Mold Inspection & Testing
in Greater Austin
A licensed assessment, lab-analysed samples and a written report you can act on.
You can smell something musty and you cannot find it. Or there is a stain on the ceiling and nobody can tell you whether it matters. Or you are buying a house and the inspector wrote one line about moisture. What you need is somebody who will find where the water is coming from and write it down.
Who Does the Inspection
Nathan, A2Z's founder, is a Texas Licensed Mold Assessment Consultant. Before he moved into full-time contracting he built a mold inspection and indoor environmental company and ran it for thirteen years.
- 15,000+residential mold inspections in Texas he has been part of since 2007
- ~1,000homes he inspected himself, plus hotels, apartment buildings, government offices and fire stations
- 3appearances before the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, representing the mold industry
He and his consultants inspected hundreds of schools and thousands of homes after Hurricane Harvey and after the Austin and Houston floods of 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018. He trained dozens of the consultants who worked for him, from a manual he wrote. His 2014 testimony was part of the Sunset review that became Senate Bill 202 — the law that moved mold regulation in Texas from the Department of State Health Services to the Department of Licensing and Regulation.
What You Get
- A licensed assessment, not a sales call
- Moisture readings and thermal imaging, so we look where water goes
- Samples analysed by a Texas-licensed laboratory
- A written report, and a remediation protocol if one is needed
- Post-remediation clearance after someone else has done the work
We Assess. We Do Not Remediate.
A2Z does not do mold removal, and neither does any company Nathan has an interest in. That is not a selling point — it is Texas law, and it binds every licensed assessor in the state. Under 16 TAC Chapter 78, the party who assesses a mold project cannot remediate it, and nobody may hold an interest in both companies.
What it means for you is straightforward: when we tell you how much needs to come out, we are not quoting the job. If remediation is needed we write the protocol, a licensed remediation contractor does the work, and we can come back for the clearance assessment afterwards.
About the Testing
Sampling is not always necessary. Where mold is visible and the moisture source is obvious, a sample often tells you nothing you could not already see, and EPA says so plainly. Where it earns its keep is when you need to know whether what is in the air is normal, or whether something is hidden.
When we do sample there is always an outdoor control. An indoor spore count on its own is a number with nothing to compare it against, which is why two samples is the practical minimum. More rooms in question means more samples.
There is no pass or fail number for mold. No federal or Texas standard sets a safe airborne level, so anyone telling you a result is "above the limit" is describing a limit that does not exist. What a sample does is compare one space with another.
What It Costs
Quotes for a mold inspection around Austin run from roughly $300 to $900, and most people are never told why. Here are our prices.
one known area, such as a single roomfrom $275
up to 2,500 sq ft$450
2,500 to 3,500 sq ft$575
3,500 to 5,000 sq ft$725
air, surface or bulk — sampling media and laboratory analysis included$96
Every inspection comes with a detailed mold inspection report: the data collected on site, a summary of conclusions, and recommendations. Over 5,000 sq ft, call and we will quote it.
What moves the number
- The size of the house, and how many areas are in question
- One room with a known leak is a different job from a whole house with a smell nobody can place. That is the difference between the limited and the full-house inspection above.
- How many samples
- Each one is a lab fee plus the time to collect it properly. The outdoor control is not optional.
- The lab
- Reading a sample costs us $40 to $75, and that is inside the $96. You will not find a separate lab line on our invoice, or a mark-up on one.
- Access
- Crawlspaces, attics and anything that has to be opened up take longer.
- Whether you need a protocol
- If remediation is required, the written protocol a contractor works from is a separate piece of work.
When You Do Not Need an Inspection
If the mold covers less than 25 contiguous square feet and you know where the water came from, Texas does not require a licensed anybody — you may clean it up yourself, and for a patch behind a sink that is usually the sensible answer. Fix the leak first, or it comes back.
Call us when it is bigger than that, when you cannot find the source, when someone in the house is unwell, or when a sale or an insurance claim means it needs documenting by somebody licensed.
Read It Yourself First
We publish a reference library on mold and indoor air quality: the full text of the Texas mold rules and the Occupations Code chapter behind them, EPA and CDC guidance, a glossary, and plain answers to the questions people actually ask. None of it is behind a form.
Book an Inspection
We cover Southwest Austin, Bee Cave, West Lake Hills, Lakeway, Driftwood, Dripping Springs, Wimberley, Buda, Kyle and the Canyon Lake area.