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Serving Maryland
Growth in the air handler or duct liner does not stay in one room — it gets distributed to every register in the building.
Free inspection in Maryland
Pick a time on the calendar, or call and we will get you in today.
Pick an inspection timeActive water right now? Call 202-798-7663 instead of booking a slot — mold starts in 24–48 hours.
If the musty smell gets stronger when the system runs, the system is the suspect. Condensate pans that do not drain, wet insulation on the coil side of the plenum, and porous internal duct liner in a humid basement all colonize, and then the blower distributes what is growing there to every room on the run.
This is also the failure mode that turns a contained problem into a whole-house one. A return vent in a room with active growth pulls spores directly into the system, which is why we shut the HVAC down during any containment work.
The Maryland suburbs give us the widest range of building types in the region, and each one fails differently. Silver Spring and Takoma Park run to pre-war bungalows with dirt-floor crawl spaces and no vapor barrier. Bethesda and Rockville are dense with 1990s and 2000s additions where the new roofline was tied into the old one badly and the valley flashing has been leaking into a knee wall ever since. Across Prince George's, the split-levels and ramblers of Hyattsville, Bowie, and Upper Marlboro were built with the finished lower level half a story down — so a single sump failure or a storm-driven backup wets a full floor of carpet, drywall, and framing in a night.
Pricing
Maryland jobs usually land mid-range. Because the rebuild has to be performed by an MHIC-licensed contractor, we price removal and reconstruction together rather than leaving you a second contract to go find.
| Scope | Typical range |
|---|---|
| System inspection with coil and plenum accessCredited against the work | $200 – $450 |
| Coil, plenum, and air handler remediation | $800 – $2,500 |
| Full duct cleaning with HEPA and antimicrobialVaries with system size and register count | $700 – $2,000 |
| Porous duct liner or flex run replacementLiner that has colonized cannot be cleaned | $1,500 – $6,000 |
| Condensate drain correction and pan replacementThe usual root cause | $250 – $900 |
Typical range for this market — not a quote. Every property is different, and the number that matters is the written scope you get after the free inspection.
Code & regulation
Maryland does not license mold remediation as its own trade, but home improvement work on a Maryland residence must be performed by a contractor licensed by the Maryland Home Improvement Commission — and the repair and rebuild that follow remediation fall squarely inside that requirement. This distinction is where most Maryland mold jobs stall: a remediation-only outfit can legally tear out your wet drywall and then leave you with an open wall and a second contractor to find. Because we are a licensed general contractor first, tear-out, the repair that stopped the water, and the rebuild sit under one contract.
Montgomery County's Department of Permitting Services and Prince George's County's Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement handle building permits for their jurisdictions, with Howard and Charles counties running their own. Remediation does not require a permit; structural repair and reconstruction involving plumbing or electrical generally do. Montgomery County in particular enforces its own housing standards on top of the state code, which matters for rental property.
Maryland law treats serious mold as a condition affecting habitability, and county housing codes — Montgomery County's in particular — give tenants a route to enforcement when a landlord does not act on written notice. As in the other two jurisdictions, the leverage on both sides is documentation: dated written notice from the tenant, and a dated independent assessment and clearance report from the landlord.
Before we arrive
In order. The first two matter more than everything after them.
Why Maryland specifically
The Maryland suburbs give us the widest range of building types in the region, and each one fails differently. Silver Spring and Takoma Park run to pre-war bungalows with dirt-floor crawl spaces and no vapor barrier. Bethesda and Rockville are dense with 1990s and 2000s additions where the new roofline was tied into the old one badly and the valley flashing has been leaking into a knee wall ever since. Across Prince George's, the split-levels and ramblers of Hyattsville, Bowie, and Upper Marlboro were built with the finished lower level half a story down — so a single sump failure or a storm-driven backup wets a full floor of carpet, drywall, and framing in a night.
How the work runs
No hand-offs, no second contractor to hire for the rebuild, and no testing done by the same people who did the removal.
A licensed technician walks the property with moisture meters and a thermal camera, finds the water source, maps the affected square footage, and photographs everything your insurer will ask about.
You get a written scope and line-item estimate the same day, built in the estimating format carriers expect — plus the photo log and moisture readings that support the claim.
The work area is sealed in 6-mil poly with a negative-air machine and HEPA filtration so spores are not pushed into the rest of the house while we work.
Non-salvageable porous material is cut out and bagged, framing and salvageable assemblies are HEPA-vacuumed and treated with an EPA-registered antimicrobial, then the space is dried to a documented moisture target.
An independent hygienist samples the area and issues a clearance report. We do not test our own work — the document is yours, and it is what a buyer, a lender, or a tenant will accept.
Remediation without repair guarantees a callback. We correct the roof, siding, window, flashing, or grading failure that let water in — then put the drywall, paint, and flooring back.
Straight answers
On its own, usually not — a cleaning that leaves the wet coil or the failed condensate drain in place is temporary. As part of correcting the moisture source, it is necessary.
Rigid metal duct cleans well. Porous internal liner and older flex that has colonized generally has to be replaced, because the growth is inside the material rather than on it.
The tell is that the odor tracks with the system: stronger a few minutes after it kicks on, present at registers in rooms with no other moisture problem, and evenly distributed rather than concentrated in one place.
What we do
Every service page carries the typical price range, what the code requires in that jurisdiction, and the steps to take before anyone arrives.
Moisture mapping, thermal imaging, and independent lab sampling — so you know what you have before anyone sells you a remediation.
See pricing & steps →Containment, negative air, removal, and independent clearance — with the leak that caused it repaired under the same contract.
See pricing & steps →Stachybotrys handled to the same containment standard as everything else — because the response does not change with the species.
See pricing & steps →The most common mold job in the DMV — finished lower levels built tight against below-grade block, with no drainage correction.
See pricing & steps →Vented dirt crawl spaces in a Mid-Atlantic summer are mold factories. Removal, then encapsulation so it stays fixed.
See pricing & steps →Almost always a roof leak or a ventilation failure. We remove the growth and correct whichever one caused it.
See pricing & steps →24/7 emergency extraction and structural drying — the 24-to-48 hour window where a water loss has not become a mold loss yet.
See pricing & steps →Growth in the air handler or duct liner does not stay in one room — it gets distributed to every register in the building.
See pricing & steps →Free, written, no obligation. If it turns out you do not have a mold problem, we will tell you that and leave — it costs you nothing to find out.