#46 | Design, Testing & Remediation: The Truth About Mould with Bryan Jepsen

Jess Kismet (00:00)
Hello and welcome to The Building Sciology Poddie where we talk about better buildings to live and breathe in. My name is Jess Kismet and I'm your host thank you so much for joining us today. Before we get started please hit the follow button on your chosen platform if you're liking the content so far and leave a five star review. Today we are diving into

mould

indoor air quality, HVAC hygiene and water damage, all the things that can make a building and the people inside it really unwell. My guest is Brian Jepson. He is an indoor environmental consultant and the founder of Keystone Environmental based in Brisbane. He is the current president of the Indoor Air Quality Association of Australia and also one of my lecturers in the advanced diploma of building biology that I have been studying recently. Welcome Bryan

Bryan Jepsen (00:42)
Thank you for the invite.

Jess Kismet (00:45)
No worries. Alright, so could you please give us a quick bit of background on you? Career highlights, just so we can get to know you a bit and find out how you ended up specialising in mould.

Bryan Jepsen (00:57)
Yeah, so I won't bore everybody too badly.

My journey into mould was rather elongated. So I came out of school and I studied plumbing. So I am a qualified plumber. I specialized in a form of plumbing called mechanical servicing. And what that entails is essentially installations of large systems. So they go into large commercial buildings, hospitals, universities, the bigger kind of buildings. And what happened through that time,

got my qualification in trade and shortly after that the GFC hit in 2008 and a lot of construction stopped.

through bit of bouncing around and things like that, I found myself in a job that opened my eyes to the indoor environment that I hadn't really ever considered before. And that was through doing HVAC hygiene audits where you assess the air conditioning system and you find out if there are any risks of mould or damage to the system itself and it's not gonna fix. Because what I was also doing with that then at the same time

was I was certifying clean rooms. So the clean rooms would be operating theatres, pharmaceutical manufacturers, electronics manufacturing and servicing, really clean environments. I was brought in to certify that they met the certain code that they had to meet. And through that, I was sampling bacteria and mould amongst other things, particles, temperature, humidity, these kinds of things.

And I realised I didn't know enough about what I was actually sampling. So what I did was I reached out to the then serving president, Dr. Claire Bird of the Indoor Air Quality Association, for which you mentioned I am now the president for all of.

11, 12 years after I reached out to her for the first time probably. And speaking with her opened my eyes up to the mould industry a lot more and mould analysis. I also realised that there was no qualification true to what I was doing. And so I started building biology.

That is a tertiary qualification as you are doing. So I finished that in

Jess Kismet (03:27)
Thank

Bryan Jepsen (03:28)
2016, I believe I finished that. And then have been around that world for a little while now. Worked with Dr. Heidke Newmeister Kemp, who wrote the Australian Mould Guideline book. And then soon after that, started my own businesses. Being the consulting firm, Keystone Environmental and a mould laboratory

Oceanic Laboratory Initiative and then have been around doing this for a while now but my career has brought me to be in a place to look at different policy kinds of things now especially being quite heavily involved in the association and setting up white papers and position papers for the industry and

best practice in all of that. So that brings me to today pretty much where those two businesses are still operating. And I also now, as you mentioned, lecture at the TAFE that I studied the building biology course with doing the advanced mould technician training where I met you, which was a pleasure. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (04:36)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Likewise. So, quite a journey. you did your, when you say TAFE, did you do the same course that I'm doing right now through with Nicole?

Bryan Jepsen (04:51)
Yeah, ultimately it was the same course. It was a bit more dialed back to what you have now. You now

Jess Kismet (04:57)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (04:58)
have a diploma, whereas for myself back then it was a Cert IV. So it

Jess Kismet (05:02)
Mm, okay.

Bryan Jepsen (05:04)
had less modules in what you're doing now. However, it was the highest qualification you could have hoped to do when you were doing mould

and moisture testing in anything. So it does cover a much broader, as you know, building biology covers so many other broad topics, water quality, general air quality, HVAC.

hygiene

into a level. Materials, building materials, it can go into all the weird and wonderfuls as well, EMF and all these sorts of stuff, is where now Dr. Nicole Bilsma had her PhD in the EMF space. yeah, it covers a really broad spectrum of what building biology does, but I don't do all of building biology myself.

Jess Kismet (05:55)
which is to me the most fascinating part of all of it.

Bryan Jepsen (05:58)
Yeah, I primarily

focus on the mould, HVAC side of it all. Yeah, that's where I decided that my passion was.

Jess Kismet (06:04)
I

think it's a place that people don't think of mould appearing. You don't think about mould appearing in air conditioning systems. I didn't.

Bryan Jepsen (06:15)
Hmm.

Jess Kismet (06:17)
But there's a lot of moisture, lot of temperature differences and things going on in there, so it made sense to reason, right?

Bryan Jepsen (06:25)
Yeah, well it amplified more in my eyes and pushed me towards wanting to learn more because when I was certifying these operating theatres, right, where people have surgery and their hepa filtration that blows onto the surgery floor in a laminar flow, their filters were getting mouldy because of the moisture and then they would ask the question, why is it getting mouldy? And so they would need an answer.

Jess Kismet (06:53)
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Bryan Jepsen (06:54)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (06:55)
You don't want mould in an operating theater. No. Okay,

Bryan Jepsen (06:57)
You don't know. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (07:01)
so what actually is mould? Like, how does it grow? What does it need to survive? Because

Bryan Jepsen (07:04)
What is mould? How does it grow?

Jess Kismet (07:07)
how does the garden grow? No, because I think a lot of people think it's just just it's like it's

Bryan Jepsen (07:10)
yeah, you're right.

Jess Kismet (07:11)
just a thing you can just like clean, wipe off. But it's so much more complicated than that, isn't it?

Bryan Jepsen (07:18)
Yeah,

it's it is at its core biology. There are other elements of air quality that we deal with that are almost singular in their approaches, where say for example, if there was asbestos or silica particular in the air, or a material that has it.

they don't go far and they don't do anything when they do land where biology doesn't act like an inert object such as these things.

and mould being biological and if we can understand that biology is although it follows a pattern isn't always perfect it has its own Volatilities to it. You don't always get born with ten fingers and ten toes. So biology can sometimes take a path

unpredictable path that way. But mould is actually closer to us as human beings than bacteria is. So we don't create our own food and neither does mould. So mould requires a food source and an environment to promote itself for growth. So like we would have to hunt and gather, it has to hunt and gather in its own way, even though it doesn't have a brain. It's probably up there is one of the most smartest and

resilient organisms this planet has. It's fascinating. It is really a pleasure to work with it. But how does the garden grow? I've come to understand there are about six factors in mould growth.

Three of them are critical and essential for its growth. And then the other three are variables in there. So what it does need, what is essential, is it needs the mould organism itself. So it doesn't grow if it doesn't exist either there on the surface or on the air. So one, needs itself. Now that can happen in total population as well for a larger concentration of itself. It means that the higher chance it will have to succeed in promoting its own.

species if it were.

The spores don't know that they have other friends and spores that are spread out when mould goes crazy. Its whole purpose is to survive for the species sake. So it is one singular mission and it doesn't care where or how it does it. So it'll go everywhere and anywhere, spread out and hopefully keep its whole civilization alive if it were. So one, you have that concentration, the actual organism itself, and then you have moisture. We talk a lot about the moisture.

part of everything. One of the main reasons we talk about moisture is because it's one of the things we can somewhat control in the built environment. can, we know when water, where there's too much water, there might be a leak or water coming from the inside out or outside in. Condensation can happen. Other things can cause this available moisture. So when mould has an available moisture, it then has its organism itself and it's got

then two of the parts so like fire and how it has the the triangle where you need the fuel you need the ignition source and then you need the what's the other one i forget what the other one is do you remember the other one is oxygen yeah there you go smart and actually

Jess Kismet (10:43)
So, Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (10:48)
oxygen is one of the variables for mould but we'll get to that one so

Jess Kismet (10:51)
you

Bryan Jepsen (10:52)
if you break if you break the triangle of these essential

parts for mould growth, that being the mould itself, if you can get rid of the mould.

So that can happen if you already have contamination, can remove it and reduce its total concentration, therefore reducing its opportunity. We can manage the moisture. We can do that in a lot of buildings. However, some buildings aren't built the best and are vulnerable to this. And the other part is the substrate. It needs its food. It needs its nutrients. And so that then it grows on that substrate. That substrate can look like most anything that is organic and needs to be decayed ultimately.

is

the role of fungi is to break down organic material. on the outside, maccas for mould, yeah, well, there's, there's diff, there's, there's some

Jess Kismet (11:37)
Nicole calls it Mac is for mould.

Bryan Jepsen (11:42)
materials that really, really give mould the run, but yeah, so on the outside environment where mould is quite prolific, that would break down leaves and animals and

all that organic matter. Otherwise, if it wasn't around, our leaves would just continue to pile up and we'd be choking on the stuff by the end of it. So the reason why leaves don't exist anymore is because mould has eaten it.

But the problem comes when it happens on the inside. So on the inside we can have other building materials and we can have dust and debris that can be there. So whatever substrate there is that if it is present plus moisture or that available moisture and also the organism itself, then the opportunity arises. So that's the triangle. And then there are the variabilities that come into it after that. And so that can include the climate. So there are

far less concentrations of mould in Antarctica, for example, than there might be in the tropics. So there are particular climates that mould prefers to grow in, and that can also happen in our environments, our homes, our businesses, where the indoor environment can provide certain climates that are favorable for it. And because, like I said earlier, mould is more similar to us than it is bacteria, if we can survive and thrive in it, so can mould.

Jess Kismet (13:09)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (13:10)
yeah the other the other big part to this is time.

If we allow mould time, it will continue to proliferate. It will go throughout. If it's got all of the factors involved in it, it can just run. So if we've got our triangle and time, will just, it'll continue to take over the whole world until it stops. Fortunately, we've got microbiomes that keep mould and bacteria and other organisms in a balance, but sometimes that can overrun and then mould will become the dominant organism and cause an imbalance.

or a dysbiosis in the environment and then it will just take over like snowball. And then the other variable is oxygen.

Jess Kismet (13:51)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (13:54)
It's a smaller, considerate one because you're not going to eliminate oxygen inside of your home because otherwise no one would live. But it doesn't mean that mould dies.

So when oxygen is removed from mould, so if it was to be thrown up into space in the vacuum of everything, it actually has the ability to survive on the spaceships. If it's brought back in time before it actually does break, then it'll survive. So even in oxygen, without oxygen, it may not be dead. So it is very resilient.

Jess Kismet (14:30)
Right, so

how long would mould live without oxygen?

Bryan Jepsen (14:35)
without oxygen from what I.

I read a study once, it was about the space station getting shot up, a space shuttle getting shot up, going to the space station and then coming back. But I think it's like,

Jess Kismet (14:48)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (14:49)
I think that was within a month and I remember one of them being the genus Trichoderma as one of the ones that survived. think Penicillium might have been also another one. But yeah, I think Trichoderma was one that...

went up with the space shuttle and also came back and was still viable and cultureable.

Jess Kismet (15:11)
month later.

Bryan Jepsen (15:13)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's about a month. So

Jess Kismet (15:14)
That's a long time.

Bryan Jepsen (15:16)
the oxygen part, we can't control that a heck of a lot. But that triangle, if we can do what we do with fire and we can eliminate and we can break that triangle, we're on a really good path to recovery. But it doesn't mean it dies. It just stays there because it is so resilient.

Jess Kismet (15:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So the

three were the spores themselves, the substrate and moisture. If we can break one of those three things.

Bryan Jepsen (15:35)
Yes, correct, available moisture.

Jess Kismet (15:39)
Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (15:41)
that breaks the cycle

quite quickly.

Jess Kismet (15:44)
Yes, but you say if those three things are present and then one of them disappears it doesn't mean that the mould disappears it

Bryan Jepsen (15:50)
Yes.

Jess Kismet (15:51)
just means that it stops growing.

Bryan Jepsen (15:53)
Correct, yes. It

Jess Kismet (15:55)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (15:55)
is a very, very strong and robust organism. It has cell walls that are strong. It can deal with temperature changes. can do all these things. can go, well, as we just go, it can go up into space and come back and still be okay. So

Jess Kismet (16:12)
Ha

Bryan Jepsen (16:13)
even though we break the cycle of growth, it doesn't mean that we've removed the risk entirely. Because if that was to be brought back.

Jess Kismet (16:21)
So prevention is better than cure is what you're saying

Brian.

Bryan Jepsen (16:25)
Always, always. We can't get rid of mould,

Jess Kismet (16:27)
Yes, boy.

Bryan Jepsen (16:29)
like mould molded is everywhere. But it's about dealing with those that triangle and the variables that come with it. If we can control those,

Jess Kismet (16:37)
Yep.

Bryan Jepsen (16:38)
we are then the dominant organism in the built environment.

Jess Kismet (16:43)
Okay, so if you had to boil it down to what you think the building conditions are that would reliably lead to mould, how much of that do you think is a portion to design, construct, and then occupant behavior? I know this is a bit of a tricky question, but it's an interesting one.

Bryan Jepsen (17:00)
Yeah,

no one's innocent in this whole thing at all. So the built environment can definitely be a problem and so can the occupants in this whole scenario. I think if I was to boil it down, it would simply be about opportunity.

So

say for example, a building is built amazingly and it's done the best it could ever do to stop mould and it was created in a bubble where it never happened or got impacted at all by water. And then someone is inside and they run the bath and the bath overflows, right? That's got nothing to do with how well the building was built. That's got to do with the occupant and the risk that they introduced to the whole space. So with that, the issue is that, then again,

Then the built environment, if the systems aren't designed well together as a unit, then the risk is on the building. Sometimes buildings are built damp.

So they are a stick frame at a time and period. might have a slab down. It rains and that moisture gets absorbed into the slab. Even though it's cured enough for you to build upon, it may still be so damp that it needs to evaporate into the building because it can't go anywhere. Once you enclose it, once it's closed in, maybe you can't do that anymore. So it's a little from column A, it's a little from column B, and it can be a combination of both because we might have a building that's designed to be used

particular way. So that might look like as we're dealing with, I guess, know, these, especially in your realm, energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is great, but it can provide an environment that if the occupant doesn't use it the way that it's designed, can then become a mould risk after that, or an air quality risk even for that after.

for other things, not even just mould.

So for that part, it's a bit of both. The National Construction Code has done well to try and start to address condensation, even though it did make a pretty solid error for certain climates where it turned them into a glad-wrapped box in a microwave, and it caused the condensation to rain within the roof cavities. I'm sure you've heard stories.

Jess Kismet (19:30)
Yeah, they're trying to fix that now.

Bryan Jepsen (19:33)
They are trying to fix that now. But sometimes the pendulum swings too far because someone doesn't think about one aspect and then it goes another way. Like I'm very tunnel visioned when it comes to microbial contamination. I will

Jess Kismet (19:47)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (19:48)
want a building built in a particular way that is impractical.

or is hard work for

Jess Kismet (19:54)
You

Bryan Jepsen (19:56)
a builder to do or a really difficult engineer. So I don't have

Jess Kismet (20:01)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (20:01)
all the answers, but I know what will cause it on that side of the thing without the consideration for a knock-on effect down the other end of the road. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (20:12)
And I think that's There's always going to be competing priorities, money being the biggest priority for most projects. So sometimes what we want,

Bryan Jepsen (20:19)
The budget is huge.

Jess Kismet (20:20)
like what I want and what you want, our designers and architects to put in our buildings, it's not always going to be practical, unfortunately. But from your perspective and all the things that you've seen and all the buildings that you've inspected, are there specific design or construction decisions that is made during

design or build that you reliably see create more

Bryan Jepsen (20:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Kismet (20:42)
problems. You five or 10 years you had a crystal ball and you were at a building site. What would you say

Bryan Jepsen (20:47)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (20:48)
to a builder or architect? And does that look different in Queensland compared to Adelaide, for example?

Bryan Jepsen (20:57)
Yeah.

I would have a lot to say to an architect, not to throw too much shade, but they have these grand ideas of design and beautification that can...

throw a building at real high risk. One real clear example of this is where they might have different angled roofing, right? One's up, one's down, one's flat, one's sideways. You've got this sail looking thing because of beauty. Now it does look good and maybe our construction code allows this, but these changes in angles in the roofing provide

real hotspots for where the roofing will fail. So say there's a strong wind in a particular direction or it catches the breeze and the wind, the water drives in, right? So I have a bit to say about architects and how far they go with the lack of consideration for extreme weather events, especially. But on the building side of things,

I, and do you know what, even this goes down to the councils. I once got really mad at a particular small town that got flooded. It wasn't super small, it's big enough, population of 200,000. It had a serious flood that went through it. And a lot of where it flooded was,

where houses were permitted to be built slab on ground in a floodplain. The council knew full well that it would flood at least once in 100 years, maybe once in 50 years, but they permitted the building to be built slab on ground instead of raised. You know, it's a simple consideration like that, that a policy, all right, a council might want their money because the more population they have in there, the more rates they can get, sure, but at least put a

caveat and what kind of building should be designed for the space that it's being built for. And that's one thing I feel like we've forgotten a lot. And to circle back to what you're talking about when it comes to location, you can't build a slab on grand house in a marshland. So you're not what might work in Sydney doesn't work in Darwin. What works in

WA where they're very dry they've got a double brick home it may not work on the other side of the country where monsoonal rains come through or whatever the story might be right and so it's

not

Jess Kismet (23:36)
Thank

Bryan Jepsen (23:37)
our current

pursuit of things with everything becoming more centralized, you you've got big designers, you've got big engineering firms and they go with the big builders, know, multi the national builders that just go this works. It's pretty, it sells well, it goes well, but then it doesn't account for the plot of land that it's on. Does it have

and underground water running through it. it have like, yeah, all right, you got to measure the soil and see if it's going to still stand. Sure, you can do the engineering, but does it account for where the wind comes from? Does it come from the East? Does it come from the West, North? How does it come through? Where is your building going to be hit when a storm comes through? Where does the sun happen? Like the arc of the sun, is it going to capture that and use a lot of the sun's energy in the right way? If you're in a colder climate,

Is it going to take on that latent heat into the building so that you don't have to use a lot of energy or if you need to expel a lot of that energy where the Sun is closer to the equator for example you want to build your building in that particular way and that Art of design doesn't exist in my opinion anymore. It is it's very generic how we go about it This meets the National Construction Code go life is good. It sells. It's pretty happy days and

Jess Kismet (25:04)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (25:04)
I feel like

that's a problem. know, we have in Queensland, as you mentioned, Queenslanders is a style of house that is built for Queensland for a reason. Now that was back before we understood a lot of the science behind it where they would cut down local trees and they would have local timbers that are already acclimatised to that space and all these sorts of things. And that was just happenstance, but it worked.

Now we've got a lot of science behind us and sometimes we get lot of nerds that have a great system on one side of a thing. So your area, right? You have this really great product that can...

be good for vapor barriers and moisture protection and all these sorts of things. A system that set up ABC, insulation here, this goes here, air gap here, and then all of a sudden the painter comes along and sticks on a paint that doesn't breathe. And all of a sudden, that very expensive, very cleverly designed wall has got glad wrap on the outside of it. It's just a plastic coating that the system then can't breathe any further the way that it was

actually meant to be designed and yes that can come like you said down to some of the budgetary kind of stuff but all it takes is a painter who has no idea about the system that's been cleverly put together and ruins it for everybody and then you've got interstitial condensation happening inside of the wall not because it was poorly designed in the first place but because something broke along the way because this whole system wasn't understood by all parties so

have problems with thermal bridging I have problems with moisture management around buildings I think to go back to the slab point of view I believe that buildings should be certified just like waterproofing is certified I think slabs and timber framing should be certified as dry before they have any linings put upon them

Jess Kismet (27:07)
mmm mmm yeah there's a actually

Bryan Jepsen (27:09)
one day.

Jess Kismet (27:10)
the episodes I'll put a link in the show notes for anyone listening just for the episode that was actually released today which will be some months ago by the time this is this episode is released but the episode not today this week an episode about concrete moisture moisture management and moisture testing in concrete slabs

So

Bryan Jepsen (27:29)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (27:30)
I'll put a link in the show notes to that episode if anyone wants to go back and listen to that because as you were mentioning earlier, yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (27:35)
Go check it out. I 100

% agree. Because the slab is a giant sponge. And

Jess Kismet (27:42)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (27:43)
it can hold so much water and it doesn't release it very quickly.

Jess Kismet (27:48)
No.

Bryan Jepsen (27:48)
The speed

in which we try and build homes, we're stacking it all together and then all of a sudden you're getting mould on the underside of bed frames because it's

Jess Kismet (27:57)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (27:57)
evaporating from the slab and it just happens to find the timber slats of a bed and then it goes moldy. So I problems. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (28:05)
Yeah,

yeah, I think there is a sector of the architecture profession and builders as well who are taking into account the sun and the wind and all those sorts of things but they're doing that more from a energy efficiency perspective and natural light perspective than they are a moisture perspective.

What you were saying about driving rain, getting into the building envelope and sun, your house in the southern hemisphere, your house is going to dry on the north side much quicker than it's going to dry on the south side. So all of those things...

need to be taken into consideration during design like for example one of my other guests another episode with Clarence McAllister which I will also link he pointed out to me one project he went to where the bathroom was a wet area on the south side of the building and he said that this particular building because it was on the south the timber framing underneath the floor because there was there must have been a moisture issue in a wet area a waterproofing issue that timber frame underneath the floor wasn't drying out because it was on the south side.

And as you sort of went from north to south in this building, the framing got more more rotten. So There's so many things about durability and moisture management that aren't taken into consideration during design and construct. And I am hoping that between you and me and other people in this area, we can start to change that understanding.

Bryan Jepsen (29:36)
Yeah, it's pod plus like what you're doing, getting such a broad spectrum of everyone like this. It brings to light the different facets for consideration, that's why it's a privilege to be here and share my little part of the world.

Jess Kismet (29:51)
Oh, it's great. Learning from you has been fantastic. I know this much of what you know. It's fascinating. is

Bryan Jepsen (29:59)
me too. I feel like I... yeah. You're not alone. I don't feel like I know at all.

Jess Kismet (30:05)
truly fascinating. So I've written down a few things just about things that you've said before we go on to the next question. One is that the

Bryan Jepsen (30:12)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (30:13)
difference between mould and bacteria. This is a question I had for you during the course and you were saying that

bacteria, sorry to throw this at you without warning, but you were saying that bacteria is more prolific than mould. I think is what you were saying. What's the difference

Bryan Jepsen (30:33)
Enumeration? Yes.

Jess Kismet (30:35)
between the two and how do we tell the difference?

Bryan Jepsen (30:39)
How do you tell, oh gosh.

Jess Kismet (30:40)
It might seem like a dumb question, but I didn't know.

Bryan Jepsen (30:44)
Yeah, they're two very different organisms. We focus a lot in our health world on bacteria. Where, you know, if we've got an infection, it's bacterial more often than not. If we have a viral issue, it's because that virus implanted itself into a bacteria and used it as its host.

Bacteria by enumeration and by general surface area is actually far greater than mould is. Mould is a larger organism than bacteria, but it doesn't mean that one is necessarily stronger than another. So for example, if we were to circle back to the health idea, if you have an infection or some sort of funny skin condition you have on your feet, it may be determined, we'll just put you on some

antibiotics

to just sort it out. Now if that happens and you kill the bacteria but it happens to be a fungal issue then that fungal issue has no competition anymore and will just...

run, it'll absolutely take over. the bacteria play a very important role in the microbiology of our homes, of our surfaces that we touch, of our skin, of our gut throughout our whole life. It's a balance between these different organisms, which are predominantly owned by the bacterial space. yeah, very, very predominant in our, in our, all of our environment.

whatever you want to call their environment.

Jess Kismet (32:20)
So if you had like a mould issue,

if you had like you picked up some flooring and it was all black under there, remediating

Bryan Jepsen (32:25)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (32:29)
that comes down to knowing what you're dealing with. So

Bryan Jepsen (32:32)
Yes.

Jess Kismet (32:33)
how do you know if it's mould or bacteria? how do know if it's mould or bacteria?

Bryan Jepsen (32:36)
Yeah,

you can test for it. But you can also go from the point of assumption to go if it is black, there's a problem. So let's deal with the problem. Do you need to know exactly what it is? Maybe not.

Jess Kismet (32:52)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (32:53)
there

are cases where you would, for example, in a hospital, especially when they care for hospital-borne infections, like golden staph, for example, they might want that specifically looked at. But if you lift up like your example, it's black, that blackness may not actually be predominantly mould. There might be mould in that biofilm, but it actually could be quite dominant for bacteria. And we don't actually talk about bacteria a lot for the built environment because

There are so many that

Jess Kismet (33:26)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (33:26)
you can only identify through culturing.

So the sampling that you do for that is you would collect a sample of it and then you would try and grow that. It may be viable, it may be cultureable, but from that then you can specie it and you can find out what it is. It's a bit of a more drawn out process to try and identify bacteria. So most of the time we just accept that it's there. Whereas mould, you can take one sample and you can see a plethora of them because they're a larger organism and easier to identify that way. So...

Jess Kismet (34:00)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (34:00)
Just because you might have a mould problem, it doesn't mean that you're absent of a bacterial problem as well. there are actinomycetes, for example, can happen in water damaged buildings and potentially be quite a challenge for people's health as well. So sometimes you might smell things. This is where it comes up a lot, okay? You'll always get asked, not you will, I will, I get asked too often, I've got mould in my drains.

you

know, the black stuff that happens and it smells. I will put money on it that that is more of a cause from bacteria than it is fungal. There might be yeast inside of that environment because it's so wet. Mould doesn't really like it as much as bacteria will. So depending on how wet something is can determine on what kind of organism succeeds the most.

So yeah, I don't even know if I answered your question, to be honest. There is a very big difference between mould and bacteria, but both can pose a health issue.

Jess Kismet (35:08)
Yeah, yeah, I guess I just didn't, and we were studying mould in the course and I just didn't even think about bacteria as a factor and what that means and you know, so I guess I was just trying to draw out the differences. Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (35:19)
Yeah, bacteria is easier to kill than mould.

It is a much more vulnerable product. If you remove moisture from it, it will die. Whereas if you remove moisture from mould like we spoke about earlier, it doesn't necessarily mean it dies, it just goes dormant. So bacteria

Jess Kismet (35:37)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (35:39)
need to procreate, if that's a word, proliferate.

They need to grow a lot

Jess Kismet (35:45)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (35:45)
more because they're more vulnerable once that once their triangle is removed, then they lose out much quicker as a species. So they're like the rabbits. They're quite... Here's a bit of a funny thing anyway.

My nieces, they have hamsters, Those are hamsters? whatever. The little gerbil rat things. I had a thought. was like, evolutionarily, how the heck,

Jess Kismet (36:10)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guinea pig.

Bryan Jepsen (36:14)
guinea pig, yeah, thank you. How the heck, evolutionary, how did this thing survive? Legitimately, it is the most useless animal I've ever seen in my life. Outside of a goldfish, it is the most useless thing I've ever seen. But the reason why it survived is because it procreated so fast that it

was

Jess Kismet (36:32)
Hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (36:33)
giving birth faster than it was dying. similar to bacteria in a way. It proliferates itself so fast that it grows more than it dies. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (36:47)
Yeah, okay. So

like bacteria is like a guinea pig and mould is like a cockroach.

Bryan Jepsen (36:53)
and molders like a horse. Yeah, cockroach is good.

Yeah, cockroach, Yeah, because it's very hardy,

Jess Kismet (36:59)
Okay.

Yeah and which one has got a bigger impact on health or is that a it depends question?

Bryan Jepsen (37:10)
That's very dependent on the person and their vulnerabilities. And it

Jess Kismet (37:12)
Yeah, I thought so. Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (37:15)
also depends on the micro...

the microbiome of whether that's the

Jess Kismet (37:22)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (37:22)
space. So say for example, like I said, mentioned staff, golden staff in hospitals.

That's a surface issue. It proliferates on surfaces very quickly, that particular organism, if nothing else keeps it at bay. So then it becomes a problem. But there will be golden staph around in a hospital. It just isn't causing a problem because it hasn't overwhelmed the microbiome. That's when a lot of things

Jess Kismet (37:47)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (37:48)
go wrong, is when the microbiome is actually overwhelmed and there is more of

Jess Kismet (37:53)
Mmm.

Bryan Jepsen (37:54)
that organism.

then it should be in a balanced environment. So when it's not balanced, that's called

Jess Kismet (38:01)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I guess that's what you excited.

Bryan Jepsen (38:03)
an environmental dyspiosis. yeah, sorry.

Jess Kismet (38:07)
I guess that's what you'd say to people

who get some of the kickback on some of the mould discussions that I've seen people say well there's mould in the air everywhere you can't get rid of mould you can't find mould it's everywhere and I guess that's not the point the point is that it becomes a problem when it overwhelms the system

Bryan Jepsen (38:25)
Absolutely. Mould and bacteria are everywhere. But when

Jess Kismet (38:28)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (38:29)
that triangle is in full flight...

and those variables are on its side, will grow faster than you can keep up with. You can't clean the building

Jess Kismet (38:39)
Yeah, for sure.

Bryan Jepsen (38:40)
fast enough. You can't keep it dry fast enough. so the problem comes when the balance breaks. And

Jess Kismet (38:50)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (38:51)
for some people who are more vulnerable than others, immunocompromised people, people who have inflammatory conditions, for example.

when their body is trying to fight something else, it may become vulnerable to this other organism. Now, it could be chemical, it could be something else, but a lot of the times vulnerable people become overwhelmed by another factor that it can't manage.

Jess Kismet (39:19)
You've talked about different causes of mould. obviously at the beginning we talked about, you know, the environment inside a home.

indoor air quality issues, so there's like condensation, there's rain events, there's humidity, vapor in the air, there's flood events. In your experience, what is the biggest cause of mould issues?

Bryan Jepsen (39:48)
The definition of big can change, right?

The most devastating can be water ingress from, I would say water ingress from above that is everywhere. So say a hailstorm breaks tiles and it rains on the entire top side of a roof.

of a ceiling and it runs down the walls, that's very devastating. It means that you have to do, you have to strip the entire building. Or if it's a flood, for example, it comes through and it decimates it from the below and then you have to almost do it in reverse the other way around.

So that can be very devastating, but it's not always common, which is why it's insurable for some areas anyway. And then, but most commonly, I believe it occurs because the opportunity was given through either a system failure for the building or through occupancy use resulting in excess moisture being available to then

find to settle the score for that triangle. So that can be if someone, for example, doesn't do housekeeping, keeping very hygienically, you can have a clean house, but it may not be hygienic where there are corners and nooks where dust just accumulates and that is the food source. And then when the

the occupants might introduce more moisture, say they cook, they boil water every day and it can't evaporate out of the building properly because the building can't manage the moisture very well. Or if the building system is installed correctly or failing and then you get rising damp or something like that where you have a constant source of moisture, that moisture isn't necessarily meaning that you're going to have mould on the slab, but that moisture going into the air, turning into a vapor and then condensing onto other

materials elsewhere, then promotes the thing. So there can

Jess Kismet (41:54)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (41:54)
be that that that is a lot more common. And

Jess Kismet (41:59)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (42:00)
in some ways, if you can understand your building, and how to use it, you can prevent all of it.

Jess Kismet (42:07)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (42:08)
There might be there might be some buildings that are harder work than others. But ultimately, if you can understand your building and how to use it,

you'll have a favorable outcome when it comes to preventing any microbial amplification.

Jess Kismet (42:23)
Mmm,

agree, agree. So after, let's say one of those major events, like a flood or a rain event or even like a plumbing failure where you've got, you know, a shower pipe pouring water into the wall. Is there a critical window where if you act fast enough, you can avoid that problem altogether? You can avoid a mould problem altogether?

Bryan Jepsen (42:46)
You can, you can. It's a seemingly small window, but there are businesses out there designed specifically for rapid response like this. And so if you have that water loss and then that water is contained, it's stopped from happening. It is possible that...

these restoration firms with their equipment and the science that goes behind structural drying, they might be able to begin the process very quickly. Now, depending on the organism, that can be...

24 hours, but the general rule of thumb is 48 to 72 hours is the real strong window where we start to get really quite concerned that if the materials aren't dry enough or managed at that time, then the risk comes quite rapidly and it will exponentially become a problem after that.

Jess Kismet (43:43)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (43:44)
Another factor that can actually shorten that whole thing, for example, is certain buildings that during construction,

say for example a timber construction and it experienced wet weather over its construction and was never considered for mould. It happens all the time. Builders have zero consideration for mould. And

Jess Kismet (44:07)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (44:07)
so that mould was already on the surface. And as I said, it's very hard to kill. So therefore it's ready to go as soon as it's given that opportunity. Now when it's given, it already has massive...

presentations of that organism on there. So we have one part of the triangle, then we have, then we've got the moisture that comes in on top of that. And then because it's already on a substrate, because it's already obviously grown, you then have that complete triangle very quickly. So that moisture, the excess moisture wasn't there beforehand, it was there. And it does have a substrate. But because that moisture wasn't there, it doesn't really start until that water comes and then all of a sudden it just it just goes and

and then it goes

Jess Kismet (44:50)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (44:51)
off. if it's already contaminated, you're, it's contaminated and proliferating almost, almost immediately. I'd say definitely within the 24 hours.

Jess Kismet (45:03)
mmm

which is a real problem in the construction industry because not only are timber frames left out in the rain like we had three days of really heavy rain over the weekend countless timber frames

Bryan Jepsen (45:13)
Mm.

Jess Kismet (45:13)
now sort of and slabs sitting out saturated but not only that is

then some timber, some packs of timber get delivered to site covered in mould already. And I know some builders will send those

Bryan Jepsen (45:25)
they do.

Jess Kismet (45:26)
back to the supplier. Others will just build with it. And I know one particular builder who had some mould on some floor joists and he was literally under the building with a sander sanding it off because he was, he

Bryan Jepsen (45:40)
What a legend. Share that guy's name with the world.

Jess Kismet (45:43)
is a legend, dead set, Sean, shout out.

Bryan Jepsen (45:48)
Share that soon.

Jess Kismet (45:50)
Yes, I'll put a link to his Instagram page in the show notes as well. Short from Haven Homes in Tasmania. He is top-notch in the building science, sort of builders game, knows his stuff, follow him, learn from him. But yeah, he was...

he puts in like fans, like if it rains he'll put fans throughout his build to dry out the frames and he'll moisture test them and everything before he clads them and insulates them so he's right on top of it and there a others in the game doing the same thing but most aren't but yeah he was underneath the floor joist standing off the mould just so paranoid about leaving anything on there and he'd had someone come through fogging beforehand as well can you talk just a bit about fogging?

Bryan Jepsen (46:36)
Sure.

So fogging is a remediation strategy that is implemented.

that what they do is they put in a solution into typically water and then they vaporize that to really small particles. Those particles then attract the debris or the mould that is in the air. So they become a larger particle. That larger particle then drops to the ground or onto horizontal surfaces. So fogging is used as a way to flocculate the air, if you were to use a word, where it makes everything really heavy.

and drop to the ground. Now, there are multiple businesses that implement this as their only form of remediation.

Now, we do have an Australian standard now that speaks to this and it says that this practice on its own is improper and so is incontrovention of the standard. is a tool to be that can be used, like I said, to pull a lot of particles out of the air, but it isn't remediation. And as much as the solution that's been put in is antimicrobial, once it's diluted so heavily and vaporized in a normal

environment, it might as well be water in my opinion. It doesn't kill. So its primary use in my opinion is to filter the air and then once it hits the surfaces then can be cleaned up after that and now that can happen through HEPA vacuuming or damp wiping the surface. So it allows you to know

Jess Kismet (48:17)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (48:19)
where those particles are going to be instead of being very agile in the air.

Jess Kismet (48:25)
Right, so this could be a solution like if you've got a high concentration of airborne particles. This is a solution for actually getting rid of those particles quickly, but it's not a solution for getting rid of the surface mould. Is that what you're saying? the... yeah. It won't kill it. It will just get rid of the particles in the air.

Bryan Jepsen (48:38)
Absolutely. Yeah, it's not going to work on it is not going to work on surface mould at all the solution they might put into

it if you were to pour it onto the the surface itself it might do something but when you dilute it it then changes the dose

capacity of that particular solution. So dose, what that means is concentration and time. So when you aerosolize it,

watering it down as a concentrate and you aerosolize it, the surface area of that thing becomes much less and less. So therefore the total

Jess Kismet (49:15)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (49:16)
concentration of it is significantly reduced. And then because it's such a fine mist, it can then evaporate very quickly. So therefore doesn't have the time to dwell on the organism that it's trying to kill. So that's

Jess Kismet (49:31)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (49:31)
why it doesn't really have a lot of success in there. But yes, you're right.

Jess Kismet (49:35)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (49:35)
It can filter things out for us to then do something like that.

you

Jess Kismet (49:39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So you're saying that if you put the full undiluted solution onto mould, onto a piece of timber that's moldy, it would kill it?

Bryan Jepsen (49:50)
By and large, that's what they're designed to do. So

Jess Kismet (49:53)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (49:53)
they'll do a lot of lab tests and go, can it kill XY organisms? You go, yeah, our solution, it kills COVID, right? That came out really big and fogging took over the world. Yeah, all right, your solution can kill COVID, but does it kill it in a normal environment outside of a laboratory? I would argue that it has its challenges there. So...

Jess Kismet (50:15)
And

Yeah, I was just going to say what, I thought you said that like, I'm operating on the premise that mould can't be killed. It has to be like, it just goes dormant, right? Which is what we've been talking about. It doesn't actually

Bryan Jepsen (50:31)
Right.

Jess Kismet (50:32)
die. You have to physically remove it in order for it to stop.

Bryan Jepsen (50:38)
Yeah, by and large by those principles. However, there are definitely chemicals that can break the cell wall of mould and therefore make it,

Jess Kismet (50:45)
Yeah, right. Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (50:47)
it disables it at that point. Different solutions work in different ways. For example, people use vinegar, right? Everyone has on all the government websites, use vinegar to clean, use vinegar to clean.

Jess Kismet (50:59)
Clove oil.

Bryan Jepsen (51:00)
Now, how clove oils, another one, right? I'll talk about that a little in a hot minute, but.

Jess Kismet (51:04)
No.

Bryan Jepsen (51:07)
vinegar for one for example similar to poached eggs or where you add the vinegar or if you're cooking a steak for example when you cook a steak

when it is ready and become tender, that is when it has denatured itself. Okay, so it's not the original form it was because we introduced heat to it. So it goes from a tough piece of meat or something like that. It goes into a tender piece of meat and then it goes really hard if you turn it into a rock. So at those stages, it's denaturing itself from what it originally was. What vinegar does is that does it to mould. So it denatures the mould. It changes it from the organism that it is and weakens it in certain parts.

it doesn't successfully grow as well. again, to come down to the dose of that, you might need a lot of that depending on the organism. But then there are really, really harsh ones. Chlorine dioxide, hydrogen peroxide, these kinds of ones, chlorine itself, these types of

chemicals can be really quite devastating to the cell wall. So they might dry the cell wall so that the moisture that it retained to try and keep itself alive, just as sustenance, it can dry that out. Similar to how ants are killed with ant sand, how it dries the shell of their body so they can't stay moist. And then there are other ways where it can penetrate into it. And this is hydrogen peroxide, not hydrogen peroxide.

Chlorine dioxide for example can imitate itself as moisture go into the cell and then cause the cell to want to go it's actually not moisture. I must need more of it more of it more of it and then it bursts so it can burst

Jess Kismet (52:53)
Yeah, right.

Bryan Jepsen (52:54)
cells so there are different ways that the chemicals and reactions can happen to kill mould or bacteria for that matter or even ourselves I have accidentally come in contact with chlorine dioxide significantly within my lungs started to explode so I

I know what it's like to drown without being in water. No,

Jess Kismet (53:15)
my goodness, were you in hospital?

Bryan Jepsen (53:17)
I lived, I lived, but I was freaking out for a hot minute. It

Jess Kismet (53:20)
Well, obviously, but like, you...

Bryan Jepsen (53:22)
got pretty scary.

Jess Kismet (53:25)
wow.

Bryan Jepsen (53:25)
So kids don't try that at home. So yeah, there are

Jess Kismet (53:29)
Right.

Bryan Jepsen (53:29)
different chemicals that can do different things. So yes, you can kill mould, but...

the particulate remains. Now, the funny thing with the particulate remaining of mould is sometimes it can have what's called microbial volatile organic compound attached to it. That may not be dealt with with the chemical.

So it may not change its chemical construct and that depending on the organism and if it is there can also cause other health concerns if consumed. Happens a lot for food. Happens a lot in nuts and grains and different things like that that we can consume. So you get farmers lung and different things like that with wheat. So yeah, there's a lot of history when it comes to mould and...

microtoxins and food and other ways you get exposed

Jess Kismet (54:17)
Yeah. Yep.

Bryan Jepsen (54:18)
not just through the building.

Jess Kismet (54:21)
Yeah, yes I've heard of that. There are certain foods that people who have inflammatory illnesses can't eat because of the exposure through the farming processes and the storage processes and everything like that.

Bryan Jepsen (54:33)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (54:35)
So going back to the fogging, if you're

Bryan Jepsen (54:38)
Mm-hmm.

Jess Kismet (54:39)
saying that they dilute these solutions so far that they're not effective, well what if they just don't dilute them as far?

Bryan Jepsen (54:48)
you don't have to ask them. I don't know if...

Jess Kismet (54:51)
Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (54:52)
Yeah, it might just be a cost thing.

when it comes to the total cost of the solution that if you're only using the pure

Jess Kismet (54:57)
We want it to be effective.

Bryan Jepsen (54:58)
concentrate. But then I would say it's a very, very unsafe environment to be in. The thing with fogging is

Jess Kismet (55:04)
for humans.

Bryan Jepsen (55:06)
you're trying to kill a biological organism, right? Especially

Jess Kismet (55:09)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (55:10)
if you're trying to, if that's your goal, if you're trying to kill a biological organism being bacteria or mould, both of which sit on our bodies, as I mentioned, we are closer to mould than we are to bacteria. So if your goal is to kill mould

And you fog this solution at a great concentration and believe it's not going to impact your microbiome or you yourself, you're

Jess Kismet (55:33)
Hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (55:34)
ignorant. So

Jess Kismet (55:36)
Yep.

Bryan Jepsen (55:36)
it's designed to kill a biological organism. You are a biological organism. So being in a space where the concentration might be astronomically high puts you at significant safety risk. would say to kill the mould, you might end up lying on the floor yourself. So yeah, and that can happen a lot with other things.

Jess Kismet (55:45)
to kill the mould. It could kill you, yeah. Okay, so in order to be effective fogging

would have to be dangerous

Bryan Jepsen (55:55)
Thanks.

Jess Kismet (55:56)
to human health.

Bryan Jepsen (55:58)
I believe so, yes. Because it's such a resilient...

Jess Kismet (56:00)
Yeah, okay.

Bryan Jepsen (56:01)
Mould is more resilient than we are. We

Jess Kismet (56:04)
Hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (56:04)
just happen to have opposable thumbs. we can remove it more quickly than it can remove us. So it's opportunistic

Jess Kismet (56:12)
Yep. Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (56:14)
on us, whereas we just go on the attack as an organism, which is why we dominate over mould.

Jess Kismet (56:21)
Okay, thank you. You

Bryan Jepsen (56:24)
My pleasure.

Jess Kismet (56:25)
mentioned before mould versus particulate matter. Could you just explain what that means to the listener please? Because they might not know the difference.

Bryan Jepsen (56:31)
Yeah,

sure. Okay, so we've touched on mould a fair bit, right? The microbiological organism that can be growing on surfaces, it goes through a life cycle where it can grow on a surface, then part of its life cycle is when it can aerosolize itself, transfer itself onto other surfaces and continue the cycle, okay? So therefore, it becomes a particle in the air. But there are multitudes of other particles, more than you could probably count.

It can happen from when you're cooking, the oil that evaporates into the air can be a particulate that needs to be dealt with. It can...

It can be chemical in nature sometimes. It can be a heavy metal. So say you're grinding something, for example, sharpening a knife even, people don't think about it. Sharpening a knife, all the very small particles of that metal are becoming aerosolized. Now they can be quite heavy and drop quite quickly. However, they have the ability to be resuspended. It can include skin cells, animal dander, hair,

silica, asbestos, all sorts of things can be in the air, all sorts of things from

Jess Kismet (57:47)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (57:47)
all of our activities. can be particles from our shirt, for example, microplastics and different things like that. We do this and then, you know, you can't see it, you can't feel it, you don't know it. But eventually, those particulates become aerosolized in one way or another. And to some people, that can be detrimental. But at the end of the day, our

respiratory system and our mucosal elevator which brings up phlegm tries to catch all of that. Our nose hairs try to catch it at different sizes and we also have other hairs and things like that going through our respiratory tract to try and catch it to dispel it so that it doesn't settle in our lungs ultimately. So all

Jess Kismet (58:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (58:32)
of those things are particles.

Jess Kismet (58:35)
And at what point does mould become a health problem? So it's suspended in the air. We're breathing

Bryan Jepsen (58:40)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (58:41)
it in. That's essentially how it gets into our body, right?

Bryan Jepsen (58:44)
Yes.

Jess Kismet (58:45)
And there's still a lot of skepticism in the industry, in the general public, in the medical profession that mould illness is a serious issue. But where does the science

Bryan Jepsen (58:52)
Mm.

Jess Kismet (58:53)
actually sit on this?

Bryan Jepsen (58:56)
It's moving towards supporting that mould is actually quite significantly detrimental.

that and bacteria. So that's for indoor environmental studies. It's going, the industry can be as skeptical as it wants to. You can have an old builder, you can have an old person in the trade. I joke about it sometimes, but I've known someone to lick a wall to see if it tastes like mould. You can have people who are quite on that side of a thing. And then you can have other people who are very,

fearful of it. Now, mould,

Jess Kismet (59:34)
Hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (59:35)
in my opinion, there should be a reverence for it. It has the ability to hurt some people quite meaningfully. And that's where the science is being able to show this. it's moving not in the direction of licking walls, but more on the precautionary side of things.

Jess Kismet (59:55)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (59:56)
so to change the mindset of the old guard, I guess, is quite a big

ship to turn. So it'll happen slowly,

Jess Kismet (1:00:04)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:00:05)
but the science itself is moving more towards the mechanisms in which mould can impact the body. Now, like I said earlier, there are some people groups that are more vulnerable than others. They might get exposed more. That could be the people who work in the mould industry. It can be children who crawl along the floor and the closest to resuspension of mould.

It can be the elderly whose ability to fight infection is dampened over time. So these people can become more vulnerable sometimes. Say for example,

Jess Kismet (1:00:45)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:00:47)
one of the clearer cases, we don't suffer from it very much anymore as technology has moved forward, but one of the leading causes of death for AIDS.

persons, people who had the immunocompromised issue from AIDS was called aspergillosis, which is a fungal infection of the lungs.

Jess Kismet (1:01:08)
Really?

Bryan Jepsen (1:01:08)
the, yeah, so HIV would cause an immune response that would then

Jess Kismet (1:01:15)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:01:15)
stop them from being able to fight the other things that would be introduced to them. And so the leading cause of vulnerability that was taken advantage of was a mould infection of the lungs, which would ultimately then see their death.

Jess Kismet (1:01:27)
Wow.

Bryan Jepsen (1:01:28)
So, yes, they were HIV, but it was that that caused the vulnerability to the organism. similar to cancer sufferers where they are trying to their body is trying to fight this thing that is overtaking them or perhaps not, or they might be going under chemo and it is impeding their ability to fight, then they become vulnerable to being overtaken for this. The same thing can be said for other people who might have, you might have heard other things, right?

someone might be under a lot of stress in their life. They're going through a stressful season, it's going through that. That has nothing to do with your physical fitness. But in that season, you hear about them

Jess Kismet (1:02:09)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:02:11)
getting the flu, right? It's like, oh, I got sick because I was stressed out and my body was so focused its energy upon that, that it became vulnerable to another outside influence. So by and large, it's an inflammation.

issue and an ability then for the body to rectify that immune response. So sometimes

Jess Kismet (1:02:35)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:02:36)
it then just goes into an inflammation cycle where it inflames itself even more to stop the inflammation and then that is very hard

Jess Kismet (1:02:43)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:02:44)
to break and for some people that recovery is really really challenging.

Jess Kismet (1:02:49)
So you're saying that the science is actually working towards more supporting, that this is actually a health issue that we should be putting some public funding into, I guess, putting some awareness into, putting some...

Bryan Jepsen (1:03:02)
I would love to.

It is growing and it is happening in the space of general air quality, more on the equitable side of things. So say for example, these vulnerable people, there is a lot of political push at the moment, policy push to try and create spaces that are equitable for them so that they can go into without fear of becoming unwell.

Jess Kismet (1:03:27)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:03:27)
So

those might be public places, libraries, hospitals. It'll start with the big before it ends up being the small. But part

Jess Kismet (1:03:34)
Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (1:03:35)
of that is in the scheme of things, it can be mould. For example, the workplace health and safety regulations that we have and WorkSafe, if you combine them together, they mention about mould being a biological...

organism that can be aerosolized, so therefore is an air quality issue. And so

Jess Kismet (1:03:59)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:04:00)
is mentioned through the workplace health and safety and work safety regulations as a workplace risk. So it's known as

Jess Kismet (1:04:07)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:04:08)
a hazard. So that means that it has to be managed. so being a challenge and only happen at opportunistic times, the

the challenge within the policy space to deal with mould is a lot more limited than it can be for say something that would be seen as providing cleaner air and that can be measured through PM2.5 particulates and

Jess Kismet (1:04:35)
Mm. Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:04:38)
CO2 for example as a measure of air cleanliness than it would be for mould for everyone to sit along mould but it is all tide, was it the tide rises all ships kind of

things. So mould

Jess Kismet (1:04:51)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:04:52)
is elevated through that process as well. Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:04:55)
Okay,

yeah, because we can measure, I've got a monitor in my house and I can measure particulate matter, carbon dioxide, humidity, there's like nine different things that it measures, but mould spores is not one of them. To measure how many airborne mould spores are in your air, you physically have to get a pump, like you have to get someone who has this expensive equipment to come in and take air samples and surface samples, so it's not as easily identifiable as some of the other indoor air quality factors.

Bryan Jepsen (1:05:24)
Yeah, correct. can't, at the ready necessarily, know what proportion of mould you have in your air, just as a real-time monitor. There are very expensive tools, very, very expensive tools

Jess Kismet (1:05:37)
Mmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:05:38)
that do that, but no household is going to have that because it's the size of an armchair.

Jess Kismet (1:05:43)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:05:44)
it's not readily available for retail indications for mould.

Jess Kismet (1:05:51)
Yeah, and you can't measure it, like it's not easily measurable. Sorry?

Bryan Jepsen (1:05:51)
But like I said, about all the other particulates... No,

no, it's not easily measurable.

Jess Kismet (1:05:58)
humidity you can measure pretty easily which means you can mitigate it easily.

it's thermal bridging we can take a thermal camera and we can measure it and we can mitigate it pretty easily carbon dioxide we can measure

Bryan Jepsen (1:06:09)
Yes.

Jess Kismet (1:06:09)
it so we can mitigate it pretty easily whereas mould spores there's no easy way to measure what's going on in your air you can you can visually see it if it's on one of your surfaces that you can have access to but if it's inside a wall

inside a cavity, underneath your flooring, most mould as we know is not, you can't see or smell it, so you don't know it's there, it's impacting our health on a daily basis and we're sort of unbeknownst as to why, we don't know why, you know we get sick or we get some sort of lung infection or we get some sort of chronic illness that we can't explain.

You know?

Bryan Jepsen (1:06:50)
It is a challenging thing, for sure.

Jess Kismet (1:06:51)
I'm glad to hear that the science is starting

to back up for some more research.

Bryan Jepsen (1:06:55)
Yeah, but it does require, like you say, specialist sampling to isolate.

both mould and bacteria, for example, these microorganisms,

Jess Kismet (1:07:03)
Mmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:07:04)
you can get a general idea of your particular load. And that might give you an indication of if you need to get greater air change rates or something like that inside of a building, whether

Jess Kismet (1:07:17)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (1:07:17)
that's opening a window or changing the setting on particular HVAC systems. But yeah, you don't know exactly mould. If mould is the thing that you're most concerned for, you can't do it.

without laboratory analysis.

Jess Kismet (1:07:33)
Yeah,

speaking of labs, you have a lab. So let's talk

Bryan Jepsen (1:07:37)
Yes.

Jess Kismet (1:07:37)
about that a little bit. What are the things that you're actually testing for? And if someone, if the listener does suspect that they have a mould problem, what is worth

Bryan Jepsen (1:07:49)
Hmm.

Jess Kismet (1:07:49)
testing?

Bryan Jepsen (1:07:51)
Yeah, so to begin with, so our lab, primarily do environmental microbial analysis. So that does include mould predominantly through air and surface sampling, but also some bacteria samples for if there was effluent loss inside of a building, for example, you can do a sample of that and we can tell you whether it's present or not.

But when it comes to mould specifically and a DIY sort of option, there are a few out there. many people might be familiar with the agar plates, which is the plates that everyone sees pictures of that grow the stuff inside of it and it looks really awesome. That's

Jess Kismet (1:08:38)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:08:38)
readily available. However, I wouldn't recommend that for a DIY person because I was actually having a joke with someone today is if you wanted to make something fail, those plates

will definitely allow you to make it look really bad, right? Because one

Jess Kismet (1:08:53)
rock. Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (1:08:54)
colony can fall onto this plate and then just create lots of other little colonies inside the plate itself and it will look really atrocious. The more time you give it, the worse it'll just look. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a bad place. So it doesn't give you proper context.

Jess Kismet (1:09:06)
just keep growing.

Bryan Jepsen (1:09:11)
There are other toolkits to do air sampling or surface sampling. For surfaces, you can take a sticky tape, for example.

and send it

Jess Kismet (1:09:19)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:09:19)
to the lab has to be clear. But you can do that as a real primitive way. Air sampling, you can hire pump kits from labs. You know, I'm not saying use it for us or anything like that, but you might be able to hire it from someone, for example, and then have that analyzed. It's not a complicated process to take an air sample itself, but the interpretation is where a lot of the skill and art of that comes in. So you can take the sample

all you want, feel free, but you won't necessarily know if number is good or number is bad. So,

Jess Kismet (1:09:56)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:09:57)
feel free to do that and so long as you've got help on the other end when it comes to interpretation, you might be able to push it across the line.

Another way to do it, which we don't do on the professional side of stuff, is using qPCR, where you can take a wipe sample of multiple different surfaces, one surface if you want it to be, and send that to go get measured under qPCR. That became quite popular over COVID, so it wouldn't be a surprise if most people understand that it's an analytical method available to us now.

Jess Kismet (1:10:30)
What does it stand for?

Bryan Jepsen (1:10:35)
quantitative polymerase chain reaction We don't do that in our lab

Jess Kismet (1:10:38)
Thank you.

Bryan Jepsen (1:10:40)
but yeah so we don't do that in our lab but there are other labs that do it.

Jess Kismet (1:10:47)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:10:48)
I would caution people on this because currently the algorithm that gets put onto the numbers that qPCR put out I don't agree with at all.

and has seen a lot of kickback for so it's called Ermi and HERTSMI too but they are available for you to do freely to do you can vacuum it up or you can wipe it up and collect a bunch of dust and settle debris and you can send that to go see what's inside of that so that is possible

Jess Kismet (1:11:19)
so QPCR is a term for an ERMI or a HERTSMI test. Is that right? Aha.

Bryan Jepsen (1:11:25)
Yeah, so that's the technology behind it. Yep, so

QPCR is the technology behind it. And

Jess Kismet (1:11:31)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:11:32)
it gives out a value. And that value is then put into the algorithm that Ermi and HERTSMI2 are. So Ermi and HERTSMI2 are an algorithm. They're not.

a test method in themselves. They are a database of numbers and probabilistic and then they balance one set of moulds against another to determine whether you have a number bad scenario.

So I don't have an issue with qPCR even though it's pretty expensive and not quite accessible for even professionals

Jess Kismet (1:12:06)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:12:07)
right now. It is getting that way but on the ERMI and HERTSMI2 side. Professionally we cannot use it because it is said to only be used for research purposes. If you're going to do research on your own home, sure go ahead and do it

Jess Kismet (1:12:23)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:12:23)
but just be careful about the number that comes back out at you.

Jess Kismet (1:12:27)
Mm-hmm and how for the listener most of them won't know what an ERMI or a HERTSMI me is so how what are they? How do they work? And what are they for? essentially

Bryan Jepsen (1:12:40)
Yeah,

so.

So it was designed by a chap in the US who really gave rise to the term CIRS, C-I-R-S, or chronic inflammatory response syndrome. And he developed using PCR with a few smart cookies, being able to take the numbers that qPCR put out and put it into their algorithm that they ran through. Don't get me wrong, it was done with the US EPA. Real smart people were involved in all of this.

They developed a benchmarking, I guess you could say, of what type of moulds you are okay to see and the ones that you don't want to see and if they're imbalanced and favouring the unfavourable types then you get a bad score. If they're favouring the good side of things then you get a good score so they balance them off each other that way using...

ERMI uses I think it's 32 different moulds against each other.

Jess Kismet (1:13:40)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:13:42)
HERTSMI2 I think is 16 or 12 I can't quite remember but it's less

Jess Kismet (1:13:47)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:13:47)
but HERTSMI2 is like version 1.5 of ERMI Let's call it.

So it

Jess Kismet (1:13:57)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:13:58)
uses a similar algorithm, the same principles, but it's been better proven to show whether there is a risk than ERMI has. But each of those

Jess Kismet (1:14:09)
Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (1:14:09)
tests, they've gone up in price for a bit, but they may be cheaper than getting a professional in, but it's not cheap in and of itself, let's say that.

Jess Kismet (1:14:19)
And how do you do one of those tests?

Bryan Jepsen (1:14:21)
Yeah, those tests are done through a vacuum into, and so you can use a regular vacuum cleaner. There's no specific speed or velocity this thing needs. And what it

Jess Kismet (1:14:33)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:14:34)
does is it passes through onto a filter cartridge, which is a special kind of paper.

And then that paper collects all the debris and everything that just deposits on there. And then you send that to the lab. The other way is to use a wipe. So you just have a white cloth, like a ghost wipe sometimes, of course. And so you can just go around and you can wipe a bunch of surfaces. you are just essentially trying to fill it up with as much stuff as you can so it can get this ratio. So you

Jess Kismet (1:15:05)
Yep. Yep.

Bryan Jepsen (1:15:07)
can vacuum it and you can wipe it.

Jess Kismet (1:15:10)
So these are DIY homeowner ways that they can test their surfaces. But be careful with interpreting.

Bryan Jepsen (1:15:13)
Very much. Yes, very much designed for that. But I would very much caution people using that.

Jess Kismet (1:15:22)
I'll put some links in the show notes too as to where you can find Brian. Maybe you can direct me towards some good resources for people at home if they want to research an ERMI or a HERTSME2 but also with the caveat of do it with caution.

Bryan Jepsen (1:15:36)
Yes.

Jess Kismet (1:15:40)
So when mould is found, homeowner goes around with their ERMI or their HERTSMI or they get a professional in to test their air and their surfaces and they find mould. What does proper remediation look like and what are some remediators doing that is making the problem worse?

Bryan Jepsen (1:15:55)
making it worse. The basic principles of remediation is to remove the mould. So you're removing any building materials that are permanently compromised.

that doesn't speak for everything. You're not going to remove the concrete slab if it has mould on it, for example. You're not going to kick your windows in because it's inorganic material. So it's not going to become vulnerable to long-term risk that way. So removal is the key, especially for porous materials.

Jess Kismet (1:16:31)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:16:32)
That can include your gyprock

That can include some timbers, can include fabrics, paintings, these sorts of things. So the idea is you're trying to remove it. So when we talk about our triangle, for example, you're trying to get rid of a lot of that concentration in bulk.

Jess Kismet (1:16:50)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:16:50)
So good

remediation removes that bulk. So they do that, but they also at the same time do the structural drying part. So if it was water damaged

Jess Kismet (1:17:00)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:17:01)
or however it got water damaged, they manage that water. So not only are they breaking the cycle for having large concentrations of the organism, they're also breaking the moisture, the available moisture opportunity there. So they break that there. What they can't always do is deal with the substrate. So yes, you're

to remove a lot of those substrate that removes a lot of the organism, but then some of those organisms might aerosolize and you can't get rid of all of your substrate. So there are still two parts of that that are, they're managed, let's put it that way, professionally.

Jess Kismet (1:17:35)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:17:36)
So good remediation sees that all of those three factors of the triangle are managed. That's how good remediation

Jess Kismet (1:17:44)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:17:44)
happens. Now, when it's not done well is when a restored

applies themselves poorly. Now there is good training out there and there are people who do it very, well. But then there are some that do the training and believe they know then everything. But they might not do structural drying completely or in their specialist way properly.

So they might dry something too fast causing the outside of the timber or substrate for example to be really dry like a bake it. You really cook it on the outside but the core hasn't had the ability to draw the moisture out and evaporate. So there is a

Jess Kismet (1:18:28)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:18:28)
very special skill and real psychrometric science behind pulling moisture out of something that is moisture laden. So that is where something can go wrong is where they leave

the material damp ultimately or

Jess Kismet (1:18:47)
Mm-hmm, okay.

Bryan Jepsen (1:18:48)
they don't do the removal properly.

So they don't pull out everything that needs to be pulled out. They don't abrasively clean the materials properly. These sorts of things. That's when it goes bad. Another way it can go bad,

Jess Kismet (1:19:01)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:19:05)
really bad, is if they don't control the mess that they're making. So when you're doing this destructive removal of everything, you are stirring it up. It goes into the air. You can't stop it. You can't challenge it. There's no way you can stop that from occurring.

So it's about

Jess Kismet (1:19:23)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:19:24)
how that gets managed thereafter. Because they might do a fantastic job on the surfaces, but if they don't manage the total concentration in the air, that organism then has the ability to then resettle. And then we've now got one of our triangle legs back. So

Jess Kismet (1:19:40)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:19:41)
at that point it becomes a...

an elevated risk again that if any available moisture comes back, boom, you've got a problem again. And that can happen. You can, if you don't contain the space that's impacted, say one area is impacted, the rest of the property isn't. If you don't contain that, it can also spread itself to other areas that may then give rise to what's called secondary damage.

Jess Kismet (1:20:08)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Bryan Jepsen (1:20:10)
Yeah,

Jess Kismet (1:20:11)
So there is a standard for remediation, right? There's the AS, what's it, S520? Is it the S520? Yeah, yeah, that's what I was gonna ask. So let's go into this

Bryan Jepsen (1:20:18)
Yes, so there are two now. Yes, correct. So we now have two.

Jess Kismet (1:20:23)
like.

Bryan Jepsen (1:20:25)
Yeah, when it comes to water damage.

We have two important documents that were once best practice industry guidelines. They were ANSI standards as well out of the United States from a industry body called the IICRC. I won't go and say their name because it's too long. But they had two standards that we have now adopted. One in 2024 being the S520. So now we have the ASIICRC S500. Sorry, that was the first one. S500 was the first.

one in 2024 and then in 2025 we now have the AS-IICRC S500. So the S520 is to do with the first one.

Jess Kismet (1:21:06)
Which was first?

Bryan Jepsen (1:21:12)
So the first one was the AS-IICRC S500 that was the first to be

Jess Kismet (1:21:17)
Yep.

Bryan Jepsen (1:21:18)
adopted in 2024 and the AS-IICRC S520 was adopted in 2025.

Yeah. So the S 500 deals with water loss and how to deal with structural dampness. And then the S 520 builds upon that when that structural dampness promotes microbial contamination or is contaminated through the water, bringing those risks into the building.

Jess Kismet (1:21:50)
And the intention of both of those standards is to what?

Bryan Jepsen (1:21:55)
The intention of those standards are to provide a framework for best practice remediation and building recovery. It doesn't

Jess Kismet (1:22:03)
Yep. Yes.

Bryan Jepsen (1:22:04)
talk about how things get tested, for example, it talks about how the building is brought back to what they call normal or condition one is what they call it. There are three conditions,

Jess Kismet (1:22:14)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:22:15)
but normal is condition one. And I don't like the word normal. I think that should be referred to as typical.

Either way, I might have sat on the committee board to adopt these things, but I didn't have the ability to change that because of copyright. So that was set out before us and the idea is so that the restoration industry applies themselves correctly. So we've spoken about fogging before and how it can be misappropriated. These standards outline the better process for how that should be done.

Jess Kismet (1:22:49)
So there is a standard now and that's actually I didn't realize that the AS500 was so recently adopted as an Australian standard I thought that had been around for years but only a couple.

Bryan Jepsen (1:23:00)
It has, as

the ANSI IICIC S500 and S520, they have existed for my entire career in this space.

Jess Kismet (1:23:09)
Yeah.

Bryan Jepsen (1:23:10)
They've been evolved over time, but they were never an Australian

Jess Kismet (1:23:12)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:23:13)
standard. we just took them on as a nation as the best practice guideline, because it was an international guideline that way. There are British standards, for example, but yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:23:28)
So just the adoption of those two standards tells us that mould is being taken more seriously, Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:23:36)
It has to now. Yeah, that's what it means.

So there's more rigor when it comes to the responsibilities of all stakeholders involved, whether that's from a workplace health and safety perspective to an insurable perspective or just a general good practice for anyone who comes across an issue and whatever

Jess Kismet (1:23:56)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:23:56)
their duty of care might be in that, that they have a standard for best practice to recover that building from those water damages and.

and microbial proliferations, yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:24:06)
Yeah,

and in a largely unregulated industry that's a very, very big step in the right direction.

Bryan Jepsen (1:24:12)
We don't have licenses

for remediation.

there isn't a license for it. There are steps to try and curb some of that, but there's also no license for you to go around and test or do anything like that.

Jess Kismet (1:24:27)
Mm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:24:28)
yeah, in that respect, we aren't regulated, but in other fashions, we are. I've already mentioned the workplace health and safety regulations. There's

Jess Kismet (1:24:36)
Yep.

Bryan Jepsen (1:24:37)
WorkSafe documents, and WorkSafe are also bringing out a document that specifically talks about bioaerosols. So it is becoming a

a

lot more regulated, not through licensing, but through policy. So a license may come, but so in some fashions, it's pretty weak. You could argue for regulations and in other other steps, there are some very real positive changes towards it.

Jess Kismet (1:25:09)
Yeah,

that's very encouraging. So you're a FITWELL certified FITWELL ambassador. I had never

heard of this until I started

Bryan Jepsen (1:25:17)
Hmm.

Jess Kismet (1:25:19)
researching a little bit about you. Most people

Bryan Jepsen (1:25:23)
Yes.

Jess Kismet (1:25:24)
probably haven't heard of it. Could you explain what this is and how it applies to

Bryan Jepsen (1:25:29)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:25:30)
your work and this conversation?

Bryan Jepsen (1:25:33)
Yeah. So in the ambition to learn more, there are certification programs for buildings. Some people might've heard of Green Star or Neighbours or LEED in the US, for example, or is it the UK? There is also the Well Building Standard. These are...

Jess Kismet (1:25:59)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:26:00)
building rating programs. So a lot of them actually cost a fair bit of money. Some of them can be very specific in what they're trying to achieve. What fitwe does and why I chose it as my first, I I have trained for the well-building standard, but I,

can't be bothered right now to be able to take the test and that's just because I'm too flat out but these building standards are

goals that buildings try and rate themselves for to try and promote themselves as being more healthy, more conscious of sustainability or more energy efficient, however they go about managing it. that's, they rank them. fitwe is one of these ones.

Jess Kismet (1:26:49)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:26:50)
the reason I like fit well personally, is because fit well comes from an avenue of evaluating a building as a rating perspective for the

the intention of being well, not by meeting a certain criteria of performance. So some will require you to meet a certain threshold, for example, carbon dioxide we've spoken of where it can't exceed that threshold, for example. And so that requires then that particular parameter to be measured. So X parameter can't exceed X parameter.

If you do, you then don't qualify for those points towards your building rating. What fitwel does

Jess Kismet (1:27:37)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Jepsen (1:27:38)
is it takes that concept.

and utilises the intent behind it. So if the intent is to have better outside air exchange rate, for example, you would then have to show that you have mechanisms to be able to, to moderate or increase the amount of outside air that might come through or

display that you might have water filters on your water.

a potable water drinking water system, for example. So it's not about how well they perform. It's about your intention to seek a healthier building and then get rated that way. So it's a lot more approachable than the benchmarking of the other type of ranking systems, but it still puts a building in a ranking system for its intent to be well, let's say.

Jess Kismet (1:28:38)
Okay, well I'm going to put some links in the show notes about that as well and I might have to do a little bit of reading about it because it sounds similar but different to the things I've experienced before.

Bryan Jepsen (1:28:48)
Yeah, like one of them, one of them, for

example, is they encourage that music be put into the stairwells so that people are more welcomed to take the stairs than to take the lift, encouraging then people to exercise and move. So it's, yeah, it's an intent thing.

Jess Kismet (1:29:08)
Yeah, cool. Well, that sounds good.

Bryan Jepsen (1:29:10)
Yeah.

Jess Kismet (1:29:12)
All right, Brian. Well, we have come to the final question.

Bryan Jepsen (1:29:16)
Okay.

Jess Kismet (1:29:16)
The final question that I ask everybody, all of my guests that come on the show. What is the one thing, if you had one thing that one takeaway that you wanted the listener to leave this conversation with out of everything that you've learned in your career, what would that be?

Bryan Jepsen (1:29:32)
Yep. I spoke about it a little bit before, but I think it's the opportunity. Don't allow mould to have the opportunity to succeed.

So we have the three primary things for mould, one, two, three, right? The organism itself and its proliferation, the moisture, and also the substrate. If you can choke it at those points, then you are doing a good job. So don't allow that opportunity. And that applies to everybody. That is the operator of the building, the homeowner, the, if it's your, if it's your work, your business, then, you know, you can reduce the opportunity that's there, improve it. That can also

go to architects. Don't create a building that allows the opportunity for water to ingress more readily than it should. It can go to the builder. Introduce good moisture management things. Try and encourage your clients to look at thermal bridging, to create documents that teaches people

that when you use your aircon at a freezing cold temperature in the middle of summer, that you're going to get condensation that happens on your walls. Or vice versa, in winter, if it's so cold and you're just going to whack on the heat as high as possible so you don't have to wear a scarf, you're potentially putting your building at risk and it's giving that opportunity. it comes down to systems. comes down from the start of the design process to the end use case.

one thing I would absolutely consider putting it out there for is if you can stop that opportunity then you stop the cycle.

Jess Kismet (1:31:17)
Excellent advice and I could not agree more, Bryan I could not agree more. Thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy day to talk to me today. I really, really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you very much.

Bryan Jepsen (1:31:29)
It is my pleasure to be with you.