Independent Mold Testing in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene

We test for mold. We never remediate it, and we take no referral fees from the companies that do. That means when we tell you your house is fine, we made nothing by saying so, and when we tell you there is a problem, we make nothing off the fix either.

Almost every other business in Spokane County and Kootenai County that advertises mold testing also sells the cleanup. Neither Washington nor Idaho prohibits that, so the only thing standing between you and a conflicted opinion is whichever company you happened to call.

A standard inspection is $425 and includes one indoor air sample plus an outdoor control. Lab results come back in one to three business days and your written report follows within a day of that. Call, describe what you are seeing or smelling, and if testing will not tell you anything useful we will say so before you spend money.

What you get for $425

The base price covers the site visit, moisture mapping, thermal imaging, one indoor air sample, the outdoor control, all lab fees, and the written report. Nothing on that list is an upcharge. If the building needs more samples to answer the question honestly, we will tell you the number before we take them, not after.

You will see $149 mold inspections advertised in this market. Those are visual walkthroughs with no lab work. A person looks around and tells you what they think. That has a place, but it is not testing, and it will not produce a document anyone else will accept.

How it works

1. Call or send a message. Tell us what happened. A smell, a stain, a burst pipe in February, a home inspector who wrote "possible microbial growth, recommend further evaluation" and moved on. We will tell you on the phone whether testing is the right tool.

2. We inspect the building. A typical residential visit is one to two hours. Larger or more complicated properties run three to four. We walk every accessible area, map moisture with pin and pinless meters, scan for temperature differentials with a thermal camera, take psychrometric readings, and use a borescope when we need to see inside a wall cavity. You get verbal preliminary findings before we leave.

3. We sample and send to the lab. Air samples are collected with a calibrated pump drawing a measured volume through a spore trap cassette, either Air-O-Cell or Allergenco-D. Every job includes an outdoor control, because indoor spore counts mean nothing without one. Samples go to an accredited lab under chain of custody for direct microscopic examination.

4. You get a report you can hand to anyone. Photos, moisture and humidity readings, the raw lab data, the indoor to outdoor comparison, our findings, and what a competent remediator would need in order to scope the work. No remediation bid, because we do not sell remediation.

Why the outdoor control matters more than the indoor number

Outdoor air always contains mold spores. Everywhere, all year. So an indoor spore count by itself tells you nothing at all. Two hundred spores per cubic meter of a given genus indoors might be entirely normal on a September afternoon when outdoor counts are in the thousands, and might be a clear problem in February when snow cover has flattened outdoor counts to almost nothing.

Elevated means elevated relative to outside your own house on that day, in that weather. Any report that hands you indoor numbers with no same day outdoor baseline is not interpretable, and plenty of them get sold anyway. Every job we run includes the control. It is not an add-on and it never has been.

Why mold happens here despite the dry summers

Spokane averages 17.2 inches of rain a year. Coeur d'Alene averages 26.6, about 55% more. People on both sides of the state line assume that rules mold out. It does not, because annual rainfall is the wrong variable. Residential mold in the Inland Northwest is driven by water intrusion events.

Spokane County has 241,434 housing units, and in the City of Spokane roughly 27% of the housing stock predates 1950, with single family detached homes averaging about 70 years old. Kootenai County has 86,151 housing units and is growing fast, with Post Falls among the fastest growing cities in the country. Old stock has old plumbing and unconditioned crawlspaces with missing or failed vapor barriers. New stock has construction moisture and tight envelopes.

Then there is winter. Spokane averages 43.9 inches of snow, Coeur d'Alene 42.4, with sustained hard freezes on both sides. Nationally, frozen pipes and cold weather damage account for about 7% of insurance claims, and burst pipes are the third most costly loss event in the country behind hurricanes and tornadoes at roughly $1.4 billion a year. Add ice dams pushing meltwater backward into attics and wall cavities, and spring melt into basements and crawlspaces.

Triple-I and ISO data put water damage and freezing claims at 1.61 per 100 insured homes per year with average severity of $13,954. That is roughly one home in sixty filing a water claim annually, or somewhere between 3,100 and 4,500 claims a year across these two counties. The American Housing Survey finds that 8 to 10% of homes have leak-related water damage in a given year, five to six times the claim rate, which means most water damage is never reported to anyone.

What we will not tell you

We will not tell you that mold is going to make you seriously ill. The CDC's position is that the link between Stachybotrys and serious illness has never been proven, and there is no diagnostic test connecting a specific mold to a specific person's symptoms. What the evidence does support is allergic reaction, asthma triggering, and upper respiratory irritation in sensitive people, plus serious fungal infection in the severely immunocompromised. Those are real problems worth solving. They are not the claims you will find on the internet, and we are not going to repeat those claims in order to sell you something.

We also will not tell you to test when you should not. If you are looking at three square feet of obvious growth on a bathroom wall you already know is wet, you do not need a lab to confirm it. Fix the water, clean the surface, move on.

Who runs this

Jesse Futia owns and operates the company. He is a US Army veteran, a Field Artillery officer who served with 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment and commanded a HIMARS battery. He also owns Spokane Boat Repair. He does the inspections himself, he shows up in the window he gave you, and he writes the reports.

Service area

Spokane, Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Cheney, Airway Heights, Medical Lake, Mead, Deer Park, Nine Mile Falls, Otis Orchards and the rest of Spokane County. Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum and Kootenai County. Colville, Newport and Davenport with a $100 trip charge.

Book an inspection

Most inspections can be scheduled within a few business days, and restoration clearances usually within one to two. Tell us what is going on and we will tell you whether we can help. If we cannot, that call costs you nothing.

Common questions

How much does a mold inspection cost? $425 for the base inspection, which includes the site visit, moisture mapping, thermal imaging, one indoor air sample, an outdoor control sample, all laboratory fees and the written report. Additional samples are $100 each. A typical three sample job lands around $525.

Do you do the remediation too? No, and we never will. We test only, and we take no referral fees from remediation companies. A company that both finds mold and sells you the cleanup has an obvious reason to find mold. We have no stake in what the lab says.

How long until I get results? You get verbal preliminary findings before we leave the property. Laboratory results come back in one to three business days, and the written report follows within one business day of that. Rush 24 hour laboratory turnaround is available for $100.

What areas do you serve? Spokane County and Kootenai County, including Spokane, Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Cheney, Airway Heights, Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls, Hayden and Rathdrum. Colville, Newport and Davenport carry a $100 trip charge.

Is mold testing licensed in Washington or Idaho? Neither state licenses mold inspection or assessment. The Washington Department of Health says plainly that anyone can call themselves a mold specialist without training or credentials. That is exactly why method, independence and the quality of the report are the only things worth judging a tester on.