Mold Removal in Slaton, TX

Caprock Mold Pros handles mold removal in Slaton, TX. Slaton is about sixteen miles southeast of Lubbock on US-84, and it is one of the more interesting towns on the South Plains to work in, because the buildings here are genuinely old.

Slaton grew up as a railroad town. The Santa Fe put a division point here and the town built around it, and that history is still standing in the housing stock and downtown. Brick commercial buildings from the early twentieth century. Frame houses from the twenties and thirties. Homes that have been added onto four times. None of that construction was designed with modern moisture management in mind, and all of it can hide water.

The inspection is free and we answer the phone at any hour.

Old Buildings Hold Water Differently

Pier and beam is common here

A lot of the older Slaton houses sit on pier and beam rather than a slab. That means there is a crawl space under your floor, and in this part of Texas that crawl space usually has bare dirt in it with no vapor barrier, or a torn sheet of plastic somebody put down decades ago.

Bare soil under a house gives off moisture constantly, even here. That moisture goes up into the joists and the subfloor. Add a plumbing leak, a foundation vent blocked by landscaping, or grading that has shifted so runoff goes under the house instead of away from it, and you have a growing colony under the floor that nobody has seen in thirty years.

The symptoms show up upstairs: floors that feel soft near a bathroom, a musty smell strongest at floor level, cupping hardwood, and cold floors in one part of the house. See our crawl space mold removal page for how we handle it.

Original plumbing on shifting soil

Galvanized supply lines and cast iron drains that have been in service since before World War II fail slowly. On expansive clay that moves with every wet and dry cycle, joints loosen and lines crack. The leak is a weep, not a burst, and it can run for years behind plaster or under a floor.

Plaster and lath instead of drywall

Older Slaton homes often have plaster over wood lath. It behaves differently than drywall when it gets wet, and it can hide a problem longer because it does not stain and sag the way a drywall ceiling does. When we do open it up, the wood lath behind it is exactly the food source mold wants.

Roof and masonry

Brick and masonry buildings downtown and older homes with masonry elements have their own path for water. Deteriorated mortar joints, failed parapet flashing on the commercial buildings, and old chimney flashing let water into wall assemblies where it travels a long way before showing itself.

Commercial Buildings Downtown

If you own or lease space in a historic Slaton commercial building, the two things we find most are parapet and roof drainage failures, and moisture wicking up through masonry from grade. Both are fixable, but both need the source addressed before any cleaning is worth doing.

Commercial property does not get the homeowner exemption under Texas rules. If the affected area is 25 contiguous square feet or more, licensed remediation and an independent assessment consultant are required. We handle that process and we document it. See commercial mold remediation.

Hail and Freeze

Slaton takes the same spring hail as the rest of the South Plains, and older roofs on older decking do not handle it as well. A hail-bruised shingle over sixty-year-old decking is a leak waiting for the right rain.

Hard freezes are also harder on old houses. Uninsulated exterior wall plumbing, lines running through crawl spaces, and unheated additions all break. The repair is straightforward. The drying afterward is what almost never happens, and that is what turns a plumbing bill into a mold job. Call us about drying before you close a wall back up.

Services in Slaton

• Mold inspection and testing
• Black mold removal
• Crawl space mold removal
• Attic mold removal
• Bathroom and shower mold
• Air quality testing
• Water damage cleanup and drying
• Mold damage repair and reconstruction
• Commercial mold remediation

We Work Carefully in Old Houses

Reconstruction in a historic home is not the same as patching a 2015 subdivision build. Trim profiles, plaster texture, original flooring and window details all matter, and a repair that is technically sound but visibly wrong is not a finished job. We will tell you up front what can be matched and what cannot.

Call (806) 615-4601 for a free look.

Older Materials Need Care

One thing that comes up constantly in Slaton and other older towns out here. Homes built before 1980 frequently contain asbestos in popcorn ceiling texture, resilient floor tile, tile mastic and pipe insulation, and homes built before 1978 may have lead paint under later coats.

That matters because mold remediation involves demolition. Cutting, sanding or scraping those materials without testing turns a mold job into a much more serious exposure problem for whoever is in the building. On any pre-1980 structure we look at the finishes before scoping demolition, and where testing is warranted we say so rather than proceeding and hoping.

It adds a step. It also keeps a manageable job from becoming an expensive mistake.