Critical Methamphetamine Testing Issues That Impact Utah Home Owners | Germ Champs 

These Critical Methamphetamine Testing Issues may impact your home sell. 


Four Critical Methamphetamine Testing Issues you need to know about in Utah.

Utah Meth DecontaminationWhen buying or selling a home a methamphetamine surface test should be included in the home inspection. The test is not expensive, results can come back in as little as 24 hours and testing does not damage the property. That said, you need to make sure you understand the following four items before the test is completed.  This information is provided mostly for those about the sell their home. In a later post I will discuss issues that buyers need to consider.

  1. Who is doing the Meth test, the Home Inspector or a Certified Decontamination Specialist? If it is a Home Inspector please ask them to do the following (if it is a Certified Decontamination Specialist they will just do it):
    • Make sure they use templates & ask them to take pictures of the areas they sample.
    • Ask them to put on a fresh set of gloves when preparing the sample areas and placing templates. Then put on new gloves when taking the samples.
  2. Engage in the process. We love having home owners, home buyers, Agents present during the sampling. This is a perfect time for you to ask questions about the process & see where the samples are coming from. That said, some Inspectors and Certified Decontamination Specialist no not. If the Inspector and/or Certified Decontamination Specialist don’t let/want you watch or they don’t want you involved, ask them to stop. Then hire somebody that will allow you to be part of the processes.
  3. When taking a sample from a home, it is best if the samples come from the HVAC, unless the HVAC has been cleaned recently.
  4. If a sample is collected by a Home Inspector and it comes back positive and over the state limit (visit this link for more info).  Then you should consider having a Certified Decontamination Specialist come back to confirm/reproduce the results. When we are called in to confirm/reproduce results we find that the levels are often times much lower.

Why would a Certified Decontamination Specialist results be different then the Home Inspectors results? Take a look at the sub items of #1.  Using templates, and changing out gloves can does impact the samples.  At lower levels these items can be the difference between full decontamination or a simple vent cleaning or no cleanup at all. Keep in mind, most Home Inspectors insist that they use templates but few do. This is where pictures come in handy. We also find that if the Home Inspector knows your going to what pictures, they are much more likely to do exactly as they said they did.