Two Companies, One Mold Job: the New York Rule and the Yonkers Wait

Because New York requires it above ten square feet: one licensee may not both assess and remediate the same property. In Yonkers that is mostly a scheduling fact. Only 8 assessment contractors hold active licenses at city addresses against 19 remediation contractors, and the assessor has to go first and come back at the end, so the assessment is the appointment to book.

The rule, and the waiver that does not work

Section 936 of the New York Labor Law says one licensee may not carry out both the assessment and the remediation at a single property, and it closes the obvious way around that: nobody may hold an ownership interest in the assessing firm and the removing firm on the same job. The Department of Labor has also said plainly that a property owner cannot waive the requirement for an independent assessment, so an owner in a hurry agreeing to let one outfit handle everything does not make it lawful and does not protect them if the work fails. The reason behind it is the money. A company that decides how big your problem is, and then gets paid according to its own answer, is marking its own homework. Split the roles and the person telling you what you need has nothing to sell you by finding more.

In Yonkers the assessor is the half you wait for

This is the part that decides your dates. Query the state license register for active licensees based in Yonkers and it returns 19 remediation contractors against only 8 assessment contractors. Across Westchester as a whole, the ZIP codes beginning 105, 106 and 107 hold 56 active assessment licenses against 66 remediation licenses, and statewide the figures are 804 against 943. More than twice as many local firms can do the removal as can lawfully say what the removal should be, and the scarce half has to go first and then come back at the end to sign the job off. So the booking that actually moves your job forward is the assessment, not the crew. Send the details through the form on this page and that is the one we go after first.

Tuckahoe, Hastings-on-Hudson and Dobbs Ferry have no licensed firm of either kind

Some of the towns around Yonkers have nobody at all. The state register shows no active mold assessment contractor and no active mold remediation contractor at a Tuckahoe address or anywhere in ZIP code 10707, the same for Hastings-on-Hudson and ZIP code 10706, and the same again for Dobbs Ferry and ZIP code 10522. Every compliant job in those three is served by firms based somewhere else, both halves of it, which means travel and two calendars to line up rather than one. That is a fair thing to raise at the start rather than find out between the first appointment and the second. Coordinating the two engagements in the right order is the part of this we handle.

Why nobody will put a number on the removal yet

If you have asked three companies for a price and one of them gave you one on the spot, that is the one to look at hardest. The Department of Labor's position is that cost estimates for mold remediation should not be given without a mold assessment, because pricing the work before anyone independent has measured it removes the whole protection the two role split exists to provide. Section 946 backs it up from the other direction: a licensed remediator cannot begin a project without an assessment by a licensed assessor, and before site preparation starts must obtain the assessor's remediation plan from the client, write a work plan meeting every requirement in it and hand the client a copy. Expect a real project to arrive as separate pieces of work, the assessment, the removal priced from the plan, and the clearance, rather than one figure covering everything.

What a real remediation plan has in it

Section 945 lists what the assessor's written plan has to contain, and it doubles as a checklist for telling a plan from a sales sheet. The rooms or areas of work. The estimated quantities of material to be cleaned or removed. The method for each type of remediation. The protective equipment the remediator must supply. The clearance procedures and criteria. How occupants get notified. An estimate of cost and time. And where they can be identified, the underlying sources of the moisture that caused the growth, together with the contractors suited to fixing them. If the document you were handed has no clearance criteria and names no water source, it is missing two items the statute requires and the job it describes is not finished work, it is a clean up.

Who is allowed to say the work passed

Not the crew that did it. Section 947 puts the sign off with a mold assessment licensee, who has to carry out a post remediation assessment, confirm that the work area is free from all visible mold and that what was done matches the plan, and then issue a written passed clearance report, or a written final status report to both you and the remediator where it has not worked. It also means the plastic does not come down before that report exists. In practice the assessor you started with returns at the end, which is your protection against a crew packing up early on a Friday. Hold the final payment until the report is in your hands, and keep it: it is the document that answers the question later when somebody buys, rents or insures the place.

What to do if the quote you already have covers both halves

This shape is common in this market, including from names you will recognize, and the brochures do not mention Article 32 at all. If one company has offered to find the problem and then fix it, and the affected area is bigger than ten square feet, that is not an arrangement New York permits, however the seven steps are drawn on the page. You do not need to argue with anyone about it. Measure the patch, ask each firm which of the two licenses it holds and check the number against the state register, and give the work to the sequence rather than the sales pitch. Send us what you have been quoted through the form on this page and we will tell you which half of the job it is, and book the half that is missing.