Thursday, March 08, 2007

The Mould Hunter

Every year my wife points out the (small) area of mould high up on the wall (11ft stud in this room) of one of out lounges. It’s an outside wall, and she says, every year, that perhaps there’s a leak in the spouting in that area, or that water is accumulating in the spouting there.
We used to blame it on the gas heater, something we’ve long stopped using. I liked gas heaters but sometimes there was a smell that permeated and became intolerable after a while. Usually it was a problem with the heater rather than the gas. I liked them because they were close to open fires in ‘feel.’ Open fires – I miss ‘em. We used to have two in our house: one was absolutely pathetic, but it survived quite some time. The other we got rid of early in the piece when we made two rooms into one. But there’s nothing quite like an open fire. (Now with global warming stuff going on all around us, open fires in houses are almost unheard of.)
Back to the mould. I came across the New Jersey Mould Company (sorry, guys, I can’t spell mould the way you spell it – it just don’t look right at my end of the world). And when I checked out their site, lo and behold they have a Mould Dog.
I quote, "Traditional mould sampling won't find the mould hiding inside your walls. Hunter the mould dog will."
I’ve included a picture of Hunter, who looks like a nice friendly feller. The people at NJMC go on to say: "Dogs have been trusted for hundreds of years to detect and locate things that humans can’t find. Since 2003 we have been using specially-trained dogs, trained just like bomb dogs or drug dogs, to detect and locate the source of mould growth by detecting the gasses (MVOC’s) mould growth gives off."
I find this most intriguing. I’m not sure that Hunter would have much trouble tracking down the annual mould at our place – although he might have a bit of trouble reaching it…! However, he might also find mould we hadn’t discovered ourselves. Now that would really give my wife something to "mention" each year!
The NJMC has a link to a very interesting article on the use of dogs in tracking down mould. Well worth a look.

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