InspectCam™Mold remediation · InspectCam™ Pro, coming soon
Mold remediation documentation, from the first photo to clearance
Every stage of the mold job photographed, lit and easy to find again.
By , developer of InspectCam™ · Published · Last updated
Mold remediation documentation is the photo record of a mold job: what was growing and how much, the moisture that fed it, the containment, what came out, how the area was cleaned, and the clearance at the end. InspectCam™, free on Google Play, keeps the phone's light on while you look, shoot and record, so crawl spaces, attics and open wall cavities are lit while you shoot. Pro, coming soon, files every photo into the job, stamps it with the date, time and address, and turns the job into a PDF report under your company name.
A mold job gets questioned after the crew has left. The homeowner wants to see what came out of their wall. The adjuster wants to know where the water came from, and when. The property manager wants proof the cause was fixed before the tenant moves back in. When the photos are stuck in text messages and three phones' camera rolls, somebody spends an hour trying to retrieve the right image weeks or months later, or ends up reconstructing job details from memory. A mold file built as you go avoids both.
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What does mold remediation documentation have to show?
Two references sit behind most mold jobs in the US. The EPA's homeowner guide puts the first rule plainly: “The key to mold control is moisture control” (EPA, A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home). Clean up the mold without fixing the water problem, and it most likely comes back. The EPA's guide for bigger buildings sets out containment, protective gear and how to tell when cleanup is done (EPA, Mold Remediation in Schools and Commercial Buildings, chapter 3).
The trade's own procedure is ANSI/IICRC S520, the Standard for Professional Mold Remediation, now in its 2024 fourth edition (IICRC). Its topics include administrative procedures, documentation and risk management. It sorts a space into three conditions. In plain words: Condition 1 is the normal background of mold for that kind of building, Condition 2 is a space contaminated mainly by settled spores from a nearby growth area, and Condition 3 is actual growth, active or dormant, visible or hidden. Those are our short summaries, not the standard's text; work from your own copy. InspectCam™ isn't certified by, approved by or tied to the IICRC or the EPA.
Put together, a good mold file answers five questions with pictures: where the growth was and how big, what moisture fed it, how the spores were kept in the work area, what was removed and cleaned, and how everyone knows it's done.
The photos for each stage of a mold job
Shoot the same way at every stage: wide first, so anyone can tell which room and which wall, then close. Stand in the same spot for the after shot as you did for the before. If an assessor wrote a protocol for the job, its list comes first; this one fills the gaps.
| Stage | Photograph | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Before | Each area of growth, wide and close, with a tape measure in the close-up | Size and spread, in one look |
| Moisture source | The leak, the wet framing, the torn vapor barrier, the bath fan venting into the attic; your meter on the wet material | The cause. Unfixed, the job comes back |
| Containment | Poly walls and the entry, sealed vents and doors, the air machine and where it exhausts | Shows the spores were kept in |
| Removal | Cut lines, the open cavity, bagged material on its way out | What came out, and why the rebuild costs what it does |
| Cleaning | Framing and sheathing after cleaning, from the Before angles | The before-and-after pairs |
| Source fixed | The repaired pipe, flashing, grading or vent | Proof the cause is gone |
| Clearance | The area at the assessor's visit, containment still up | Someone else checked the work |
| After | The finished room after the rebuild | What the owner sees last |
Before: size, spread and the source
Size matters to everyone downstream. The EPA's homeowner guide says a patch under about 10 square feet, roughly 3 feet by 3 feet, is often a do-it-yourself job, and points larger problems to its guide for bigger buildings. Lay a tape or a folding rule along the growth in the close-up, and “how big was it?” is settled by the photo. The same guide notes that when mold is visible, sampling is usually unnecessary; testing is the assessor's call, and the photos are yours.
Then photograph what fed it. A stain on a ceiling is a symptom; the drip at the toilet supply above it is the cause. Put your moisture meter on the wet material and take the photo with the reading in view. That one shot does more for the file than ten pictures of the stain.
Containment and removal
The EPA's guide describes limited containment for about 10 to 100 square feet (one layer of 6-mil fire-retardant poly, with vents and doors sealed) and full containment above 100 square feet (two layers and an airlock or decontamination chamber), both kept under negative pressure and exhausted outdoors. It warns that sheeting bulging outward means the containment has failed. Photograph the containment the day you build it and again before clearance: poly drawn in toward the work area shows the air machine doing its job.
At removal, photograph the cut line before the cut, the open cavity after it, and the bagged material on its way out. Hidden growth on the back of drywall or inside the cavity is the most common surprise on a mold job, and the most common change order. A photo of it, taken the moment the wall opens, is what makes the extra work an easy conversation.
Who asks for mold photos, and what they look for
| Who | What they look for |
|---|---|
| The homeowner | What was growing, what came out of their house, and that it's gone |
| The adjuster | The cause and its date: a burst pipe, or years of a slow drip |
| The landlord or property manager | Which unit, which dates, and proof the cause was fixed before anyone moves back |
| The assessor | That the work followed the protocol, and the area is ready for clearance |
Adjusters care about the cause. The Insurance Information Institute puts it this way: mold is generally treated as a home maintenance issue and not covered by standard homeowners policies, but when growth is the direct result of a covered peril such as a burst pipe, the cost of removing it may be covered (Triple-I, Protecting your home from mold). So the source photo and its date carry the claim. If the job began as a water loss, our guide on how to document water damage for insurance covers that side.
Some states write the paperwork into law. In Texas, no later than ten calendar days after the project stop-date, the licensed remediation contractor must give the property owner copies of the required photos of the remediation area, taken before and after, along with a Certificate of Mold Damage Remediation (16 Tex. Admin. Code § 78.150). In New York, a licensed mold assessor's post-remediation assessment checks that the work area is free of all visible mold and that the work followed the plan, and a written passed clearance report goes to the client when it does (N.Y. Labor Law § 947). Rules differ by state and city; check your own. This page is not legal advice.
Landlords need the dates. A property manager running several units wants the unit number on every report and a clear before and after. Our rental inspection page covers move-in and move-out photos for the same buyers.
Finding the source in the dark: the free camera
Mold grows where it's dark and damp: crawl spaces, attics, the back of a vanity, inside a wall cavity. InspectCam™ keeps the phone's light on while you look, shoot and record, so you aren't holding a flashlight in your teeth to take the photo. Tap to focus on the stain. Pinch to zoom, or use the wide and close presets your phone supports.
With gloves on, the volume buttons take the photo, and touch lock keeps a sleeve from tapping the screen. The light turns off after 10 minutes untouched, with a warning first, or if the phone gets very hot; tap the light to turn it back on. Your music keeps playing — even while you record video. On phones that support it, Dual records the back camera and a small front-camera window at once, so you can explain the stain while you film it; our guide to front and back camera job videos shows how.
To look inside a wall before you open it, plug in a USB borescope and feed it through a small hole. Works with: Klein Tools ET16 (tested). Tested and doesn’t work: DEPSTECH NTC55, Bazo DN200 and a scope sold as “Industrial scope W400”; they only work with their maker’s app. Most scopes sold on Amazon won’t work. The works-with list stays current, and this check tells you whether your phone can take a USB camera at all.
One thing to be clear on: InspectCam™ doesn't detect mold and doesn't measure moisture. Your meter, your nose and your eyes find it; the camera lights it and records what you found. Photos and videos save to the phone, and free photos carry a small, faint InspectCam™ mark in one corner. For where to look under a house, see how to check a crawl space.
With Pro: every photo in the right mold job
Pro · Coming soon
Pro puts a job chip on the camera. Choose the job, and every photo and video you take lands in it, with the client, address and notes on one card. Allow location and the camera picks the job you're standing at, if you've taken photos for it there before; where two or more jobs are near, the chip asks “Which job?” until you choose. No more sorting a day's photos between the duplex and the basement down the street.
Every photo and video you take in Pro carries the date, time, street address and GPS coordinates the phone reports, in one thin line along the bottom. Say no to location and it stamps the date and time only, and the camera won't pick the job for you. Dual videos aren't stamped. It records what the phone reports at the shutter: a record of the job, not a certificate.
Start from Pro's Restoration template, which already has Mold as a cause of loss on its claim card, and rename its shots to your stages: Before, Containment, Removal, Source fixed, Clearance. Mark the ones you need as required, and give each a one-line tip, like “Tape in the close-up”. Until the required shots are taken, the job page lists them under Still needed, and the camera shows the next one in a single line, such as “Next: Containment 3/8”, filing your next photo under it.
Mark the stain, pair the before and after
Pro · Coming soon
Open the photo from the last-photo square and tap Edit to number what matters, the drip with an arrow and the staining with a circle, and write what each number means. The original photo never changes.
Give each photo one or more categories, such as Basement or Hall bath, and a tap on a category shows just its photos. Pick two photos of the same spot, the growth before removal and the clean framing after, and pair them: in the full report each pair gets its own page, Before above After at the same size, each with its time, note and marks. Anything you mark internal only, a photo, a video or a finding, stays with your team and never reaches the report.
The report your customer, adjuster or landlord gets
Pro · Coming soon
One tap turns the job into a PDF report under your company name, with your logo, contact details and license number, and a permanent report number that is also the file name. With the claim card on, the claim number, insurer and date of loss go on the cover. Photos print by category, each with its date, time, note and marks; before-and-after pairs get a page each. Write up a finding, like hidden growth behind the shower wall, with what you saw, what it means and what you recommend. Preview before you send, make a summary-only version, and pick US Letter or A4. The last page carries one small “Generated with InspectCam” line; the rest is your company's.
Before you start, the owner can sign a work authorization on your phone with a finger, and a certificate of completion at the end. The default wording is written for water jobs, so add your own once in Settings. The job keeps the words as signed, with the name, date, time and time zone. Neither is a state form: Pro's certificate of completion is not Texas's Certificate of Mold Damage Remediation, and it isn't an assessor's clearance report. The app records the signing; what it binds is a question for your own lawyer.
Send the report as a file, or, from a company job's full report, as a link that opens it in the customer's or adjuster's browser, with Download PDF. Stop sharing takes the link down.
When the mold job starts as a water loss
Plenty of mold jobs begin as a leak nobody caught in time, and the drying and the remediation share one file. Pro's Restoration template also carries a drying log: you type each meter reading by hand, and it works out grains per pound and dew point and shows the day each room reached dry. Nothing connects to a meter. The water damage documentation page walks through the drying log, equipment-days and the claim card, and the water damage insurance guide covers the photos an adjuster asks for on the water side.
Which plan fits a remediation company
Pro · Coming soon
| Plan | People and price | Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Duo | Up to 2, $39.99 a month | An owner who runs the mold jobs with one tech. Every Pro tool except the trade photo drop. |
| Team | Up to 5, $89.99 a month | A few techs and the office on the same jobs, plus the trade photo drop. |
| Business | Up to 10, $159.99 a month | Several crews on several jobs at once. |
On Duo and Team, yearly is a year for the price of ten months; Business is monthly only. These are US prices, plus any tax, charged by Google Play, and none of it can be bought yet. The plan's owner brings techs in with a short invite code, and every phone on a company job sees the same photos, notes and signatures; changes merge field by field, so the tech in the attic and the one in the crawl space both keep their work. On Team and Business, the plumber or roofer who fixed the source can send photos of the repair from their phone's browser, by QR code or link, with no app and no account. For now, each person on your crew needs an Android phone; the iPhone app is coming soon, with Pro included. The full comparison is on the InspectCam™ Pro page.
Questions mold crews ask
Does InspectCam™ detect mold or measure moisture?
No. It's a camera that keeps the phone's light on while you look, shoot and record. Your moisture meter and your own inspection find the mold and the water; InspectCam™ lights the spot and records what you found.
Is InspectCam™ certified for IICRC S520 or EPA guidance?
No. Nothing in the app is certified or approved by the IICRC, the EPA or any state. It helps you take and file the photos those guidelines and your protocol call for; whether a file meets a standard, a carrier's rules or a state's is up to the people who judge it.
Can it fill in the Texas Certificate of Mold Damage Remediation?
No. That certificate is a state form signed by licensed people. Pro can hold the before and after photos Texas asks the contractor to give the owner, and print them in a report you send yourself.
Is any of this free today?
Yes, the camera. InspectCam™ is free on Google Play now and keeps the light on while you shoot, with zoom, tap to focus and the USB borescope view for the tested Klein Tools ET16. Jobs, the stamp, markup, before-and-after pairs, reports and signatures are Pro, coming soon in the same app.
Does the stamp prove when a photo was taken?
It prints what the phone reports at the shutter: the date, time, street address and GPS coordinates, or the date and time only with location off. It's a dated record of the job, not a certificate; how much weight it carries is up to the people you show it to.
Can the plumber who fixed the leak add photos to my job?
Yes, on Team and Business. Send them the job's QR code or link, and their before and after photos land in your job from their phone's browser, with no app and no account. Duo doesn't include the trade photo drop.
Pro for other trades: water damage restoration, home inspectors, move-in and move-out inspections, contractors and their crews, and who InspectCam™ is for.
Pro is coming soon and can't be bought yet, so details here may still shift before it launches. Sources quoted on this page were read on 16 October 2026. If your mold jobs need something that isn't here, write to support@inspectcam.app.