Mold in Florida: what it means and what to do
A moisture problem before it is a biology problem. Slab floors, block walls, year-round cooling: how mold shows up in a Florida house, what the law requires, and what the work costs.
The numbers that decide
Florida law sets a licensing threshold at 10 square feet. The EPA sets a drying window at 24 to 48 hours. Most decisions on this page follow from those two numbers.
Where the line falls →Start here: is it mold?
What the two words actually refer to, and why the moisture behind both matters more than the label.
What colour does and does not tell you, in the words of the CDC and EPA.
Where growth hides in a Florida house when the surface looks clean.
What a test can establish, what it cannot, and when it changes a decision.
What the health agencies state, and what they deliberately decline to state.
What an assessment buys you before the remediation quote arrives.
Where it shows up in a Florida house
The drain line, the condensate, and what a system produces in summer.
Still air against an exterior wall, and what changes it.
Surface staining versus growth in the substrate underneath.
The minority of Florida homes that have one at all.
After a leak or water damage
The EPA window, the water categories, and the deadline the standard never set.
Statutory deadlines, prompt notice, and how Florida courts have read the exclusions.
What a Florida landlord owes, and what the statute actually requires.
Claim and payout patterns from the NFIP record for Miami-Dade.
What the flood record shows for Hillsborough and the bay.
Inland claims: a different profile from the coastal counties.
Cost and who does the work
Where EPA guidance and Florida statute land on the same number, and what the owner exemption covers.
What the price ranges are built from, item by item.
The DBPR register, mapped: who is licensed where in the state.
Local help
Getting an estimate in Miami-Dade, and what to ask before signing.
Hillsborough and Pinellas: licensing checks and local pricing.
Orange County: what an inland job looks like.
Thirty years of NOAA records for five Florida cities, plus the practical guides on measuring damp air and bringing it down.
We run no testing of our own and hold no mold assessor or mold remediator licences. These pages report what named sources say, with the source named on the page.