Hurricane Recovery First Steps For Water Damage & Mold

So hi, I'm Cheryl and I am coming on live. Let me get my notes here to talk about hurricane recovery. And I am so, so sorry for all of those out here that are watching this. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that are not watching this because they can't, because they don't have electricity, because they don't have a computer, because they don't have their phones. Whatever the situation. I this has just been such a tragic catastrophe with the flooding this year, not just from Helene, but also from Debbie in Florida. I know I've come on before because my sister lost her house. Not the whole house, which is what I'm seeing now, but that the whole structures are being washed away. But she lost every, all of her furniture, all of her cabinets, all of her appliances and the walls up four feet. And then there's electrical stuff that's impacted and all those things. So you guys probably know this. I'm coming on Free Crystal is on with me, my assistant and she's going to be posting in the comments. You can ask questions. I'm just going to talk a little bit about a few things that I have notes on that to share with you all so that, you know, hopefully something I can say will be helpful. I was originally planning to come on this was originally meant to be a discussion with our David Sweet, who is a water mitigation expert, remediation educator. He trains remediators and he's also an expert witness at MIT consulting out of Florida. But he's been called out on an emergency case. Go figure. I'm not surprised we have this planned. And so I just wanted to come on and do what I could do on my own. And we will reschedule the conversation with David. He has a lot of experience as a former insurance adjuster as well. So he's a lot of experience dealing with insurance claims from flood damage and also related to mold and other kinds of water damage. Hopefully we will be in contact again soon with him to get that back on the schedule. But today I'm just going to touch on some of the critical things to be aware of steps that you can take right away after a water event, whether it was Helene, whether it was Debbie, whether it was a burst pipe, overflowing toilet, forgot to turn off the sink and that overflowed. There's so many ways that our buildings can get wet, including from some pretty not major storms too. So there are some immediate safety steps. And that's the first one is get yourself safe. Do not worry about your things. If you're at risk of flooding and you're being told to evacuate, evacuate, just go. Nothing is worth there's no things in this world that are going to be worth more than our personal safety and those that we love, the safety of those that we love. So the immediate step is follow all instructions from agency officials and get away from flooding as far as you can or potential flooding. And as with my sister, she was not in a flood zone. In her case, they actually opened a dam and she's in Florida outside of in the Bradenton area. And so she didn't have insurance. So the after an event, you might determine whether you do have any insurance. And for many, many people in the recent events, due to Helene and in Debbie and other events, we don't have insurance that will cover a flood. So I'm going to try to specifically stay on the flood topic. Floods can be devastating because the water is usually very toxic and full of bacteria and stuff anyway because sewers are also flooded. And so again, be safe, don't spend time in the water. Watch out for there's going to be electrical, usually, hopefully electric is going to go down, but your electric may not be turned off. So we never want to walk in floodwaters when there could be downed electric wires that are live even in our house. So be very, very careful and wait for the water to subside before you do anything. And just be safe at the beginning. There's nothing that has to be done immediately that an individual can probably do if you're being overwhelmed in floodwaters. So in terms of so safety first, safety first. The water is toxic, the water's nasty. The there's bad stuff in the water just from the sewage mixing with the floodwaters. And many of us don't have flood insurance policies. Even those that do, they may not cover something as catastrophic as this or have severe limitations on them. So just know the faster that you can respond to some of this stuff, the better. But don't put anything before safety in terms of if you have flood insurance policies, you want to understand your flood insurance policy, but also know that you also then want to document your stuff. So take a lot of pictures if you still have a working phone, obviously as much as you can. You can only do what you can do. So ahead of time, it's always good to walk around and insurance companies tell you this. Walk around with a video and photograph your stuff, talk about it on the video so you can say this, we bought last year, it cost this much money. This we caught, you know, put it somewhere safe, send it to some relative or something so that it lives somewhere or it's living out in the cloud. But if it didn't happen, then whatever you have that, if you have insurance, you can photograph it. There's still going to be a good chance you're not going to get everything back that you would like. But again, it's all about. Not as much about things as about safety first in terms of what to keep and what to throw away. Definitely furniture that is upholstered, that's been underwater is going to go. If you have something that you could take it apart and clean the frame and you totally reupholster it, maybe that's something that you could do. But in most cases, furniture that's been underwater, that is upholstered is gone. So carpeting is gone, drywall underwater, gone. You think of what else. In some cases there are. Laminate, any kind of vinyl. Sometimes hardwood floors aren't going to survive that. Most of the time they're not tiles. I don't know. I'm being told by. By people like David Sweet that our David Sweet that, that the tile does have to come up because it's not going to completely dry. I don't know on that one. I. I wasn't sure about it, and I'm still not sure. So get the drywall out of there. So the goal is going to be the structural integrity, making sure that's okay. So what can remediators do that and what can't they do? They can't remove structure that's holding up your house, and that includes the sheathing on the exterior of the house. If the inside was underwater, the outside usually was too. They can't remove floor flooring over the joists. The subfloor is structural. They should not be removing that, and their insurance won't cover them to remove that properly. So this may be something that you're also going to involve a structural engineer or a licensed architect who can evaluate the right and wrong ways to put to remove structure. Because there will be times when we do have to remove structure, whether it's structural flooring. Maybe there's part of the roof deck that's blown off. There could be wall sheathing that has been saturated and needs to go at some point. This is ultimately going to be about drying and structural drying. It's a complicated topic. There is a certification that some remediators may have on structural drying. I would definitely ask people, when you're trying to think of who to call, you would Want to ask people about what kind of education they have, what specialty courses do they have certification on? I'd be asking to see their certificate because sometimes the company has been certified to do structural drawing, which means someone in the company, but not the person who's going to be working on your project. So you want to be careful with the details. You want people that actually studied something like structural drawing to be involved in a flood case, who to call. Be careful, because I can tell you what my sister told me about her situation. So the whole neighborhood was flooded, flooded. And she said all of her neighbors were getting. There was one company in particular that was scan, you know, scanning the neighborhood and trying to get everybody signed up. And there was a lot of arm twisting. There was a lot of pressure. So don't succumb to pressure. Number one, she did not go with these people, but because she had me, and so I advised her, but a lot of people did, and she did tell me some of the things that they were doing and that I wouldn't do. So don't be drawn in by. We'll get it done really fast and we'll be have you back drywalled and good to go in a week. Drying is the most important piece. Yes, we're going to want to clean and all this other stuff, but we need to dry and know that this is the biggest and most important thing. Failure that I see among remediators is not defining what dry is, not documenting what dry is. So dry is a number. It's a different number for different materials if I focus primarily on wood, because most buildings have some amount of wood components, and most residential buildings have wood behind the drywall in some way, if not the structure there. The number, moisture content. 19 is what lumber comes out of kiln being kiln dry to use new construction. However, that is not the equilibrium moisture content that your house would have become as it ages. And so 19 is not an acceptable number. That is, there needs to be way more drying than 19. If you have 19, there's a good chance it will air dry during the process of construction to get to the equilibrium number. But I'm going to give you right now a place to look to learn about moisture in wood materials. In particular, it's a Forest Products Lab website. So Forest Products Lab, there's a book that's available for free online in PDF form called the Wood Handbook, and I believe it's chapter 4, 12 and 13, but check me on that are the chapters on wood and moisture. And so you're going to Review those to understand this. And the equilibrium moisture content is going to vary by your location, by the season that you're in. And also a little bit on the the individual species. But so there are listed numbers for things like Juneau, Alaska versus Tampa, Florida or Chicago, Phoenix. There are actually documented equilibrium numbers. So your house was at an equal or equilibrium number before the flood, before the water event. And so we're going to want to get the house back to that number. That's when it's going to be dry and only then within a few percentage points. Using a pin meter, not a surface meter, we actually need to stick pins in the wood. And the other thing about wood that I, I think people need to know is that wood is, has a thickness to it. So say it's a 2x4, it's two inches thick, four inches or three and a half. It's usually one and a half by three and a half is the actual sizes of a 2x4. Know that water can be stored at the middle. That will need to dry through all the layers before it's done. And so if the surface is dry, that doesn't mean the inside is also dry. That piece of wood might have more drying to do, especially wood and wood structural members that have been underwater. If it's not structural, then I would just get rid of it. So cabinets, anything that's it's even plywood, probably you need to start over on lower cabinets. But anything mdf, particle board, absolutely, get rid of it. And the sooner you get wet materials out of your home and onto the driveway, the better. Again, if you have insurance, there may be other things you have to do to document before you start moving stuff. But a lot of you won't have insurance. My sister did not. And so then it was a case of anything wet, just get it out of the house onto the driveway so that the structure itself isn't burdened by all the wet materials that are still in it. So in terms of other things that have to do with cleaning, the EPA says that any mild detergent will work. And, and that could be dish soap. We just don't want to add a lot of water. So I do use some essential oil based products that is a cleaner. There's a couple companies that make these. I use one in particular. You can look on my website and we can talk about more of that another time. That's not my goal to talk about that today. But you can use any mild detergent, a stiff scrub brush, and you just want to make sure that after you Clean you dry. Because know that any cleaner is going to have a water component to it and we, we want to just clean the surface and dry it off. We don't want to soak the wood that's already been soaked. So in, in terms of sprays and cover ups and all the rest of that, the EPA and the, the remediation standards that I have seen is talking about removing mold, not killing it. So the goal is not to just put fungicides all over everything and call it good. I wouldn't pay for that and I don't think you should. Sprays and coatings Read the warranty. I have a YouTube video where I go over a warranty of a very typical kind of coating product. In the warranty will be limitations and exclusions. And you want to read those and know those. Because why would you pay for something that you're never going to be able to act on in terms of a warranty or that that the. If you have to achieve what they're requiring you to achieve, to have a warranty that, that you could. If you had the same thing without a coating, then you would have this. You would also not have mold. So you could save the money as long as you make sure your situation is dry. And in most cases going to say that the coating has to be applied to a clean, dry surface. Clean meaning no mold. Dry meaning water at an equilibrium moisture content. They don't say that, but that is the definition of dry and structural capacity. And you know if you have those things and you're not likely to have mold grow back anyway. They also usually disclaim humidity, high humidity. So as far as drying goes, then we can get to your questions. I'm going to have to see if I can find them. I have one screen today because I am not in my usual office. So I just came on to try to help here. In terms of drying, know that it's going to more likely take weeks if not months to completely dry out a structure. So this is a case where the turtle is going to win the race. This is not a move fast. Yes, you would have dehumidifiers. Some cases you may use some moving air. Some cases fresh air will be your friend. Some cases it may not be. But the drying process to dry layers of materials, you'd want to separate them as much as you can. But in the structure, some of those materials that are touching each other are holding up our building. So there's a balancing act between what can be removed that will accelerate drying and what do we need to wait for. But in most cases heat is going to also be your friend because heat is drying. Just like if you try to blow dry your hair on cold setting, your hair will take longer to dry than if you add heat to the air that's blowing. So generally warm air holds more moisture than cold. So we still don't want to have a high humidity. But I would be measuring humidity in the space, always documenting that and then not just in the middle of the room but also on course corners, exterior walls and Lee if they're the little cheap ones that are 10, 12, $15, let it sit there all day in a corner on the floor and see if you get the same number that you get in the middle of the room. 3% off up to 3% is probably inconsequential but more than that is not is some something's got to be going on. There's got to be something different in that spot spot and it could be that your structure is holding more water than you realize. So sign up for my free newsletter. Crystal is my assistant is probably putting I think you can go to avoidingmold.com forward/free and we we will be sending out resources to subscribers as we have them on our list. We have a great newsletter and really good open rate and so I do encourage you to look at that. It is completely free. Completely free. So we will be sharing resources there. We'll be talking about we'll share the link to the Wood Handbook. We'll be talking about when we can reschedule coming on with our David suite and including him in the conversation. As I said, Crystal's dropping links in the comments here as well and and also links for our David Sweet so you can look up his information. And as I said he teaches remediators so there may be people that he has been part of his classes that might be helpful for you in terms of narrowing down the list of who should you talk to. So I'm going to see if we have any questions. You're welcome to put your questions. We only were kind of planning on a half an hour today so if anybody has any questions, See. All right, I see Crystal's been putting notes in. Thank you, Crystal. We have Susan from Naples. Hi. Hi Susan. Lori from Bouldering Springs Lakes, North Carolina. We got hit with potential tropical cyclone number eight on 916 two and a half feet of water all around the exterior and eight inches across every square inch. Wow. No FEMA declaration. Most with no insurance and no help from our city or government. After 18 days I am so, so sorry, Lori. This is one of those cases where all we can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and know that it's going to be over and there's going to be a way out. See, I got David. Our David Sweet is in the comments and she'd love to come on, but we didn't. I didn't realize that she wanted to do that. Gail is hot. Austin, Texas. Let me see if there's any other questions here. David is very disappointed that he couldn't be on today. There's the link for the Wood handbook warranties in our videos there. Check out the newsletter. Oh, Lori's asking about mold tests and what can I buy and are they worth it? So we do have a link to a Do it Yourself mold testing kit that's available through my website. It's again, a free PDF on my tools that I use that might be helpful for people to take a look at. That when you have moisture, you're going to have mold, you're going to have the potential for mold. And the things that I, I like to say about mold testing, I don't do it very much anymore for myself and I don't recommend it like I didn't recommend it for my sister. The reason why, I mean, if you see something, you could test it. However, if you don't find mold, that doesn't mean that it's not there. That's the tricky part. So we've spent money and if you have a false response like that, oh, there's no mold here. In my experience, you can't be really calm about that and you can't be, you're not, can't really feel safe because I have clients all the time that have really good mold tests and then they're still sick. So I would follow things about, like how you feel, if you're starting to feel symptoms that you didn't feel before, your heart's racing and those kinds of things. I would just assume that you have mold somewhere and then do everything you can to put your money into cleaning and drying your space. So. But I do have a link to one that I know of that's a do it yourself that you can do. Swab samples in many cases is going to be the best kind of sample for this situation where you can swap something. But again, I would test the moisture content in the materials and maybe the best investment is on a pin type moisture meter. That's good quality. So some of the stuff that's available for under $50 made in China may not be a good quality. You want a moisture meter with pins that has scales for different materials. The acceptable scale for drywall is going to be under five for whether drywall is wet. Obviously, in most cases with drywall, you can see the. You can see a flood line. And I would go 18 inches to 2ft beyond where you think water has been, because there's something called capillary action which causes water to wick up into porous materials. Drywall is porous. Wood is porous, Brick is porous, concrete's porous, Concrete blocks porous. So we have a lot of materials that water can wick up into, rise against gravity, and be end up wet, higher than the top of the flood waters actually was. So my rule of thumb would be two feet beyond where you think the height of the water was. But I would be also measuring for that. So let's see. You can find my tools there. I don't see any other questions. Does anybody else have a comment or question? The other thing about mold tests that I would say is that there's more. There's more mold species than we've actually identified. Air testing is, you know, can be interesting. I always just wonder, like, are we. What are we going to do different? If we know what species we have or we. Even if we know that there's. If we think there's no mold, it doesn't confirm that there isn't. And the mold testing doesn't, because it can miss mold. It's really common. We can have mold, and just high humidity over time will cause mold in the high parts of our house, like in attics and whatnot. So it's really about managing the humidity and the moisture content itself. If we don't have moisture, then there's a good chance that we won't have mold. If we have mold, if we have moisture and it's leading to humidity that we can't manage, then the potential for mold is much higher. If we have high humidity that we're not managing well or can't manage well, we have potential for condensation that causes bulk water. So after a flood, we've saturated a lot of stuff, a lot of materials in our buildings. Some can be dried. Like I said, wood in many cases can be dried. Steel's gonna. Gonna rust, so it's not gonna be completely immune. But it's certainly easier to dry steel off in some cases. But it does have the potential to rust. Our David Sweet, who is supposed to come out with me, would have a lot more to Talk about on this. And that's why we're not gonna go too long, because he's really the expert and. And I'm really sorry that he couldn't be on. Let's see if I have any other things here. Gail's asking what if I can smell mold but can't see any evidence of mold? Gail, that is a great question. If you smell mold, you have it. And the other thing is that with mold comes bacteria, also smells. So are the smells always the same? No. So just like there's lots of species of mold, there's lots of species of bacteria. You're not going to find bacteria on a mold test. Sometimes bacteria is a different. Is a color like orange or purple, yellow, pink I've seen in showers. So if you smell something that's off, if it doesn't smell clean, I would just 100% assume that there's mold somewhere. And the same steps would apply of drying, drying, drying. And where you can't dry easily is a. Or where you can't access easily to measure and determine if something is dry is a good chance that it's also a place that doesn't dry easily. So really good question, Gail. But I would. If someone smells something, smells off or musty or sweet or like cat urine or all these other smells that people describe in the building, I would assume that you have mold. Just assume it. I wouldn't spend any money on. There's. You shouldn't smell. The air should be clean. And let's see. Juliana is asking. I have a log home in a rainy climate, no obvious mold in indoors. Any advice diagnosing and remediating? Best kind of H VAC system. Can you discuss ERVs? Okay. A lot of stuff here. So log home. So logs are somewhat durable, but the end grain is going to be where it's most susceptible to decay and water soaking in. So the end grain in wood. And this includes studs. So when we're talking about studs in a frame wall that have been underwater, the cut ends of the woods and the base plates have been underwater soaking up water. The cut ends of the studs is the exposed drainage path of trees to get the water from the roots to the top of the tree and the cells in wood in structural wood that are two by fours. Lumber two by sixes is vertical with the length of the wood like the tree. And they're like straws. And water can actually go by capillary action up cell to cell. And that's how water gets from the roots to the top. Of the tree. So now our studs with the cut end are below water underwater. So that it's. The tree doesn't. The wood stud doesn't know it's not a tree anymore and it's still trying to suck up that water. So when you're looking at wood, you always want to be looking as measuring close to the cut ends to make sure that's the same as the middle. The middle might be fine high up, but water has settled due to the. Where water has gotten in. Say it was a rain event and water's gotten in some opening and then it all flooded and pooled at the bottom. That's where you're going to have the rising effect of the capillary action and what we call rising damp. And so you'd want to be really careful there. In some cases, with professional help, architect or structural engineer advisement, There can be ways that we may just be better to cut some of that out and rebuild that part of the wall. I'm not going to talk about how that happens because every situation is different, but it's not something a remediator can do. And so if they come along and say, well, we should just code it and then you'll be fine. It's because they can't do anything else. They cannot remove structure. It's not part of their. They're not insured to do that. They don't have the education to do that. So that's what I'm saying. Somebody with a license for structural work, which means they can build buildings and design buildings, will be able to help you how to. With how to retrofit one and. And remove damage and replace it. Then let's see what else. What else was part of that question? So we had no obvious mold indoors. I would check your humidity because wood will store a lot of water and then release it. And so I would be just really looking for that. I'd be checking the end grain for sure. That needs to be sealed on the outside. In terms on diagnosing and remediating even there's people who do log as a specialty, and that's who I would be involving for sure. But that doesn't mean that they know everything about mold and mold and drying wood. Again, it's going to be measuring moisture content. So in a heavy timber, like a log or a big beam or heavy timber homes, we have to actually use other tools. And there are other tools that are accessories that get added on to a really good moisture meter, this. That have longer pins. So I have one that I can put on my. So my little pins on my, my regular moisture meter are 8th of an inch deep. That's how far they're measuring in to the wood. I have an accessory that I can add and go in 6 inches. Teflon coated pins. The end is not Teflon coated so it's only going to measure at the end. And that allows me to either drill some, usually drill some holes and stick those pins in deeper and to find out what the moisture content is at the center of the log at the center of the beam. To get an idea of how long this is really going to take to dry. Because the outside might be a really good number in terms of being close to the equilibrium for that for being dry. But at the inside may be way too high and it still has to dry through all the layers. The analogy that I use for this is if you had a bunch of towels, you took them out of the dryer and they weren't dry. They're all still damp. You fold them, you stack them up. Towels, damp towels. The edges are all going to dry to the air. The sides of the pile will be dry. The top towel will be, will be dry. But if you take up down to the middle of the pile and you stick your hand in there, it's probably still damp at the middle of the towels, the towel pile. Because that moisture at the middle has to dry through all the other layers. And it just takes a lot more time. In some cases the middle will become kind of dank smelling and because it didn't dry fast enough. And so that's what we want to pay attention to in terms of thick pieces of wood like a log, heavy timber beams, glulam beams. Ganged pieces, ganged studs. Some of us have studs in our home that are two together, three, four. Well all those spaces that are even though they're tight together, the studs, the spaces in between are not perfect. And there's a really good chance that water has gotten in in between and haven't hasn't been able to dry. Just like if you got your clothes wet and you're wearing all kinds of layers. You either have to take all the layers off and dry them individually or you're not, you're not going to fully dry everything because you have too many layers on and, and the inner layers don't dry as fast can as you the outer layers. And then I'll just finish this. Let's see. Before diagnosing and remediating it is moisture content matters. That's the most important thing. Juliana and then in terms of H Vac systems, I don't think it matters. Although I prefer radiant heat heated floors if you can afford it and I have the ability to do that. Radiators are also a good alternative because it's not moving air. The reason that I like that is because a lot of our buildings do have mold in them. And by keeping the air aloft, people are running their air purifiers and they have their H Vac running, their fans running. We're keeping sometimes bad stuff aloft as opposed to just letting it settle out of the air. Clean the floors, do it again. And so for most people with allergies and sensitivities to environmental things like mold, a radiant heat system is going to to be the best. Ervs is a really hot topic. It's definitely something that is being promoted due to our tight homes. However, they can cause more problems than they're worth. So just know if you're in a very humid climate, you're going to have to have some sort of dehumidification attached to your erv, not the whole house. Dehumidification. We don't want to bring all the humidity in and then fill up the house and dehumidifier, we want to dehumidify at the source. And that's something that the industry is still working on. I can tell you that I didn't put one in the house I built 15 years ago that was safe, which we've since sold. And I live in a builder home that's three years old and it doesn't have one either. But it does depend on your climate to get fresh air. Open a window, crack a window open, and if it's the air coming in is too humid, too cold, too hot, then just imagine what's happening in the erv. So it's something that we as humans have to manage and understand. And I forecast that there will be a new wave of building problems because of ERVs put in without attention to the reality of the humidity and the seasons and rainy days and all bad air quality due to forest fires and whatever else pollution that there is. So unfortunately we're a work in progress in the building industry and there's, we keep trying to do better, but we're human beings working on buildings. Human beings are, are involved in building and humans make mistakes and sometimes even with good intentions, the end result can be flawed. I, I'm going for tried and true. Usually looking at history, looking at indigenous architecture, looking at indigenous buildings, what worked for centuries and centuries in this particular climate, big overhangs are going to be your friend. That's like an umbrella over your building in any climate. And know that even in the desert you can have floods, you can have, you all have, you have water in the ground. In every climate, including in the desert, Death Valley, Arizona, there's moisture that's in the ground that's trying to get up and then we put our buildings on top of it and that can trap moisture. So I think that's all we can do for today. And I hope this was helpful. You can find out more my tips through my free resources@avidingmold.com and check out our David Sweets links that we put in as well in terms of remediator training. If you are a remediator, check out our David Sweet. I've known him for many years and, and we agree on so much way more than we, I don't even know what we don't agree on. But he, he's a guy who's focused on drying as well. And for that, that makes him, you know, go there for that because that's what's the number one thing that is not being done. Well that we need to ask for Structural drawing to a number. Dry is a number. If your mediator says to you how dry that everything's dry, then your response needs to be oh, how dry is it? Where did you measure and what moisture content numbers did you get? And can we get that in writing, documented and and then do your research on that to make sure that the numbers that they think are good are really good. So because there's so much to learn, I thank you, Crystal, for coming on with me and, and everybody who has come on and is going to be watching this recording. If anybody needs immediate help post Hurricane Helene, you can connect with David, our David suite. There's a link that we put in the comments and like I said, he is the expert on this. I am helping people avoid mold in the first place by avoiding water damage and through building defects. Avoiding the building defects. Thanks for being on and thanks again to Crystal and I'll see you next time.