Top Ten Spaces Prone to Mold & Water Damage With Jessica McQuade

Foreign. My name is Kendra Seymour, and welcome back to another Change the Air foundation interview. I'm joined Today by Jessica McQuaid, also known as the Mold Mentor, and she's going to talk to us about 10 of the most common reasons for mold and water damage that she's seen day in and day out with her clients. So thank you, Jessica, so much for joining us.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Now, for those who don't know Jessica yet, she's the owner and operator of Mold Mentor, llc, providing mold consulting, coaching, and support to the hypersensitive community. As a toxic mold survivor herself, she's extremely passionate about helping others navigate the process of dealing with mold in their homes. She's trained as a certified mold inspector and mold remediator with multiple certifying bodies such as Normie and the iicrc. She considers it her professional responsibility to never stop learning. Jessica, I absolutely love that because I. I am a learner at heart myself. So, again, I can't wait for us to jump into some of these things because I think the average person, you know, so often mold and water damage, it's out of sight, out of mind that we're not thinking about it, and then by the time we do notice that, it's a huge problem. So I'm excited to get started with your top 10 list.

Yeah, let's do it.

So, number one, before we even jump in, tell us a little bit about how you got into this field.

Oh. So, I mean, everybody in this space has their story, right? So while they're all unique, there are a lot of similarities where, you know, basically, I got really sick. Took me seven years to figure out what it was. Turned out it was a pretty significant toxic molded exposure that I had had back in 2014. But basically, I was one of these people that. It followed me. You know, I moved, I think, four times between when that first exposure happened and when I finally found out what it was. And I was at the time living in a molding house. This house, in fact. So, yeah, I mean, the way I talk about it is it very much has been a journey. And for those of us who are hypersensitive, you know, it's an ongoing journey, and you're forced to. To learn so much along the way. And I just felt like I needed to do something with that because I was forced to learn so much stuff that I never in a million years thought I would ever have to learn or want to learn or have any interest in learning. And it just. It developed into a real fashion Project for me to help other people navigate this whole journey that I had to go through. You know, just with like no. No map.

Oh yeah, it's. It's resonates with me because I think once you go through this and you realize how hard and overwhelming and confusing it is, part of you wants to ensure that it like doesn't happen to anyone else. I know that's part of the reason why so many of us came together to found change the Ear foundation because we want to make it just a little bit easier on people who are going through the process. Now for your top 10 list, your first one talks about failures of water based appliances. What can you tell us about this? What are people looking for?

Yeah, so this is all of your water based appliances, right? So it's your dishwasher, washing machine, the refrigerator water line. That's one that's really out of sight, out of mind because mine's disconnected. But so if you have, you know, a dispenser, water ice dispenser for your refrigerator, which 99% of them do these days, there's a water line, you know, there's. That water has to come from somewhere. It's not coming from inside the refrigerator, it's coming from a water supply line, you know, a source which typically is the kitchen sink. Right. So mine runs as they often do, under the floor, under my hardwood floor, from back the refrigerator to the kitchen sink. So those are pretty common that those lines either behind the refrigerator, you know, the line comes, disconnected somehow or over time, you know, eventually, depending what those lines are made of, they can be more or less apt to degrade inside that floor cavity. And that can be a very tiny, slow leak that can take a really long time to find. Usually you'll see it in the ceiling. If you have access into the basement below, you'll see it eventually in the ceiling of the, of the basement water heaters. So all these appliances, they fail eventually, right? Every appliance is going to fail eventually. And when we have a water based appliance that works with a supply line or a giant tank full of water, it's kind of just a matter of time in terms of, you know, so.

What can you do?

I don't want to say that. And just build this like sense of panic. So like, oh, I'm just constantly waiting for that to happen.

Right.

Because I think most of us were in this space feel like that already. You know, I mean monitoring, right. Whatever we can do to monitor and prevent. So things like appliance trays, they make dishwashers, I understand now that that come with a tray built in underneath it so that if it does, you know, like an alarm or sensor built into it so it'll shut itself off if it senses a leak. And if it does leak, it's not going to immediately hit the floor. You've got a little bit of play before it does. Same thing with washing machines. Put trays under them. Water alarms monitoring is your best bet on those things and replacing, you know, perhaps replace it if it's getting really old or even just check the manufacturer guidelines. Like at what point should be. Should you be replacing it to stay ahead of that?

For those who are interested in weak alarms, it's important to note, like, there's so many different kinds available. You don't need like the super fancy kinds. There's kinds that, you know, talk to your smart devices and things like that. And if you're into that and not concerned about EMFs, you know, there's great options there. But then there's ones that are battery operated. My only word of advice, and I learned this the hard way, is make sure you replace those batteries periodically. But they are very loud. You know, you wouldn't think something that is $1520 could be that noisy, but it, they definitely, you know, can grab your attention. So I love. What about number two, you talk about roof leaks.

Yeah. So roof leaks, super common. Not super common, but, well, they are kind of super common. Typically when we see a roof leak, it's usually a flashing issue. Not always. It could be the actual roof and damage to the roof more commonly. I see flashing around the chimney is a common one just because it's not done right. Every time I've seen flashing around a chimney fail, it's because it wasn't done right the first time. You know, it wasn't done right originally. And, you know, that's a bigger issue. Right. That's like a skill set in the industry kind of an issue. Also around bent boots. Those, you know, can degrade over time. So typically anywhere we have what we call a penetration where there's a hole made in the roof for something to go through, it is where is where our weak points are. So in terms of prevention there, I mean, get your roof inspected, even if it's every year or two, you know, most roofers will come out and do that for free because there's a potential job in it for them. And, you know, it can't hurt to do that or get up there yourself or have some, you know, trusted handyman, whoever you've got who knows what they're looking for. Inspect regularly.

Yeah. And if you have attic access, I know most people we're going to get to that later. So we don't need to, to go there. But you know, there are things you can do as the homeowner that don't involve you going up on the roof. Because I know I'm a little bit of a klutz myself, that would be a dangerous combination. But everywhere else in my house I'm comfortable going and checking. But I love that roof inspections, you know, periodically are a great idea. Especially you know, after if you're in an area that gets a lot of like severe weather or major storms, you're going to want to stay on top of that. Number three. You talk about exterior hose related intrusions, what's going on there?

Yeah, so I've seen a couple of these in my practice and every single time it's been that somebody left the hose on somebody, somebody was out using the hose, forgot to turn it off, and the hose is just running, running, running, sometimes for a day or two before it's noticed. And by that point it has breached, you know, the foundation and made its way into the basement. Often it's finished basement. So we're seeing, you know, drywall, carpet, all of that stuff getting impacted. Yeah, that's the number one. Sometimes, you know, they freeze and a pipe bursts. Usually it's the pipe is inside the house where it bursts. But yeah, number one is leaving the hose on.

It's funny you bring that up because I have a funny story real quick. We, I was, my contractor was here and we were walking around the back of our house and we're, we're pretty close to our neighbors. And he's like, do you hear that? And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, it's like running water. And so we kind of are looking around and we follow the sound and my neighbor's hose was on right up against her foundation. And so I'm like, that's not right. I go running next door and luckily she was home and she's like, oh my God. I asked my 5 year old son to turn off the hose 2 days ago and he hadn't turned it off all the way. And, and so she had run down and sure enough they had water in that part of the basement and behind the wall. You know, people assume, oh, my foundation will keep the water out. And that's not exactly how it works. And I know we'll get into some of that later about how water exterior issues can impact the interior of the home. But yeah, that's one of those ones that the expensive. Lesson learned. Number four. You talk about tile showers. What's going on? What are you seeing there?

Yeah, I mean, usually with these, I mean, there's of course, like cleaning grout and fog, that's one issue. But when I see failures, it's usually due to the original design, the original install. You know, we see tile that was put directly on drywall, which is, you know, that's just not the way to build a shower. But otherwise, if it was not an original sort of install, design issue, cracks and gaps in the pot, the grout as well, you know, neither of those like last forever. I think it's just not on our radar as homeowners that we need to do anything about that. But grout needs to be resealed, generally speaking. I don't know anybody who does that. I've never met a homeowner who's like, oh yeah, I reseal my clock in my showers every year. It's just not. Nobody tells us this, right? We don't get like the handbook for homeowners. And hey, make sure you're, you're resale, you're resealing the grout in your shower. Failures that they just occur over time, you know, degrades. It's not meant to last forever. So just being preventative. Oh, yeah. So just being preventative about that, paying attention. Like, look at your shower. Does it not look good? You know, bring somebody in to handle that. If it's not looking good, if the, if those things are starting to look cracked and crumbly or moldy or peeling away, like it's not meant to look like that. So handle it.

Yeah, I think too, like one of my favorite, like prevention tips, and I even have my kids, they've been doing this since they were little, is you always want to remove the moisture from a bathroom as quickly as possible. So you know, a four dollar squeegee, you're squeegeeing the tile, you want to. And then you. The rims of the tub and pushing it all down the drain so that you're not letting moisture sit on that tile, which, which can absorb in the grout moisture. And if you're in the position where you're redoing a bathroom or maybe you had to tear one out, waterproofing really occurs, you know, behind the tile. So there are systems and things that you can do that go behind the tile. That will help with, you know, Any moisture that does get absorbed through the tile and grout and everything.

Oh, and you just remind me of another favorite bathroom tip. You can also get a humidistat. It's, I think it's called like an in wall humidity sensor that you can replace the switch for your bathroom exhaust fan with this little humidistat that will trigger. You can set it to however you want it to trigger at whatever percent humidity you want it to turn the fan on, and it will do that automatically. And you can set it for how long you want to stay on after it triggers, which is kind of awesome for, like, kids, bathrooms, guest bathrooms, so you don't have to worry about that fan and whether it's being used or not to exhaust all that humidity while people are taking a shower. And that also actually leads me to another attic tip that I didn't mention for attics, which is bathroom exhaust fans need to be exhausted all the way to the outdoors. It's super common that those are exhausted. They just terminate right in the attic, which is a terrible idea. And often, you know, the cause of humidity and moisture and mold issues and attics.

Yeah, that is super important. You would be, you know, I know you've seen it, but the number of times we've seen, you know, all that human air being dumped into the attic or like a wall cavity, and then all that moisture is just hanging there, you know, allowing for that mold circle of life to. To flourish. So it's definitely a great tip. And another thing I'd add to that, your bathroom fan, it needs to be obviously used during and after the shower, but it should be properly sized for your bathroom. If you're in, like a newer build or your home, sometimes people will go for the cheapest fan. And the, the, you know, cubic feet doesn't match your bathroom, and so it's not able to pull out enough moisture fast enough. I always get angry, you know, at my kids when they forget to turn on the fan because you see all that condensation on the mirror. They think it's fun. But all that condensation is landing on your drywall. And so you want to make sure it's properly sized and in good working order because they. Those, like all appliances do have a lifespan and can stop working. So those are great tips, Jessica. I love that. All right, so five crawl spaces that you say crawl space to a moldy. And I think most of them, their blood pressure grows up. So what are you seeing here?

Yeah, my own does, because that was like, in this house, that was like the Mold pit in this house. So, yeah, I have a. I have a beef with crawl spaces, generally speaking. So, you know, lots of things that I see in there, improper vapor barriers probably takes the. Takes the number one spot, takes the cake, if you will. Usually what I see is just kind of a tart, you know, like a. Basically just a plastic sheeting thrown over the ground. It's kind of like loosely covering soil. And you know, soil is molds, like natural habitat. So we know there's mold in soil. So that's essentially if it's just draped over the soil, it's not sealed. Especially if there's an H vac system in the crawl space and we have a vapor barrier that's just like tossed over the soil. Yeah, that's kind of where I'll speak for disaster for somebody who's hypersensitive. Other things I see down there, improper insulation, lack of ventilation. Some places we need dehumidification. Also drainage. Depending on your. Where you are and what your. Your water table looks like and your weather and all that stuff, you might need a sump pump or other types of drainage systems to make sure there's no water getting in there. And then I also see a lot of like debris, like stuff down there. It's usually from when they built the house, like my house. They actually laid the, like shaped the concrete of the foundation with cardboard. So my entire foundation in the crawl space was lined with cardboard. Yeah, that was all moldy. So I mean, weird stuff was done during the building process. And then also there was just like two by fours laying in there and everything was moldy. You know, more stuff that's in there and more opportunity there is if the conditions are right for that stuff to grow mold on it. And then you've got not only like a moldy crawl space, you've got stuff in it, you know, adding to that. So. Yeah, also water intrusion. There's a lot that can happen here. Water intrusion due to, you know, gutters not being directed away from the home. Foundation issues, rating issues. All of these things, you know, can end up in the crawl space.

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's for someone who tells you, oh, it's okay for a crawl space to be wet. No, crawl spaces should be clean and dry because that air does impact the rest of your home. There's something called stack effect. So the air moves from the bottom of your home, generally speaking, and can penetrate and work its way up into the other levels of the house. So I love that you touched on like the stuff down there. Right. Because people also sometimes will store stuff in their crawl space. Like, stop doing that. It's just a recipe for disaster down the road. Is there someone who. If. If they're concerned about their crawl space? You know, the average person probably doesn't want to be crawling down there. You can maybe peek down there who can make call that might go into your crawl space that can check things out for you if they're concerned. Yeah.

So there's a couple different resources that I use from time to time, depending on what the situation is and what we have available to us. Wherever the home, you know, wherever the home is located. So people that can go down there, like foundation repair companies, folks who do like basement systems, usually are in the crawl space arena as well. Also, like, you know, if you're really desperate, you don't have any of those kind of people around. Like a water damage restoration company, they do a lot of crawl spaces because there's a lot of flooding happening, flooding and mold happening in crawl spaces. So those folks are really used to going into crawl spaces and evaluating what might be going on in there. Mine actually, it was a leak detection company who figured out that my. My crawl space was an old pit, the one in there. So any of those would be typically like good places to start and see if we can get somebody going there and check it out.

Yeah. If it's been a while, if it's been a number of years since somebody has had an eye on your crawl space, Put that on your spring to do list. Just stay ahead of it. I know sometimes it's scary. You're like, if I look, then I'll know, and I'd rather not know. But I. I promise you that the sooner you address some of these issues, the better off you're going to be. Let's go to the opposite side of the house. Number six. You talk about addicts.

Yeah. So addicts being addicts. Right. So you know what we might see up here? As we mentioned earlier, when we're talking about roof, roof leaks, the place you're going to see it first is going to be in an attic. So to your point about having false face looked at, if you can't do it yourself, get somebody in there to look at it. You're gonna, you know, look up when you're in there. If water is going to come in, it's most likely not always because it could come in from the sides as well, depending on what's going on. But if it's, you know, coming from the roof, you're going to see it first by looking up when you're in rattle, you're going to see water staining, darkening. You know, there'll be some pretty obvious sign usually if that's happening and then H vac leaks. So where I am out in Colorado, we have a lot of H vac systems in the attic. And we'll talk more about this later. But if there's air conditioning, you know, if there's a coil up there that has a condensation line, there's water coming out of it. High efficiency furnaces, water. So there's water being produced in your attic. Also ventilation issues, improper insulation, those two things can work together. Baffles, things like this. Just having your insulation done properly, you know, and making sure that we're not blocking ventilation from happening properly. Those are the biggest up there.

Yeah. And to piggyback on what we said with when it came to crawl spaces, stop storing stuff up there. I know it's a tempting place to stick, like a Christmas tree that you only use once a year or whatever those are. Those are generally unconditioned spaces. You do not want to be sticking anything up there. And, you know, I still baffles, you know, my mind that we are building homes and sticking H vacs and ductworks in attics or crawl spaces where it makes it that much more difficult to be serviced and maintained. You know, that's something I hope we see change more as we, you know, go forward. But it's not always something that a homeowner or renter has control over. So number seven, let's talk about basements.

Yeah, I want to just add on to your storing in crawl spaces and attics because I see it in every single house that I see. If you absolutely must like no cardboard, right. Like you can get plastic bins that have a, like an airtight seal on them. If you absolutely must, please use plastic bins over cardboard boxes. Yes, let me say that. Peace of mind. All right, so basements, right? So basements being basements, water goes down. So anything that happens above is likely going to make its way down to the basement. And then we have intrusions from, as we mentioned earlier with the crawl space intrusions from foundation issues, grading problems, gutters, window wells. So like window wells that, you know, end up basically at the bottom of the window well is halfway down the wall in a finished basement. I've seen those fill up like swimming pools when we get a heavy, heavy rain. And then that is an awful lot for the concrete wall to the porous concrete wall. And the window to have to complete with. So that's often a source. What else? Basements. Right. So some pump failures. Give us some pump. Put an alarm on that puppy and also consider like a backup battery. You know, they make those so that if you have a big storm and you lose power, what good is your sump pump going to do if you don't have electricity? So battery backup is a really good idea on those. And also like checking them, you know, again like spring, put it on your twice a year list of things to just check and make sure it's working because I've seen a lot of those where it just like we didn't know it wasn't working until we had 3 inch drinks of water in the basement. H vac again. So very common location for them in the basement. Water heater. Again, like their appliances that are producing water or a giant tank of water or even tankless, you know, they have pressure relief valves and things like these are all sources. And if you're not in your basement very often that's where water alarms come in. As you mentioned earlier. And I agree, in my living space I use this, the cheap little hockey puck ones because they're very loud, especially in the middle of the nine of wand. But for like my cross space, my attic, those two spaces in particular I use, I do use like the wi fi ones that will call me and text me obsessively if it senses a leak. For my crawl space in the attic, I feel like it's, it's worth taking the hit on the EMS for those.

Yeah, I mean because you also have the challenge if you're out of town or something and that's when you have a water related event. You're not going to hear a leak alarm. But then, you know, you may want to consider, you know, some people shut off their water main and I think you have a tip for us later on that before they go out of town to help avoid issues there. But I'll add to like people with basements or really any foundation, they tend to think, oh well, maybe my water heater is not in the basement. But your exterior grading and drainage. So if your, you know, soil around your home is slanted towards your house or your gutters aren't moving water away, that water comes towards your foundation eventually. Just like the hose situation we talked about earlier is going to have the potential to make its way into your basement. And if you have drywall or carpet, it's going to make it that much harder and take that much longer before you discover that. And I should have said at the top of this because people are probably sitting here and they're a little overwhelmed listening about attics and crawl spaces and basements and checking behind their fridge. You can find a good indoor environmental professional. And iep, which is a general term, it's not a certification to do a thorough inspection of your entire home. And we have resources on our website, changethe air foundation.org that you can, you know, head on over to the website and look up that are going to help you find someone who can do a quality investigation of your home. And we have a list of questions. It's like 20 questions to ask when vetting an IEP. You can type that into the search and it should come up and we give you certifications and things to start looking for. But there are people here who can help you navigate this process. But you as the homeowner, as the renter, you are the first line of defense. So these are things that you can do. Sorry, that was my little psa. The next one you talk about, number eight, H Vac systems. What are we looking at there?

Condensate lines. Almost always it's so common that we get a leak from the condensate line. And like I mentioned earlier, you know, beach central air or high efficiency furnace which is super common. Both of those are producing quite a bit of water. So yeah, that's like the main issue that we see there. And again like put a water alarm right in front of your H Vac, you know, or I have like in my attic one I have, I have a little water alarm that comes with a little tab sensor and have a little tab in the tray that the system is sitting on so that if it does make it into, it shouldn't even be making it into that tray because it should be going draining through condensate line. But if it makes it into the tray, something is malfunctioning. So I want to know that immediately. I also on my H Vac system, my H Vac guy was able to install and they have them. It's not like an abnormal thing like mine actually came with a shut off valve so that if it senses if the condensate line is malfunctioning and it's not draining properly, it will shut the system off. It's an auto shut off. So you'll know. But if you want to double down, also put a water alarm in the tray just in case something else fails. And that's what I have. Multiple fail safes, if you will in place because it's in my attic and I'm not up there regularly.

Yeah. And if you're only getting your, you know, some people never service their H vac system. Don't do that. You need to be having it checked one or two times a year, depending on the recommendation for the specific unit you have. But don't wait for those touch points in between. And certainly if you have a technician coming to service, you know, maybe before you turn on your ec, see in the spring, go down there, ask questions, you know, don't take too much of their time that it's a chance to. If you're not sure where the condensate line is, ask them to point it out. So that's something you can monitor more regularly. So, number nine, talk to us about sinks. Everyone's got one.

Yeah. So leaks under sinks. I have yet to meet a house that doesn't have at least one sink. You know, the flat form underneath that is water damaged. So it's super common and it's super preventable. So top tips here would be, I have those waterproof mats under every one of my sinks. They're very easy. They're on Amazon. They're actually thin enough. Even like the sturdier ones, I was able to cut with scissors because I had pipes, you know, in the middle of my. Where my underneath. And I was like, how am I gonna do this? It really wasn't that hard. You know, maybe like a little X cut a line to it and then it pretty much closed back up once I put it in there. It's good enough because I also have a water alarm on top of that tray. So I'm gonna get notified immediately and I'm gonna prevent damage to the bottom of my cabinet. So, yeah, that's a biggie. It's. And also, like, don't stuff your, you know, cabinet under there with stuff because that stuff is going to, like, absorb the water. Especially with paper towels and towels, things like that. They're going to absorb water and by the time you find out there's a leak, it's not going to be good.

Yeah, I think too, people tend to like collect like cleaning products, maybe they've stopped using or personal care products and they're all like half finished and they're sitting back there and expired. Like, if you haven't this spring, pull out everything from underneath your sink. You should be doing that periodically anyways to check for leaks. But maybe it's time to, you know, recycle or trash some of the. The products that you aren't using. Anymore that way you have a better visual. But I love that I have the trace to undermine with like the high lip and water alarms under every sink. Because that's just an easy one that you can do. And it's pretty affordable intervention as well.

Another thing I'll add is put your stuff in trays, you know, like little plastic bins or trays. It's nice for organization purposes, but also like, it just helps organize it a little bit better so that you can put the water alarm where it's going to get hit first and still have some stuff under there, but it's, you know, semi protected.

Yeah, I love that. So let's bring it home with number 10. Talk to us about windows and doors again.

Yeah, I mean, yes, sorry, obvious one, right? Windows and doors, they're penetrations on the building envelope. They're holes in your house. So if they're not, you know, installed, maintained, there's a lot of things again here that like, we're never taught as homeowners how to monitor and preventatively maintain our house. And windows and doors are pretty darn important to your point. There's a lot of them and they're an entry point for, for moisture and water. You know, I had a situation in my, my primary bedroom. Snow was building up. There's a, like a balcony. So the door that goes out to the balcony, snow was building up outside. And the threshold for the door had apparently been installed backwards. So snow would build up outside, melt onto the threshold and then drain into like the wall cavity. So, you know, that was an install problem. And then also, you know, same thing, like windows are caulked around them on the outside. And that caulk is subjected to the elements. Where I live, it's, you know, all my south facing windows, like the caulk was all degrading and coming, you know, cracking and leaving these big gaps around my windows. Like, you gotta stay on top of that stuff. Right? It's gonna rain. Yeah. So yeah, just generally speaking, windows and.

Doors, are there any tools a homeowner can use? Like obviously if I, I can see standing water. But what am I looking for though? If it's something, if it's behind the wall around the window, maybe underneath the floor by the door. Is there anything that the average person can, can do to help them besides looking for the obvious?

I mean, it's. Yeah, it's really about monitoring, maintaining and bring someone in. Like if you don't know what you're looking for, what you're looking at, like bring in A window professional, you know, a window, they're usually one in the same. Windows, windows, doors. Typically, you know, bring them in, have them take a look around and go with them. Like you mentioned with your H vac. Anytime I have any sort of contractor professional coming into my house, and I've warned them that I'm going to be following them around like a puppy, asking them a bunch of questions, because it's an opportunity. Every time you have a professional home, it's an opportunity to learn about your home. And frankly, as a homeowner, like, it's your responsibility to understand your home. And no one tells us that. But, like, if you're not doing that, who is for you? You know what I mean? Like, it's just one of these huge missed opportunities for all of us, myself included. Lessons learned over and over again about, like, no one's gonna look out for me in my house other than me. So, like, it is my job. I consider it part of my job to, like, understand that house and know what I need to be looking for. You know, it's important.

I love that. I've said that for years, no one will care about your health or your home as much as you. And so that's why it's all about being your own advocate and all the resources we provide and you know, hopefully move people towards understanding the home a little bit more. And I love that you bring that up. Now you actually have a bonus one for us. And it you want to tell us or should I tee it up?

Whatever you like. You could see it up.

All right, so improperly executed water damage restoration. What does that mean? Oh, my goodness.

Oh, man. So many of these. So I see these often. More often than I would like, for sure. You know, we're talking about all these opportunities with my list here for water damage to occur and how we can prevent it. But some things are not preventable. Right. Sometimes there's a failure that we didn't. We didn't. We couldn't prevent. Sometimes acts of nature. Right. We were talking earlier about, you know, and I have a client who this happened to as well. A tree fell on the house and it's raining into their house. There's nothing they could have done to prevent that, you know, or water, you know, intrusion in the basement because of just like some sort of massive flooding event. And no matter what, there's nothing to do to stay ahead of it. So the. Yeah, what I see often is just that water damage was not handled properly either by a water damage restoration company who didn't handle it properly, which definitely happens. Or the homeowner thinking, like, oh, let me just, like, mop this up with towels and call it a day. But if building materials have gotten wet, it's not that simple. You know, there needs to be more aggressive handling of the situation. So, yeah, it's just, I see, like, floods or things, you know, major events that happen, and it was just underestimated. Right. Because it's common. We think, oh, twid overflowed. Everybody still overflows. Oh, this happened. Nothing that happen, or just clean it up, throw a fan on it for a few days, and, you know, maybe that might be enough, depending on how significant of an event and what was affected and what got wet and how wet and yada yada. But it's just very, very common that we underestimate the damage that a simple water event can cause. And usually it's. I'm getting that, you know, people are coming to me months or years later saying, oh, I wonder, could it be when that. That one time that this happened and we handled it this way or, you know, we did have this company come in and this is what they did. And looking back at it, I'm saying they didn't do enough. They didn't do it right. So not only can we ourselves do it wrong, like I said earlier, like, sometimes we can rely on companies and think that this is their expertise and, you know, trust that it's been done right, and sometimes it hasn't. And that goes back to all of your. I'll let you speak to it, you know, but all of the effort that you are putting out there in terms of educating consumers on how to properly vet and understand what should be done, because we kind of have to. Kind of have to make sure. Right? You got to make sure it's being done right. Your home.

Well. And I think it's important, too, that people are seeing the clock starts the moment the building material gets wet, not the moment the restoration company shows up a day or two later, or not the moment the mold starts becoming visible. It starts the moment the. The water, you know, occurs. So you have that 24 to 48 hours, and the material needs to be dry within that time. So I think sometimes people, you know, they start drying the materials and not realizing maybe they're not using enough to. To dry the material out fast enough. And so the material is wet for five, six, seven days, or they only run the fans for 48 hours and they're like, it feels dry, but dry is a measurement, and that's where something like a moisture meter, which you can get at, you know, online. And most building type places, we don't name specific places, but, you know, a homeowner can have one. There's pin and pinless. But the IEP or restoration company you're working with, ask them to confirm that the material is dry from the center and ask them for the number. Right. Building materials, they have different moisture content. And so, you know, you want to know that it is in fact dry. And you know what your risk is with the amount of time it takes to dry out that, that material. Because I think to your other point, you know, people will also just clean up what's on the surface and they don't think about what's below because, you know, not only do we underestimate water, I think we, we tend to not understand quite how far it can go. Right. Like, my cousin had a water leak with her washing machine and they dealt with it on the main floor, but the water had already traveled down into the basement. And it was a year when they were exploring other issues before they discovered. And lo and behold, it, you know, was wet long enough for mold to grow. So that's a great, great tip. Now you, you, you have some. You had a great client story, and we have a few minutes. I was wondering if you could tell us about that because it's very empowering, because things happen, but it doesn't have to be the end of the world. So what happened to your, your client recently?

Yeah, so this was just a few weeks ago. We had a cold snap here in Colorado. It was below zero for a couple days. So of course we all had our radar on, like, where is there going to be a pipe burst? So I had a client give me a call and she said she's been through mold before. She knows she's hypersensitive, she's in her, you know, safe home, and she's been doing well for a couple of years. And she came downstairs, walked into her kitchen and heard, you know, like the sound of water running. And she didn't have anything running. So she realized very quickly it was coming from like, you know, in a wall behind a kitchen cabinet. And she ran and turned off her water. She turned off the water main to the home because she didn't know exactly what the source was or what was happening, but she knew enough to know a, if it's coming from like a supply line of some sort, turning off the water main will stop that. And also she knew where her water was and she knew how to turn it off. Now she admitted that she was like, it was terrifying to actually take that step. But you know, I mean, you gotta do it. And she was right. Like she turned it off. It stopped the source of the water. She got a plumber in. It was a leak in a pipe that had frozen in the wall in the kitchen wall behind the cabinet that went out to the hose. Biblical. So it had frozen in the. In the wall because it was so cold outside. You know, frozen the wall and then it was thawing out because it had warmed up. It's when it warms up usually that we see the issue because that's when it falls, that's when it typically. But the lesson there was that she knew her house. Right. She knew what her. And I say this all the time, like, know your home, know what it sounds like, know what it looks like, know what it smells like. Like those things alone, like, notice when. The better you know it, the more you're going to notice when something is out of sorts.

Right.

She heard something that was like, this is not a normal sound. Right. So, yeah, that lesson learned. Like she knew her house and she knew well enough that it didn't seem right. And she was able to take action immediately. We did bring, you know, a remediator out there. We were able to check everything out. And she did not have to do anything. Like she took preventative measures. She. There was water in the cabinet that she could see, so she dried that. She put a fan on it and a heater, like a space heater. And with our climate, it's so, so dry here in the winter. It did dry out in time. And we got a remediator out there the next morning. They got under there and checked it with moisture meters. Everything was dry. And, you know, plumber fixed the problem and she moved on with the light within like two days. And she did not have to deal. It was not this, like, huge. It didn't turn into this huge ordeal. And that was also something that was really nice for her is that she got to experience a water event gone. Right. You know, and that was because of her actions. So it doesn't always have to be like this super scary. Oh, my God, my life is over. I have to like, you know, move out and throw away everything I own and all this stuff. Like it can be a minor event.

Yeah. And. And I think that's important for people to hear too. If you're. If you know your home and you can be proactive and address it quickly, it doesn't have to Feel like the end of the world. It doesn't have to. Yeah, you're going to spend a little money, right. But it's going to pale in comparison to what you would have spent. You know, pulling up that drywall and replacing it is going to be far cheaper than leaving it there and having to remediate and everything else down the road. This is a great segue as we close though, because you talk about having a plan. So is there anything you want to say to people listening about having a plan in place?

Yeah, I think that's really important. Like what she did, I'm sure she had at some point played, played it out in her mind. Like when she familiarized herself with where's my water main? How do I turn it off? She was doing what we're about to talk about. She was making a plan. Right. An emergency plan for like, what would I do if. And something I did, like, I, you know, a couple years ago I brought in a handyman and I said, just walk through my house with me and show me. I've done it with a plumber too. Show me how to turn everything off and let's strategize, like, let's go to every water source and just strategize for like, what could go wrong and what would I do about it in that case. Right. So my washing machine is leaking. What do I do? Well, there's a supply line right there for the cold and the hot. Right. I'm going to turn those off. I'm going to get towels, I'm going to get a shop vacation, you know, that I can wet that, the water out. Like, we talked through every detail of like, what would my plan be for this? And that was really helpful for me just in terms of like having peace of mind and trusting myself and trusting my house to know that, like, we're going to figure this out. We're going to, I'm going to stay on top of things. I'm going to monitor, I'm going to understand how my house works and I'm going to be an empowered homeowner. Know, I'm going to know what to do in case of each of these, like, more common or obvious scenarios. Of course things can happen we don't anticipate, but the more we, like, exercise that muscle of strategizing and developing a plan and being comfortable with like taking action that we normally wouldn't do. You, like, it's scary to me, you know, like, if you think about, like, oh, I'm going to go under my sink and like, turn a valve on a pipe and hope it does what it. I'm not a plumber, you know, hope it does what it's supposed to do if something else happens. Right. But the more you're prepared for that, like, the less scary it is and the more apt you are to be able to, like, take action when you need to.

Yeah, I. That is so, so important because it is overwhelming. It. It's not, you know, how you want to spend your time, I'm sure thinking, you know about these, but it's so important and you won't regret it in the long run. So I have a challenge for everyone listening based on this. If you do nothing else, and I hope you go through these areas that she's recommending, I encourage you to figure out how to shut off the main water line to your home in the event of an emergency. Figure out where that is. Make that. If it's. It's the only thing you can handle and tackle right now. Make that your goal. Do you know how to turn off your water in the event of an emergency, Pipes leaking or whatever it may be? It's a good thing for all of us to know. So, Jessica, thank you so much for being here. I can't wait. You know, I think we talked about maybe doing some more. More interviews in the future because you always have such great tips. But if people wanted to get into contact with you or they had questions, how could they do that?

Yeah. So my website is Mold Mentor, llc. I'm also on Facebook and Instagram, and I try and post, you know, tips and experiences and stories and all sorts of fun stuff.

Yeah, wonderful. And for everyone listening, do us a favor. If you found this interview helpful, head on over to changetheira foundation.org and sign up for our newsletter, because it really is the best way to get great interviews like this directly to your inbox. Thank you so much and we'll see you next time.