Our Certified Services

Same-day and next-day appointments are usually available across our Tujunga service area, with 24/7 emergency response for active leaks, recent water damage, or urgent real estate timelines. Standard scheduling runs 1 to 3 business days depending on availability.

Our certified mold inspectors assess bathrooms, kitchens, laundry rooms, basements, attics, crawl spaces, HVAC components, and any area showing signs of past or current water issues. Thermal imaging and moisture meters identify hidden moisture behind walls and under floors.

Hillside properties depend heavily on drainage systems, retaining walls, slope stabilization measures, and foundation waterproofing. When any of these components fail or become overwhelmed during storms, water can enter areas that are difficult to access and inspect, creating ideal conditions for concealed mold growth.

Pricing varies based on the size of the property, the scope of testing required, and whether any lab work is included. Most residential mold inspections in Tujunga fall within the standard industry range of $300 to $600, with a clear quote provided before any work begins.

Air sampling, swab testing, tape lift testing, wall cavity sampling, and HVAC mold testing. The inspector recommends the right method on-site based on what's found. Samples go to a state-certified lab, with results typically back in 24 to 72 hours.

Mold needs water to grow, so finding the moisture source is what prevents the same problem from coming back after any cleanup. Moisture detection during the inspection identifies plumbing leaks, roof leaks, condensation issues, and humidity buildup that's feeding any growth.

Yes. Post-remediation verification confirms the remediation contractor's work succeeded and the space is safe to reoccupy. Because we don't perform remediation ourselves, the verification stays independent of the remediation contractor's interests, which is what insurers and tenants look for.

We work the whole foothill corridor out of Tujunga — Sunland, Shadow Hills, Lake View Terrace, Sun Valley, Pacoima, and east into La Crescenta and La Cañada Flintridge, with Glendale and Burbank on the other side of the Verdugos. It matters that these are different problems within a few miles of each other. Up here the water arrives from above: canyon runoff, failed hillside drains, and slopes that shed storms faster than they used to since the fires. Drop down toward Hansen Dam and Pacoima and the ground flattens into deep alluvial fan deposits, where the housing is post-war slab-on-grade and moisture tends to come up through the slab or in at the perimeter rather than down the hill. Same inspection process, different places to point the meter. Appointments are usually same-day, and we answer emergency calls around the clock.

On a Tujunga hillside or canyon property it is the most useful thing you can spend a contingency period on, because so much of what determines the risk is invisible in a summer walkthrough. We look at where the water is meant to go: terrace and area drains, the outlets that should be daylighting downhill, subdrains behind retaining walls, and whether the pad still slopes away from the house after decades of settlement. Inside, we read moisture at the base of uphill walls and in any lower level or garage cut into the slope, and we go into crawl spaces rather than describing them from the hatch. Older Tujunga homes have usually been added onto more than once, often by owners, and the seams between the original house and that work are where storm water gets in. Buying between May and October means you cannot watch the water move — so we read the evidence it leaves: staining, efflorescence, silt lines, and rust at the base of framing.

They do, and usually not in the way people expect. Homes that survive a fire still take on water — from suppression hose streams driven under eaves and into attic vents, from roof damage nobody noticed while the smoke was the emergency, and from the season that follows, because a burn scar sheds rain instead of absorbing it. The Station Fire in 2009, the Creek Fire above Sunland-Tujunga in 2017, and the La Tuna Fire on the Verdugo side that same year all sent water and sediment down slopes that had held it before. The second thing we sort out is odor: smoke residue and mold both read as musty, and owners frequently attribute one to the other. Testing separates them, which matters for an insurance claim, since the two are handled differently. If your home sits in or below a burn area, the attic, the uphill wall, and any crawl space are the first places to check.

Someone with no stake in the outcome, which is the whole reason we stay out of remediation. Post-remediation verification happens while containment is still standing: a visual check that the affected materials actually came out, moisture readings confirming the assembly has dried to a normal range rather than merely looking dry, and air samples run against an outdoor baseline taken the same day. If a contractor inspects, removes, and then clears their own work, none of those three steps means much. There is a Tujunga-specific wrinkle worth knowing. When the source was hillside drainage, a canyon-facing wall, or storm intrusion at an addition, clearing the air in August tells you the cleanup was done — not that the water is fixed. The real test comes with the first significant storm, so if the drainage repair was deferred, plan on a follow-up moisture check that winter rather than assuming the file is closed.

Start by knowing what does not exist: California has no state license for mold inspection or assessment, so there is no license number to look up the way there is for a contractor. That puts the burden on you. Ask for third-party certification through a recognized body, proof of general liability and errors-and-omissions coverage, and confirmation that samples go to an independent, accredited laboratory under a documented chain of custody rather than to something in-house. Ask directly whether the company also sells remediation — if it does, the person defining the scope of work is also bidding it. Be skeptical of anyone offering an instant pass-or-fail verdict on the spot, since the state sets no numeric exposure limits for mold and interpretation always depends on the outdoor baseline. For Tujunga specifically, ask whether they will actually enter crawl spaces, walk a slope, and pull the drain outlets — a hillside inspection done from the driveway is not an inspection.

Tujunga sits inside the City of Los Angeles, which gives you more to work with than tenants in the unincorporated areas nearby. Habitability complaints go to the Los Angeles Housing Department, whose inspectors can cite a substandard condition, and most buildings put up before October 1978 fall under the city's rent stabilization ordinance. State law backs this up: visible mold has been listed as a substandard housing condition in California's Health and Safety Code since 2016, so the age of the building is no defense. Practically, build the record. Give written notice and keep a copy, photograph the growth with dates, and get an independent inspection with moisture readings and lab-analyzed samples — a report from a company that does not sell remediation is hard to wave off as a sales pitch. Much of Tujunga's rental stock is converted garages, back houses, and lower levels dug into a slope, and those are exactly the spaces where we find genuine, documentable problems.

They deserve the closest look on the property. Tujunga's deep lots and long history of owner-built work mean an unusual concentration of converted garages, back houses, and rooms added on across the decades, plenty of it done without permits and later sold as finished square footage. A garage slab was poured to be hosed out: no vapor barrier under it and a slope toward the driveway. Put flooring, framing, and drywall on that and ground moisture moves straight up into the new assembly. Additions bring their own weak point at the roof-to-wall transition, where old and new construction meet and flashing is either wrong or missing. On a sloped Tujunga lot, a room cut into the hillside behind the house is worse still, because the uphill wall is holding back wet ground with no waterproofing or drainage designed for the job. We meter those walls, check the transitions, and trace where the addition sends its roof water before anything else.

No, and the two are often bought together. A general home inspection covers the whole property at a broad level — structure, roof, electrical, plumbing, appliances — and reports what a trained generalist can see. Mold is outside that scope, which is why home inspection reports so often end with a line like "evidence of past moisture, recommend evaluation by a specialist." That evaluation is what we do: moisture mapping with thermal imaging and meters, inspection of the concealed areas where water collects, and air or surface samples analyzed by an accredited lab. We don't perform general home inspections, so nothing in our report is padded to justify a second visit. On a Tujunga hillside or canyon property in escrow, buyers commonly run both, with the home inspection covering condition and ours covering moisture.

Most of what we find in Tujunga was never visible to the owner. The area's older houses have been added onto and remodeled repeatedly over the decades, and the seams between original structure and later work — where a room was extended, a porch enclosed, a bathroom relocated — are where water gets in and then has nowhere to dry. Shaded canyon lots compound it, because a north-facing or heavily vegetated property stays damp for days after a storm that dries a sunnier lot in hours. Finding that means instruments rather than eyes: thermal imaging to spot the temperature signature of wet material behind a finished surface, moisture meters to confirm it, and where needed a small-diameter probe or wall-cavity air sample to check inside an assembly without opening it up.

We inspect and test; we never remove. Mold removal is construction work — containment, demolition of affected materials, drying — and it belongs to a remediation contractor. Keeping the two apart protects you twice over. Before the work, our report defines the actual affected area so contractors bid against a fixed scope rather than their own guess. After the work, we can return to verify the result independently, which means something precisely because we had no part in performing it and no stake in it passing. If you've already been handed a remediation quote by a company that also did your inspection, a second opinion on the scope is usually worth the inspection fee on its own.

Stop, close the room off, and leave it undisturbed. "Black mold" is a colloquial label rather than a species, and dark growth is far more often a common household mold than the Stachybotrys people are picturing — but neither you nor an inspector can tell them apart by sight, only a lab can. Scrubbing or bleaching it before anyone samples it releases spores through the house and destroys the evidence needed to scope any cleanup. Shut down heating or cooling that circulates air through the affected room, photograph what you see, and get surface and air samples taken. Then deal with the water: in Tujunga that is usually storm intrusion at a hillside wall, a roof or flashing failure, or a leak inside an older addition. Cleanup without fixing the source only resets the clock.

Not for the question you're actually asking. The petri-dish and instant-result kits sold at hardware stores will grow something in essentially any home, because mold spores are present in all indoor air everywhere — so a positive result tells you nothing about whether your house has a problem. What makes a professional air sample meaningful is a calibrated volume of air, a matching outdoor sample taken the same day as a baseline, and analysis by an accredited lab that reports genera and concentrations. A kit gives you none of those, and more importantly it can't tell you where the water is. Every mold problem is a moisture problem, and finding the source is the part that determines what the repair actually costs.