68: How to inspect and test 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, everybody, what's going on? This is not too long after Christmas time. Also not too long after my birthday, which I mentioned quickly on the last episode with Scott.

Anyway, I wanted to, you know, talk to you guys again. It's been a minute. So here is. Here's what happened over the holidays. All right? So I'm sitting around, I've got the mold phone kind of out. I pull it out of my nightstand in the morning, and I'm like, looking at it, and there are so many texts from you guys. I'm wondering, like, what did you guys do on Christmas? You're like, oh, man. I just really wonder what Brian's up to. Let me text Brian.

I had so many text messages. So I was. I was working on getting back on those, and I started reading them and there was a bunch of texts all kind of about the same thing, which was, hey, looking to get a new house. What do I do? And I was like, oh, I see everybody's getting themselves some awesome Christmas presents. We're getting new houses. This is exciting. You get a house and you get a house. Everybody gets a house. So anyways, I was kind of responding to a couple of them individually, and then I thought I could do just kind of like a broader sort of episode around new construction. I think the next guest that I'm going to have on, whose name is Mike Rubino, who owns a remediation company out in the northeast, who actually is able to work with some of our clients in different areas of the country. I'll give you much more info on him when we get into it, but we basically have kind of worked together to really fine tune how to. How to actually remove mold and toxins from a house. Anyways, he is getting a house built as well, and he was having some issues on new construction, and so all these things were kind of happening, and I was like, all right. I don't know. It seems like the new house gods are, like, all asking for some information. So that's what we're going to talk about a little bit today is new constructions, not renovations. Not just homes that you're looking to buy, but like specifically new constructions. Because there are some unique things about new constructions, instructions when we're going and looking at them. And I just want to make sure you guys kind of know that if that's something that you're looking to do. Okay, so here's what is this the normal thought? Maybe like, I'm, I'm buying a new house. It's going to be perfect, right? That's like the normal thought. I hate to break it to everybody. No house is perfect anywhere, anytime, all right? And there's a lot of factors that go to it. If it's an older house and it has a history, which means there's probably been leaks and that's kind of accumulated. If it's a renovated house, then that means that they probably ripped open walls and things where there were mold problems and spread them all over the place. And if it's a new construction, a lot of times there are leaks that happen during construction.

The wood that they use to build the house with actually has mold on it. And there are issues with heating and air conditioning systems a lot. And then there are a second set of issues with off gassing, so VOCs and even like formaldehyde. Right. So these are kind of the things we're looking at. So when I'm going into a new home, I'm not typically expecting like a new construction home. I'm not expecting to find a bunch of water damage signs everywhere, right? Because they've just put the house together, you know, and even if there was a leak during construction, it didn't impact any drywall, probably because it either happened before the drywall was hit or they just cut the drywall out and put new drywall in because it's new construction and it has to be perfect and clean looking, right? So a lot of times, and that's even for like cabinets or flooring or whatever, right? Like, that happens everywhere. So a lot of times you're not going to find.

Sources of issues, like visible clues of sources in a new construction, except for a couple places. And it's typically the places that don't, quote, sell the house. It's not the visual aesthetic places. It's your attic, it's your air conditioning systems, it's your crawl space or your basement. If you have one of those, it's those areas, right? Like, like even buying a new house, renovate whatever. Whatever house you're buying. And not even new construction specific, but any house, they're trying to sell you something, right? And so when you're. When someone's trying to Sell you something. They try to make it look as pretty as they can, right? Think about it like, I'm trying to sell my car right now, or I'm going to. I have a little dent in my car. I'm like, huh, all right. I feel like I need to get this dent fixed right Before I could sell the car, because I don't think anyone's. I think the value I get for it's gonna be a lot less versus what I put in to fix a little dent. Right? Or even less than that. If you try to sell a car when it's really dirty compared to when you just had it cleaned and detailed, it'll probably sell better, right? It's all about how we interpret stuff. It's just about packaging. It's. That's really what it is. And that's what happens in homes. That's why when you're. When, you know real estate agents working with you on selling a current house, they're like, okay, you got to fix up the kitchen and the bathrooms. This is what sells homes. So that's what you do, right? So anyways, that's kind of what happens in the new construction piece. If there's an issue, they just. They cosmetically fix it, and you go in and you have no idea. Okay. So the challenges that we're dealing with are leaks that happen during construction. We're wood that has mold on it that they built with exposed areas where he get a sense of what's been going on with the wood that they built with, like in attics and crawl spaces, then your heating, air conditioning system. So those are kind of the things that we'll cover. So here's the deal. If there are leaks prior and they fix it, we're not going to know about it, right? So if it is possible to be there, like, during the new build process itself, that's great, right? If you could be checking on the house, like, that's good. And that's. We're going to talk with Mike Rubino about that on the next show that we do because he is obviously a mold expert, and he's going and looking at his house, and there's like, water coming in from the foundation. There's like, all these things going on. He's like, yo, what. What are you doing? Like, this. This isn't happening. And it's turned into, like, a big ordeal for him to get on. On what he's doing. So we'll talk about it. But if you could be there and look at the house while it's being built, then maybe you could see some of these things and then try to get them addressed beforehand Right. Before they put it together. Once it's put together, you don't know. Right. And so when you don't know, we have to do kind of more screening tests throughout the house just to get a sense of overall mold load in the home or bacteria load in the home. Because when you have big leaks, you could have bacteria issues too. And then we look at that and try to get a feel of like, do we think that this is kind of par for the course for new constructions? Because new newsflash, guys, like, there is going to be mold on some of the wood that's used to build your house. It's just the world we live in, there's nothing we can do about it. Right. That's why every house is gonna have some level of mold issue in it. And we're really focused on getting to where the sources have kind of been created inside the house to at least get rid of that load. And then we always talk about, like a maintenance cleaning plan and technology pieces that you bring in to help support that. Like you. You can't just remediate a house and think that it's all gonna be perfect. You know, no house is perfect. There has to be a maintenance piece that goes on to basically counteract other hidden things that may not be able to be found, short of gutting your entire house. Right. And that's just not usually a thing that everyone can do. So there are other pieces that have to be involved. Okay, so, so we talked about leaks and things that happen during construction. So this could be toilets, it could be sinks, Plumbing lines get broken. Somebody is putting something in, and they drill into a plumbing line on accident and it floods everywhere. So now the subfloor gets all wet and they don't replace the subfloor. Maybe they just try to like dry it up real quick. Like these cause. These things cause problems. Right. And so if they've covered all of it up, we don't know. So keep that in the memory bank. We'll talk about that. So then what's the next thing? So we're talking about kind of exposed areas that we can see, right? So now, now we, if we get into an attic or we get into a crawl space or a basement that it's unfinished, we can actually see a good chunk of the wood that was being used to build the house. If there's a bunch of mold all over that wood, then it's kind of a red flag that it's probably in a bunch of other places. And it's a red flag, you know, it's something to consider.

I did a inspection at a new construction home maybe like a year or so ago in kind of the.

Valley area of Los Angeles, like kind of one of the more wealthy areas. It was a $5 million home, new construction. The developer was there, like, while we were doing the inspection with the prospective buyer, who was our client and was going through everything. And guess what? Nothing really looked bad in the house. Of course it didn't, because they've literally just painted and cleaned everything, like immediately before we came in. Guess what did not look good. The attic was covered, covered in mold all over the trushes and the decking and the framing and all this stuff. They used a bunch of moldy wood to build the place, right? And so then that says, okay, well, if they used it here, then what makes you think it's not everywhere else? Right? And so that was. That's a big thing. And we sampled it and it was bad. So that's, that's one way to kind of get insight on what is happening behind the walls that you can't see is by being able to look at these larger, unfinished, exposed areas in the home. That's why attics, crawl spaces, basements are imperative to be inspected during the. You know, when you're looking at a new construction and not by a home. And like a general home inspector. No, you need, like, you need a special. You need to. You need someone like me, or you need to go to molefindersmethod.com and register for the free webinar on how to find mold in your house. So you could do it yourself, but you, you can't trust local guys to do it, right? Because they just, they look at it and they think, oh, well, that's normal. Because mold just happens on wood and there's no way to fix it, so it's fine, right? This is the thought process, the thought process that happens. Think about the lumber is stored outside, it's not protected. This is normal building practices everywhere, right? Lumber is stored outside, it's not protected. It gets rained on, mold grows on it. Then they take all that lumber and they start building houses with it, right? And so your general home inspector is going to look at it like, yeah, I mean, you know, it doesn't look like it's not wet right now. So, yeah, it's just normal. So I'm not going to flag it as a problem. And that's it. And so it doesn't get flagged in your general home inspection. I can't tell you how many times somebody's like, how did my general inspector miss all of the stuff that you found? It's like, because they're not looking for it in that way. Right? They've rationalized that it's okay. And so you can't rely on that person. So you either need someone like specialized like me to come out. And guys, there's only a handful of us. There's not a lot of. Or you can do it yourself. I show you exactly how to do it. I'm doing a webinar on 6th Wednesday, which is actually talking about it. You go to molefindersmethod.com you can register for the webinar. I'll walk you through the whole thing. So anyway, so that's why attics and crawl spaces and basements are really important right now. Here's the next thing. The next thing is heating, air conditioning systems. So let's talk about this new construction house that I just mentioned, this $5 million house. So I go into the attic. Mold everywhere, right? Guess what else is in the attic? All three of the air conditioning systems, all the air handler units, and all the ductwork is all up there. So what happens with these units? Well, they create this massive, heavy suction that pulls air through the system. Guess what is not happening in most of these units? They are not airtight sealed, which means that whenever you turn on your air conditioning system, wherever that unit lives, it's pulling in air from that area. So if the attic is a big fat, moldy mess, and then you have three air conditioning systems that are suctioning air in from that attic. You think it's going to get in the H vac system and compromise it? Yes. So that's one thing. Here's the second thing, though, and this is, you know, and this might be even more common when you're doing new constructions, is you have workers that are working in the house. It gets hot or it gets cold, depending on where you are. What do they want? They want air conditioning. They want heat so they can be comfortable. So they bring in the air conditioning systems or the heaters and they run them during construction. What's happening during construction? You're ripping stuff apart. There's all kinds of particle flowing around. There's. There's insulation pieces. There's drywall dust everywhere. If there was a mole problem or a water leak that happened, then that happened. And the system is running during that whole thing. So what do you think happens to the system. It pulls all of that crap into the system and it can become contaminated before anyone's even lived in it. Right? And this is what happened at this $5 million house. When I opened it up, it was so dirty. It's a brand new house. It's never been lived in. It was like on the market for a month. There is no reason for the system to be so dirty except that they were running it during construction. When you run that system during construction, you are going to screw up the system system. It's just going to get contaminated, right? So that's why when you're going into a new home, you have to, have to, have to test the air conditioning systems. And a lot of people think it's a new house, they're going to be fine, they're brand new. They're not though. The amount of disruption and debris and stuff moving around during that construction period is equivalent to years of exposure. That's how much stuff is floating around, right? It's as if they age that air conditioning system five or 10 years within the build, like in terms of the amount of stuff that's moving through it. And if there's anything going on in the house and it gets pulled in there too. So the heating air conditioning systems are a very big piece of understanding how to go through a new construction home and making sure they're okay. I tested all the air conditioning Systems in that $5 million house. Every single one was heavy mold, contaminated. I basically went back and said, okay, the whole inside of the house looks good.

You have to remediate the entire attic and you have to replace all three air conditioning systems and all the ductwork associated with it. And the developer had like a freaking aneurysm when I told him that or when I told my client that. And then it went to the developer and he was clearly not very happy. It's like, listen guys, it's not my fault, right? It's not my fault that you guys used a bunch of moldy wood to build. And it's not my fault that you guys are running your air conditioning systems during construction. I'm just, I'm just telling you what's here, right? And that's, that's kind of what it was. And so then, then my client had to kind of negotiate and figure out how they were going to handle everything. And they, they kind of built that in and they got a discount and they kind of did what they needed to do because now it was attached to the home, right? Now there's A report. There's data. It's attached to the home. They have to disclose that. You want to be the developer that is developing moldy homes before anyone ever moves in? Probably not.

So they kind of handle. It was almost like they settled outside of court, almost scenario, you know what I mean?

So that's the H VAC system component of it. So that's why that's very important. The last p. Okay, so before we get into the VOCs and off gassing and chemical stuff. So with these things, you're saying, okay, Brian, like, so there's been a leak that happened during construction, and they put everything up. There's no way for me to know about it. So how do I know about it? Right. This is why in every new construction that I do, doing what we call screening tests throughout the living spaces of the house, I'm testing every heating and air conditioning unit separately. And then we're going into the attics and the crawl spaces and looking to see if things are going on in there. And maybe we have to do some testing up in there. So for the living spaces of the house, I'm doing an ERMI for mold. I'm doing an actinobacteria sample to check out the bacterial piece of things. And then I'm testing for mold toxins, which are mycotoxins. I'm testing for bacterial toxins, which are endotoxins. So I'm doing that package of four things in the living spaces of the house and in each separate heating and air conditioning system. Is it an investment? Yeah. Is every inspection you do an investment to make sure you're not getting screwed in your new house? Yeah. Right. So, no, this isn't maybe the normal type of inspection that someone would do. And so they see the costs of doing multiple samples like that. And it seems expensive. I mean, here's the flip side to that, you know. Now you may not be buying a $5 million house because LA is just stupid expensive, but you're buying your house, it's a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe $150,000, 200, $300 wherever you live, 400, whatever. Right.

You at this point have the opportunity to not move forward on that house and not inherit a problem that's going to be a health issue for you. Right. And by doing this testing up front, you're going to be able to give yourself that information to make that call. Do you want to buy the house because you're so emotionally invested in this new construction that you want and actually not do this type of look through and this type of testing and then start getting sick and then do it. And then realize that all your air conditioning systems are screwed. Like, probably not, right? You don't want to do that, because then, guess what? You know how it costs to replace an air conditioning system? It's 10, 20 grand to replace the system, depending on where you are and what you're doing or whatever, Right? It's not cheap. You know what I mean? You need to do the stuff up front. So you do the dust collection throughout the house. Of those four that I talked about, you do each one of those four in. In every air conditioning system, air handler unit that you have. And then you go through and you look in the attics, the crawl spaces, the basements, and you see if there's any surface growth in any of those places and how significant it is. And kind of use that in your mind as trying to understand. Well, I mean, if we're seeing so much here, do we think it's in other places? Right. When you do the package of those four dust samples throughout the house, it's going to show you what's moving through the house. If you have a massive mole problem or bacteria problem in the house in a new construction, that means two things. One, they built with a bunch of moldy wood. Or two, there were water problems that happened during the construction. It's actually compromised the house before you moved in. It's not a new house. It's a damaged house at that point. Right? You have to do that testing. You have to do it, and you need to do it on the air conditioning systems, too. So that's kind of how you go through a new construction. And like I said, if you could be involved kind of from the beginning, you know, like, you pick your plot of land and you go check on the house and see what's going on. If you see that there's leaks coming into the house or there's mold growing on framing, then you can get that stuff addressed and figured out before they start putting the house together and trapping it and hiding it to where you don't know about it and anymore, you know. So, yeah, so those are kind of the. It's kind of the approach on the new construction. Now, the other thing that we have to worry about in new constructions is off gassing. VOCs and formaldehyde are kind of the big things. So why is this an issue? Because there's a bunch of new building material. There's paints, there's adhesives, there's flooring, there's Cabinets, there's all these things. They all have chemical off gassing, right? So one of the bigger things that can happen in these new constructions is that you can see that those chemical levels are high and it's because all the materials are new and they need time to off gas. So for some people moving into a new construction, if you're, you know, more sensitized, it might not work, right? You might have reactions in the house. It might not even be mold related, it could be chemical related because your body, you know, the burden on your body has gotten to the point where chemicals are a trigger for you potentially. And so that's another thing you need to look at. So one other thing that we do in every new construction we recommend doing is VOC and formaldehyde testing, alright? So VOCs are all the chemicals we talked about. Formaldehyde is separate. It's a separate individual chemical test. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen. All right? Like formaldehyde causes cancer, the end. So it's very, very important to understand if that is in the home. Formaldehyde is in a lot of wood materials and a lot of adhesives. That's kind of where you find it most. So think about your house. You have all these new cabinets, right? If you have wood floors, you have all these new wood floors. A lot of us don't get solid real wood floors. We get some sort of laminate. So depending on the type of laminate, you could have high formaldehyde levels from that. The adhesives and the glues that are used maybe to put flooring down, whether it's your wood flooring or even tile flooring, things like that, that can also have formaldehyde in it. It is so important to understand that because even if you don't have a mold issue, if you're moving into a house that's a cancer box, that's not something that we want either, right? So these are the things that we're doing in new construction houses from an inspection piece, from a testing piece, kind of all that stuff. So like I said, I got a lot of questions over the holiday about new construction. So one, Congratulations everyone on looking for your new homes. Very exciting. I hope you find what you're looking for.

100%. If you're looking for a new place, you need to come to my webinar. You need to look at how to find these problems yourself because you cannot trust a general home inspector to do it. And your local mole guys, they just don't get it right. So you need, need need to come register for this. Do it. Do it right now. Pause the podcast and go to moldfindersmethod.com, put in your name, put in your email. That's it. It takes you five seconds. And then come back to the podcast and finish. All right? Because understanding this stuff can help you avoid getting into a massive problem. Not only a potential health problem, but also a money problem. Right? The cool thing about buying a new place is that you have the ability not to buy that new place. Right? That's the nice thing about it. You can avoid these situations if you know how. Right. And so, so that's the thing. So molefindersmethod.com, register for the webinar. I'll kind of show you how I go through a house and look at these things. And then specifically what we talked about, right? So we talked about the package of four tests. We have ermi, actino, micetes, bacteria, endotoxin, mycotoxin. We do that set of tests in the living spaces. You could composite the whole house. You don't have to split different levels and stuff. You're just trying to see if it's there. So there's no reason to do like, upstairs, downstairs, basement or something like that. Just see if it's in the house, put it all together into one set of tests, and then each of the air conditioning systems, right? So that's going to understand what's moving through the house. That's going to understand what's getting pushed through the house through the ventilation, which is the lungs of the house. You're going to look, you're going to do a full inspection of the house using what you learn in molefinder's method. But you're probably not going to find a whole lot in the living spaces because it's new. So that's why we're saying attics, crawl spaces, basements. These are big indicators on kind of what's going on in the house. So you want to make sure you're doing that. And. And then also keep in mind the chemical off gassing piece. Okay? So those are kind of the four things for new constructions that are a little bit different.

Than just kind of your standard go through when you're looking at a house. All right, guys, so hope this was helpful. Thank you, guys. Again. If you, you know, want to text me, feel free. My, my, like I said, my birthday was a few days ago. If you want to tell me happy belated birthday, I'll take it. If you want to tell me happy New Year, I'll take that, too. I also have asked for pictures of dogs and oddly enough, everyone sends me the picture of their dog, which is hilarious. So it puts a big smile on my face. So if you want to send me a picture of your dog, I'll take a look at that, too.

Maybe I'll send everybody a picture of my dog. Since I asked all the time, maybe I'll do that too. All right, guys, that's it. So that's what I got for you. If you want to do any of that texting, the number is 9495-288709-49528-8704. Try to answer as many questions as I can. Share some stuff behind the scenes that I'm not sharing on social media. You know, try to give you guys a little bit extra for letting me chit chat with you on the phone. All right, guys, have a good one. We'll talk to you next time.

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.