30: Inspection Review - Open your HVAC / Basement problems / and more...

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.

All right, so I had a cool appointment yesterday, and I just want to run you guys through some of the stuff that I saw there, because I thought that might be kind of interesting, helpful for you. So this appointment was in the Boston area, and the house was built in 1740, all right. Which is crazy. It's like an old colonial house. When I saw the notes in. In my calendar leading up to the appointment, it said the house was built in 1740. And I just thought that they meant to write that the square footage was 1740 and not that the house was built then.

Sure enough, the house was, like 250 years old or 70 or 80. 280 years old. 280 years old. Was. Was this structure. Now, they had renovated it. Obviously, there's been things that have been done since then, particularly this. Our client had renovated it, or it was renovated 30 years ago, and then they moved in. I think it was like eight or 10 years ago. So that was the most recent renovation, which is interesting. So you guys all know my thoughts if you. If you've been listening to me at all on. On limiting the age of your house. And this is like the complete other side of the spectrum. So this is part of why it was pretty interesting to go through the property.

So, you know, when you're dealing with an older property like this, and I've talked about renovated homes before and how when you renovate stuff, it takes away a lot of the clues that we use to figure out. You know, has there been water damage in places? Because water damage is the key trigger for us to start identifying where hidden mold might be located. Now, this was renovated 30 years ago, so there's still plenty of time for there to be triggers. But the interesting thing is sometimes on these renovated houses, the areas that are not occupied, if you go take a look at those areas, they give you a bit of a clue of what's been happening to the house. And so for this particular house, I'm talking attic. It also had a basement. There's only a couple things I'm going to talk about about this particular inspection project, because, I mean, we were. We were there for like eight hours. So I'm just going to talk about kind of the attic, basement space. We're going to talk about the windows and we're going to talk about the heating air conditioning system. And I'm going to leave it at that. Those are some of the three key things that I think that we could all take something away from. So first, when it comes to these non occupied spaces, when renovations are done, like nobody ever goes in them, right? Who cares what they look like? Because the homeowner isn't buying those spaces spaces. So you get a much more kind of long term look at just kind of what the house has been exposed to really. It doesn't mean that you're finding every water issue, obviously that's in the house because you're not next to all the different areas. But like you could get a sense like, has this house been through some stuff basically? And this house, I would say definitely falls in line with the house, has been through some stuff. In the attic you can see that the decking, which is the plywood that goes under the rooftop. So if you go in your attic and you look up at the, you know, at the ceiling of the attic, that's the decking. So much water damage on all that decking. And so it's pretty clear that there was a roof leak at some point in time. And so it turns out the roof had been replaced, but all the, all the decking was still water damaged. Right. And so.

And additionally there's other places in the attic where it looked like there's mold growing on, on plywood platforms, on framing, on different things like that. And the thing is, and I've mentioned this before, is that when you fix the source of a leak. So let's say in this example, it's pretty clear that there was some roof leaks that happened at some point in time. And so the roof got fixed. And so the thought is, oh, we fixed the roof, so everything is fine. Well, it's not true because if mold grew as a result of a roof leak, even if it happened eight years ago, all that stuff is still there. The colonies are still there. I started using a different analogy to explain this and, and maybe it'll help. So if you have a yard and you have a beautiful green yard and then you just stop watering it, right? So you're, you're eliminating the water source. The yard just turns like yellow and gross and dies. And it kind of like when you walk on, it kind of hurts your feet. It gets a little more flaky. Like it doesn't disappear. The yard doesn't just magically poof away and then you just have dirt again, right? It's like all this dead grass that's there. And so this is the same thing that happens, right? All the mold just. The water goes away. It basically, it's non viable anymore, which means it's not growing, but it becomes really brittle the same way that that grass is. Like when you walk on regular grass, it's kind of soft under your feet. You walk on, you walk on dried out grass and it's really hard and it feels like needles. And it's because all the water dried out has become really brittle and, and just kind of awful. And so that's what happens when mole colonies grow. And then you fix the water source. So in this case, you fix the roof leak, which is cool. You know, there's something that needs to be done. But like all the decking stayed. So the problem is like, imagine if you're looking up at the top of your. Your attic. You're just. You just look up at the ceiling of your attic. That's what the decking is. And then the roof goes on the other side of that, okay? So you're looking at the bottom of that plywood. The roof attaches to the top side of the plywood that you can't see. So if a bunch of water came through there at some point, which was pretty clear that it did, then there's a pretty good likelihood that there's mold growth on the top side of that plywood that you can't see. You know, so in addition to the water damage that we were seeing, there's a pretty good chance that there's mold growing on the top side of that plywood. So that was what was happening in the attic, the basement. You guys really know how I feel about basements and crawl spaces.

The basement honestly looked like I just walked into a horror movie. Like they should have been filming a horror movie in the basement. It was.

It was like all old stone down there, super water damaged. The smell was really, really bad.

Even through the mask, you could smell like what was going on. Like that's how, that's how much of an odor there was down there. And, and again, when you get that type of odor, that musty type of odor, like that is typically because there's an active mold growth issue happening, and it's creating the enzymes that put off that smell, right? So that's why you're getting it. So part of what you do, what we do in basements is we try to moisture map all the walls. We want to see if there's moisture coming in from the exterior walls anywhere. So if there's any drainage problems, it's pretty typical. So, like, if you have a drainage issue, then the water will actually migrate through the stone or the cement or the brick or whatever it is down there. It's called hydrostatic pressure will push that water vapor through. And then it basically soaks moisture into the wall. And in turn, it can increase the humidity in the space. And so it's a common thing that happens in crawl spaces and basements. So we're going around all the walls and checking all the walls for moisture. We couldn't find a wall that wasn't really wet. Right. So normally we can find a baseline reading. And so when I start showing clients the moisture meter readings, I'm showing them, for example, you know, these walls were all around, like, 70% moisture detected in the moisture reader. Typically when you go through a space, you can, like, move to a place on a wall somewhere else that's not as wet, and you can get a reading of an area that's not dry or that's not wet. Excuse me. And then use that as a comparison point. So you say, yeah, see these areas? These ones were elevated moisture. It's like 70%. And then over here, maybe it's like, you know, 30 or 35 or something. And this was a place where you could see there's a big difference. But in this basement, the whole thing was like that. And so it's showing you how much moisture is coming in here. What was interesting about this is that, you know, the air conditioning system lived down here too, which immediately, like, we knew was going to be a problem because of what was going on with just the moisture load in the basement. And when we went to the unit, the unit actually had condensation, like droplets, like water. Drip drops, drip drops, Water droplets all over the air conditioning unit. So imagine, like looking at the outside, we didn't even open it yet. At the outside of the air conditioning unit that was down there and seeing like the. The water drips that you would see on a glass, on a glass that's filled with water, and it starts to have condensation that was all over the air conditioning system. It was the first time I've ever seen that. And so immediately it's like, well, this is. This is not going to be good in here. You can just tell if this much moisture is just accumulating on the outside of this unit. It's not a Good thing. We open up the unit, and it was in really bad shape.

All of this condensation dripping was actually happening inside of the unit, too, which was. I've never seen that. I've seen a lot of these. I've never seen that.

So it's obviously a big problem because there's moisture now just flowing through this entire system. And then when we opened up the coil area, which is where the heating and the cooling happens, there was just standing water all throughout the coil area. And you could see bacteria growing in the standing water. And so the reason I want to bring that up specifically is many of us have probably heard of Legionnaires disease at some point, but maybe we don't really know what it is.

So Legionnaires disease, it's like a really, really, really aggressive pneumonia, and it could kill people. And there's been a lot of cases of this throughout history. A lot of times when you see it happening, it's because there's some sort of standing water where there's a bacteria called Legionella growing in the bacteria, and then that creates the Legionnaires disease, you know, from people being exposed to that. You see it way more often in commercial buildings in their air conditioning systems. Not necessarily Legionella growing, although it has happened sometimes in a few that I've been in. But just the fact that you usually have, like, these really big air conditioning systems, and they have to service a lot of space. Space. And, you know, I don't really know the technical specifics about why you find standing water in those units more often than you do in residential units, but my guess is that just because they're massively large units and they have a lot of space to fill, and there's probably a lot of turning on and turning off of the air conditioning system, which creates the condensation because it's serving multiple areas, and, you know, that creates more of a standing water issue. That's. That's kind of what I think is going on. But even if that's not the complete answer of why it's happening, I do know that when I open those units, which are larger, bigger units, there's way more likelihood of a standing water problem in those commercial units, and that's a huge, huge problem. So a lot of these Legionnaires disease cases, a lot of them happen in, like, workplaces or larger spaces like that because of that. So I open this up and I look at this, and typically, you guys may know that I always want to test the heating and air conditioning system, because you have to know what's going through there in order to really, truly remediate the house properly. And most times you're not seeing mold growth, you're not seeing bacterial growth in an H vac system. And it's just getting impacted by pulling air in from around the house that might have mole particles or fragments or mycotoxins that might be moving through the air, kind of piggybacking on the dust. And so a lot of times that's what's happening. But in this one, it wasn't the case. Right. So when I spoke to the client about the testing plan, I actually told her. I was like, listen, I don't think that we should be testing this. I don't think you should be spending your money on testing it. I'm going to tell you right now that this H vac system needs to be. And the ductwork all needs to be replaced. And if you're on the same page with me and you believe that, then there's no need for us to test it and spend the money to test it. If you need more information to kind of wrap your head around that and you don't think that that's necessary, then we absolutely have to test this. Because what we're seeing in here with all of the standing water and bacterial growth on it, not to mention that there was actually mold growing on the coils and inside of the blower fan compartment. I mean, it was a disaster. And so we had that conversation. We ended up not testing it. She's just going to turn it off and seal up all the vents and just try to cut off every air pathway that comes through there and not use it for now. So that's what we ended up doing with that air conditioning system.

The last thing that I wanted to talk about in this place particular, and then we could talk through kind of what the strategy was in terms of what the sampling and what the testing looked like, because it was a unique way that we had to put it together. So, last piece was the windows. Excuse me. Sorry about that. And so a lot of the windows have been replaced. I think she actually said all the windows had been replaced a couple years ago throughout the house, which is good. All the windows looked good. However, all the window sills and the trim and a lot of the walls under the windows had water damage. And so it's the same thing that we're talking about in the attic. Right. If the windows were leaking, you fix the window, you're just fixing the leak, which is a good thing. No different than just fixing the roof, if there was a roof leak, but there was water damage that impacted all the area around several of the windows. And so that doesn't fix the problem, right? The mold, if it grew, it's still going to be there. And my guess is that, you know, if we ended up testing those areas, that we would have seen that there are some problems in those spaces there. Some of the windows below the walls actually had, like, buckling and bubbling, like, of the wall and the paint, and there were some. Some cracking down there. Other windows, it was more isolated to the window sills and the trim where you could see water damage. And actually, some of them, it looked like you could see mole growth on them. So just another thing to keep in mind. I know a lot of folks, they. They replace their windows, right? And. And it was funny. It was like, yeah, we'll replace the windows because they were leaking. So we wanted to fix it. And I get it, right? That's what you do. You got to fix the leak. It's just that doesn't always fix the problem, right? The underlying problem, it fixes the. The reason why the mold might be growing. But it doesn't change the fact that maybe if mold grew already, it's going to be there already, you know? So that was. That was just the third piece of the. Of the assessment that I wanted to talk about. There's other things that we found, obviously, but I feel like these three things, when we're just talking about fixing the source of water versus the what that water has created is just a good thing to continue to touch on. I talk about it a lot, but it's so important that just fixing the leak doesn't fix a mold problem. And then I really wanted to touch on the H Vac system, too. One more thing. On that system.

We have to open these air conditioning systems, okay? You have to know what's going on in them. A lot of us, we just don't think about it. You don't see the ductwork. You just. You flip the switch on your air conditioning unit and it turns on and cold air comes out, and you think everything's fine. This system was not fine. And every time that that was turned on, it's creating a problem and moving it through the house. These systems have to be open. They have to be looked at, okay? And what was worse, she's telling me that they come out and service this unit every year. If they're servicing this unit every year, then they're not doing their job at all, right? Because there's no way that this should be happening, unless all of it just happened in the last three months, which is very doubtful to me. And if you open this unit and you see all the water droplets that are all over it, that's a big problem right there. Like, why is there so much water all over this thing? It's a big, big problem. So these units have to be open, and they have to be looked at. All right? So I just want to make sure that we really hammer that home. And if you're. If you're not going to test them, like, then. Then you have to just understand that if they look the way that this looked and you don't want to test it, then the answer has to be you have to replace the whole thing. And if you're on the fence about it, then you have to test it. Right? You have to know, because the last thing you want to do is find different areas in the house and try to remediate stuff and do what you're trying to do to get the house in a better place for you and then leave an air conditioning system, because it seems kind of daunting to tear out some walls to take out the ductwork.

Just want to try to hammer that home a little bit for you guys. So last thing I'm going to talk about real quick about this appointment was what the sampling plan looked like. One thing I always ask people before we even get started talking about, you know, what the sampling plan looks like and how it's put together is what their goals are, what they're trying to achieve by having me out there that day. Because some people are in different situations. If some people, like, are already knowing that, they're, like, in their gut, the house is making them sick and they want to move, and they're already planning on it, and they just kind of need some validation that it's the right decision, then we don't sample everything. Right. Because that's not what they're looking for. However, if someone is really wanting to stay in the house and it's their home and it's where their roots are and they want to stay there, then we do need to sample everything. If your goal is to get in a house that's not going to keep making you sick, ultimately, Right. If the goal is to try to get a healthy living environment, then we have to know everything that's going on. And so those are typically the, you know, kind of the two paths you go down. Now, when I was speaking with this client, interesting, because she's like, she's Like, I mean, I guess we, you know, I'm open to moving, but at the same time, like, I really want to stay here, right? So she was like, right in the middle of, you know, of that thought process. That's the case. And you lean more towards. We have to test. We have to test things so you can make that decision, right? And so if you're open to moving, that's great, but you're not like wanting to move right now, you know, so you need to have a reason to push you to do that. So we talked about that before. I showed her everything and then I showed her everything. And now at the end, she's like, I think I just need to move. And she wasn't really wanting to test anything at all. And, you know, it's tough because I know that she didn't want to move, right? And so there's ways that we could phase into getting the information too. So for her, I thought that this made the most sense. I was like, listen, yes, there, there are some problems. You know, we see that there are some problems here. We know that the H vac system, for example, it's got to go. Like, it just has to go, all right? But for me personally, this is what I told her. I was like, whenever I move in, whenever I buy a house where I have control over the whole thing, if it's not like a brand new house, I'm replacing the air conditioning system. It's just not even a question. The system is coming out. It's just happening. All the. So many air conditioning systems get, get contaminated, get compromised. And you can't clean them, you know, and you can try to clean them, but there's always going to be residual left in there because you can't clean these, like metal micro cavities 100%. You can't clean flex ductwork 100% because stuff just wedges in there. There's no way to get it all out. For me, H VACS are going. If you're hypersensitive, you really, really have to consider anywhere that you move into that's a new, you know, that's going to be the home that you live in that isn't like a brand new home. The H VAC system, honestly, I think it should be getting replaced. It just pulls everything in from the history of the home and it stays in the H vac system. So, you know, I was explaining this to her. That. And I have clients that do this too, right? Other clients, I should say that do this too. We're going to look at new homes for them, and it's happened multiple times. They're like, okay, we're not even going to test the H VAC system because we know we're just going to replace the whole thing. Right. But we want to look through the rest of the house. I mean, these are. This is. This is kind of the mindset to go in with the H VAC systems. And I know I'm probably some pushback from people on this, and that's fine. Pushback. It's okay. It's not going to change my opinion on this. We could always test them. Okay. And this is the thing. If you're. If you're on the fence and you want to test them, we can test them. And every now and then they come back and they're not that bad. So maybe it's worth the testing. And I totally understand that. So let's just say this. It has to be addressed. At the very least, you have to know the answer. Okay? So at the very least, we'll leave it there. So that was the first thing that we talked about. And then we talked about, you know, every house. Every house is going to have its problems. I mean, I don't know if she's going to be looking to move into a house that's 280 years old again, but she's looking to stay in the same neighborhood. There probably is a lot of homes that are like that. Right. So that's something to consider. Like, they're all going to have similar issues that are going on. So it's not like you're going to move from your house and you're going to get into another house that's just perfect. It's not like your house was the. Was the. Just the one bad apple. You know, water damage happens in, like, 80% of houses. It's just a thing. Right? There's always going to be something for someone who's hypersensitive. And when I say hypersensitive, you know, it just means that you have a sensitivity. Sensitivity to mold. So I didn't mention it, but this particular client, she has mast cell activation syndrome. It's very sensitive to mold. And so she can't be around it. She wants to get better, you know, and so there's always going to be something in buildings. It's just a. It's just something that happens. Unfortunately, there's water damage all the time. Mold happens all the time. We have to be on top of it. You just have to stay on top of it. And we just need to Know, if we're going to go find a new place, it's not like our house was the only house that's ever had a problem. And every house is going to be better. So we're just going to move into a better house. That's not how it works. Okay. So the thought process is, if you're going to move, you have to understand one, you're going to have to do something with the air conditioning system. Two, there's going to be some mold problem somewhere in that house. You're going to have to remediate something. Okay.

And three, you might have to do some other larger retrofitting. There might need to be waterproofing that needs to get fixed. There might be some other things that need be to need to get done that you're not going to get a home seller to do for you. Right. Because there's other buyers that will buy the house without doing all that stuff. So you really don't have any leverage. So you're going to be going into a new house, you're going to be paying whatever the premium is to buy a new house. And then on top of it, you're going to have to be spending extra money to handle your air conditioning system in whatever way makes sense. You're going to have to spend extra money for mold remediation. And you may even need to spend extra money on other things like drainage or some more of the kind of basic things in the home that need to be addressed in order to help prevention. Right. So those are things that you might need to spend on. You may be able to get remediation covered if you have some testing done during your contingency period. But again, the reality is, is that there are a bunch of people that would move into that house and not care about it. So you don't have the leverage. You don't have the leverage when you're buying a new house because there's so many other people that are lining up to buy them until the home market changes. And I mean, I'm in California, I don't know how it is everywhere else. I know how it's been here for the last 10 years is good luck getting your offer accepted on a house. Like, there's competition everywhere. Everybody wants to move in. And if you're in a neighborhood that's a desirable neighborhood, and in doing so, the leverage is all on the buyer side or all on the seller side. Excuse me, and not on the buyer side. And so if you come in and you say, okay, we're going to need this remediated. And this has to happen. And this has to happen with the air conditioning system. And we need to retrofit the drainage and do some things. They're gonna be like, yeah, sorry, we're just gonna sell it to the next person and that's what's gonna happen, you know? So there is a benefit of knowing what's happening in your own home. You have total control over it. You've done a thorough assessment of your home. You can find out everything that's going on, and you can really make the decision on what you need to do. Okay? So that. That's really the benefit of at least understanding what's happening in your place. So anyways, for her, we had this conversation. I was like, listen, why don't we do this? Why don't we only do what I call screening tests, right? Let's just do ermi. Mycotoxin endotoxin testing in the house and in the basement. Let's just see what's floating around. Let's see what the exposure looks like, okay? We're not worrying about where it's coming from. We're not testing the air conditioning system. We're not testing all the different walls and the windows and the attic and all these different areas that we pointed out. We're literally just doing dust screening tests throughout the house to see what's going on. If it comes back and there's no toxins in the house. And yeah, maybe there's a mold load. There probably is going to be a level of mold just from what we're seeing. But if we're not seeing any of the toxins, it's a really good sign, right? It means that maybe some of this stuff is more manageable than what we thought just by looking at pictures. It's tough because I can only show you so much in pictures and what I'm showing you. While I'm pretty good at picking things out, you know, I went back and we pulled a bunch of numbers on, like, my last 200 samples that were of things that I called water damage. 75% of them were positive, 25% of them were not. Some homes I do skew way down the other way. Sometimes it's more like three out of ten samples come back positive and the other seven are okay. That's happened before. Other times. Every single one that I do is a problem. So, you know, as. As good as you can be at anything when you're dealing with microscopic stuff and you don't. It's not visible and you're basically just following clues in a map, essentially trying to figure out everything that's going on. It's not black and white right there. Things that you think are really bad might not be as bad, and things that, that don't look super bad could be really bad. And that's why testing is so important. So that's what we ended up doing, right? So we eased into it. I said, listen, we can phase into this. Let's just do the screening test. Let's see what's here. If the screening tests come back and they're not terrible and we think it's manageable, then we could always come back and we could do the source testing. If you feel like that, at that point you want to stay and you want to understand what the remediation plan looks like. The one key thing that I told her and that you guys all have to know is that if you're doing screening testing like ermi, mycotoxin endotoxin, you're not going to know where the sources are coming from. There's no remediation plan that comes with that. There's nothing to clean. Yes. If there's toxins in the house, obviously you want to clean them, but cleaning them at that point in time without understanding where any of the sources are and what's actually creating the problem is just a complete waste of money because it's just going to happen again. So no remediation plan comes with this stuff, okay? And it's how you get, like, ermi tests too. You know, you do an ermi result comes from the lab, they just tell you what it is. You know. Now I obviously help people interpret that a little more than the labs do. They just kind of send you the raw lab report and, and expected to know everything. So, you know, we talk through that and say, okay, so here's what this means. Here's what these molds are. We have. We don't have toxins, whatever it is, but there's no remediation to do at that point. And a lot of times companies will come in and say, oh, we're just going to fog the whole house and it'll fix everything, guys. It will not fix anything. All right? I just want to be really, really clear about that. If the sources are still there, if the factories are still creating the problem, you can try to clean the house. You could spend thousands of dollars to do it. It might be a little better for a week or two. And then the factories, which are still in operation, are going to continue to spread all that stuff through the house, it's going to build up again. And there you go. You're back at square one. So don't ever do remediation solely off of an ermi or mycotoxin or an endotoxin test in the house, because it's not going to work. But for this case to kind of ease into what the situation looks like, because she was on the fence, like, should I stay or should I go? I don't really know. Then we need a little more information to help her make that decision. And so that was why we put that plan in place.

All right, one more quick thing before I go. As some of you know, if you've been listening, I'm moving here really soon. My move date is actually next week, Monday. So it is Thursday right now. I'm going to try to get one more episode out tomorrow if I can, but we got a lot of packing to do and a lot of things that have to get done in order to get into this to the new property. So I may be about a week or so without having any updates on the episodes. Bear with me. I know I've actually gotten messages from a lot of you that you guys listen, like, immediately, and you listen to every episode, which is so awesome. It's actually, like, very affirming for me, and it makes me want to keep doing this. So thank you for telling me that. And if. If you are one of these people that haven't told me that, like, feel free to tell me that. It makes me feel good. You could just, like, message me on Instagram. I'll make my day. But all that said, there may be a little lull in some of these episodes. We move on Monday and Tuesday. We have two days of moving. Monday, we're kind of doing our own move in our own cars. And then Tuesday is when the actual moving truck is coming to get all the big things. So those days are definitely out. And Wednesday is probably not going to happen either, because we're going to have to be organizing things. So I think Thursday would be the earliest, maybe Thursday, Friday. So just keep that in mind as you're listening through and you're trying to, like, update the feed and, like, nothing's updating. I do this on podcasts I listen to also. I'm like, I want to listen today. What's on. I go on the next day, there's nothing there. It's, like, frustrating. So I just want to give you guys the heads up that that is the situation for me for the next week. So until then. Hope you guys all have a good one. We'll talk to you soon.

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 rating wherever you get your podcasts. It'll help spread the word to those who really need it the most.