This trade has a wider spread of competence than most, partly because the customer is usually anxious and rarely knows what to ask. Here is what to ask.
1. What is your TDLR licence number?
Texas licenses mold assessment and remediation, and licences are searchable on the TDLR public register. Ask for the number rather than accepting "licensed and insured", which is a phrase.
Then check the type matches the work. An assessment consultant licence is not a remediation contractor licence.
Bad answer: vagueness, or a general contractor licence offered in its place.
2. Is this job above or below 25 contiguous square feet?
The threshold that determines whether licensed remediation is required in Texas. A contractor should measure and tell you which side you are on, because it changes the process, the documentation and the price.
Bad answer: not knowing what you are referring to.
3. Where is the water coming from, and is fixing it in your price?
The most important question on the list. Remediation without a repair to the source is temporary, and the repair may be a plumber, a roofer or an HVAC contractor rather than the remediator.
Bad answer: a quote for removal with no identified source, or "we'll see once we open it" as the whole answer.
4. Will the work area be contained and under negative pressure?
Sealed containment, HEPA filtration exhausting outside, and HVAC openings in the area sealed. This is the step that separates remediation from cleaning, and it is the most common thing missing from a cheap quote.
Without it, cutting drywall distributes spores through the whole house and converts a one-room problem into a whole-house one.
Bad answer: "we'll tape plastic over the doorway".
5. How far past the visible damage will you cut, and why?
The correct answer involves moisture readings — cutting to a defined distance past the last elevated reading, and back to a framing member.
Bad answer: cutting to the edge of the stain. Visible growth is always smaller than actual growth, and material left behind the new board keeps growing.
6. How will you know when it is dry?
Moisture content readings on each affected material, compared to an unaffected reference of the same material in the same building, logged daily until they hold.
Bad answer: a fixed number of days. Drying to a schedule rather than to a standard is how framing gets sealed up wet.
7. Who performs the clearance testing?
An independent assessor, and on licensed work in Texas that independence is required. The person checking the work should not be the person paid for it.
Ask also when it happens: with the containment still up and before any rebuild.
Bad answer: "we do our own", or clearance scheduled after reconstruction.
8. Does this price include putting the room back?
Reconstruction is frequently larger than the remediation and is often quoted separately. A remediation-only number next to a remediation-plus-rebuild number is not a comparison.
Bad answer: ambiguity. Get it in writing either way.
9. What documentation will I have at the end?
Assessment and protocol, photographs, moisture and drying logs, disposal records where relevant, the clearance report, and on licensed work the Texas Certificate of Mold Damage Remediation.
That file is what you hand an insurer, a buyer or a tenant. It is a substantial part of what you are paying for.
Bad answer: an invoice.
10. What would you tell me not to do?
Our favourite question, because of what it reveals.
A contractor who has never advised a customer against work has either never met a small problem or does not mention them. Surface growth on bathroom grout is a cleaning and ventilation job. A good contractor says so.
Bad answer: finding a containment job every time.
Warning signs beyond the answers
Free testing bundled with a remediation quote. The person deciding how much work is needed should not be the person paid for it.
A species named on sight. Nobody can identify an organism visually, and using the word for effect before any sampling is a sales technique.
A quoted safe limit. No regulatory threshold for indoor spore concentrations exists in the United States. Anyone citing one is inventing it.
Health claims. Nobody in this trade is qualified to tell you what a finding means for a specific person.
Pressure to sign today, or a discount that expires. A genuine emergency needs water extracted today; it does not need a remediation contract signed today.
Door-knocking after a storm. Some are legitimate and many are not. Check the licence before anything else.
What a good conversation sounds like
They ask more questions than they answer at first. When it started, what it smells like and when, what has leaked, whether anyone is symptomatic, how the property is used.
They measure before they quote. They explain which side of the licensing threshold you are on. They tell you what the water source appears to be and what fixing it involves, including where that is somebody else's trade.
And they are willing to tell you that part of what you asked about does not need them.
See mold inspection and what mold removal costs.
Get a free assessment
Tell us what you are seeing and where. We come out, find the moisture source, and put the scope and the price in writing before anything is torn out.