For Home Inspectors: A Testing-Only Referral Partner

We are not home inspectors. We do not perform home inspections, we do not write up roofs or electrical panels, we do not carry a Washington home inspector license, and we have no interest in your work. We also do not perform mold remediation and we take no referral fees from remediation contractors.

That combination is the entire pitch. When you flag suspected growth and hand the client a name, that name should not be a competitor and should not be someone whose business model depends on finding a problem in a house you just inspected. We are neither.

Why you have to refer this out in the first place

You already know the rules. They are worth stating plainly because they are also the clearest explanation to give a client who wants you to just handle it.

WAC 308-408C-030 defines the standards of practice for Washington home inspectors and excludes environmental hazards from them, mold among them. It is not in your scope, and the standards say so.

WAC 308-408C-050 goes further and requires the pre-inspection agreement to state that the inspection does not include investigating mold, mildew, or similar conditions unless separately contracted for in writing. So the disclaimer is not optional boilerplate you chose. The rule requires it.

That means every mold question that comes up during a Washington home inspection is, by regulation, outside the report and outside the contract. You can observe it. You can note apparent conditions. You cannot investigate it under that engagement.

Idaho is a different problem. Idaho licenses neither home inspection nor mold assessment. There is no state standard of practice and no state-mandated contract language at all. If you work both sides of the state line, your exposure in Kootenai County comes entirely from your own agreement and your own discipline. The referral matters more there, not less.

What we do, precisely

We test. Then we stop.

• Air sampling with a calibrated pump drawing a measured volume through an Air-O-Cell or Allergenco-D spore trap cassette, submitted to an accredited laboratory for direct microscopic examination.
• An outdoor control sample on every single job. Outdoor air always contains mold spores. An indoor spore count with no same-day outdoor baseline is a number with nothing to compare it to. Elevated means elevated relative to outside. Your clients will encounter reports that skip this. They are not usable.
• Surface sampling by swab or tape lift, which is the direct answer to the most common thing you flag: is that dark staining actually growth, or is it soot, overspray, mineral deposit or an old water mark that has been dry for fifteen years.
• Bulk sampling where a piece of material needs to go to the lab.
• Moisture mapping with pin and pinless meters.
• Thermal imaging for temperature differentials behind intact finishes.
• Borescope into wall cavities and inaccessible spaces.
• Psychrometrics by area and outdoors: relative humidity, temperature, dew point.

Typical residential visit is one to two hours. Larger or more complex properties run three to four. Post remediation clearance is a separate 45 to 60 minute service judged against IICRC S520.

What we will not do

This list matters more to you than the one above.

• We will not offer an opinion on your report, your findings, or anything outside the mold and moisture question we were engaged for.
• We will not solicit your client for any other service.
• We will not sell them remediation, because we do not do remediation.
• We will not take a fee from a remediation contractor for pointing your client at one.
• We will not tell a client that a house is unsafe. We report conditions, readings, and lab data.
• We will not overstate health effects. CDC has never established a causal link between Stachybotrys and serious illness, and says no test proves an association between a specific mold and particular health symptoms. What is documented is allergic reaction, asthma triggering and upper respiratory irritation in sensitive people, plus real infection risk in the severely immunocompromised. Nobody gets scared into a purchase decision on our watch.

You are handing us your reputation when you give a client our number. We understand what that is worth.

How the referral works in practice

Give them the number, or call us yourself. Either works. If you call, tell us what you saw and where, and we will bring the right sampling plan instead of arriving cold.

Same visit when the timing allows. If you are inside a contingency window and the client wants it handled fast, we can often meet you at the property or come the same or next day. Rush lab turnaround is 24 hours for an additional $100, which usually keeps a transaction on schedule.

We report to whoever engages us. Usually that is the buyer. If you want a copy, have the client authorize it and we will send it.

No fee to you, and none from you. There is no referral arrangement, no kickback, and no reciprocal obligation. If you send someone and we are not the right answer for their situation, we will tell them that and they will still be your client.

Pricing, so you can quote it accurately

Lab results normally come back in one to three business days, with the report within a day of that.

Radon comes up in the same conversation often enough to be worth knowing: both Spokane County and Kootenai County are EPA Radon Zone 1, the highest tier, meaning predicted average indoor levels above the EPA action level of 4 pCi/L. It is a two visit service since the monitor sits for 48 hours.

The market context, briefly

Washington's Department of Health says plainly that there are no certification requirements for mold work in this state and that anyone can call themselves a mold specialist without training or credentials. Idaho is the same. So a client you refer will find companies with impressive-sounding letters after a name and no regulatory floor underneath them.

Most of those companies also sell remediation. That is the structural problem. The same business decides whether there is mold and then writes the estimate to remove it. New York made it illegal under Labor Law Article 32 for one company to both assess and remediate the same job. Washington and Idaho have no such rule, which is why anyone practicing that separation here is doing it by choice.

If your client is deciding between vendors, the useful question is not what certification they hold. It is whether they can profit from the answer.

Inspector questions

Do you ever do home inspections? No. Not for anyone, not as a side service, not on a house we tested. It is not our business and we have no plans to make it ours.

A client wants me to just say whether it is mold. Can I? That is between you and your agreement, and WAC 308-408C-050 requires your contract to state that you are not investigating it. The practical answer is that a swab or tape lift settles the question for $425 and removes the guess from your file entirely.

What if my client only wants a yes or no on one stain? Call us. Sometimes a single surface sample answers it. Sometimes the honest answer is that the staining is clearly old water damage and nothing needs a lab at all, and we will say that on the phone rather than booking a job.

Do you work in Kootenai County? Yes. Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum, Dalton Gardens and Hauser with no trip fee. Coeur d'Alene averages 26.6 inches of rain a year against Spokane's 17.2, so the Idaho side genuinely produces more moisture findings.

How do I explain the cost to a client who thinks $425 is a lot after paying for an inspection? One indoor air sample, an outdoor control, moisture mapping, thermal imaging and a lab report from an accredited laboratory, with a written document they can take into a negotiation. If it comes back clean, they have removed an unknown from a purchase worth several hundred thousand dollars. Median owner-occupied value is $410,700 in Spokane County and $518,700 in Kootenai County.

Will you make me look bad if you find nothing? No. You are required to flag apparent conditions and required to disclaim investigating them. Referring it out is the correct call whether or not the lab finds anything, and a clean result is a good outcome for your client.

Add us to your referral list

Call or send us a note and we will give you a card, a rate sheet you can hand a client, and a straight answer any time you want to talk through what you are seeing before you write it up.