ever beento one recently, but there was
a couple of dudes in bananasuits and they're mosh pit.
It's a thing.
Doug (04:41):
Okay, the Masons are got to keep us culturally relevant.
Michael Church (04:46):
Yeah, mason, you should know about this stuff.
Come on, that's outside of myscope, guys, that's.
Mason (04:50):
that's definitely not my niche.
That's definitely not my niche.
Michael Church (04:54):
Yeah, yeah, so, but yeah, it was good stuff.
It was good stuff, all right.
So so I made this little list,10 compelling soda blasting
talking points.
And you know, I will admit thatI asked AI to kind of help me
do this because I wanted to know.
You know, I've been doing thisforever, right, and I know what
(05:15):
I know, but there's homeownersthat probably have different
questions than I think they have.
So I wanted to see what AI hadto say about this kind of stuff.
So that's why I asked it tokind of give me some topics that
a homeowner might be interestedin asking.
So that's where this list kindof came from.
Great, let's start with James.
(05:36):
How about we start with you,james?
You've been obviously doingthis six years with two
different companies now.
What is soda blasting and whyis that ideal for mold?
And what I mean by that is notonly for us as the soda blast
store.
But why is it ideal for ahomeowner who has mold in the
(05:58):
crawl space of their basement?
Why is soda blasting ideal forthem?
James (06:02):
Yeah, so soda blasting is basically we take.
So soda blasting is uh,basically we take uh baking soda
and we pressurize it and we uhstrip the very, very top layer
of the wood, um, and that thegreat thing about soda blasting
is that it removes uh not onlythe surface mold, but it the
mold at its root, um, and itmakes the wood look essentially
(06:23):
brand new or as new as can be.
I found that the greatestsuccess for homeowners is when,
if your house is a little bitolder, say, it's from the 70s or
even older than that sometimesyou know we still buy some
80-year-old homes and the woodlooks incredible.
I mean way better results thanyou can get with any other
(06:44):
method of mold remediation asfar as removal of mold.
Michael Church (06:48):
That's right.
So, basically, whenever youknow, I first discovered soda
blasting, I was trying to find away to strip the mold off.
Right, because it seems likeevery other company out there,
they're what I call a spray andpray.
Right, they just spray it.
A lot of times they'll evenleave the insulation in place,
they'll leave the wood damp, allthat.
(07:12):
We've got our protocol that wefollow for all that kind of
stuff.
But I wanted something, likeyou said, to make the crawl
space look good and and toalmost reset the wood.
So you know, if you're in the,if you're in the spray and pray
column, and you go down thereand you spray the mold and maybe
you kill it, maybe you don't.
Uh, how do you know if new moldhas come back?
Because you, you don't know.
Right, and that's what sodablasting does.
(07:33):
It gives us that clean surfaceso that we know if something
does come back.
James (07:39):
Uh, then this is new, this is fresh, there must be a
water problem or something likethat going on right, right, yeah
, exactly, I mean, if you don'tactually physically remove the
mold, your only hope is to takepictures of what it looks like
at a certain point and thencompare it.
You know, down the road andyou're just guessing, unless you
can maybe get it tested andsent off to a lab and maybe it's
(08:04):
dead.
It's just, you're absolutelyhoping it's taken care of and
I've always heard that you know,hope is not really a strategy.
It's not something that withsolar blasting.
It's gone, it's completely gone.
It's really remarkable, that'sright, that's right.
Michael Church (08:21):
Mason, do you have anything to add about that?
I mean, as far as what you'veseen, has it been pretty amazing
the results that you've beenable to see with that.
Mason (08:30):
Yeah, Soda blasting is just something that you know.
Since seeing this and learningthis industry and learning how
we take care of mold remediation, soda blasting seems like the
number one way and the numberone process for how to remediate
that mold.
Not only does it remediate themold, but often we have to
explain to customers that whenthere's mold, and when there's a
(08:50):
presence of mold over anextended period of time, it
tends to stain the wood.
So for a lot of customers likeyou were talking about with the
Spray and Pray company, even ifthey're doing something like
using a wire brush to wipe itdown or using towels to wipe it
down, that wood is still goingto be stained because of the
presence of mold.
So soda blasting is so amazingbecause we can make it to where
(09:13):
a homeowner goes down and,depending on the way that they
use the soda blaster, we caneven try and help with some of
that wood staining as well.
Michael Church (09:23):
Well, and I want to touch on that just for a
second too you talked about themethod of soda blasting versus a
wire brush or some kind ofbrushing.
You know the crawl space is notalways ideal for those brush or
wipe off or HEPA vacuum typescenarios, and I don't know
which of you want to speak onthis, but you know, if you've
(09:44):
got, say, for example, hardwoodand you've got nails going
through there, hey there,michael Church, founder of Crawl
Space Ninja.
Do you have a crawl space or abasement, or perhaps your home
is suffering from some type ofindoor air quality issue?
I want to encourage you tocheck out my book Crawl Space
Repair Myths Busted, availableon Amazon.
(10:05):
This is a great book for anyhomeowner that is concerned
about indoor air quality, mold,moisture, whether you're on a
crawl space or a basement or aslab built house.
This is a great book, greatinformation.
I encourage you to check it outAgain.
The name of the book is CrawlSpace Repair Myths Busted, now
available on Amazon.
You got like a sharp corner.
(10:27):
I mean, do you see the wirebrushing and all that being able
to be effective at getting themold off around those areas?
James, do you want to talkabout that?
James (10:36):
Yeah, I've personally at a previous company I worked at.
You know we spent some time,you know, working with the crews
.
I worked at.
You know we spent some time,you know, working with the crews
and you know they would spraythe mold and then you hand wipe
it with either towels or rags orwire brushes.
But when there's nails, I meannot only is it it's really hard
to get it actually removed, butit kills your hands, even if
(10:59):
you're wearing thick gloves.
I mean you're every time you'regoing to get bloody.
It's so it's.
It's really difficult for toget the process to actually get
it removed and also for whoeverdoes the work.
It's hard on them too.
Michael Church (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely I.
I just don't.
It wasn't effective.
I mean, before I could do sodablasting that was my preferred
method was wiping it off.
I feel like that's even betterthan HEPA, because in my opinion
, hepa vacuums are not powerfulenough to suck mold off of wood,
especially that damp mold.
Right, you guys have seen thatbefore.
(11:32):
I mean, imagine, imagine goingto a tree and this if you're a
homeowner and you want to testthis out, go find a mossy or a
lichen covered tree and try tovacuum that off.
Yeah, I mean you to vacuum thatoff.
Yeah, I mean you can't do it.
James (11:46):
No.
Michael Church (11:47):
So.
So how can a mold guy go downthere or mold lady go down there
and vacuum?
I mean, mold it's, it's not,it's like sucked on it's.
It's it's fighting for its life.
Yeah, it doesn't want you totake it off.
Yeah, you know.
James (12:02):
I mean, it's resilient.
Michael Church (12:05):
Yeah, take it off.
Mason (12:06):
Yeah, right, you know I mean it's resilient.
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I was just gonna say, yeah,mold is resilient.
Um, you know, it's gonna tryand find out the you know the
areas that it can live and beundisturbed.
Um, it's gonna try and find youknow the best places, uh, that
it wants to be and where itmakes it the hardest to to
remediate it.
Um, and that's why the sodablaster is so important, like
you were talking about.
(12:26):
You can't really get into acorner, especially if you add,
like James was talking about,some nails in that corner it's
hard to move towels, rags,brushes, anything through there.
That soda can just go rightthere.
It's number one.
Michael Church (12:42):
Yeah, very good, very good's.
Uh, let's talk a little bitabout sodium bicarbonate itself.
Um, I've got a question here toask, uh, or a question here
from a homeowner that asks is itsafe for my family, my pets and
my home?
And I just want to be cautiouson the word safe.
All right, uh, because eventhough sodium bicarbonate is a
(13:05):
food grade material, it stillrequires certain PPE you know,
personal protective equipmentand those kind of things to be
able to utilize it effectively.
So which one of you want tospeak on that safe aspect, with
our customer or with ourhomeowner?
James (13:29):
customer or with our homeowner, sure, sure, um.
Well, it is.
I believe it's the same stuffyou put in a cake when you bake,
right?
So I mean you can't, I mean you, I tell people you can lick it
if you want.
Now, when you soda blast, youare, there is probably going to
be some dust, um, that comesinto your house, and baking soda
, uh, uh, particles that comeinto your house, and baking soda
, uh, uh, particles that comeinto your house.
You know, some houses have more, some houses have less.
Every house is different, um,and when we do that, we we do
(13:52):
have an air scrubber running inthe home just to help purify the
air, um.
So, yeah, I mean it is verysafe, but you are going to see
some, uh, some particlesprobably coming to the house.
Mason (14:06):
Very good, I think that that is just what I was going to
say.
Is that, um, you know, forfamilies that are, uh, asking,
you know, are curious, um, aboutwhat it's going to do inside
the house, um, you know, everyhome is different.
Wood warps and contractsthrough different temperatures
(14:27):
and moisture.
So we definitely see homes thatthat soda comes up through the
subfloor.
But, like we were talking about, if the soda blaster wasn't
that powerful and that good atremediating it, then I don't
think that we would have thatproblem.
Like James mentioned, you know,we put that air scrubber in, we
(14:48):
come in, we tape up all thereceivers of the ducts on the
first floor, we ask that youturn your AC off, so we take
steps to try and remediate theresidue inside the home.
And then, even with thatresidue being inside the home,
it's a safe, non-toxic residue.
That, if anything, is just alittle inconvenient.
Michael Church (15:09):
That's right.
Well, and the reason why I saidsafe in quotes was because you
know everybody would think oh,water is good for you, right,
Water is safe.
Well, you can actually die fromwater, right, If you can drown.
But there's also somethingcalled water toxicity, which
means that you can drink so muchwater that it can kill you.
So with there's still, it'sstill a chemical, it's still a
(15:31):
product that has to be utilizedcorrectly.
It is a high alkaline basewhich and mold is typically
acidic, so it likes to kill anacidic mold.
But, like you said, it's in.
If you drink alkaline water, ifyou go into the grocery store
and buy alkaline water, that'ssodium bicarbonate that they
added in that water to make italkaline.
(15:52):
If you, if you're taking aTom's or a Rolaise or something
like that, that's sodiumbicarbonate.
And then the opposite of thatis, if you're kind of stopped up
a little bit, it can become alaxative.
So you know, it's food great,that's the whole point.
But you know you still have tobe cautious with it.
You don't want to, you know.
But, like you said, if your dogor something goes down there
(16:15):
after we soda blast, we're notusing, you know, EPA registered
chemicals that would kill thatanimal if they accidentally got
into it.
So that's now.
That's the nice thing about it,Right?
So now it will brine your grassa little bit.
I mean, if you guys have everseen that happen around the
(16:35):
doorway of the crawl space, itwill brown that grass a little
bit.
Doug, were you going to commenton that?
Doug (16:40):
Yeah, I was just going to say just as, as as a business
owner, it just feels goodputting our people in a safe
place.
You know I talked and James youwould know a lot because you've
worked at other companies andMason you would know a lot
because you work with our crewsevery day.
But some of these otherprocesses of treating or trying
to kill mold not great for theworkers either.
(17:01):
I mean it's probably a littlebit tougher on us to train these
guys up so that they know howMost of these guys will come to
us, even if they havecross-based experience and never
touched a soda blaster before.
So we have to train them up.
So on the front end it's alittle tougher for us.
But I mean I feel good knowingthat you know my people are
going into a home not onlytrying to improve the air
quality and the investment forthe homeowner, but not only
trying to improve the airquality and the investment for
(17:23):
the homeowner, but that it's asafe, really good green process
for our employees.
I'm not putting them in a spotwhere they're breathing in
dangerous chemicals and thosekind of things.
Michael Church (17:40):
Yeah, that's a good point, Doug.
And the flip side of that,people always ask me well why,
doug?
Well, dry ice blasting wouldkill my staff, or could, because
it off, it's, it's, it'sexchanging oxygen for, I think,
carbon dioxide, yeah.
So, yeah, we have not had awork comp claim due to the
ingest ingestation of soda, sowe're good to go there.
(18:03):
Right, it might have had somepeople run to the bathroom if
they decided to eat it, butother than that, I tell you, you
know what the guys after yousoda blast your skin and your
hair are impeccable.
Hey, why do you think my hairlooks like this?
Mason (18:19):
I rub soda in my hair every day.
All right, James.
Soda in my hair every day.
There you go.
Michael Church (18:23):
I don't, I don't do it All right, james.
How effective is soda blastingat killing and removing mold?
Can you just?
You know that was one of thequestions our homeowners are
asking us.
James (18:35):
No-transcript uh, it's the best process I've ever seen.
I are the best process I knowof at um removing uh mold growth
from the surface.
Uh, so you know we we work withhouses.
You know some are brand new,like I've worked under new
construction home that developedmold while it's being built and
(18:57):
you know, obviously it removesmold there really well.
But I'm really impressedwhenever we work under houses
that are 100 years old and Imean when you see that mold
being stripped away and how thatwood looks that old growth wood
after we're done, it's reallyremarkable.
I'm sure there's plenty ofpictures online that we could
find, but it looks great.
(19:18):
So it's the best process I knowof.
I've researched.
Michael Church (19:21):
Yeah, very good, mason, you got anything to add
about that?
Mason (19:25):
Yeah, just reiterating what James said.
I would compare it to if youhave a very dirty concrete
surface and you pressure wash it, just going from seeing that
dark concrete to light concrete.
It's the same thing with thewood, like James, when you have
an old house that is exacerbatedand it is like night and day
(19:45):
and it's honestly satisfying.
You know the, the soda blasteris just so effective at taking
mold off, regardless of how oldor how heavy or how present it
is that's a great analogy.
Michael Church (19:59):
the the pressure washing analogy is fantastic.
Mason (20:05):
I definitely have a video or two in my camera roll of us.
We did a house one time and wealso ended up doing soda
blasting on the joists of hisporch because all of the floor
and the wood was taken up.
They were just renovating thewhole entire house so we were
able to soda blast outside andit was easier to get a video.
(20:25):
So, yeah, my guys got a videoand it's like you're pressure
washing the wood, but we do itwith soda and it remediates the
mold.
It's night and day.
Michael Church (20:35):
That's great.
Well, please send that to me,I'll include it in this video.
Yeah, one of the other things.
I don't know if you all havehad any experience with this,
but we got a lot of cabins.
You know log cabins in theSmokies and I know Paul has done
this up in Delaware.
You can soda blast the outsideof log cabins, especially if
(20:55):
they've gotten all mossy.
You know, usually these cabinsare in the woods and it's shaded
and damp and mossy.
If you want to restain yourcabin, soda is very good.
If you were to pressure washthat cabin with water, you're
forcing moisture into that wood.
That could grow mold later.
(21:16):
It's okay to pressure washconcrete, but I certainly
wouldn't want to use that onwood a whole lot, because then
you're just forcing that waterinto the grain.
So that's where soda blastingis really good.
By the time the soda comes out,the end of that nozzle it's
almost a powder.
It's so dry.
So it's a very good alternativeto a wet form of removing
(21:38):
staining and all that Very good.
All right, I'm going to startwith you on this one, mason.
Will soda blasting prevent themold from coming back?
Mason (21:50):
So I think my short answer on this one is going to
be no.
In my opinion, what is going toprevent the mold from coming
back is the process that we doafter the soda blasting, whether
that be insulating the walls,adding plastic to the floor,
taping all the seams and thendoing something like that, or
just doing maybe a partial andadding plastic to the floor,
(22:12):
depending on what the projectneeds.
The soda blaster is going to bethe most effective at getting
the mold off of the wood, butfrom there, the work that we do
after is what prevents that fromcoming back.
Michael Church (22:23):
That's right, James.
You got anything to add to that?
James (22:25):
Yeah, same, it's just important to remove the reason
why the mold is there.
You know, because sometimeswe'll come in and soda blast
after someone's had a prolongedplumbing leak also, and maybe
the mold is not there because ofprolonged humidity and crawl
space, but maybe they just had aleak there for six months I
didn't know about.
You know, of course you want tohave that fixed, but the only
(22:48):
way to keep the mold from comingback is to remove the reason
why it was there, which ismoisture.
Michael Church (22:53):
That is correct.
So you know I'm always big onhumidity.
Well, humidity isn't always thereason why there's mold.
I mean, like you said, aplumbing leak.
Well, humidity isn't always thereason why there's mold.
I mean, like you said, aplumbing leak.
So if we were to go down thereand we were, you know, real dumb
at how mold works and we werelike, hey, we're going to soda
blast this crawl space and we'regoing to leave the plumbing
leaking while we're down there,well, that's dumb.
(23:13):
Everybody's like, why don't youstop the plumbing leak?
Well, to me it the mold,without addressing the humidity,
because that high humidity isgoing to allow that mold to
return, no matter how much youclean that wood.
And one of the other nice thingsI like that that we as Crawl
(23:34):
Space Ninja do is adding thatprotectant.
You know that that penetrant iswhat it's called.
It's an X 70.
You know it's a silvernanotechnology protectant.
But you still have to controlmoisture and humidity.
It's it's not a standaloneproduct Like some of these other
products that, oh, if yousquirt this on your wood, it'll
(23:55):
never grow mold again.
That's a lie.
That's a lie.
If you don't control moisture,moisture and humidity, it
doesn't matter how good thatproduct is.
Mold is going to come back.
Would you guys agree with that?
James (24:05):
yeah, yeah, if you go to shuffle home depot or loaves or
whatever and you'll, you'll finda ton of products that say they
clean and prevent mold intwo-in-one.
It's kind of like two-in-oneshampoo and conditioner.
You ask anybody.
Those don't really work verywell.
The same with mold productslike that.
Mason (24:21):
Yeah, yeah, I'll say that my time with the company, which
has been about six, six and ahalf months.
We've done projects where we'vegone out, installed plastic, a
dehumidifier and that's been it.
There's never been a projectwhere we've just gone out and
soda blasted.
We aim at remediating thereason why the mold was there in
(24:42):
the first place.
Michael Church (24:43):
That's right.
That's right.
So you got to have that processof either removing standing
water through the flooding,fixing the plumbing leak,
sealing off the vents andinstalling that dehumidifier
along with the vapor barrier.
It's all a process, right, sothat's great.
I appreciate you all sharingthat with me.
Now here's another one.
All right, let's, let's, let'ssee how many videos of mine you
(25:06):
all have watched.
Ok, so which is better, bleachor sodium bicarbonate at getting
rid of mold?
Mason (25:19):
I mean.
James, I know the answer.
I think that you could probablyanswer the why better.
Well, you're the new guy, solet's see what you got.
Ok, yeah, I like that.
So the question was why doesthe sodium bicarbonate prevent
mold better than than bleach,correct?
Michael Church (25:37):
Actually, which is better at killing the mold,
the bleach or the sodiumbicarbonate?
Which one would you think wouldbe better?
Mason (25:47):
Just going to use logic here.
As far as killing the mold, I'mgoing to say something that has
an ability to, on a chemicallevel, remediate it.
I want to say bleach to, on achemical level, remediate it.
I want to say bleach when wesoda blast in my mind.
What we're doing is we'retaking the mold from where it is
(26:08):
, which is on the wood, andwe're taking it off of that From
there.
After that, we apply our Anabeccleaner, which I know is a
peroxide-based cleaner.
In my opinion, that is whatkills mold on a chemical level.
Michael Church (26:24):
I'd love for some constructive criticism,
though if that's how I'm correct, james, you got any
constructive criticism for him?
James (26:30):
Well, I believe a couple things with bleach.
Bleach is what's the percentageof water that makes up bleach.
Is it like 97% or 98%?
Pretty high water content.
You're just introducing evenmore moisture into the the wood
in the crawl space.
So that's a problem number one.
Number two I believe that, uh,the chemical in bleach doesn't
(26:52):
evaporate too quickly, orsomething to do with the contact
time on the surface, that itdoesn't really have the time on
the surface to properly killthem all.
Is that correct, michael?
That is correct, that iscorrect.
Michael Church (27:03):
So, mason, it was a loaded question man.
So you should have asked howmuch bleach or how much chlorine
is in the product because, likeJames was saying, you know the
stuff you use in your laundryit's only like 3% to 10%
chlorine.
Okay, now they.
They do have some things that Iuse.
(27:25):
To you know, bleach my beard,that's a little bit higher.
I'm kidding, I don't bleach mybeard, obviously, but, but you
know there are higher chlorinecontent available.
But even then, to James point,bleach or chlorine evaporates so
quickly, so quickly they say itdoesn't have a long enough
contact time to actually killmold.
(27:46):
Okay, and here's the last thingI'm going to say about bleach
is the log cabin industry haswritten many, many, many
articles about this.
That bleach, even if it dideverything that the homeowner
wants it to do and all the oldwives tales that have been told
about it over the years, hey,just put bleach on it.
(28:07):
All that, even if it did whatit was supposed to do, it
destroys the lignin of the woodand the lignin is the wood
skeletal system.
So as a homeowner, do I want toput something that's effective,
even if it is effective, onwood, so that I can soften the
wood and destroy the skeletalsystem.
(28:28):
So that's, those are the three.
You know, in my opinion, thethree big reasons.
Number one, like James wassaying, got a lot of water in it
, so it's going to, you knowthat moisture, you're just
adding water to it, right?
Number two it evaporates superquick, okay, like really fast, I
mean unbelievably fast.
(28:48):
And then number three isobviously it destroys lignin.
And then number four how muchbleach do you want to sniff?
Yeah, right, yeah, I mean, I'vebeen in some.
I've been in some crawl spaceswhere you know the DIY used a
bunch of bleach.
You can't even stand to be inthere, or and how much that's
(29:10):
coming into the house.
Oh, exactly.
Yeah exactly so.
Anyway, good, good, good, try,mason.
That was, that was a goodeffort.
Mason (29:19):
Well, yeah, I, I, uh.
I'm always trying to learn, butI'm never gonna.
I'm never gonna say what Ithink you want to hear.
I I'd always like to try anduse my brain first.
Michael Church (29:28):
So I appreciate the prescriptive criticism yeah,
very good, very good, all right.
And then if you, you know, ifyou throw the uh, the bleat, or
if you do the soda blasting andthen you go down there and spray
it with vinegar, then you'vegot the volcano effect going on.
If you want to try that, doug,y'all just do that for fun, see,
if a homeowner lets you do that.
(29:49):
I'm just kidding, don't do that.
It foams out.
Have you ever seen one of thosevolcanoes?
Doug (29:56):
Alright, very good that doesn't actually sound very fun,
it's an angry irate customer.
It'd't actually sound very fun.
It's an angry customer.
Yeah, it'd be cool.
It'd be cool for 30 seconds.
Michael Church (30:04):
So yeah, until it bubbles up into the living
space and Mrs Jones is going tobe upset about that.
So All right.
So let's talk about the mess.
We mentioned it a little bitbefore, but let's, let's
actually talk about the mess.
All right, because I'm sorry,but it's.
It's very hard to cleansomething without making a mess.
(30:26):
I mean, I know that seems likea weird thing to say, but
whenever I go to, when I was akid and my mom would tell me to
clean up my room, it wouldactually be more messy To start
cleaning it up, because you'repiling stuff and what Right.
And that's kind of the way withwith addressing mold, you know
it's way more messy to yank outall that old plastic and get all
(30:47):
that debris out and the yardsfull of debris and everything
before the final product Right,so let's talk about what
possible mess could come fromsoda blasting.
James, you want to start us offwith that one.
James (31:00):
Yeah, I mean we, we talked about a little bit.
But number one, I mean, whenwe're pressurizing, I mean those
little particles of baking sodaare so small they're going to
find any little crevice they canfind to try to come up into the
house.
Now, unfortunately, sometimesthere's a decent amount of
(31:20):
baking soda that comes in thehouse and just we do our very
best to avoid that fromhappening and take every
precaution, but sometimes it'sjust unavoidable.
But I always tell people likeit's a minor inconvenience for a
permanent solution, and youknow it's going to be a little.
It's kind of like when you go tothe beach and you get sand in
every little area you canimagine.
And it's kind of like when yougo to the beach and you get sand
(31:41):
in every little area you canimagine, and it's.
It's kind of like that.
But uh, you had a good time atthe beach though, didn't you?
Uh, you don't, you don't gohome thinking about cleaning up,
uh.
And so that's how we kind oftreat the soda.
Blasting is, yeah, you knowwhat there's.
Sometimes there's some umresidue, but we take care of it
and after it's done, then it's,it's over.
You never have to worry aboutit again as long as you
encapsulate it.
Michael Church (32:02):
That's right.
That's right, and Mason, yougot anything good about that?
Mason (32:06):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's my day job is just is
just customers and trying toremediate that and and and
explain that.
I think that, like James said,you know that that that baking
soda is is the perfectremediation, but because it's so
good at what it does, it'sgoing to find every little crack
and crevice that it can.
(32:26):
I say on trim, on baseboards,if they come out just a little
bit, it's going to be an areathat Soda Blast is going to get
through.
I'd say even not just insidethe house, but, like you
mentioned, when we pullinsulation, you know there's
going to be debris in the yard,debris, like you mentioned, when
we pull insulation, um, youknow there's going to be debris
(32:47):
in the yard, debris around the,around the door of the crawl
space, Cause you're pushing abunch of insulation insulation
through a small area, Um, so,yeah, there's, there's a mess
and a damage that comes with, um, like you said, cleaning and
doing the job, Um, I think mymain goal is to just try and be
forefront with that.
But, like James said, I thinkthat that's a very good saying
(33:07):
it's a temporary inconveniencefor a permanent solution.
Michael Church (33:11):
Yeah, and I just try to be as upfront with
people as I can.
I don't want any of us to go inthere and say, oh yeah, you'll
never have soda in the house,because the one time you say
that it's going to explode inthe house, I mean you're going
to miss it, and that's that'swhat that's what these videos
are all about, is educatinghomeowners on that process, and
that's why we, you know, do alot of things that we do.
That's where our methodology hascome from, because I have, over
(33:34):
the years, filled up a lot ofpeople's homes with soda and it
took me a minute to figure outhow to prevent or how to get
that, you know, under control,to where it's as little as it is
today.
You know like, for example, weair seal the subfloor, you know,
to the best we can.
You know, but we can't air sealthe rim joists until we soda
(33:56):
blast.
And that's where this baseboardissue that you're talking about
comes from Mason, becauseusually the baseboard sits on
the rim joist of the crawl space, and so people are like, well,
why don't you air seal the rimjoist?
Well, there's usually a lot ofmold on the rim joist.
If I cover it up with foam boardand spray foam before I've had
a chance to dry it out andremove that mold, then it can
become a problem.
(34:17):
So that's why we have to dothat.
That's just part of it, and thenice thing about baking soda is
that, if some of it does get in, keep in mind.
It's alkaline, so it's it'sgoing to kill anything that that
it's touching, as far as thatgoes.
So those are great answers,doug.
You got anything to add to that?
Doug (34:34):
Yeah, I was going to say what you just said too.
I mean, it's like if some, ifI'm the homeowner and
something's going, I'm okay withbaking soda.
It's not a perfect process.
I kind of have a question foryou, michael, because we found
that communication andexpectation both of those things
are the two keys to having abetter experience, which is why
(34:54):
I feel like, james, you as aninspector do a really really
good job of setting thatexpectation with the homeowner
at the initial visit, at theinitial visit, and, mason, I
think you do a really incrediblejob communicating with the
homeowner, kind of holding theirhand through the process.
I was going to ask you whatthat looked like, but you
already you beat me to it.
You already talked a little bitabout.
Hey, here's what I talked tohim about.
Here's, james, you mentionedthe air scrubber.
(35:15):
You know, here's thatcommunication piece.
Is that?
What do you feel those twothings have been the most
important Absolutely, absolutely.
Michael Church (35:24):
I'm I've always been under the the philosophy of
under promise, over deliver,right and.
And to me I would rather sayhey look, mrs Jones, you're
going to get soda in the houseand then maybe it's not as bad
as she thought, versus me tryingthe opposite and being like, oh
yeah, there's nothing.
And then the littlest amounttouches the baseboard and she's
like oh yeah, there's nothing.
(35:44):
And then the littlest amounttouches the baseboard and she's
like you said nothing, you knowI mean, so I'd rather err on
that, Because if you're going totell me you don't want me to
soda blast, tell me now.
Mason (35:55):
Yeah.
Michael Church (35:56):
Don't tell me when we're halfway through the
process.
I want you to know.
I want you to go in this thingwith your eyes wide open.
Yeah, you know.
James (36:04):
Go ahead, james.
Well, the worst thing I've hadis we did a big subtle blessing
job for close friends of mineand they didn't really.
I honestly I probably didn't dothe best job of communicating
that this could be a decentproblem and it was everywhere.
But they also had theirregularly scheduled cleaning.
(36:26):
People come like we started thejob so their house was
perfectly clean and they justpaid money to have it cleaned.
And then we it was, that sodawas everywhere, everywhere and
uh, that was like I telleveryone now, if you're gonna
have your house cleaned, justwait until after we're done.
Mason (36:42):
Yeah, I'll never forget the house that we did, we did a
gold on and we sort of lasted.
On a Thursday, the weekendbefore Christmas, and her house
was from the 60s and the woodhad expanded a lot and so, lo
and behold, you know it's theday before Christmas Eve and she
(37:03):
had to have a cleaning servicecome because we just didn't have
the wherewithal to think ahead.
But, Michael, I'd also like toask you in my experience I
remember one specific house thatwe soda blasted in and the
entire first floor was eithercarpet or large vinyl tiles
(37:28):
either carpet or large vinyltiles.
That house I remember not onlynot really seeing a residue of
soda, but not seeing at allresidue in the air inside the
house.
Have you experienced that maybecarpet or vinyl is better in
terms of residue inside thehouse than maybe wood?
Michael Church (37:41):
Yeah, and I'm not sure it's the the actual
material.
I think it's how the material isinstalled so usually, usually
carpet you can push it under thebaseboard right because you got
that extra.
Where hard, excuse me, wherehardwood, for example, they
leave almost an expansion joint,yeah, around the edge, which
means that there's more directair to the crawl space at that
(38:04):
expansion joint.
So I would think tile would besimilar because there's an
expansion joint, or maybe theydon't go all the way to the
framing, the outside framing,because of the baseboard right.
So I think it's not necessarilythe material, but how the
material is installed isprobably the driver of whether
(38:25):
more soda comes in or not.
James (38:28):
We had a customer about a month ago, maybe six weeks ago.
He had a great point Like themore soda you have come into
your house when we're sodablasting, that's how much more
air leakage you have from yourcrawl space, so even more.
So you needed it done, you know, because you're breathing that
mold even more.
Michael Church (38:45):
Absolutely, and you know, like a tongue and
groove, you know, subfloor isgoing to have more joints, more
air spaces, versus, you know,plywood or an OSB, you know.
So it all depends on theconstruction, right?
Yeah, those are great questions, mason.
And, like I said, I've filledup more homes with soda than
probably anybody combined,because I had this one situation
(39:07):
and that's the other reason whywe have a ninja up in the house
, you know, is to watch, to makesure, you know, because I've
trusted the homeowner Right Towatch and they get busy, they're
not, they don't know what tolook for.
You know, we, I had, I've hadtwo situations.
I had a homeowner who had theirteenage son watch.
(39:29):
Well, that didn't turn out verywell, not well at all, I'll just
say that.
And then I had another onewhere the homeowner watched but
she worked from home.
This was pre COVID.
She worked from home and shehad an office that was that was
on a slab off of the main partof the house and she, she went
into that office and closed thedoor and here we are, thinking
(39:51):
she's up there watching.
Well, about the time we're done, soda blasting, she decides to
come out of her office and itlooked like it had just.
I mean, it looked like theArctic there was soda everywhere
.
Yeah, you know, and this wasbefore we learned to air seal
the sub floor and turn off theAC.
(40:11):
You know all these things thatwe do.
Now.
This was me still learning theprocess and you know what was so
great, and I'm not bragging onus but we still turn that into a
five-star review because Irecognize that we had messed up.
I paid to have it cleaned, Ipaid to have her carpets cleaned
(40:32):
.
I did all that and they wroteus a five-star review and I've
never had that situation happenagain.
Because of what we learned fromthat scenario and that's how
long ago.
That was.
That was many, many years ago.
That's not like it happenedlast week.
So, anyway, that's the.
That's the other nice thingabout us is we try to learn from
our mistakes.
Right, you know to do thingsdifferently.
(40:52):
So that's why we don't allowyou know, the teenage son to
watch, because I've had badexperiences with that.
But anyway, yeah, these aregreat questions.
So, mason, I'm going to, I'mgoing to let you answer this one
how long does the process take?
Let's say we got a thousandfifteen hundred square foot
(41:15):
crawl space.
Yeah, what's the timeline?
And just for soda blasting,forget about capsulation.
All that, just for sodablasting.
How long does that typicallytake?
Mason (41:22):
so 1500 square feet.
I'd say that's a pretty typicalhouse for us.
Um, you know, we've seen biggerthan 2000, we see less than a
thousand, but I feel like 1500is pretty typical.
Um, we typically expect um thatwe are able to pull the
insulation, maybe, do clean outand soda blasting Um, sometimes,
(41:48):
uh, most of the time, or itreally just depends on how the
house is Um, but we, we, we can.
On some cases I feel like wecan do clean out and then start
soda blasting.
Um, soda blasting will maybetake five, six hours, um, and
then, and then you know we'reready to move on from there.
Sometimes I know that we'll doa half a day of clean out and
(42:09):
then we'll start soda blastingand then it takes a little
longer than that.
That's really something thatI'm still trying to to to really
hone in on.
Is that expectation?
Michael Church (42:26):
on is is that expectation of?
Okay?
Well, and to be fair, again,another loaded question, because
it kind of it kind of doesdepend on how thick the mold is
on there.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you gota lot of wood decay fungus on
there, that dude's going to takelonger than one that's got just
a light, you know, white moldor a light brown mold.
Mason (42:40):
So yeah, I mean as much to that as is if you have a uh,
if you have a crawl uh, if youhave a crawl space, that's four
and a half cinder blocks high ora crawl space, this two, um, I
I think that that can, it canaffect the process.
Um so much.
Um, it's, it's really a toughquestion.
Michael Church (42:58):
Yeah, cause you know that low crawl I mean, I'm
six one, you know a'1" tall anda low crawl space it's harder
for me to turn around in.
It's almost like an aircraftcarrier trying to turn around in
the water, right, it just takesa while, right.
But if I get in there and I'min a 3 1⁄2", 4' tall, that's
like the ideal size for mebecause I can still sit down,
you know, and work and move verywell.
(43:19):
So that's good, james.
A follow up question to that.
We've mainly been talking aboutbaking soda and all that, and
you kind of mentioned the Anabecproduct.
What do we do immediately afterwe we soda blast it?
James (43:37):
What do we apply after and why?
Can you kind of share with us alittle bit?
Yeah, Well, yeah, Once the oncethe mold's been removed, then
we spray the Anabec peroxidecleaner to sanitize everything
down in the crawl space.
Make sure all surfaces arecovered.
The air's like anything that'sin the air has been killed.
All the mold's dead.
Michael Church (43:55):
Yeah, and that's a really great point.
Because two things the reasonwhy I like to apply Anabec is
for two reasons.
Number one like you said, youcan really only soda blast
hardwood surfaces.
We can't get down there andsoda blast somebody's ductwork,
because then we'll just rip itto shreds.
So the anabag, the peroxide,it's nice to fog that afterwards
(44:15):
so that any other materials Imean I've even seen like PVC
grow mold.
So anything that's wet can growmold.
I've seen glass grow mold, youknow, uh, so you know anything
that's wet can grow mold.
I've seen glass grow mold.
It wasn't that the glass itselfgrew mold, it was just the.
The dirt on the glass was yeah,right, um, so you know, that's.
(44:36):
That's the other reason why Ilike to fog.
And then, secondly, a liquidcan penetrate deeper into the
wood than obviously soda can.
So if, for some reason, there'sa deep root system or something
like that inside the wood, welike to saturate that wood so
that that peroxide cleaner canget into that wood and kill
anything that might be inside ofit.
So so great answers, though Ilike two questions michael.
James (44:58):
Um, one would be uh, does the does so?
Does the baking soda?
Does it actually kill the mold?
It does.
Michael Church (45:02):
It does because of its alkalinity okay.
Does it actually kill the mold?
It does.
It does because of itsalkalinity.
Okay, it does kill the mold,just like it kills the grass,
right.
But that's not the main reasonwhy I use it.
The main reason why I came upwith the soda was to remove the
mold.
So for me, the removal of it isthe most important side of it,
(45:23):
and then the Anabec is more thekiller side of it.
But yes, it does kill mold too.
James (45:29):
And you ever see mold growing on the concrete block or
brick.
Michael Church (45:34):
Usually if it's not painted concrete block in a
crawl space if you see a whitecolor, a lot of times that's
efflorescence.
Now I'm not saying thatconcrete cannot grow mold,
because obviously it can Ifsomething is on there that can
grow mold.
But for me, most of the timeconcrete and brick and things
(45:57):
like that grows mold more ifit's got a food source like a
paint that's been applied to it,because every once in a while
I've seen like kind of a, like ablack furry mold grow kind of
at the bottom of the concreteblock.
James (46:10):
Sure, um, and I've just I've only seen it probably two
or three times, but I have seenit all right so those of you
that don't know, let me let meexplain this to you.
Michael Church (46:21):
Do you know where most toxic molds come from
?
I don't, okay, it was.
I don't expect y'all to knowthis because we're not
microbiologists.
Obviously we don't study mold.
We kill it, right, um.
But?
But I've spoken to a lot ofmicrobiologists, I've
interviewed them and we've had alot of talks.
Most toxic mold, yourstachybotrys, those types of
(46:44):
molds actually come from thesoil.
Oh, really, okay.
So what you're alluding to,james, is where the brick or the
block, at the base, which iswhere the soil is right.
So that's why you're seeingthat.
Mason (46:58):
Oh.
Michael Church (46:58):
Okay, it's because that soil either is
contaminating that low sectionor even maybe on the brick or
the block at that point, andthat could grow mold.
Got it?
Okay?
Now it's completely what's theword I'm looking for.
There's no reason to try tokill mold in soil.
(47:20):
Okay, because it would be liketrying to kill mold on wet wood
and you never dried the wood out.
It's just going to come rightback so so the soil is always
going to hold a certain amountof moisture.
Especially us in North Carolinaand Tennessee, we got a lot of
clay soil, which means it's gota lot of organic material in
there that can.
(47:41):
That is a food source for mold.
So that's why we don't reallytry to kill what's in the soil,
because it's, it's irrelevant,there's no way you could do it,
but that's why you're probablyseeing that line that you're
talking about is because of thesoil.
So one of the things that I'velearned over the years and I
don't know if a lot of peoplerealize this, but taking off
your shoes at the door helps toprevent a lot of mold tracking
(48:04):
into your home, because if yougo out and play with your kids
and the grass, that's where alot of mold comes from is the
soil.
So you know, having that habitof like taking your shoes off at
the door has been proven to bepretty effective at keeping mold
from spreading a lot of times.
So just because it comes fromsoil, what do you think about
(48:30):
cost effectiveness?
Is the soda blasting treatmentthat we use cost effective for a
homeowner, and why?
James (48:36):
If either one of you want to answer that, when you think
about cost effectiveness, Ithink about doing it once and
having it done forever, likeit's just, it's gone.
Um, so yeah, on the front end,a subtle blasting is going to be
more expensive than justspraying, doing a spray and pray
(48:56):
, fogging, or even somebodywho's going down there and hand
wiping it with with a chemical.
Um, a subtle blasting is nodoubt going to be more expensive
than that, but it's going to begone.
So when you go to sell thathouse, eventually there will be
no visible evidence of mold aslong as it's been encapsulated
properly and the moisture hasbeen removed.
(49:17):
So it's not cheap by any means,but as far as never having to
worry about it again, never haveto pay for it to be done again,
then yes.
Doug (49:26):
James, you're always really good about this, and what
I found out is that they sayit's about the money and how
expensive it is, but it's reallyabout the value.
And so when you realize thatthat's what really is the heart
of the issue, it's justimportant to understand really
what this is, because in ourmarket nobody else does this.
(49:48):
So it's a game changer and it'ssomething different.
And I think education and James, you do a great job with this
and I think just the you know,bringing people up to speed with
what this process is, what itlooks like, how effective it is
it's going to build value inyour investment.
I know for me, my why a lot ofnights when I go to bed I got a
(50:09):
text from a lady, ms Williams.
We were on her job a couple ofweeks ago and she sent me this
text.
Her life has changed.
She had these horribleallergies and she couldn't
figure out where it's comingfrom and she was just wrecked.
Her health was just wrecked andwe soda blasted there and in
the few days since we've beenthere, she texted me and told me
how, how well she's doing.
(50:31):
And you know, it's just.
You know you can't put a dollarfigure on that you know that's,
that's.
That's a game changer forpeople.
Michael Church (50:37):
To your point, james, and to your point, doug,
I have had the privilege ofspeaking to hundreds of
homeowners across the countryand and a lot of times people
will do a consultation with meto discuss because, you know,
crawl Space Ninja isn'teverywhere and they'll do a
consultation with me to discusswhat these other companies are
(50:58):
going to do to their home.
And there's a.
There's a gentleman in VirginiaBeach who holds the record for
the most consultations with meever.
I won't tell you how many, butthere was a company out there
and I want to talk about twothings.
That was happening to him wasthere were companies that said,
oh yeah, we do soda blasting,because he'd watched a lot of
(51:20):
our videos.
He wanted his crawlspace sodablasted and then he would call
these companies.
They would get out there andthen they would pull the bait
and switch.
They'd be like, yeah, we don'treally do the soda blasting, but
we sub it out and it's superexpensive.
You don't want to do that.
We want you to do this, whichis really cheap, right, because
(51:40):
when you don't have a goodproduct, everything you're doing
is based on price, right?
And this guy was telling methis story and I'm like, really,
and he goes, oh yeah.
And then they went along to say, yeah, our method will probably
have to treat it every coupleof years With our method because
the mold's going to come back.
Now they weren't putting in adehumidifier, they weren't even
(52:03):
really encapsulating, right, sosoda blasting again doesn't keep
the mold from coming back.
You got to do all those otherthings too, but that just really
stuck me, like, struck me aslike, ok, first of all, the bait
and switch is just you know,that would be like us saying, oh
(52:29):
yeah, we're plumbers, and thenyou call us out there and you
would go down there oh, we don'treally do plumbing, but you got
mold in your crawl space.
You want us to address that.
I mean, that was like, whywould you do something like that
?
But then again, like you said,doug, that that value, you know,
we like to call it a worry-freecrawl space, a one and done.
(52:52):
I've always said there's nothingmore expensive than having to
do something over, right.
And if you all want to see that, if you're watching this video
and you want to see the do-over,check out that we redid a
$25,000 crawl spaceencapsulation video.
It's one of our top performingvideos.
He was a judge here locally inKnoxville and he had his crawl
space encapsulated, paid a pestcontrol company 25 grand to do
(53:13):
it and then paid us 40 to fix itRight.
Just to give you an idea Now,to be fair, this is like almost
a 4,000 square foot crawl space.
So those of you that just had aheart attack because I said
$40,000 fixed crawl space itdoes.
You know a 4,000 square footroof costs a lot more to shingle
(53:34):
than a 500 square foot roof.
So you know there's a lot thatgoes into the pricing here.
But the point is is that yougot to make sure you do it right
and if you don't have access toa company that that does it
right, that's why a lot ofpeople will do it themselves.
That's where the DIY comes in.
You know and I hate to say it,but there's people in your in
Charlotte I don't care how goodyou guys are, doug they won't
(53:57):
hire you to do it because theywant to do it themselves.
That's just the way it is andthat's why we we create this
content, because we recognizethat those homeowners are out
there.
They don't want a contractorcome in their house at all.
Either they don't trust you orthey don't have the money to do
it.
You know, and a lot of people,it's the trust factor.
(54:19):
They've been, they've beenwrecked by so many contractors
out there.
You know that they just don'ttrust them anymore.
And you know, to be fair, I cansee that.
And you know, to be fair, I cansee that.
I mean residential remodelershave the worst rating on the
Better Business Bureau of anyindustry in America.
I mean you probably have satacross the table from somebody
who had money stolen from them.
Oh yeah, I paid them 25% downand they never showed up or they
(54:40):
never finished the job, right,well, that's, that's where we're
different.
You know, we're a customerservice company that just so
happens to fix crawl spaces,because our focus, doug,
wouldn't you agree?
Our focus has always been oncustomer service.
Doug (54:55):
Yeah, I've always felt like the best thing about, one
of the best things about CrawlSpace Ninja is that my wife and
I we're both Charlatans.
Mason's a Charlatan.
My wife and I we're bothCharlotteans.
Mason's a Charlottean.
James has three reallyincredible little boys and
they're part of the community.
And you know I don't want to goto dinner and have to run to the
restroom because I didn'tfinish your crawl space or I
(55:16):
took advantage of you.
Just as a person, michael,that's been really tough for me
to be lumped in the category ofso many bad contractor
experiences, because that's justnot who we are, but I do
understand it.
I talked to a gentleman thismorning.
He, I'm sure, has a history ofbeing burned by other
contractors and has been onguard, and so it's a challenge
(55:37):
to then elevate ourselves, tothen make sure they know that
we're not like that, and then wespend a lot of time and a lot
of energy trying to elevateourselves and reassuring people.
They were not like that.
So the bar sometimes is low,which is good.
You know that we can.
We can do that, but that'sreally important.
Again, no, nobody wants to runto the restroom and hide when we
(55:57):
see it.
Michael Church (55:59):
Well, and that's why I brought up the point
about you know, we do mess up.
We are human, you know, justlike the lady with the soda
blast that went all in her house, I mean, I messed up.
I obviously didn't take cautionto keep that from happening, so
I paid for it.
I fixed it, you know, andsometimes we have to pay for
things that we didn't mess upbut the homeowner thinks we did
(56:20):
it.
So we do it anyway.
Right, I mean, that's just partof being in business.
But you know, to me the Bibletalks about how a good name is
to be chosen, you know.
So if you're going to have agood name, it's a choice.
You don't accidentally have a4.9 star rating.
(56:40):
That's not by accident.
Yeah, you can maybe, you know,get the numbers up and you know,
having your cousins and yourmom and all that right your
rating.
But eventually you're going torun out of those people and then
you know, the truth is going tocome to the surface and that's
why we try to be really good atwhat we do and if we do mess up,
(57:02):
we try to fix it right.
I mean, that's the whole point.
So if you're watching thisvideo, hopefully you'll see that
as us, as a company, not onlyhere in Knoxville but in
Charlotte and Delaware and inevery area that we are, that's
what we try to be.
So, anyway, gentlemen, I reallyappreciate y'all joining me
today and I felt like this is agreat video for people to get to
(57:24):
know you all there in thecharlotte area.
So, um, anything to add beforeI let you go?
Mason (57:30):
no thanks for having us yeah, I appreciate it very much.
Michael Church (57:32):
It was nice to meet you and just get to talk to
you and ask my questions yeah,very nice to meet, uh, all of
you as well, and and, uh, uh, Ihad the pleasure of knowing Doug
.
How long now, doug, has it been?
Three years.
Doug (57:47):
Man, I think you and I first met in 2020.
Michael Church (57:51):
Five years.
Doug (57:53):
Yeah, almost five years.
Honestly, personally, I wassuper pumped to be talking today
because I really wanted you tomeet James and Mason.
And James has been with us overthree years and is such a big
part of why we're successful.
And Mason does an incrediblejob with our customers and is
our job coordinator.
And again, Michael, you and Iknow each other very well, but
(58:14):
it was mostly exciting for mefor you to meet these two guys.
They're such a great part ofour success.
Michael Church (58:20):
Yeah, yeah, and just so you know, this is James
Taylor, but not the musicianJames Taylor.
James (58:27):
There'll be no singing for me.
Michael Church (58:30):
Well, it was a pleasure and an honor to meet
both of you all as well, soappreciate y'all being on this
call with me, and I'm MichaelChurch for Crawl Space Ninja.
We hope you make it a happy andblessed day and we'll see you
later.
Hey there, michael Church, crawl Space
Ninja.
I had the opportunity to sitdown with the folks over at
Crawl Space Ninja of Charlotte.
I got a chance to talk to DougJames and Mason and we are going
to go through a lot ofquestions that I had for them
about soda blasting and mold andprocedures and indoor air
quality.
I feel like it's some greatinformation.
(00:21):
Sit back and relax and take alisten to these guys explain
exactly what soda blasting is.
Is it cost effective?
How is it different than othermethodologies when it comes to
addressing mold?
Hope you like this content.
Hope you'll subscribe.
Mason, let's start with you.
Tell me I don't know if you'veever done this before.
I want you all to becomfortable, so usually you get
(00:42):
comfortable by talking a littlebit, so why don't you tell me a
little?
Mason (00:48):
bit about yourself and how long you've been with the
company and all that kind ofstuff.
Well, yeah, my name is MasonGordon.
I'm 21 years old.
I'm from Charlotte originally.
I went to high school rightdown the road at Providence High
School.
I went to college at EastCarolina and I'm a little bit of
a unique case.
I'm still in school, um.
I transferred to online schoolabout two years ago, um, and I'm
(01:09):
still taking classes at EastCarolina university.
Um, I started with the companyabout six months ago.
Um.
Doug, our owner um, I know himthrough a personal connection
and so I started about sixmonths ago through that and I've
I've come to know James and therest of our crew, of our crew
and and had a good time so far.
James (01:25):
that's great, james, uh, yeah you're the same, yeah, yeah
, I've been with uh crawlspaceninja for just over three years
now, um, and I've been in thecrawlspace industry for, let's
see, I always forget I thinkit's been uh six years actually.
Michael Church (01:40):
Yeah, very good uh Doug, how you doing.
James (01:44):
What's going on.
What's happening?
Doug (01:46):
I see these two every day.
Michael Church (01:47):
I don't see you every day, so well, you're
probably seeing the best onesevery day you want to see.
Doug (01:52):
Yeah.
Michael Church (01:53):
Yeah so.
Doug (01:56):
Michael.
Michael Church (01:57):
I'm good.
I'm good.
I just got back from Nashville.
My oldest and I went to aconcert in Nashville.
So he plays bass and he's notin a band or anything, he plays
at church.
But he loves all kinds of music, from country to hip hop to
metal.
So we went to a concert out inNashville and it was really good
(02:19):
.
There's a lady called Poppy.
I don't know if you ever heardof her before, but she's a metal
screaming lady.
James (02:27):
Oh right.
It was a really cool venue.
Michael Church (02:30):
Yeah, it was called.
It was a bowling alley.
I've never seen anything likeit before.
It was a two-floor bowlingalley with a venue inside of it,
so it was super cool, small,you know venue.
Uh, it was her and and she hada small, opener band and uh,
(02:52):
yeah, it was really cool.
We, uh we were going to flydown, but the weather wasn't
that great, so we wound updriving down.
So, uh, yeah, we got backyesterday afternoon.
Doug (03:00):
So yeah, good, how have you been, doug, Active bowling
alley.
I mean, it's an old bowlingalley.
Michael Church (03:06):
No, no, they were bowling, it's like you know
.
I'm like, well, do they have topay to see her?
Because they can see her, and Ihad to pay to get in here.
So you know it was a littleweird.
I never seen anything like itbefore in my life.
Doug (03:22):
That'd be a good lesson.
Rent your bowling shoes firstnext time.
Michael Church (03:26):
Yeah, I was like that's pretty cool.
So and then him and my wife aregoing to go see Ghost in July
back in Nashville, but that'd bea little bit bigger of a venue.
I think they're going to theauditorium out there for that
Ghost is a little bigger.
Doug (03:40):
It's a good show.
I saw them about four years ago.
It's a good show.
I saw them about four years ago.
It's like Marilyn Manson meetsBlue Oyster Colton.
Michael Church (03:47):
Yeah, yeah, ghost is pretty cool.
We saw Killswitch Engaged up in.
I always want to say Paducah,but that's not where we went.
It was Corbin Corbin, kentucky.
There's like a small venue upthere and we saw them.
And anyway, it's you.
You know, I'm getting a littleold to be standing around
getting in a mosh pit, so I, uh,I kind of sit over on the side
(04:11):
and get beer thrown on me everyonce in a while.
That's about it, but uh, anyway, pretty, pretty cool, pretty
cool experience.
Doug (04:17):
Don't sell yourself short.
I'd go in a mosh pit with youyeah, well, he was in there, I
wasn't.
James (04:21):
I was holding his jacket there, you go yeah, that's, I
mean you go to the mosh pit.
You're good for the gym for afew days.
Michael Church (04:27):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he was in there pretty
good.
Apparently, people dress uplike bananas.
I don't know if y'all ever beento one recently, but there was
a couple of dudes in bananasuits and they're mosh pit.
It's a thing.
Doug (04:41):
Okay, the Masons are got to keep us culturally relevant.
Michael Church (04:46):
Yeah, mason, you should know about this stuff.
Come on, that's outside of myscope, guys, that's.
Mason (04:50):
that's definitely not my niche.
That's definitely not my niche.
Michael Church (04:54):
Yeah, yeah, so, but yeah, it was good stuff.
It was good stuff, all right.
So so I made this little list,10 compelling soda blasting
talking points.
And you know, I will admit thatI asked AI to kind of help me
do this because I wanted to know.
You know, I've been doing thisforever, right, and I know what
(05:15):
I know, but there's homeownersthat probably have different
questions than I think they have.
So I wanted to see what AI hadto say about this kind of stuff.
So that's why I asked it tokind of give me some topics that
a homeowner might be interestedin asking.
So that's where this list kindof came from.
Great, let's start with James.
(05:36):
How about we start with you,james?
You've been obviously doingthis six years with two
different companies now.
What is soda blasting and whyis that ideal for mold?
And what I mean by that is notonly for us as the soda blast
store.
But why is it ideal for ahomeowner who has mold in the
(05:58):
crawl space of their basement?
Why is soda blasting ideal forthem?
James (06:02):
Yeah, so soda blasting is basically we take.
So soda blasting is uh,basically we take uh baking soda
and we pressurize it and we uhstrip the very, very top layer
of the wood, um, and that thegreat thing about soda blasting
is that it removes uh not onlythe surface mold, but it the
mold at its root, um, and itmakes the wood look essentially
(06:23):
brand new or as new as can be.
I found that the greatestsuccess for homeowners is when,
if your house is a little bitolder, say, it's from the 70s or
even older than that sometimesyou know we still buy some
80-year-old homes and the woodlooks incredible.
I mean way better results thanyou can get with any other
(06:44):
method of mold remediation asfar as removal of mold.
Michael Church (06:48):
That's right.
So, basically, whenever youknow, I first discovered soda
blasting, I was trying to find away to strip the mold off.
Right, because it seems likeevery other company out there,
they're what I call a spray andpray.
Right, they just spray it.
A lot of times they'll evenleave the insulation in place,
they'll leave the wood damp, allthat.
(07:12):
We've got our protocol that wefollow for all that kind of
stuff.
But I wanted something, likeyou said, to make the crawl
space look good and and toalmost reset the wood.
So you know, if you're in the,if you're in the spray and pray
column, and you go down thereand you spray the mold and maybe
you kill it, maybe you don't.
Uh, how do you know if new moldhas come back?
Because you, you don't know.
Right, and that's what sodablasting does.
(07:33):
It gives us that clean surfaceso that we know if something
does come back.
James (07:39):
Uh, then this is new, this is fresh, there must be a
water problem or something likethat going on right, right, yeah
, exactly, I mean, if you don'tactually physically remove the
mold, your only hope is to takepictures of what it looks like
at a certain point and thencompare it.
You know, down the road andyou're just guessing, unless you
can maybe get it tested andsent off to a lab and maybe it's
(08:04):
dead.
It's just, you're absolutelyhoping it's taken care of and
I've always heard that you know,hope is not really a strategy.
It's not something that withsolar blasting.
It's gone, it's completely gone.
It's really remarkable, that'sright, that's right.
Michael Church (08:21):
Mason, do you have anything to add about that?
I mean, as far as what you'veseen, has it been pretty amazing
the results that you've beenable to see with that.
Mason (08:30):
Yeah, Soda blasting is just something that you know.
Since seeing this and learningthis industry and learning how
we take care of mold remediation, soda blasting seems like the
number one way and the numberone process for how to remediate
that mold.
Not only does it remediate themold, but often we have to
explain to customers that whenthere's mold, and when there's a
(08:50):
presence of mold over anextended period of time, it
tends to stain the wood.
So for a lot of customers likeyou were talking about with the
Spray and Pray company, even ifthey're doing something like
using a wire brush to wipe itdown or using towels to wipe it
down, that wood is still goingto be stained because of the
presence of mold.
So soda blasting is so amazingbecause we can make it to where
(09:13):
a homeowner goes down and,depending on the way that they
use the soda blaster, we caneven try and help with some of
that wood staining as well.
Michael Church (09:23):
Well, and I want to touch on that just for a
second too you talked about themethod of soda blasting versus a
wire brush or some kind ofbrushing.
You know the crawl space is notalways ideal for those brush or
wipe off or HEPA vacuum typescenarios, and I don't know
which of you want to speak onthis, but you know, if you've
(09:44):
got, say, for example, hardwoodand you've got nails going
through there, hey there,michael Church, founder of Crawl
Space Ninja.
Do you have a crawl space or abasement, or perhaps your home
is suffering from some type ofindoor air quality issue?
I want to encourage you tocheck out my book Crawl Space
Repair Myths Busted, availableon Amazon.
(10:05):
This is a great book for anyhomeowner that is concerned
about indoor air quality, mold,moisture, whether you're on a
crawl space or a basement or aslab built house.
This is a great book, greatinformation.
I encourage you to check it outAgain.
The name of the book is CrawlSpace Repair Myths Busted, now
available on Amazon.
You got like a sharp corner.
(10:27):
I mean, do you see the wirebrushing and all that being able
to be effective at getting themold off around those areas?
James, do you want to talkabout that?
James (10:36):
Yeah, I've personally at a previous company I worked at.
You know we spent some time,you know, working with the crews
.
I worked at.
You know we spent some time,you know, working with the crews
and you know they would spraythe mold and then you hand wipe
it with either towels or rags orwire brushes.
But when there's nails, I meannot only is it it's really hard
to get it actually removed, butit kills your hands, even if
(10:59):
you're wearing thick gloves.
I mean you're every time you'regoing to get bloody.
It's so it's.
It's really difficult for toget the process to actually get
it removed and also for whoeverdoes the work.
It's hard on them too.
Michael Church (11:11):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely I.
I just don't.
It wasn't effective.
I mean, before I could do sodablasting that was my preferred
method was wiping it off.
I feel like that's even betterthan HEPA, because in my opinion
, hepa vacuums are not powerfulenough to suck mold off of wood,
especially that damp mold.
Right, you guys have seen thatbefore.
(11:32):
I mean, imagine, imagine goingto a tree and this if you're a
homeowner and you want to testthis out, go find a mossy or a
lichen covered tree and try tovacuum that off.
Yeah, I mean you to vacuum thatoff.
Yeah, I mean you can't do it.
James (11:46):
No.
Michael Church (11:47):
So.
So how can a mold guy go downthere or mold lady go down there
and vacuum?
I mean, mold it's, it's not,it's like sucked on it's.
It's it's fighting for its life.
Yeah, it doesn't want you totake it off.
Yeah, you know.
James (12:02):
I mean, it's resilient.
Michael Church (12:05):
Yeah, take it off.
Mason (12:06):
Yeah, right, you know I mean it's resilient.
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I was just gonna say, yeah,mold is resilient.
Um, you know, it's gonna tryand find out the you know the
areas that it can live and beundisturbed.
Um, it's gonna try and find youknow the best places, uh, that
it wants to be and where itmakes it the hardest to to
remediate it.
Um, and that's why the sodablaster is so important, like
you were talking about.
(12:26):
You can't really get into acorner, especially if you add,
like James was talking about,some nails in that corner it's
hard to move towels, rags,brushes, anything through there.
That soda can just go rightthere.
It's number one.
Michael Church (12:42):
Yeah, very good, very good's.
Uh, let's talk a little bitabout sodium bicarbonate itself.
Um, I've got a question here toask, uh, or a question here
from a homeowner that asks is itsafe for my family, my pets and
my home?
And I just want to be cautiouson the word safe.
All right, uh, because eventhough sodium bicarbonate is a
(13:05):
food grade material, it stillrequires certain PPE you know,
personal protective equipmentand those kind of things to be
able to utilize it effectively.
So which one of you want tospeak on that safe aspect, with
our customer or with ourhomeowner?
James (13:29):
customer or with our homeowner, sure, sure, um.
Well, it is.
I believe it's the same stuffyou put in a cake when you bake,
right?
So I mean you can't, I mean you, I tell people you can lick it
if you want.
Now, when you soda blast, youare, there is probably going to
be some dust, um, that comesinto your house, and baking soda
, uh, uh, particles that comeinto your house, and baking soda
, uh, uh, particles that comeinto your house.
You know, some houses have more, some houses have less.
Every house is different, um,and when we do that, we we do
(13:52):
have an air scrubber running inthe home just to help purify the
air, um.
So, yeah, I mean it is verysafe, but you are going to see
some, uh, some particlesprobably coming to the house.
Mason (14:06):
Very good, I think that that is just what I was going to
say.
Is that, um, you know, forfamilies that are, uh, asking,
you know, are curious, um, aboutwhat it's going to do inside
the house, um, you know, everyhome is different.
Wood warps and contractsthrough different temperatures
(14:27):
and moisture.
So we definitely see homes thatthat soda comes up through the
subfloor.
But, like we were talking about, if the soda blaster wasn't
that powerful and that good atremediating it, then I don't
think that we would have thatproblem.
Like James mentioned, you know,we put that air scrubber in, we
(14:48):
come in, we tape up all thereceivers of the ducts on the
first floor, we ask that youturn your AC off, so we take
steps to try and remediate theresidue inside the home.
And then, even with thatresidue being inside the home,
it's a safe, non-toxic residue.
That, if anything, is just alittle inconvenient.
Michael Church (15:09):
That's right.
Well, and the reason why I saidsafe in quotes was because you
know everybody would think oh,water is good for you, right,
Water is safe.
Well, you can actually die fromwater, right, If you can drown.
But there's also somethingcalled water toxicity, which
means that you can drink so muchwater that it can kill you.
So with there's still, it'sstill a chemical, it's still a
(15:31):
product that has to be utilizedcorrectly.
It is a high alkaline basewhich and mold is typically
acidic, so it likes to kill anacidic mold.
But, like you said, it's in.
If you drink alkaline water, ifyou go into the grocery store
and buy alkaline water, that'ssodium bicarbonate that they
added in that water to make italkaline.
(15:52):
If you, if you're taking aTom's or a Rolaise or something
like that, that's sodiumbicarbonate.
And then the opposite of thatis, if you're kind of stopped up
a little bit, it can become alaxative.
So you know, it's food great,that's the whole point.
But you know you still have tobe cautious with it.
You don't want to, you know.
But, like you said, if your dogor something goes down there
(16:15):
after we soda blast, we're notusing, you know, EPA registered
chemicals that would kill thatanimal if they accidentally got
into it.
So that's now.
That's the nice thing about it,Right?
So now it will brine your grassa little bit.
I mean, if you guys have everseen that happen around the
(16:35):
doorway of the crawl space, itwill brown that grass a little
bit.
Doug, were you going to commenton that?
Doug (16:40):
Yeah, I was just going to say just as, as as a business
owner, it just feels goodputting our people in a safe
place.
You know I talked and James youwould know a lot because you've
worked at other companies andMason you would know a lot
because you work with our crewsevery day.
But some of these otherprocesses of treating or trying
to kill mold not great for theworkers either.
(17:01):
I mean it's probably a littlebit tougher on us to train these
guys up so that they know howMost of these guys will come to
us, even if they havecross-based experience and never
touched a soda blaster before.
So we have to train them up.
So on the front end it's alittle tougher for us.
But I mean I feel good knowingthat you know my people are
going into a home not onlytrying to improve the air
quality and the investment forthe homeowner, but not only
trying to improve the airquality and the investment for
(17:23):
the homeowner, but that it's asafe, really good green process
for our employees.
I'm not putting them in a spotwhere they're breathing in
dangerous chemicals and thosekind of things.
Michael Church (17:40):
Yeah, that's a good point, Doug.
And the flip side of that,people always ask me well why,
doug?
Well, dry ice blasting wouldkill my staff, or could, because
it off, it's, it's, it'sexchanging oxygen for, I think,
carbon dioxide, yeah.
So, yeah, we have not had awork comp claim due to the
ingest ingestation of soda, sowe're good to go there.
(18:03):
Right, it might have had somepeople run to the bathroom if
they decided to eat it, butother than that, I tell you, you
know what the guys after yousoda blast your skin and your
hair are impeccable.
Hey, why do you think my hairlooks like this?
Mason (18:19):
I rub soda in my hair every day.
All right, James.
Soda in my hair every day.
There you go.
Michael Church (18:23):
I don't, I don't do it All right, james.
How effective is soda blastingat killing and removing mold?
Can you just?
You know that was one of thequestions our homeowners are
asking us.
James (18:35):
No-transcript uh, it's the best process I've ever seen.
I are the best process I knowof at um removing uh mold growth
from the surface.
Uh, so you know we we work withhouses.
You know some are brand new,like I've worked under new
construction home that developedmold while it's being built and
(18:57):
you know, obviously it removesmold there really well.
But I'm really impressedwhenever we work under houses
that are 100 years old and Imean when you see that mold
being stripped away and how thatwood looks that old growth wood
after we're done, it's reallyremarkable.
I'm sure there's plenty ofpictures online that we could
find, but it looks great.
(19:18):
So it's the best process I knowof.
I've researched.
Michael Church (19:21):
Yeah, very good, mason, you got anything to add
about that?
Mason (19:25):
Yeah, just reiterating what James said.
I would compare it to if youhave a very dirty concrete
surface and you pressure wash it, just going from seeing that
dark concrete to light concrete.
It's the same thing with thewood, like James, when you have
an old house that is exacerbatedand it is like night and day
(19:45):
and it's honestly satisfying.
You know the, the soda blasteris just so effective at taking
mold off, regardless of how oldor how heavy or how present it
is that's a great analogy.
Michael Church (19:59):
the the pressure washing analogy is fantastic.
Mason (20:05):
I definitely have a video or two in my camera roll of us.
We did a house one time and wealso ended up doing soda
blasting on the joists of hisporch because all of the floor
and the wood was taken up.
They were just renovating thewhole entire house so we were
able to soda blast outside andit was easier to get a video.
(20:25):
So, yeah, my guys got a videoand it's like you're pressure
washing the wood, but we do itwith soda and it remediates the
mold.
It's night and day.
Michael Church (20:35):
That's great.
Well, please send that to me,I'll include it in this video.
Yeah, one of the other things.
I don't know if you all havehad any experience with this,
but we got a lot of cabins.
You know log cabins in theSmokies and I know Paul has done
this up in Delaware.
You can soda blast the outsideof log cabins, especially if
(20:55):
they've gotten all mossy.
You know, usually these cabinsare in the woods and it's shaded
and damp and mossy.
If you want to restain yourcabin, soda is very good.
If you were to pressure washthat cabin with water, you're
forcing moisture into that wood.
That could grow mold later.
(21:16):
It's okay to pressure washconcrete, but I certainly
wouldn't want to use that onwood a whole lot, because then
you're just forcing that waterinto the grain.
So that's where soda blastingis really good.
By the time the soda comes out,the end of that nozzle it's
almost a powder.
It's so dry.
So it's a very good alternativeto a wet form of removing
(21:38):
staining and all that Very good.
All right, I'm going to startwith you on this one, mason.
Will soda blasting prevent themold from coming back?
Mason (21:50):
So I think my short answer on this one is going to
be no.
In my opinion, what is going toprevent the mold from coming
back is the process that we doafter the soda blasting, whether
that be insulating the walls,adding plastic to the floor,
taping all the seams and thendoing something like that, or
just doing maybe a partial andadding plastic to the floor,
(22:12):
depending on what the projectneeds.
The soda blaster is going to bethe most effective at getting
the mold off of the wood, butfrom there, the work that we do
after is what prevents that fromcoming back.
Michael Church (22:23):
That's right, James.
You got anything to add to that?
James (22:25):
Yeah, same, it's just important to remove the reason
why the mold is there.
You know, because sometimeswe'll come in and soda blast
after someone's had a prolongedplumbing leak also, and maybe
the mold is not there because ofprolonged humidity and crawl
space, but maybe they just had aleak there for six months I
didn't know about.
You know, of course you want tohave that fixed, but the only
(22:48):
way to keep the mold from comingback is to remove the reason
why it was there, which ismoisture.
Michael Church (22:53):
That is correct.
So you know I'm always big onhumidity.
Well, humidity isn't always thereason why there's mold.
I mean, like you said, aplumbing leak.
Well, humidity isn't always thereason why there's mold.
I mean, like you said, aplumbing leak.
So if we were to go down thereand we were, you know, real dumb
at how mold works and we werelike, hey, we're going to soda
blast this crawl space and we'regoing to leave the plumbing
leaking while we're down there,well, that's dumb.
(23:13):
Everybody's like, why don't youstop the plumbing leak?
Well, to me it the mold,without addressing the humidity,
because that high humidity isgoing to allow that mold to
return, no matter how much youclean that wood.
And one of the other nice thingsI like that that we as Crawl
(23:34):
Space Ninja do is adding thatprotectant.
You know that that penetrant iswhat it's called.
It's an X 70.
You know it's a silvernanotechnology protectant.
But you still have to controlmoisture and humidity.
It's it's not a standaloneproduct Like some of these other
products that, oh, if yousquirt this on your wood, it'll
(23:55):
never grow mold again.
That's a lie.
That's a lie.
If you don't control moisture,moisture and humidity, it
doesn't matter how good thatproduct is.
Mold is going to come back.
Would you guys agree with that?
James (24:05):
yeah, yeah, if you go to shuffle home depot or loaves or
whatever and you'll, you'll finda ton of products that say they
clean and prevent mold intwo-in-one.
It's kind of like two-in-oneshampoo and conditioner.
You ask anybody.
Those don't really work verywell.
The same with mold productslike that.
Mason (24:21):
Yeah, yeah, I'll say that my time with the company, which
has been about six, six and ahalf months.
We've done projects where we'vegone out, installed plastic, a
dehumidifier and that's been it.
There's never been a projectwhere we've just gone out and
soda blasted.
We aim at remediating thereason why the mold was there in
(24:42):
the first place.
Michael Church (24:43):
That's right.
That's right.
So you got to have that processof either removing standing
water through the flooding,fixing the plumbing leak,
sealing off the vents andinstalling that dehumidifier
along with the vapor barrier.
It's all a process, right, sothat's great.
I appreciate you all sharingthat with me.
Now here's another one.
All right, let's, let's, let'ssee how many videos of mine you
(25:06):
all have watched.
Ok, so which is better, bleachor sodium bicarbonate at getting
rid of mold?
Mason (25:19):
I mean.
James, I know the answer.
I think that you could probablyanswer the why better.
Well, you're the new guy, solet's see what you got.
Ok, yeah, I like that.
So the question was why doesthe sodium bicarbonate prevent
mold better than than bleach,correct?
Michael Church (25:37):
Actually, which is better at killing the mold,
the bleach or the sodiumbicarbonate?
Which one would you think wouldbe better?
Mason (25:47):
Just going to use logic here.
As far as killing the mold, I'mgoing to say something that has
an ability to, on a chemicallevel, remediate it.
I want to say bleach to, on achemical level, remediate it.
I want to say bleach when wesoda blast in my mind.
What we're doing is we'retaking the mold from where it is
(26:08):
, which is on the wood, andwe're taking it off of that From
there.
After that, we apply our Anabeccleaner, which I know is a
peroxide-based cleaner.
In my opinion, that is whatkills mold on a chemical level.
Michael Church (26:24):
I'd love for some constructive criticism,
though if that's how I'm correct, james, you got any
constructive criticism for him?
James (26:30):
Well, I believe a couple things with bleach.
Bleach is what's the percentageof water that makes up bleach.
Is it like 97% or 98%?
Pretty high water content.
You're just introducing evenmore moisture into the the wood
in the crawl space.
So that's a problem number one.
Number two I believe that, uh,the chemical in bleach doesn't
(26:52):
evaporate too quickly, orsomething to do with the contact
time on the surface, that itdoesn't really have the time on
the surface to properly killthem all.
Is that correct, michael?
That is correct, that iscorrect.
Michael Church (27:03):
So, mason, it was a loaded question man.
So you should have asked howmuch bleach or how much chlorine
is in the product because, likeJames was saying, you know the
stuff you use in your laundryit's only like 3% to 10%
chlorine.
Okay, now they.
They do have some things that Iuse.
(27:25):
To you know, bleach my beard,that's a little bit higher.
I'm kidding, I don't bleach mybeard, obviously, but, but you
know there are higher chlorinecontent available.
But even then, to James point,bleach or chlorine evaporates so
quickly, so quickly they say itdoesn't have a long enough
contact time to actually killmold.
(27:46):
Okay, and here's the last thingI'm going to say about bleach
is the log cabin industry haswritten many, many, many
articles about this.
That bleach, even if it dideverything that the homeowner
wants it to do and all the oldwives tales that have been told
about it over the years, hey,just put bleach on it.
(28:07):
All that, even if it did whatit was supposed to do, it
destroys the lignin of the woodand the lignin is the wood
skeletal system.
So as a homeowner, do I want toput something that's effective,
even if it is effective, onwood, so that I can soften the
wood and destroy the skeletalsystem.
(28:28):
So that's, those are the three.
You know, in my opinion, thethree big reasons.
Number one, like James wassaying, got a lot of water in it
, so it's going to, you knowthat moisture, you're just
adding water to it, right?
Number two it evaporates superquick, okay, like really fast, I
mean unbelievably fast.
(28:48):
And then number three isobviously it destroys lignin.
And then number four how muchbleach do you want to sniff?
Yeah, right, yeah, I mean, I'vebeen in some.
I've been in some crawl spaceswhere you know the DIY used a
bunch of bleach.
You can't even stand to be inthere, or and how much that's
(29:10):
coming into the house.
Oh, exactly.
Yeah exactly so.
Anyway, good, good, good, try,mason.
That was, that was a goodeffort.
Mason (29:19):
Well, yeah, I, I, uh.
I'm always trying to learn, butI'm never gonna.
I'm never gonna say what Ithink you want to hear.
I I'd always like to try anduse my brain first.
Michael Church (29:28):
So I appreciate the prescriptive criticism yeah,
very good, very good, all right.
And then if you, you know, ifyou throw the uh, the bleat, or
if you do the soda blasting andthen you go down there and spray
it with vinegar, then you'vegot the volcano effect going on.
If you want to try that, doug,y'all just do that for fun, see,
if a homeowner lets you do that.
(29:49):
I'm just kidding, don't do that.
It foams out.
Have you ever seen one of thosevolcanoes?
Doug (29:56):
Alright, very good that doesn't actually sound very fun,
it's an angry irate customer.
It'd't actually sound very fun.
It's an angry customer.
Yeah, it'd be cool.
It'd be cool for 30 seconds.
Michael Church (30:04):
So yeah, until it bubbles up into the living
space and Mrs Jones is going tobe upset about that.
So All right.
So let's talk about the mess.
We mentioned it a little bitbefore, but let's, let's
actually talk about the mess.
All right, because I'm sorry,but it's.
It's very hard to cleansomething without making a mess.
(30:26):
I mean, I know that seems likea weird thing to say, but
whenever I go to, when I was akid and my mom would tell me to
clean up my room, it wouldactually be more messy To start
cleaning it up, because you'repiling stuff and what Right.
And that's kind of the way withwith addressing mold, you know
it's way more messy to yank outall that old plastic and get all
(30:47):
that debris out and the yardsfull of debris and everything
before the final product Right,so let's talk about what
possible mess could come fromsoda blasting.
James, you want to start us offwith that one.
James (31:00):
Yeah, I mean we, we talked about a little bit.
But number one, I mean, whenwe're pressurizing, I mean those
little particles of baking sodaare so small they're going to
find any little crevice they canfind to try to come up into the
house.
Now, unfortunately, sometimesthere's a decent amount of
(31:20):
baking soda that comes in thehouse and just we do our very
best to avoid that fromhappening and take every
precaution, but sometimes it'sjust unavoidable.
But I always tell people likeit's a minor inconvenience for a
permanent solution, and youknow it's going to be a little.
It's kind of like when you go tothe beach and you get sand in
every little area you canimagine.
And it's kind of like when yougo to the beach and you get sand
(31:41):
in every little area you canimagine, and it's.
It's kind of like that.
But uh, you had a good time atthe beach though, didn't you?
Uh, you don't, you don't gohome thinking about cleaning up,
uh.
And so that's how we kind oftreat the soda.
Blasting is, yeah, you knowwhat there's.
Sometimes there's some umresidue, but we take care of it
and after it's done, then it's,it's over.
You never have to worry aboutit again as long as you
encapsulate it.
Michael Church (32:02):
That's right.
That's right, and Mason, yougot anything good about that?
Mason (32:06):
Yeah, I mean, that's that's my day job is just is
just customers and trying toremediate that and and and
explain that.
I think that, like James said,you know that that that baking
soda is is the perfectremediation, but because it's so
good at what it does, it'sgoing to find every little crack
and crevice that it can.
(32:26):
I say on trim, on baseboards,if they come out just a little
bit, it's going to be an areathat Soda Blast is going to get
through.
I'd say even not just insidethe house, but, like you
mentioned, when we pullinsulation, you know there's
going to be debris in the yard,debris, like you mentioned, when
we pull insulation, um, youknow there's going to be debris
(32:47):
in the yard, debris around the,around the door of the crawl
space, Cause you're pushing abunch of insulation insulation
through a small area, Um, so,yeah, there's, there's a mess
and a damage that comes with, um, like you said, cleaning and
doing the job, Um, I think mymain goal is to just try and be
forefront with that.
But, like James said, I thinkthat that's a very good saying
(33:07):
it's a temporary inconveniencefor a permanent solution.
Michael Church (33:11):
Yeah, and I just try to be as upfront with
people as I can.
I don't want any of us to go inthere and say, oh yeah, you'll
never have soda in the house,because the one time you say
that it's going to explode inthe house, I mean you're going
to miss it, and that's that'swhat that's what these videos
are all about, is educatinghomeowners on that process, and
that's why we, you know, do alot of things that we do.
That's where our methodology hascome from, because I have, over
(33:34):
the years, filled up a lot ofpeople's homes with soda and it
took me a minute to figure outhow to prevent or how to get
that, you know, under control,to where it's as little as it is
today.
You know like, for example, weair seal the subfloor, you know,
to the best we can.
You know, but we can't air sealthe rim joists until we soda
(33:56):
blast.
And that's where this baseboardissue that you're talking about
comes from Mason, becauseusually the baseboard sits on
the rim joist of the crawl space, and so people are like, well,
why don't you air seal the rimjoist?
Well, there's usually a lot ofmold on the rim joist.
If I cover it up with foam boardand spray foam before I've had
a chance to dry it out andremove that mold, then it can
become a problem.
(34:17):
So that's why we have to dothat.
That's just part of it, and thenice thing about baking soda is
that, if some of it does get in, keep in mind.
It's alkaline, so it's it'sgoing to kill anything that that
it's touching, as far as thatgoes.
So those are great answers,doug.
You got anything to add to that?
Doug (34:34):
Yeah, I was going to say what you just said too.
I mean, it's like if some, ifI'm the homeowner and
something's going, I'm okay withbaking soda.
It's not a perfect process.
I kind of have a question foryou, michael, because we found
that communication andexpectation both of those things
are the two keys to having abetter experience, which is why
(34:54):
I feel like, james, you as aninspector do a really really
good job of setting thatexpectation with the homeowner
at the initial visit, at theinitial visit, and, mason, I
think you do a really incrediblejob communicating with the
homeowner, kind of holding theirhand through the process.
I was going to ask you whatthat looked like, but you
already you beat me to it.
You already talked a little bitabout.
Hey, here's what I talked tohim about.
Here's, james, you mentionedthe air scrubber.
(35:15):
You know, here's thatcommunication piece.
Is that?
What do you feel those twothings have been the most
important Absolutely, absolutely.
Michael Church (35:24):
I'm I've always been under the the philosophy of
under promise, over deliver,right and.
And to me I would rather sayhey look, mrs Jones, you're
going to get soda in the houseand then maybe it's not as bad
as she thought, versus me tryingthe opposite and being like, oh
yeah, there's nothing.
And then the littlest amounttouches the baseboard and she's
like oh yeah, there's nothing.
(35:44):
And then the littlest amounttouches the baseboard and she's
like you said nothing, you knowI mean, so I'd rather err on
that, Because if you're going totell me you don't want me to
soda blast, tell me now.
Mason (35:55):
Yeah.
Michael Church (35:56):
Don't tell me when we're halfway through the
process.
I want you to know.
I want you to go in this thingwith your eyes wide open.
Yeah, you know.
James (36:04):
Go ahead, james.
Well, the worst thing I've hadis we did a big subtle blessing
job for close friends of mineand they didn't really.
I honestly I probably didn't dothe best job of communicating
that this could be a decentproblem and it was everywhere.
But they also had theirregularly scheduled cleaning.
(36:26):
People come like we started thejob so their house was
perfectly clean and they justpaid money to have it cleaned.
And then we it was, that sodawas everywhere, everywhere and
uh, that was like I telleveryone now, if you're gonna
have your house cleaned, justwait until after we're done.
Mason (36:42):
Yeah, I'll never forget the house that we did, we did a
gold on and we sort of lasted.
On a Thursday, the weekendbefore Christmas, and her house
was from the 60s and the woodhad expanded a lot and so, lo
and behold, you know it's theday before Christmas Eve and she
(37:03):
had to have a cleaning servicecome because we just didn't have
the wherewithal to think ahead.
But, Michael, I'd also like toask you in my experience I
remember one specific house thatwe soda blasted in and the
entire first floor was eithercarpet or large vinyl tiles
(37:28):
either carpet or large vinyltiles.
That house I remember not onlynot really seeing a residue of
soda, but not seeing at allresidue in the air inside the
house.
Have you experienced that maybecarpet or vinyl is better in
terms of residue inside thehouse than maybe wood?
Michael Church (37:41):
Yeah, and I'm not sure it's the the actual
material.
I think it's how the material isinstalled so usually, usually
carpet you can push it under thebaseboard right because you got
that extra.
Where hard, excuse me, wherehardwood, for example, they
leave almost an expansion joint,yeah, around the edge, which
means that there's more directair to the crawl space at that
(38:04):
expansion joint.
So I would think tile would besimilar because there's an
expansion joint, or maybe theydon't go all the way to the
framing, the outside framing,because of the baseboard right.
So I think it's not necessarilythe material, but how the
material is installed isprobably the driver of whether
(38:25):
more soda comes in or not.
James (38:28):
We had a customer about a month ago, maybe six weeks ago.
He had a great point Like themore soda you have come into
your house when we're sodablasting, that's how much more
air leakage you have from yourcrawl space, so even more.
So you needed it done, you know, because you're breathing that
mold even more.
Michael Church (38:45):
Absolutely, and you know, like a tongue and
groove, you know, subfloor isgoing to have more joints, more
air spaces, versus, you know,plywood or an OSB, you know.
So it all depends on theconstruction, right?
Yeah, those are great questions, mason.
And, like I said, I've filledup more homes with soda than
probably anybody combined,because I had this one situation
(39:07):
and that's the other reason whywe have a ninja up in the house
, you know, is to watch, to makesure, you know, because I've
trusted the homeowner Right Towatch and they get busy, they're
not, they don't know what tolook for.
You know, we, I had, I've hadtwo situations.
I had a homeowner who had theirteenage son watch.
(39:29):
Well, that didn't turn out verywell, not well at all, I'll just
say that.
And then I had another onewhere the homeowner watched but
she worked from home.
This was pre COVID.
She worked from home and shehad an office that was that was
on a slab off of the main partof the house and she, she went
into that office and closed thedoor and here we are, thinking
(39:51):
she's up there watching.
Well, about the time we're done, soda blasting, she decides to
come out of her office and itlooked like it had just.
I mean, it looked like theArctic there was soda everywhere
.
Yeah, you know, and this wasbefore we learned to air seal
the sub floor and turn off theAC.
(40:11):
You know all these things thatwe do.
Now.
This was me still learning theprocess and you know what was so
great, and I'm not bragging onus but we still turn that into a
five-star review because Irecognize that we had messed up.
I paid to have it cleaned, Ipaid to have her carpets cleaned
(40:32):
.
I did all that and they wroteus a five-star review and I've
never had that situation happenagain.
Because of what we learned fromthat scenario and that's how
long ago.
That was.
That was many, many years ago.
That's not like it happenedlast week.
So, anyway, that's the.
That's the other nice thingabout us is we try to learn from
our mistakes.
Right, you know to do thingsdifferently.
(40:52):
So that's why we don't allowyou know, the teenage son to
watch, because I've had badexperiences with that.
But anyway, yeah, these aregreat questions.
So, mason, I'm going to, I'mgoing to let you answer this one
how long does the process take?
Let's say we got a thousandfifteen hundred square foot
(41:15):
crawl space.
Yeah, what's the timeline?
And just for soda blasting,forget about capsulation.
All that, just for sodablasting.
How long does that typicallytake?
Mason (41:22):
so 1500 square feet.
I'd say that's a pretty typicalhouse for us.
Um, you know, we've seen biggerthan 2000, we see less than a
thousand, but I feel like 1500is pretty typical.
Um, we typically expect um thatwe are able to pull the
insulation, maybe, do clean outand soda blasting Um, sometimes,
(41:48):
uh, most of the time, or itreally just depends on how the
house is Um, but we, we, we can.
On some cases I feel like wecan do clean out and then start
soda blasting.
Um, soda blasting will maybetake five, six hours, um, and
then, and then you know we'reready to move on from there.
Sometimes I know that we'll doa half a day of clean out and
(42:09):
then we'll start soda blastingand then it takes a little
longer than that.
That's really something thatI'm still trying to to to really
hone in on.
Is that expectation?
Michael Church (42:26):
on is is that expectation of?
Okay?
Well, and to be fair, again,another loaded question, because
it kind of it kind of doesdepend on how thick the mold is
on there.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, if you gota lot of wood decay fungus on
there, that dude's going to takelonger than one that's got just
a light, you know, white moldor a light brown mold.
Mason (42:40):
So yeah, I mean as much to that as is if you have a uh,
if you have a crawl uh, if youhave a crawl space, that's four
and a half cinder blocks high ora crawl space, this two, um, I
I think that that can, it canaffect the process.
Um so much.
Um, it's, it's really a toughquestion.
Michael Church (42:58):
Yeah, cause you know that low crawl I mean, I'm
six one, you know a'1" tall anda low crawl space it's harder
for me to turn around in.
It's almost like an aircraftcarrier trying to turn around in
the water, right, it just takesa while, right.
But if I get in there and I'min a 3 1⁄2", 4' tall, that's
like the ideal size for mebecause I can still sit down,
you know, and work and move verywell.
(43:19):
So that's good, james.
A follow up question to that.
We've mainly been talking aboutbaking soda and all that, and
you kind of mentioned the Anabecproduct.
What do we do immediately afterwe we soda blast it?
James (43:37):
What do we apply after and why?
Can you kind of share with us alittle bit?
Yeah, Well, yeah, Once the oncethe mold's been removed, then
we spray the Anabec peroxidecleaner to sanitize everything
down in the crawl space.
Make sure all surfaces arecovered.
The air's like anything that'sin the air has been killed.
All the mold's dead.
Michael Church (43:55):
Yeah, and that's a really great point.
Because two things the reasonwhy I like to apply Anabec is
for two reasons.
Number one like you said, youcan really only soda blast
hardwood surfaces.
We can't get down there andsoda blast somebody's ductwork,
because then we'll just rip itto shreds.
So the anabag, the peroxide,it's nice to fog that afterwards
(44:15):
so that any other materials Imean I've even seen like PVC
grow mold.
So anything that's wet can growmold.
I've seen glass grow mold, youknow, uh, so you know anything
that's wet can grow mold.
I've seen glass grow mold.
It wasn't that the glass itselfgrew mold, it was just the.
The dirt on the glass was yeah,right, um, so you know, that's.
(44:36):
That's the other reason why Ilike to fog.
And then, secondly, a liquidcan penetrate deeper into the
wood than obviously soda can.
So if, for some reason, there'sa deep root system or something
like that inside the wood, welike to saturate that wood so
that that peroxide cleaner canget into that wood and kill
anything that might be inside ofit.
So so great answers, though Ilike two questions michael.
James (44:58):
Um, one would be uh, does the does so?
Does the baking soda?
Does it actually kill the mold?
It does.
Michael Church (45:02):
It does because of its alkalinity okay.
Does it actually kill the mold?
It does.
It does because of itsalkalinity.
Okay, it does kill the mold,just like it kills the grass,
right.
But that's not the main reasonwhy I use it.
The main reason why I came upwith the soda was to remove the
mold.
So for me, the removal of it isthe most important side of it,
(45:23):
and then the Anabec is more thekiller side of it.
But yes, it does kill mold too.
James (45:29):
And you ever see mold growing on the concrete block or
brick.
Michael Church (45:34):
Usually if it's not painted concrete block in a
crawl space if you see a whitecolor, a lot of times that's
efflorescence.
Now I'm not saying thatconcrete cannot grow mold,
because obviously it can Ifsomething is on there that can
grow mold.
But for me, most of the timeconcrete and brick and things
(45:57):
like that grows mold more ifit's got a food source like a
paint that's been applied to it,because every once in a while
I've seen like kind of a, like ablack furry mold grow kind of
at the bottom of the concreteblock.
James (46:10):
Sure, um, and I've just I've only seen it probably two
or three times, but I have seenit all right so those of you
that don't know, let me let meexplain this to you.
Michael Church (46:21):
Do you know where most toxic molds come from
?
I don't, okay, it was.
I don't expect y'all to knowthis because we're not
microbiologists.
Obviously we don't study mold.
We kill it, right, um.
But?
But I've spoken to a lot ofmicrobiologists, I've
interviewed them and we've had alot of talks.
Most toxic mold, yourstachybotrys, those types of
(46:44):
molds actually come from thesoil.
Oh, really, okay.
So what you're alluding to,james, is where the brick or the
block, at the base, which iswhere the soil is right.
So that's why you're seeingthat.
Mason (46:58):
Oh.
Michael Church (46:58):
Okay, it's because that soil either is
contaminating that low sectionor even maybe on the brick or
the block at that point, andthat could grow mold.
Got it?
Okay?
Now it's completely what's theword I'm looking for.
There's no reason to try tokill mold in soil.
(47:20):
Okay, because it would be liketrying to kill mold on wet wood
and you never dried the wood out.
It's just going to come rightback so so the soil is always
going to hold a certain amountof moisture.
Especially us in North Carolinaand Tennessee, we got a lot of
clay soil, which means it's gota lot of organic material in
there that can.
(47:41):
That is a food source for mold.
So that's why we don't reallytry to kill what's in the soil,
because it's, it's irrelevant,there's no way you could do it,
but that's why you're probablyseeing that line that you're
talking about is because of thesoil.
So one of the things that I'velearned over the years and I
don't know if a lot of peoplerealize this, but taking off
your shoes at the door helps toprevent a lot of mold tracking
(48:04):
into your home, because if yougo out and play with your kids
and the grass, that's where alot of mold comes from is the
soil.
So you know, having that habitof like taking your shoes off at
the door has been proven to bepretty effective at keeping mold
from spreading a lot of times.
So just because it comes fromsoil, what do you think about
(48:30):
cost effectiveness?
Is the soda blasting treatmentthat we use cost effective for a
homeowner, and why?
James (48:36):
If either one of you want to answer that, when you think
about cost effectiveness, Ithink about doing it once and
having it done forever, likeit's just, it's gone.
Um, so yeah, on the front end,a subtle blasting is going to be
more expensive than justspraying, doing a spray and pray
(48:56):
, fogging, or even somebodywho's going down there and hand
wiping it with with a chemical.
Um, a subtle blasting is nodoubt going to be more expensive
than that, but it's going to begone.
So when you go to sell thathouse, eventually there will be
no visible evidence of mold aslong as it's been encapsulated
properly and the moisture hasbeen removed.
(49:17):
So it's not cheap by any means,but as far as never having to
worry about it again, never haveto pay for it to be done again,
then yes.
Doug (49:26):
James, you're always really good about this, and what
I found out is that they sayit's about the money and how
expensive it is, but it's reallyabout the value.
And so when you realize thatthat's what really is the heart
of the issue, it's justimportant to understand really
what this is, because in ourmarket nobody else does this.
(49:48):
So it's a game changer and it'ssomething different.
And I think education and James, you do a great job with this
and I think just the you know,bringing people up to speed with
what this process is, what itlooks like, how effective it is
it's going to build value inyour investment.
I know for me, my why a lot ofnights when I go to bed I got a
(50:09):
text from a lady, ms Williams.
We were on her job a couple ofweeks ago and she sent me this
text.
Her life has changed.
She had these horribleallergies and she couldn't
figure out where it's comingfrom and she was just wrecked.
Her health was just wrecked andwe soda blasted there and in
the few days since we've beenthere, she texted me and told me
how, how well she's doing.
(50:31):
And you know, it's just.
You know you can't put a dollarfigure on that you know that's,
that's.
That's a game changer forpeople.
Michael Church (50:37):
To your point, james, and to your point, doug,
I have had the privilege ofspeaking to hundreds of
homeowners across the countryand and a lot of times people
will do a consultation with meto discuss because, you know,
crawl Space Ninja isn'teverywhere and they'll do a
consultation with me to discusswhat these other companies are
(50:58):
going to do to their home.
And there's a.
There's a gentleman in VirginiaBeach who holds the record for
the most consultations with meever.
I won't tell you how many, butthere was a company out there
and I want to talk about twothings.
That was happening to him wasthere were companies that said,
oh yeah, we do soda blasting,because he'd watched a lot of
(51:20):
our videos.
He wanted his crawlspace sodablasted and then he would call
these companies.
They would get out there andthen they would pull the bait
and switch.
They'd be like, yeah, we don'treally do the soda blasting, but
we sub it out and it's superexpensive.
You don't want to do that.
We want you to do this, whichis really cheap, right, because
(51:40):
when you don't have a goodproduct, everything you're doing
is based on price, right?
And this guy was telling methis story and I'm like, really,
and he goes, oh yeah.
And then they went along to say, yeah, our method will probably
have to treat it every coupleof years With our method because
the mold's going to come back.
Now they weren't putting in adehumidifier, they weren't even
(52:03):
really encapsulating, right, sosoda blasting again doesn't keep
the mold from coming back.
You got to do all those otherthings too, but that just really
stuck me, like, struck me aslike, ok, first of all, the bait
and switch is just you know,that would be like us saying, oh
(52:29):
yeah, we're plumbers, and thenyou call us out there and you
would go down there oh, we don'treally do plumbing, but you got
mold in your crawl space.
You want us to address that.
I mean, that was like, whywould you do something like that
?
But then again, like you said,doug, that that value, you know,
we like to call it a worry-freecrawl space, a one and done.
(52:52):
I've always said there's nothingmore expensive than having to
do something over, right.
And if you all want to see that, if you're watching this video
and you want to see the do-over,check out that we redid a
$25,000 crawl spaceencapsulation video.
It's one of our top performingvideos.
He was a judge here locally inKnoxville and he had his crawl
space encapsulated, paid a pestcontrol company 25 grand to do
(53:13):
it and then paid us 40 to fix itRight.
Just to give you an idea Now,to be fair, this is like almost
a 4,000 square foot crawl space.
So those of you that just had aheart attack because I said
$40,000 fixed crawl space itdoes.
You know a 4,000 square footroof costs a lot more to shingle
(53:34):
than a 500 square foot roof.
So you know there's a lot thatgoes into the pricing here.
But the point is is that yougot to make sure you do it right
and if you don't have access toa company that that does it
right, that's why a lot ofpeople will do it themselves.
That's where the DIY comes in.
You know and I hate to say it,but there's people in your in
Charlotte I don't care how goodyou guys are, doug they won't
(53:57):
hire you to do it because theywant to do it themselves.
That's just the way it is andthat's why we we create this
content, because we recognizethat those homeowners are out
there.
They don't want a contractorcome in their house at all.
Either they don't trust you orthey don't have the money to do
it.
You know, and a lot of people,it's the trust factor.
(54:19):
They've been, they've beenwrecked by so many contractors
out there.
You know that they just don'ttrust them anymore.
And you know, to be fair, I cansee that.
And you know, to be fair, I cansee that.
I mean residential remodelershave the worst rating on the
Better Business Bureau of anyindustry in America.
I mean you probably have satacross the table from somebody
who had money stolen from them.
Oh yeah, I paid them 25% downand they never showed up or they
(54:40):
never finished the job, right,well, that's, that's where we're
different.
You know, we're a customerservice company that just so
happens to fix crawl spaces,because our focus, doug,
wouldn't you agree?
Our focus has always been oncustomer service.
Doug (54:55):
Yeah, I've always felt like the best thing about, one
of the best things about CrawlSpace Ninja is that my wife and
I we're both Charlatans.
Mason's a Charlatan.
My wife and I we're bothCharlotteans.
Mason's a Charlottean.
James has three reallyincredible little boys and
they're part of the community.
And you know I don't want to goto dinner and have to run to the
restroom because I didn'tfinish your crawl space or I
(55:16):
took advantage of you.
Just as a person, michael,that's been really tough for me
to be lumped in the category ofso many bad contractor
experiences, because that's justnot who we are, but I do
understand it.
I talked to a gentleman thismorning.
He, I'm sure, has a history ofbeing burned by other
contractors and has been onguard, and so it's a challenge
(55:37):
to then elevate ourselves, tothen make sure they know that
we're not like that, and then wespend a lot of time and a lot
of energy trying to elevateourselves and reassuring people.
They were not like that.
So the bar sometimes is low,which is good.
You know that we can.
We can do that, but that'sreally important.
Again, no, nobody wants to runto the restroom and hide when we
(55:57):
see it.
Michael Church (55:59):
Well, and that's why I brought up the point
about you know, we do mess up.
We are human, you know, justlike the lady with the soda
blast that went all in her house, I mean, I messed up.
I obviously didn't take cautionto keep that from happening, so
I paid for it.
I fixed it, you know, andsometimes we have to pay for
things that we didn't mess upbut the homeowner thinks we did
(56:20):
it.
So we do it anyway.
Right, I mean, that's just partof being in business.
But you know, to me the Bibletalks about how a good name is
to be chosen, you know.
So if you're going to have agood name, it's a choice.
You don't accidentally have a4.9 star rating.
(56:40):
That's not by accident.
Yeah, you can maybe, you know,get the numbers up and you know,
having your cousins and yourmom and all that right your
rating.
But eventually you're going torun out of those people and then
you know, the truth is going tocome to the surface and that's
why we try to be really good atwhat we do and if we do mess up,
(57:02):
we try to fix it right.
I mean, that's the whole point.
So if you're watching thisvideo, hopefully you'll see that
as us, as a company, not onlyhere in Knoxville but in
Charlotte and Delaware and inevery area that we are, that's
what we try to be.
So, anyway, gentlemen, I reallyappreciate y'all joining me
today and I felt like this is agreat video for people to get to
(57:24):
know you all there in thecharlotte area.
So, um, anything to add beforeI let you go?
Mason (57:30):
no thanks for having us yeah, I appreciate it very much.
Michael Church (57:32):
It was nice to meet you and just get to talk to
you and ask my questions yeah,very nice to meet, uh, all of
you as well, and and, uh, uh, Ihad the pleasure of knowing Doug
.
How long now, doug, has it been?
Three years.
Doug (57:47):
Man, I think you and I first met in 2020.
Michael Church (57:51):
Five years.
Doug (57:53):
Yeah, almost five years.
Honestly, personally, I wassuper pumped to be talking today
because I really wanted you tomeet James and Mason.
And James has been with us overthree years and is such a big
part of why we're successful.
And Mason does an incrediblejob with our customers and is
our job coordinator.
And again, Michael, you and Iknow each other very well, but
(58:14):
it was mostly exciting for mefor you to meet these two guys.
They're such a great part ofour success.
Michael Church (58:20):
Yeah, yeah, and just so you know, this is James
Taylor, but not the musicianJames Taylor.
James (58:27):
There'll be no singing for me.
Michael Church (58:30):
Well, it was a pleasure and an honor to meet
both of you all as well, soappreciate y'all being on this
call with me, and I'm MichaelChurch for Crawl Space Ninja.
We hope you make it a happy andblessed day and we'll see you
later.
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