37: Renovate or Remediate?

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. How we doing? I wanted to talk to you guys today about a conversation I had with one of my clients over the weekend or Friday or over the weekend. I don't know, in the last few days, it. It's all kind of running together for me now.

But this was a client where I had initially done an assessment of their home, probably like, two months ago, maybe. And. But when I was there, they decided they didn't want to do any testing at all. So I think it might have just been a little overwhelming, to be honest, because I don't remember exactly how many areas there were, but there was probably, like, 25 or so different spots in their house where it looked like that there could be some problems. I was wanting to do some testing, and, you know, it's a lot when you. If you think that all of those. Wow. Excuse me. It's early in the morning, and I haven't had my coffee yet. I apologize for that.

I was saying, you know, they had, like, maybe 25 areas of concern, and, you know, you think through that's a lot of areas of your house, and if you think that all of them might have a problem, then it gets a little overwhelming. And what was interesting with them and what I started uncovering during the conversation was that they kind of had conflicting goals. Not on purpose, but they ended up having conflicting goals. And I'll tell you what I meant or what I mean in a second. And because of that, they basically haven't done anything. And so through the conversation that we had, I was able to kind of feel. Figure out what was happening and then give them some advice. And we're gonna go out there and actually do some testing and try to figure out what's going on now. So here's what was going on. They've got. They had actually this really cool house. It was. It was on, like, a bigger piece of land, and it was in this kind of, like, wooded area a little bit. So it's in Los Angeles, right? We don't have, like, a lot of wooded areas, but it was this little secluded thing, and they had this really big wraparound backyard that was like multi leveled. As you went around the house, it almost felt like you were going on a hike. When you were walking around the house and then surrounding the yard, it kind of felt like you were in the woods. There was big trees and all kinds of stuff. It was really cool, actually, on the outside and then the inside, the house is an older house. And so, you know, older houses were more sectioned. Kind of like this open concept thing that we see now was not really a thing a while ago. So, you know, it was kind of, you know, each level and then it was kind of like tight corners and sections and things like that. Anyway.

So they. It was an old. The reason, I tell you, this is an older house and they've done some renovation to it now, you know, up to now, right. So the kitchen had been completely redone, and I want to say one of the bathrooms had been completely redone. And then they were planning on redoing their entire master bathroom and master bedroom suite. That was like the next thing on their list.

And so one of the things that they were doing, and really without thinking about it, I think, is that.

They were kind of testing, or wanting to test, I should say, to figure out, like, kind of where they needed to renovate, if that makes sense. I'm trying to figure out the best way to put this for you guys. So they were already planning on doing like, the master bathroom and the master bedroom suite that was next. And so when I went through that area, I found seven different spots just in the bedroom and bathroom that looked like there could be problems. There was some moisture issues in the bathroom. There was some staining on, like, the walls next to the exterior sliding doors in the bedroom. So there were some things going on in multiple spots in there. And so when we started talking, they said, well, we. We don't want to test that because we're going to renovate it. And I get that. So let's talk about that for a second.

If you're going to renovate something like that and you don't want to test it, here's the only way that I would be okay with you not testing it, especially if there's a lot of, you know, potential issues in it like I'm seeing. And that is if you're planning on treating the whole thing as everything that you expose is contaminated and furthermore that you're actually gutting the entire thing. Right. So there are different things. Sometimes when people are renovating, they're only doing a small portion of something. And when you're doing that, if I'M finding, you know, water damage and moisture and different things in the floor and in the, in the walls and different places. You have to be planning on taking all of that stuff out. And if you're not planning on doing that, if that wasn't part of your plan, then we have to test it because we have to see if there's a problem there that would require you to pull all of that. So stuff out. Right. So that's kind of the first piece of it. The second piece is.

I've talked about renovation before, and when you're renovating, you're not bringing in remediation crews, you're bringing in contractor crews. Right. And so they're coming in and they're just ripping a bunch of stuff out and then they're going to take it out through the house and they're not really going to wrap it up properly. And so they're going to cross contaminate the house with whatever's going on in the room. And they're probably not going to have a proper containment put up that has negative pressure and has air scrubbing going on and all that stuff. Usually what contract is that they'll just kind of put up a plastic, you know, barrier over the door. But typically the plastic is not thick enough. Right. So when you're doing remediation, you actually use 6 mil plastic. That's the 6 millimeter thick plastic is what is kind of the, the standard that's used. You could even do more if you want to. But a lot of times when construction work's getting done, they use something that's much, much thinner, which isn't going to seal the place off as well. And so there's just a lot of things from a containment perspective alone and a process containment or a process perspective that aren't being done as if there's a mole problem. But I was seeing a bunch of things in there that made me think there would be a mold problem. So do we understand where the problem is here? Right.

If you're planning on renovating and gutting something out, what happens when you gut something? You're ripping all the walls out, you're ripping all this stuff out, you're creating this big disturbance. If there are mold problems back there, it's going to get popped up into the air. And if you haven't contained the space properly, it's going to cross contaminate the house. If you're heating and ventilation, if the heating air conditioning system vents are not sealed and closed, you know, the can lights are not taped over and closed or you know, all these things where there's air pathways and all this stuff that contractors are not going to do, they're just not going to do that stuff because in their mind they're like, why the hell would we do that? We don't need to do that. Right. So that was one piece. Right. The second piece is, like I said, if you're not planning on taking everything out, then we have to test to figure that out. So that's the second piece. And then the third piece of it is so beyond containment and removal, but the actual cleaning process. Right. So if you have a construction crew in there that's just renovating a bathroom, I guarantee you they are not doing any sort of remediation on the building materials that are left over. It's a common misconception that if there's water damage, let's say there's a mold problem in a cabinet under a sink, or that there's drywall that got impacted or whatever it is, that if you just remove the drywall or the cabinet and that's it, that everything is remediated. And that's not true. Like if you take the drywall out, you've got structural building components behind the wall, you've got your framing right, your two by fours, your studs.

It's not like mold just decided to grow on the drywall and not on the studs. It's going to grow on everything back there. It'll grow in the insulation. It'll grow. I mean, it'll be there if it's there. And even if it's not growing there, the spores, the particles, the fragments are going to move throughout that wall cavity. And so the whole cavity is still going to have to be cleaned.

And wiped anyway. Even if you're not visibly seeing mold. Right.

Because the truth is, is that you can't really see most mold. And I had another client, maybe I'll get in this story afterwards or maybe I'll save her for tomorrow. But another client where I went and gave them an entire plan to do and they were trying to kind of like pick and choose the places that seemed worse and then just kind of open those areas and look at them and they had someone tell them that it didn't look bad and then they just close it up and nothing was done yet. The lab result said that there was a problem back there, which means there was a problem back there, so it needed to be cleaned. And.

It was just the approach that was taken. But that wasn't even a construction company that looked at their stuff that was kind of like a lower end remediation company that looked at it. So that's even a step higher than a construction company. And they aren't really treating it the right way. You know what I mean?

So getting back to this bathroom, this is the first piece of this whole conversation. They decided they did not want to test any of the bathroom. And so I've just explained why I still thought it was worth doing. Now here was the time. So I said a minute ago, there's a time when I get that and I'm okay with it. If you're gutting the whole thing. And this is where I was getting at. If you're gutting the whole thing and you're treating the whole space as if it was mold contaminated, meaning that you're putting in the proper containments, you're bringing in a remediation company to actually do all the removal, and you're then having the remediation company clean everything as if there's mold everywhere, everywhere. And they're actually treating all the surfaces and cleaning everything, then that's fine. Don't test. Right. But the truth of the matter is the cost for the remediation company to do all of that versus the cost of me to run seven samples, it's probably better for me to run the seven samples and maybe there's some stuff that doesn't have to be done. So this is a master bedroom and bathroom. What if the stuff in the bedroom really didn't come back and show a problem and it was only the bathroom? Well, then they could save on the remediation cost of ripping out a bunch of stuff in the bedroom and cleaning a bunch of things surface wise in the bedroom that might not have had to be done. And remediation cost is way more expensive than running a few samples, right? So the cost benefit is worth it in my opinion.

So that's why I would test something. Even though you're planning on maybe renovating it.

Here's the next thing. So like I said, they had done the kitchen already. So we're talking about this conflict of goals that they had. And I don't think they even really knew they had the goal or the conflict. So it started. The wife is basically sick, right? And she has a lot of the similar issues that we talk about all the time, right? So there's mold issues. I think she actually had mast cell activation syndrome specifically. And then she had mycotoxins in her body, I believe as well. So, you know, she had a couple Things going on. So the kitchen. I found some things in the kitchen through the inspection. I think there was three areas in the kitchen that I thought were a problem that warranted some testing. So when I was on the phone with them, it was. Her and her husband were both on the phone. I hadn't met the husband. He hadn't seen me go through the house. He saw the report, and so we're talking about. He's like, well, we just renovated the kitchen, so we're not doing that. And I said, he's like, so we could just cut out those samples. We're not gonna do that. We're not gonna do the bedroom. You start pulling all these things out, they're not gonna do. And I said. I said, listen, I get it, right? You just renovated this kitchen. I'm sure it wasn't cheap. But let me just ask you guys, like, why. Why did you call me out here in the first place? What am I doing here? What are you hoping to get from me being here? And the conversation turned into what they all turned into. We need to find out if there's anything going on in our home. If there's something that's making my wife sick. Is there this or that? I'm like, well, I found potential issues in the kitchen. So what if the kitchen ended up being one of the worst areas and the bedroom that you're planning on renovating ended up not being one of those areas? What if that was the case? If that was the case, and because you've already renovated the kitchen, you've just wiped the kitchen off of your plan, you're not even willing to acknowledge it. If that happens and you end up leaving a more significant source in the house than not, then you. Then we're not doing what you actually wanted me to be here to do. If you have X amount of dollars to spend for remediation and renovation, and we find out that the kitchen is actually a bigger problem. Yeah, I know that we redid the kitchen. I know that it sucks. It looks really nice. I get it. Right? But if the purpose is to figure out where the worst of the worst stuff is, then we got to figure out where the worst of the worst stuff is, where the problems are, and then we can figure out how to prioritize where we're remediating based on that. If you just leave it out, and it ends up being one of the worst places, and then you leave it there and you go through and you do your planned renovations in your master bathroom and in your bedroom and everything.

And then you don't do testing in those rooms. Right, because they don't want to do that either. So you're not testing an area where I'm seeing some issues in a place that you previously renovated. You don't want to test an area where I'm seeing multiple issues. And you're already planning on opening it up, but now are you going to open up enough? Are they going to clean it properly? Are they going to remove things properly? Is it going to be contained properly? Are you going to cross contaminate your house, all this stuff? If you're not doing the testing to figure all this stuff out, to help us map out the blueprint of the right way to do it, then why are we here? You know, there's a lot of times that I get called out and people, they, they want me to come out and they want me to show them and tell them stuff. But as soon as I show them and tell them what's going on, all of a sudden it's like this defense mechanism, a pushback. And it takes a conversation of, listen, why did you call me, right? If you called me to come out and just tell you what you wanted to hear, then you called the right person, you called the wrong person, right? That's not what I'm going to do. If you called me to get my opinion on what needs to be done, to figure out what's going on, to help map out the plan, the phases, how all that stuff works, and that's what I could help you to do. But I can't do that unless I know what's going on. And then, you know, I gave them an example. I actually heard Corey, who, if you guys have mentioned Corey's my, my co founder of Weinspect. He was on a phone call with someone and it was a similar conversation. And he said, let me put it to you this way. If you had a broken wrist or arm or hand or something in there, something was broken and you didn't know what it was, and you went to the doctor and you said, hey, listen, I just need you to fix my hand. There's something broken in it. Can you just fix it? And the doctor would be like, yeah, cool. So we just need to do some X rays. We gotta figure out what's going on. And they're like, no, no, no, no X rays. I just want you to look at this. And then I just want you to make it feel better.

Think about that. Think about that. We're going, you're basically asking someone to see something that's hidden and tell you exactly how to fix it without knowing exactly where the problem is. There's no way in hell you would ask a doctor to do that. And there's no way that you should be asking, you know, us to do that either. Right. It's the same thing. We got to know what's going on and then we can figure that out. What if there wasn't actually a break where you thought that there was, and it was more of just a reaction because you had a break or a pinch nerve or something else further up your arm? Right. So the problem isn't even where you thought it was. And they X ray your arm and they see, oh, man. Yeah, you got this thing, but it's actually higher up. Like it's actually near your wrist. It's not in your hand. So we actually have to fix this thing in your wrist. And then your hand is going to. We're just going to emulate, mobilize it, and then it's going to start feeling better. That's kind of the same concept, guys. We have to figure out what's going on. If we're already taking half of the testing plan basically out of the equation because you've already renovated the kitchen and you're just in your mind not touching it ever again, and then you're already planning on doing the bathroom. So why would we renovate that or why would we test that? Like I said, what if one of those areas is worse off than it is? If the kitchen is the worst area, then what are you going to do? If you have X amount of dollars, really what you need to be doing is not renovating your bedroom and remediating the kitchen. And then you're actually not. You're getting out more of the problem right now. If there's big problems in the kitchen and the bathroom, then it brings something to light and it says, hey, we still have to fix the kitchen. Like, we know that this is a problem. We can't live in ignorance and think that because we just did this, there's no problem there. So by the end of the. The conversation started with the husband cutting more than half of the sampling out of the plan because of different things that he just thought was happening or plans that they had for renovations or work that they've already done. And after this explanation, by the end of the phone call, it said, okay, you're right, we need to test everything and we need to figure out what's going on. Right. And so that, you know, I think that's A valuable lesson to take out of this conversation that I had.

We're dealing with something that's not super obvious all the time. And so if the point is to create a healthier space that's going to allow you to heal, then we need to evaluate the whole space. We can't make assumptions about things because work was done a year ago or a year and a half ago. I think this kitchen, it's been months since I've been there. And then they had the work done like a year and a half or two years ago or something. So it's. I mean, it's new, it's like a two year old kitchen. But, you know, a lot can happen in two years, you know, So I told them, I was like, hey, mold could start growing in 48 hours, 24 hours sometimes. Like, you've had this kitchen here for two years and I'm seeing three places where it looks like that there's water issues. Do we think that two years is enough time for something to grow? If it could grow in 24 to 48 hours, the answer is, of course it is. Right? Of course it is. So it was just hard because they had this conflicting. This conflicting interest of. And they didn't know about it until we talked about it, but it was. They had this desire to renovate their house and to get it to a point where they were going to be happy. And that desire was over. It was overtaking the priority position of trying to figure out if the house was healthy and a place where his wife, who's clearly sick, is going to be able to heal. And once they switched those priorities, because the truth is those priorities should be switched. And they just didn't know that they had them in the wrong order because they hadn't thought about it. And so it was reshaping their entire thought process and how they were thinking without them actually knowing about it. So once we switched the priority and they really understood.

What their own goals were, this wasn't me feeding them their goals. This wasn't me telling them that their health is more important than their house. It was them telling me that it was more important. And then them listening to themselves tell me that, and then them realizing what they just told me. Right. And so once they kind of wrap their head around that rejiggered their priority, then they're like, wow, okay, let's do all the testing. Let's figure it out. If the kitchen is a very big problem, then we'll have to handle it and we'll address some of these other areas as they need to be addressed.

So anyways, I run across this all the time and so I thought that just the conversation we had was a good one and I wanted to share it with you guys. So next time you're really thinking about what's going on in your house, if you've done some renovation, if you're planning on, on already renovating something else and you're just kind of thinking of like, well, we're not even going to check that area because we're just going to rip everything out. It's not that easy. It's not just about ripping stuff out. It's about understanding how you're going to contain it. Is there contamination behind there for one or an area that you've already done some work on has a problem occurred? You know, when rebuilds happen, leaks happen all the time. It's not like you build something and then immediately it's just never going to break again. I'm watching this show on HGTV with my wife on. I think we end up kind of watching it on Sundays, which is weird because you can watch stuff anytime you want to now.

But it's called Renovation island, it's on hgtv and it's this couple that bought this like run down hotel resort in the Bahamas and they've spent like a year and a half renovating the whole thing. And so each episode is them going through and like, you know, the speed bumps and the challenges and like, ah, this isn't working. Oh, we gotta renovate this. Oh, we're running out of tide. Nothing. We're not going to open. You know, classic TV drama but for these shows. But what's interesting is so this guy's a contractor, he knows, clearly knows what he's doing. He's renovating the house or, excuse me, the hotel property. And they just, in the last episode they put in air conditioning units and then later in the episode there's a leak. So they put in some air conditioning units and they put up wallpaper in the room underneath where those areas were. Then they're going into the room to do some other work and they realize the wallpaper's and they pull the wallpaper away. They're like, holy crap, where's all this water coming from? And then they go up and they figure out that the air conditioning units are leaking or they install flooring and doors and everything and then they come back in and the floor is cupping and bowing by the doors and they're like, oh man, there's water coming in. So what they have to do, they had to reopen all of these things, right? And the guy's like, pissed about it. He's like, ugh. He's like, we're on this timeline, we put this together, and now there's this problem and I have to reopen it and I have to fix it and I have to figure out what's going on, right? This stuff happens. It's not like you build something once and it's gonna be perfect and there's not going to be issues that happen, right? I mean, in here, I mean, they built something literally a month or two ago, and within that time, it's all getting water damaged again, or leaks are sprouting up, or waterproofing isn't working the way that it was supposed to. And so what do they have to do? They have to fix it. They have to open it up and they fix it. And that's what's happening in the show. They're like, oh, man, we got to rip the floor back open or we got to open up these walls, we got to open up the ceiling. I got to figure out what's going on. Part of one of the solutions they did, which I thought was kind of cool for something, is they had an issue. Well, just to bring it to light that they talked about it. They had an issue in their attic that ventilation wasn't working properly and there was condensation happening in their attic. So they had a metal roof, because I guess in the Bahamas you put up metal roofs, I guess. And so the extreme temperature change from the air conditioned space to the really hot Bahamas was creating condensation on the metal roof. And it was like waterlogging the whole attic. And then it was dripping down into the rooms and stuff. And so they actually had to go in, they had to rip out all the stuff that was water damage. And then they had to go into the attic and they had to actually create ventilation in the attic so that you didn't have the stagnant air in there. And then.

They had to do some insulation issues in there to help.

Prohibit the condensation from happening. So it was a combination of getting the air out of the attic, which was making the temperature really different from the metal roof, and then also insulating things more properly and doing some of that stuff. So the point of that whole story is that you've got this guy that's renovating this whole thing on this TV show that is having to rip open things that they renovated only a couple months ago because problems happen. So do we think that if you have this happening to this guy on this TV show who is, you know, putting millions and millions and millions of dollars into getting this whole thing done, and he had some problems. And, you know, this is like an expert, expert guy, right? That. Do you think if things are happening to him, that if you have your local contractor come in and do some work in your house, that it's possible that maybe something in your house within the first few months or year or so might have a leak? Right. I can't tell you how many times I've heard clients say they had a plumber come in and they redid, like, a lot of pipes. They had to, like, redo piping, and now there's leaks everywhere in the pipes. Right. If things got done perfectly the first time, then we would never have to check anything again. Right. There would never be water damage where I'm seeing and stuff that's renovated. And things would take years and years and years to have problems. The reality is that things don't get done perfect in the first time. And it's not always, always the contractor or the plumber's fault. I mean, sometimes it is, but it's not always their fault. I mean, sometimes things just happen, you know, and so you have to be on top of it. And so we can't just think because we did something, you know, five months ago, six months ago, a year ago, that this is now going to be set in stone for the next 10 years. It doesn't work like that. Right. So if the goal is to create a healthy place where someone can heal and you've done some renovation, you can't just block that off and put up blinders to that space. It has to be looked at. And if there are areas of suspect there, then they have to be checked out. So that's what I got for you today, guys. Hopefully you guys took something out of that. We will talk to you later this week.

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.