Questions we get asked

You can, and for a rough personal indication it is better than nothing. But a DIY kit is a presumptive screen with no chain of custody and no accredited laboratory behind it, so nobody else has to accept the result — not an agent, not an insurer, not a tribunal. If the result is only for you, a kit may be enough. If anyone else needs to act on it, it is not.

Australian practice measures results against the investigation level in the Commonwealth Clandestine Drug Laboratory Remediation Guidelines. Your laboratory report states the level your result is measured against, so you are never left comparing a number to nothing. Above it means further investigation is indicated — not automatically that a clean-up is required.

Presumptive screening gives an answer on site during the visit. Everything involving a laboratory takes three to five business days from sampling, and we send the report the day the results land. If you are against a contract date, tell us when you book and we will be straight with you about whether it fits.

Possibly, and it depends on your circumstances and the stage you are at. Disclosure obligations in Queensland are a legal question rather than a testing one, so get advice from your solicitor or your agent. We can tell you what the result says; we cannot tell you what you are obliged to do about it, and you should be wary of any testing company that offers to.

Yes, and it is one of the most common reasons people ring. You need the owner’s permission for access, which in practice means arranging it through the agent. Build the laboratory turnaround into your contract dates — a five-day lab result is no help if your cooling-off period ends in three.

It might be, and it might be a hundred other things. Smell is not a reliable indicator in either direction: heavily contaminated properties can smell like nothing at all, and a property that reeks can test clean. That uncertainty is the entire reason testing exists. Do not clean it first.

It depends which one you book. A whole-property composite produces a single number covering the rooms sampled, which is one result for the property but an averaged one. By-room composite gives each room its own result. Detailed sampling gives each individual location its own result. More granularity costs more and tells you more.

No. We test and we report, and that is the whole business. If a result comes back positive you will want a Certified Occupational Hygienist to assess the property and prepare a remediation plan, then a remediation contractor to carry it out. We are neither, which means nothing in your result is worth anything to us.

Yes. Post-remediation testing is worth doing properly — book detailed sampling rather than a composite, because an averaged result is exactly the wrong tool for confirming that a specific area was cleaned. If a hygienist prepared the remediation plan, check whether clearance sampling was already written into it before you book anything.

A result describes the surfaces we sampled on the day we sampled them. It cannot speak for rooms outside the scope you booked, surfaces we did not swab, or anything that happens at the property afterwards. Anyone offering you a guarantee broader than that is selling you something they cannot deliver.