24: How to avoid mold in new construction homes

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey everyone. Happy Fourth of July. It is 6am on Saturday, the Fourth of July. It's the time that I'm recording this. I hope you guys all have a great weekend. I know I've been a little behind on a few of the episodes this week, and I apologize for that. As you know, or those of you who have been listening, we're in the process of, of moving and preparing to move. And so this week has been a lot of trying to figure out what furniture we're going to get and what TVs we're going to get and these different things that we need to fill this house. And it's a, it's a bit overwhelming, guys. We're moving from a two bedroom apartment to a larger home with more rooms to fill up. So it's, it's not just a move, but it's also refurnishing and buying new things. So it's kind of been a lot. But I did notice that I was getting some questions in, so I wanted to talk through a few of those. But quickly before that, I just want to say this week the Mold Insurance email series went out. I hope all of you guys found some of that helpful. The two secrets that we talked about in email two and email three I found to be really beneficial for a lot of my clients. So I just wanted to, to thank you guys for subscribing to get that information.

I will give the quick Cliff notes here on what that is. But basically we're talking about insurance. You know, it's the insurance company's job not to pay you, right? Like their job isn't to give money to everybody. Their job is to collect premiums and then to hold on to that money as well as they can. So the company actually makes a lot of money. That's the business of insurance. So when we know that that's what they're trying to do, then we have to think about, okay, well, how do we get that money from them, right? It's not our money. Like, we think that if there's something going on that the money is ours and to fix everything. And, you know, maybe theoretically, like that that may be true, but the reality is, is that they're doing everything not to give it to you. Okay? So it's not something that's just going to be given to you. We need to fight for it. And so the first secret that we had in, in the email was, was about striking first, is being the first one to show that there's a problem. Right? And basically what we don't want to do is, is call in, put a claim into the insurance company and have them bring their own mold assessor out. And because what that guy's gonna do is just take air samples around your whole house, they're all going to come back fine for the most part, at least 80% of the time, and then they're going to tell you there's no mold problem. And now you're going to be fighting them the whole time, trying to change their mind and re establish the baseline that they created, that there's no mole problem. When instead if you go through, do all the testing, do the inspection, have all the data, the information, the test results, everything first and all of that gets submitted then now the new baseline thought process is, whoa, there is a mole problem here. And it changes the whole dynamic of the conversation. So, so that was the first thing, and then the second thing was about how to actually get them to listen to you. Okay, so I use this analogy all the time.

That dealing with your insurance company is like going to court, right? So the claims adjuster on their end, it's like an attorney, right? There's all this legal language and all your policy claims and documents that you honestly have no idea what it means, right? There's all these loopholes in it, like it's the same thing in court. If you go to court, you would never represent yourself in court. You would get an attorney to represent you against their attorney, right? So if you try to represent yourself against their insurance claim adjuster, it's going to be like you trying to go into court and represent yourself and not have an attorney, which nobody would do. That's just stupid to do in court. Yet a lot of us do it when we're dealing with insurance. And I think that's why a lot of people lose and they don't get the full coverage that they should get. So there is something called a public insurance adjuster. They basically are an insurance person that works on your behalf. So in the courtroom analogy, it's like your attorney, right? So now you have somebody on your side speaking the same language as the person on their side, and you Get a better chance of getting the coverage that you should be getting out of that plan. So that was the quick summary of those two emails. So, you know, I think I might be doing some more of these different kind of themed series because it seems like people like them. And so when I do, I'll go ahead and, and do the same thing and let. Let you all guys, let all of you guys know beforehand that it's coming. So if you haven't already gotten on to the molefinders email subscribers, maybe that'll be the. The nudge that you need to do that. But when it comes to the emails that I send out, I send them out almost every day during the week. I would say four to five days a week. Typically I'm sending out emails and it's all kinds of tips and tricks and different things. So if you like the Instagram feed or you like this podcast, the emails a lot of times go even more in depth into that stuff. So I would definitely look into getting on that list if that's of interest to you. The way you could do that, you could just go to moldcleaning product.com. you could give me your email there. I'll send you the product that I like for cleaning all of your stuff, cleaning mold from all your stuff. And then in addition to that, you'll actually get on the list and you'll get all those emails moving forward. So that was the first thing. Okay, so let's move to some of the questions that I got over the course of the week that I was looking through. A lot of them were actually kind of themed towards newer homes and new construction, which is cool. So I'm going to talk about two things on this episode about that. So the first one, or at least one, we'll see how far it goes. If it goes longer, then I'll split it into a second episode. But we're going to start with new construction. Right. So if you've listened back to some of the previous episodes that I've done where I've talked about the criteria that I would be looking at for a new home, you'll hear that I say in there that I'm looking for a place that's typically like two to five years old, so newer. The reason that I'm looking at that is because.

It'S less of a history for there have been. For there to have been water events. And if you have a less. A lesser period of time where these things can happen, then obviously there's a lesser accumulation of hidden mold and Other things that are, that would have occurred from those water events. Right. So the less the history, the less the potential for water damage and hopefully a lesser mold burden on the house. So, so that's the general idea. While I'm looking for stuff that's relatively newer, typically when I'm recommending houses for more of my sensitive clients, the reason I say two years instead of brand new is because it gives the house some time to off gas. And so they're painting, they're using glues, adhesives, they're putting in carpeting, potentially they're putting in cabinetry, all these things off gas. They have VOCs that are part of that. If you're super sensitive and you have a chemical sensitivity, then that can cause a pretty big problem for you. So by waiting and looking for a place that's more, you know, that's had like two years pass, at least in that two to five year range, you're giving time for like the initial off gassing to happen. And I found that that's a little more palatable for some of my more sensitive clients. So that is, you know, that's why we're looking at newer places. But specifically I want to talk about new constructions because I've had a few different questions about new constructions come in. And so I'm just going to give you a few things to keep in mind on new constructions. What's cool about this is that my, my cousin who I mentioned maybe in the last episode, his name is Mike, he runs All American Restoration out of New Jersey, but they also have a setup in Florida. And his company's also actually created a traveling arm of the business that works specifically with my clients from We Inspect. So We Inspect is our national.

Inspection service. So we, we basically fly somebody around the country and then we can look at the inspection of what they're doing from our home office and kind of like tag team it. So you're getting basically me and somebody that, that we've trained both going through your house at the same time. And then I work, you know, I would work with your Corey. For those of you who don't know Corey, he's my co founder and We Inspect. One of the two of us would basically like work with you, kind of like how a doctor does telemedicine and go through everything that we're finding and talk through what samples make the most sense, talk about your goals, all these different things. So Weinspect has allowed us to expand our footprint nationally to be able to do that. And basically we just Developed.

A web based platform, we made an app to allow the mobile piece work. We went and worked on.

High end streaming technology so we could see everything that's going on. So we invested a lot for us to be able to do that. And it's been super successful in us being able to work with people all the way from Maine to Hawaii to the Midwest, the South and everywhere in between. So it's been pretty cool. But anyways, that wasn't the point. The point was that Mike, who also basically is the company that we refer to out for remediation, he flies people around to all these places that we go to to help do the remediation if it makes sense for the client. Anyway, he is looking at a new house right now. And so we were talking through and maybe I'll actually have him come on an episode, maybe we could talk about this a little more. But we were talking through kind of what he's thinking of doing for his new build, right. Because he's doing a new construction. So some of the things he was saying was pretty interesting and, and I thought they were cool. So let's talk about when we're dealing with new construction. Like the thought is, oh, it's brand new. There, there can't be any mold. And it's, you know, it's not true, right? There can be, you know, mold only takes like one or two days to grow. So it's not like a brand new construction is immune to anything that can ever happen. It just means that the history is less. Right. Just kind of what we talked about, some of the challenges with new construction.

One of the big challenges is the building materials that are actually being used. Right. So if you think about it, if you ever drive by houses that are getting built, right. You'll see all the wood framing and it's all exposed sometimes for months while they're building the house. You know, if you live in a, in a damp or a rainy environment or even if it just rains while you're in a place that isn't super damp, right. So let's say you're in Vegas. This not a super damp place. But if it rained while the house was getting built and then it wet all of the wood and then they. And mold grew on the wood as a result of that. Well, now you're going to have mold on the framing behind the walls, right. And, and it has nothing to do with where you live or anything like that. It has to do with the fact that the wood got wet and then it wasn't properly Dried out and maybe mold grew on the wall, on the framing. Right. So that's a really common thing that happens, that this is why I tell people when I go in their house, it's literally impossible for me or any other mold, you know, you know, high, you know, you know, high expert, you know, one of the. One of the few guys in the country that are the guys that you bring out to look at this stuff, to be able to tell you 100% that every little, you know, spore or mold, every little piece of mold is out of the house. It's impossible to find all of it, because there could be growth behind walls that were the result of the new construction. Where there's no water damage on the inside, it's currently dry. No infrared technology is going to pick up any temperature differentials. There's literally no clue that would be making us think that there's mold behind some random wall in the middle of your hallway. Right. Because there's no water source nearby. There's nothing. And so the thought that we're going to be able to create, like, this hermetically sealed bubble that will never, ever, ever have mold in it, it's just not a realistic thing. Okay. I'm not going to go into the immune funnel again. But the idea is that we're limiting the amount of contaminant coming into our body. And if we're able to focus on the areas of interior water damage, we know that those are going to be the areas where, you know, more of the potential problematic molds are going to be. Those are going to be the areas that are currently creating an issue in the house. And that's really where the focus is for us to be able to do that. And by looking at it that way, you know, it's been very successful for people. But let's just change the expectation that, you know.

The thought that you're going to be able to be in a home and there's literally going to be zero mold anywhere in the home. It's just not very realistic. And so the goal is just to anywhere where there's been, you know, historical water issues that have happened once the build has occurred, where there's sugars and there's signs like, we focus on all that, we get a big, big chunk of the exposure out, and your body's able to start handling the mold burden again. So, okay, so. So with all that said, so if you're driving by a house that's getting built and it rains and mold grows on the framing, and then they Cover it up well, then you're probably gonna have mold on the framing behind there. Right. So that's one of the big problems. So like how do you address that? Right. And so, so we were talking. This is what I was talking to Mike about because he's looking into a new build and there was, there's two things that we talked about that came up. So the first one was.

This is more. If you are kind of like building like it's more of a custom build and not like a home track build. Right. And that's to try to, to find the services that do modular home building. So what they do is that they create kind of larger pieces of the home and they put them together like in a. Where, you know, know in like a big like warehouse or something like that that's covered. And then when it comes time to, to kind of put the house together, they just bring that piece that's already like a bunch of smaller pieces assembled together and then they attach it on site. So let's say that they connect like a bunch of your roof trusses and some different things. Well, that's all going to come in when you're doing modular builds is like maybe a few large pieces that are kind of pre assembled and then they put them together on site and they kind of get it all put together versus them coming in and literally putting every two by four together while they're out there. That's going to really drag out the process and it's going to allow the home to stay exposed for much longer than you want it to. Right. The goal is to try to figure out how to keep the wood as exposed for as little time as possible. That's the goal. You want to get it covered up and you want the exterior, you know, the waterproofing, all this stuff done as soon as you can so you can help protect it from getting wet if it rains. So that's, that's what we're trying to do. I, I always said in my head I was like, man, I wish it would be cool if we could just like cover the house the way they do when they're like when they're doing like a bug fumigation, like a bug bomb in a house. You know, you like drive by the house and the whole house is tented. Like, man, it'd be pretty cool if you could just tent the whole house while you're doing the construction inside. But obviously then cranes aren't going to be able to move things in place, place and stuff like that. So it's not super realistic for that to happen, but like, that would be cool because then you protect it from the elements. So this is a way to kind of limit the exposure time for a lot of the framing pieces and the structural components by doing kind of modular sections like this and speeding up the process. There's this show on hdtv it's called, I don't know, I think it's like your dream house in 100 days or 100 day dream house or something like that. But basically they build an entire house from scratch. So they find the land and they build it from scratch to completely built finished house where like the homeowner walks in in a hundred days, which is, you know, about three months, right? So if you're, if you're doing like your own home build, right, and you're waiting, you know, you go to like a track home, a lot of times it takes a lot longer than that. And so what they do in that show is what I just described. They modular build stuff. So they build it off site, some, somewhere that's like protected and covered, and they come and they drop it on the day that they're doing the install. And that's how they're able to speed that process up. So that's one thing. But if you're doing like a track home build, you probably don't have that type of flexibility. Like, they do it all the same way, right? They're not going to do stuff different for you. So however, something else that you could do though, and this, you could get this negotiated in if you push hard enough and you really explain express what's going on. And if you say, listen, if I get into. I always, unfortunately, and I don't come out of the box like shooting guns like this when I'm working with people. But the. As soon as you start like threatening legal action and health consequences and stuff like that, people are a lot more open to doing things because they especially like track home builders or people who are big corporations because they don't want to deal with that, right? And so if you talk about, listen, if there's mold in this house, I'm going to be able to tell, test and find it. And if I, and I'm sick and if you're going to put me in a sick house, I'm going to come after like, it's not a thing. Like, right, like we're going to have to come after you guys. Like, if you think of a nicer way to present that to someone and let them understand the, the importance of Making sure that you're not going into a home that's going to cause issues like that. I think it'll help you move that through. However, so what, what he said that he was going to do in the area that he was looking, because his is a track build, so he's not doing a custom build. What he was going to do is that once all of the framing is up, right. So all the wood two by fours are up throughout the whole house. Before they do any sort of, you know, putting the drywall on and all that stuff, he is actually going to bring in a team because he, you know, it's his business, but he's going to bring in his team and he's going to remediate all of. All of the wood throughout the house as if it was a house that, that we fully gutted and needed to be completely remediated. That's what he's going to do through the house. So basically he's going to wait until all of the exterior kind of waterproofing walls are in place, the roof is in place. So you would walk into the house, right? And it would be all covered up, but then all of the. There'd be no drywall anywhere. So you would still see all the wall framing, all of the ceiling framing, all of the trusses in the roof, all that stuff would still be exposed. He's then going to bring his team in and remediate all, all of the exposed framing in the entire house. So he's going to make sure that there's no surface growth on any of the wood. Right. And so if you do this, you're eliminating a big problem. So let's say that it did rain, right, While they were putting stuff together and then you come in. Well, now you're able to remediate all the framing and all that stuff. And the only piece that you're not able to remediate is where the framing meets the exterior. That little kind of patch. Like if you put the exterior against the, the small side of the wood framing, there's that one piece that they might not be able to get. But if it rains, you know, he's going to be more on top of it and make sure he's going out there and that things are getting dried out properly and all that stuff. So he's going to be on top of that. But once all that stuff gets put together, he's going to go in and he's going to remediate the entire interior structure of the house. So now you're eliminating all those like potential little hidden areas in random places, like a hallway where there's no water source. And then there's no way for us to think that there could even be mole back there. Right. Because there's no clue that's telling us that it's there. So by doing this at this stage, he's going to have them pause, he's going to come in, he's just going to remediate all of it, surface, clean everything basically, and then have them move forward again. And, and for him, and, and when we were talking, it's like, listen, now I know that there's not going to be anything on the framing in the house. So now they could put all the walls up. And I'm not dealing with an issue where they brought problems in. Right. So that's a good thing. Another way that problems get brought in on the wood framing, by the way, in the house is where they store the wood. So it's not just like when they're building it and if it rains like on site, but it's where are they storing all the wood in the lumber? You know, if they're storing it in a way where it rains on it, which happens all the time. Like I can't even tell you how many times like you just go to a Home Depot and if you look at the two by fours and stuff, you can see that there's mold on some of them. It's just like, it's just how our building practices are. It's how we protect our, our framing and our building components and everything. Right. Like it's just not a thing that's thought about and so that can happen. So even if it didn't rain like during the construction piece of it, there is still a potential that there could be mold on some of the framing that's being used for the build. So by him going in and remediating everything at the beginning, even you know, just assuming there's something everywhere, basically, basically is what he's doing then he's helping to eliminate that. So, so that, that's one thing that he had talked about doing that I think was a pretty cool idea. One more quick thing that I'm going to mention is H Vac Systems. So one of the early episodes I talked about this project I worked on, but just kind of a regroup on it. This was a brand new construction from a developer in Los Angeles. It was like a $5 million house, really beautiful house. And they had three air conditioning systems. And so part of any inspection that I do Is testing the H VAC systems. Because, like I've mentioned a few times before, there's no way to really know if a system is impacted just by looking at it. Because most times, systems aren't growing mold inside of them. Most times what they're doing is that they're just. Because they're forced air movement through the H vac systems, they are pulling in particles and spikes from other mold sources in other areas of the house. And they get embedded into the H vac system, and then they start to continuously just get pushed throughout the house. And the only way to really know if that's happening is to test the system. So there's three H vac systems. I tested them. All three of them had massive mold problems in them. Now, what was interesting is that the attic. The framing in the attic, there was mold all over the framing in the attic, too. So this is one of those classic cases where the framing that was brought in just wasn't. Well, I mean, I guess it could have rained. I don't know. I wasn't there during the build, but doesn't rain a whole lot in la. Odds are that the framing that they built in wasn't protected from the elements. There was probably mold on it when it came into the building process for the house. And I could see in the attic, because a lot of it was exposed, that there was a bunch of mold on all of those. Right. So I did testing in the attic. The attic was bad, but the H vac systems lived in the attic. There's three of them, and they all were housed in the attic. Like the. The furnace units were all housed in the attic. So they had become contaminated, because when you turn those air conditioning systems on, they pull in air from their surrounding area, so they become contaminated from that. Now, the other. The reason that I want to talk about H VAC systems and new builds is a lot of times what happens is that when they're building the house, like, it gets hot. And so they turn the. The air conditioning system on, you know, once. Like, it's all closed up once the exterior and everything is on. But they'll turn the air conditioning system on while they're still doing construction work in the house, which is like a big no. No. Right. Because what you're doing is if you're still doing construction in the house, there's a lot of debris. There's a lot of, you know, just construction crap that's floating around, including potentially mold, as well as drywall particles and all this other stuff that then gets into Your air conditioning system and now your air conditioning system becomes contaminated, right? It becomes contaminated because they were using it during the build.

And they may also want to, you know, like, if they're not using it during the build, sometimes they're trying to test it as well to make sure that it works. But if they're testing it during all of the construction process, the same thing is happening. They're pulling all that stuff into the system. They're testing the system to make sure that it just like turns on and it works. Right? But when they're doing that, when there's a bunch of construction debris and drywall dust and potential potentially, you know, disturbed mold and other things from the framing and stuff that are all over the place that's going to get pulled in the system. It can contaminate the system before you ever, ever move in. Right. So it's really important that they don't run that system, they don't do the testing on that H vac system until, like, all the construction is basically done inside and the house has been cleaned. Right. Because even if you have all the walls up, if they haven't cleaned the house and all those particles are still in the house, they can still get into the system. So you really want to make sure that the house has been cleaned and that, you know, kind of all the construction is done before they start testing the H VAC system. That way you're not going to be pulling all that stuff into the system. So those are a couple, just a couple things to think about. Like, if you're looking at a new build, so hopefully you can understand like, like through all this, that new builds are not the end all be all right. There's a lot of potential for them to be contaminated and issues to happen during that process. Especially, especially if the process is taking four, five, six months, right? There's. There's a lot of time for things to happen in there. If it rains during the build, that's an issue, you know, then everything has to get dried out properly. You have to make sure that there's no mold that's grown on anything. If they're, if they're, you know, during, during the build or running the air conditioning system, that can be a problem. So these couple things that, that I share with you are just some things that you can try to use to, to lower the risk of these things to happen. So hopefully all of this helps answer a good number of the questions I was getting about new constructions. Because. Yes. So just to go back what I said at the Top of the show. Yes. Like, newer is better, Right. I would still personally rather go new construction than a house that's like 20 years old. Right. Just because there's less history. Because that same thing that I've been describing in new construction has been happening in building forever. And so that house is 20 years old is going to have started around the same way, except then it has 20 years of history of other things that have gone on in it too. Right. So still, I would prefer to go new home, but just we can't go blindly in a new home, right, into new build. Like, there, we still have to be on top of it. So we just can't think, oh, new construction, it's going to be perfect. I don't have to worry about it. Like, you need to be diligent about it. You need to be on top of it. You need to make sure things are being handled the right way. And I really, really love the idea that Mike had about remediating everything when all the wood was exposed. I actually had another client who had me come out and they were doing a new build. Just quick side note. And when all the framing was up, he had me come out and test the entire house. I did surface testing in, like, batches. So, like, if you think of an open floor plan, when you're just looking at open framing in a house, right? So you walk into the house, the house is like on a square footprint, basically. So what I did is I split the house into like eight different sections, basically, and then I did surface testing of the framing in each of those sections. And many of the sections came up and there was problems, right? Because I was looking at all the wood, so I was seeing, like, where things looked like there could be mole growth. So, you know, I've had a client that did this and it came back and there were problems. And. And when they went back and showed the testing to the builder, the builder then had to bring somebody in, Right? So again.

This is a quick, good point too.

If you're not able to negotiate with your builder to let you come in and remediate everything, all the exposed framing before they put back together, because they just say, we don't do that, we don't have problems, then you're going to have to prove it to them. Right. It's the same way that you have to prove to your insurance company that there's a problem, the same way that you have to prove to your landlord that's a problem. The only way to prove is by testing, right. And you have to show the lab results. So that's what this client of mine did. We went, we tested all the stuff. Like I said, I think there's eight areas, and five or six of them came back, and there were problems. And so then everything had to stop. And then they had to bring in a remediation company to come in and actually remediate all the framing in the house. And that's how they got it done. Okay. So that's something that could be done as well. So just make sure that you're being on top of these new constructions. That little trick might be able to help you to make sure you can get the framing remediated. I love that idea. Before you're putting drywall up anywhere, make sure that all the wood behind the walls is clean. Right? As clean as you can, as you can get it anyway. And if you're able to basically remediate everything before they put the drywall up the first time, then at least you know you're going in with as clean of a slate as you can have. And I think that's a. That's a big, big benefit, and that's ultimately where we want to start from in a new house.

So I'm going to wrap up there for today's show because it looks like we're running a little long today. So we're going to wrap it up there for today, and then on the next few shows, we'll be talking about some other things that hopefully you guys will find interesting too. So thanks for listening.

So that's it for today's show, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment and subscribe and give a.

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