We have some students in a rental complaining about mold growth. A few weeks back they said there was "black stuff" on the vent in a bathroom.

Thankfully HVAC summer maintenance visit was upcoming. He checked everything out and said no visible signs of mold or mildew in the unit anywhere. But the bathrooms were dirty and the air filter was disgusting. Hadn't been changed in a long time, full of bugs and cat hair (see the pic). Believes the black coloring is due to dirty conditions and condensation from showering.

After we told them all of this they didn't respond for days. Then sent a picture of a mold test they bought off Amazon saying it's positive and they've been experiencing "mold poisoning symptoms" like SOB/wheezing.

Given the filter was horrific and the bathroom dirty as hell I think this is ridiculous. But they won't drop it. They want us to get some sort of mold specialist out for an inspection.

What are you doing in this situation? They just renewed for another year

Beckdiesel03 said:

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Mold people are the worst. My experience is from working for a City with a lot of low income apartments. Its normally people behind on rent wanting to not get kicked out, or it is people trying to get out of their lease early. It seems to be that since they renewed the lease, they might be using this as a way to force you into giving them a discount or not dinging them on deposit...IDK, but like the poster said above, if they are disgusting I would consider cutting your ties with them.

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What's weird is they have always been on time and we've had zero issues before with that. Not a low income area.

When we did a walkthrough in November things looked pretty clean. 1 room wasn't great but still not bad.

You could be right on trying to use this as leverage since they renewed.


My hesitation with cutting ties is that school starts in < 2 months and it'd be scramble to find replacements. We aren't local which makes it tough.

I also don't want to fork over money for a mold inspection, particularly if we're required to share results with them

Just went thru this in our house. If it is only on the bathroom vent the mold is definitely from condensation/humidity from showering. Have them to run the exhaust fan in the bathroom for an hour or whatever after they are done showering.

If the mold is on multiple vents in the house it & not inside the ducting(your AC guy verified that) then it is from condensation from the cold air in the duct hitting the unsealed(caulked) box (in the attic) that the ceiling vent screws to. The condensations sits on the vents & then mold grows. It's more of a dry mildew.......

We had our vents sealed & this fixed our issues.

You've done all that is needed. If I showed up & found a clogged filter & knew the "mold" was in the bathroom I would've simply given them some ready materials(should be in a standard TREC lease) on changing the filter monthly (at a minimum) & running the exhaust fan.

I had a client (very smart guy) that was convinced the house he moved into had mold issues because of crap like this.

Got some "clean air specialist" come and install a bunch of UV nonsense. Basically told me his inspector dropped the ball because he didn't crawl through the ductwork, Bruce Willis style.

You never know what's going to set people off.

Thanks for the reply.

Who did you vent sealing, AC guy?

I'll look around for those forms related to TREC filter changing, etc. Not finding them right away but I'll look again. Still can't believe they'd complain about breathing problems and not start at the filter.

I'll be pretty firm but if they push back maybe sealing the vents will shut them up for awhile.

They aren't forms, they are line items in the standard trec lease agreement.

I had a tenant mention this because of one vent and had to talk her off the ledge because I had JUST had an AC guy look at my system and that seemed to alleviate her fears.

Gotcha. I'll look there. Appreciate it.

Yes, AC guy did the sealing.