Mold Inspection In
Cocoa Beach

Cocoa Beach is a barrier island with the Atlantic on one side and the Banana River on the other, and the water does not stop at the shoreline. The city has 37 canals running about nine miles through its neighborhoods, and many of the residential streets were built on mud and sand dredged out of the river. On a lot like that the ground under the slab is rarely dry. We start at the slab edge: the bottom few inches of drywall, the bottom plate and the back of any cabinetry on an outside wall.

Most of the city was built in a hurry. Cocoa Beach had 246 residents in 1950 and close to 10,000 by 1970, so a large share of the houses are Space Race era concrete block, now sixty years old, and many of the condominiums along the ocean followed in the decades after. Salt air has been working on all of it the whole time. It does not cause mold, but it eats the things that keep water out: window frames, slider tracks, fasteners, door sweeps and the coil and pan inside an air handler. The ocean-facing side of a building is where we look first.

A lot of Cocoa Beach is part-time. Vacation rentals turn over weekly and seasonal condos sit closed for months with the thermostat set high, and both hide problems well. A rental gets cleaned and repainted between guests. A closed unit holds humid air until growth starts on the coolest surfaces. In stacked buildings the water is often not yours at all: it comes from the unit above, down a shared plumbing wall, and shows up in a ceiling corner or behind a vanity.