In a daycare or a classroom nobody says "it smells of mold in here". There is a cough that comes back every winter, parents who start asking, and a director who needs an answer that can be shown. A daycare mold test measures the air the children breathe, during the day, against outdoors, and gives the parents' committee and the municipality a number instead of an argument.
Children breathe more air per kilogram than adults, spend hours on the floor and at cupboard height, and cannot say what is bothering them. What an adult in an office notices as a smell, a child in daycare shows at home at night.
The protected room or shelter doubles as a nap room, an art room or a store. It has the thickest walls in the building, the coldest in winter, and no ventilation. It is the first place to condense and the last where anyone opens a window.
Mattresses stacked against a north wall, storage cupboards against an exterior wall, the corner under the sink. A daycare is full of places that hide a wet wall, and nobody moves them until the summer holiday.
The municipality for the building, the director for the day to day, the network or the association for the budget, and the parents for the demand. An independent lab result is the only document all four accept as a starting point.
Sampling is done at the children's breathing height, during activity hours, with the air conditioning running and the doors closed as usual. The air of an empty daycare in the evening is not the air the children breathe.
An air sample in every nap room or classroom, in the shelter and outdoors for comparison, moisture mapping of exterior walls and behind the cupboards.
About this methodSwabs from every stain, from the AC diffusers and from the mattresses, for species ID. Species of prolonged wetness show the problem is older than the complaint.
About this methodFor a setting with a history: humidity, particle and CO2 sensors in every room, with an alert to staff when something drifts.
About this methodTesting an educational setting is also a matter of order: who orders, when we come, what the parents are told before and after. This is the route that works, and what each party holds at the end.
The order comes from the director, the network or the parents' committee, sometimes from the municipality. We ask in advance for the floor plan, the location of the shelter, any water events, and who complains and when. Also a short letter to parents explaining that a test is coming, so the questions reach us and not the teacher.
We come in the morning while the children are in, because that is the air to measure. Sampling is quiet and takes minutes per room. Lifting panels and moisture readings happen during playground or nap time. Nobody needs to be sent home.
In every setting the shelter is tested separately, with its own sample and moisture mapping of every wall. Most daycare findings are here, so the report separates "the daycare" from "the shelter", so the conclusion does not stain the whole institution.
The director gets the conclusion and the repair list in order. The municipality or the owner gets the findings by location, for execution. The parents get one page in plain language: what was measured, what was found, what is being done. Everyone gets the same numbers.
A repeat sample in the same rooms after the renovation or AC cleaning, before the children go back into the shelter. That is the second letter to parents: "tested, fixed, tested again". Without the second test the first letter stays open.
The test for an average daycare costs less than a week of illness rolling through the children, and almost always less than the argument.
The report is written so the director can attach it to a letter to parents without translating, and the municipality can raise a work order from it without asking.
No, quite the opposite. Samples are taken during activity hours, with the children in and the air conditioning running, because that is the air that has to be measured. Sampling is quiet and takes minutes per room, and moisture readings are done during playground or nap time. An empty daycare in the evening gives a result that does not represent what the children breathe.
Either can order, and we work with both transparently: the report is the same for whoever ordered and whoever did not. It is usually better for the order to come from the director or the network, because they hold access to the shelter and the floor plan. If the committee orders, we suggest coordinating with the director in advance so the test happens in cooperation rather than confrontation.
Israel has no binding threshold for mold spores in the air of educational settings. The practice our report uses is comparison against outdoors at the same hour: an indoor concentration higher than outdoors, or a different species mix, points to a source in the building. Particles and carbon dioxide have accepted reference values that the monitoring sensors measure. The report states the values and their source so they can be shown to parents.
It is where most daycare findings are. The thick walls are cold in winter, there is no ventilation, and mattresses are stacked against the wall. The test samples the shelter separately and measures moisture on every wall, and the report separates it from the rest of the daycare. In many cases the fix is forced ventilation, a dehumidifier and moving the mattresses off the wall, not a renovation, and a repeat test confirms that was enough.
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