Meet the owner and Founder of Mold Zero, LLC. Rusty Tweed is originally from Waterloo, Ontario where he studied Mechanical Engineering. Realizing early on that working in a cubicle crunching numbers all day was great for his mathematical skills, but horrible for his social and business skills, Rusty struck out on his own in 1980 to be an entrepreneur and hasn’t looked back since. Over the years Rusty has had various successful businesses, but always he was looking for a business that helped people, had no side effects for anyone or the environment and was easily affordable to those who needed it.
When his wife Carol, out of a need for herself, came across the “Dry Fog” technology, Rusty and his wife spotted an opportunity to build a great business. Today Rusty still is involved in his other business ventures and has left the day to day operations to his son and partner Cassidy along with Dominic, but still keeps a hand overseeing and working on ways to expand the mold elimination business in both Clearwater, FL and Los Angeles, CA.
Rusty Tweed’s History with Mold and its Effects
Prior to 2014 I had no awareness of mold and it’s potential damaging effects on a person’s health. In 2002 we moved into a beautiful old Mediterranean home (built in 1926) in Los Angeles, that my wife had found and we had fallen in love with. Unfortunately we had no idea that our dream home was loaded with a hidden, but very lethal growth, mold…
Scroll forward 10 years and we find my wife having issue after issue with her immune system, feeling terrible and not doing well physically. She would have medical handlings, would improve then 4-6 months later would find herself in a decline with her health all over again. Finally after years of this pattern, she had a particular blood test which showed that she had fungus in her blood. Initially this was a mystery to us, but after some research we decided to have our home tested for mold.
Lo and behold the lab test results came back a resounding positive for mold in our home. Not only was it positive, it was off the charts.
It turns out that our house, which is over 90 years old, was loaded with mold. For the 13 years we had owned it, there had been a recurring roof leak that took 3 different roofers over 6 years to finally find and terminatedly handle. In addition, we’ve had several plumbing problems, where pipes had broken on the second floor and leaks had seeped down through our walls. As well I found a drain hose from our AC that had been improperly connected and had been slowly dripping in a crawl space below our home. This had created a large patch of dampness which in turn had been growing about a 3 foot square area of mold, all out of eyesight. Behind our walls (where there had been water leaks) there was obviously more mold, but to find and see it, we would have to rip the walls open. That was a nightmare, as we have a large home and we would have had to rip open a lot of area. With an older home like ours, there’s no telling where there had been roof leaks and plumbing problems in the 80+ years prior to our purchasing it.
Upon more research, we also found out that once you have mold in your premises, the mold releases spores. These spores can get picked up by your air handling system (AC and hot air units) and get blown all through your home. We finally came to the conclusion that to effectively remove all the mold from our house we would have to practically demolish and replace all the walls and thoroughly clean out the ductwork as well as pretty much scrub down the whole house. And even then there was no guarantee that we would completely remove all the mold and it’s spores.
What a nightmare!
At this point we had resigned ourselves to the fact that we would just have to sell our home. There was no way we could afford the cost to totally remediate our home and it was pretty obvious that my wife could not continue to live in it without getting rid of all the mold.
Fortunately for us, my wife mentioned what was happening to a chiropractor friend of ours in Utah. It turns out that he and his wife went through a very similar situation with their home and they ended up totally handling it. Curious, my wife found out about the Dry Fog technology and how it had totally eliminated the mold in our friend’s home. Now my wife was excited and came to me about this miracle method of getting rid of mold. To top it off, it turns out that the process is totally non-toxic, EPA approved and guaranteed to kill not only mold, but bacteria and virus’ as well for up to one year after the treatment.
We were ecstatic! With very little delay we arranged for our home and several friends of ours to be treated. It worked great. We had our home tested by a local reputable lab and the mold count was practically zero (it’s rarely zero we learned as there’s always some mold spores floating around from the air outside). My wife felt better and people that came to our house could sense the cleaner, mold free air. As well, friends of ours that had their homes treated had great success. They commented on how much better it felt being in their homes and almost everybody commented on how their sleep had improved.
I had had a goal to be involved in some sort of business that truly benefitted people, was easily affordable and that did not harm the environment. Wow, this Dry Fog technology did all of that! We had stumbled not only on a technology that saved my wife, but that we could develop and expand upon and have a thriving business that we could truly feel good about.
One thing led to another and we ended up working a deal to operate this technology here in Southern California. My son and his friend got very excited about what they had seen and wanted to go to Florida to do the Dry Fog there. We worked another deal and off they went, partners in a new exciting venture that they could make into a career and bring excellent benefits to people at a reasonable cost.
Since then we have done well over a hundred jobs. Every job we’ve had verified by a reputable lab testing the property after our Dry Fog application and one for one we’ve had excellent results eliminating mold from the building environment. We’ve successfully done not only homes, but commercial buildings and even a hotel. In pretty much very case the occupants have noticed a change in the interior air and often a big improvement in their health. In fact a large percentage of our leads come from local doctors and chiropractors who have patients, much like my wife with severe mold allergies. Many are the success stories from our clients.
It really is a joy to own a company that can bring such an improvement to people’s lives. A business that is absolutely non-toxic to homes, pets, plants, occupants and to the environment. The cost is low enough that pretty much any home owner can afford it, and the improvements in their health make it a lot less expensive than all the medical bills they were looking forward to.
We are now successfully up and running. We are proud to be offering the Dry Fog treatments to the people of Southern California and the Tampa Bay area of Florida.
Due to the resounding success of this business we’ll be opening other offices in the near future as well. Here’s to another American Dream coming true!!