What's Up With Your House?

It’s been four weeks since we received our initial mold test back from the lab and then proceeded to vacate our house.  During the past four weeks it almost seems like we’ve gotten nowhere, but in reality we have made it through some mentally taxing times and while we don’t have a solid game plan so far, we have learned a lot.  We have spoken to a variety of people/professions  - mold abatement/remediation specialists, home inspector, occupational hygienists, etc –  and gotten a large variety of answers/opinions ranging from one extreme to another, often just making us more confused.  We have scratched our heads, pulled our hair and yes, even some tears have been shed out of pure frustration and exhaustion.

We’ve heard everything from just seal up the attic and light fixtures so the attic air can’t get into the house, to the other extreme of ripping off the roof, taking out the upstairs ceiling, removing the trailer part of our home (our house was built around a mobile trailer), waterproofing the basement  … basically pretty much strip it down and start over (can you say “bulldozer”?).  We’ve been told the contents are all contaminated and we need an occupational hygienist to evaluate what can be cleaned and saved and what needs to be thrown out … to the other extreme of the contents are all fine, except when you start inquiring about mattresses and couches, they begin to falter and suggest that you might want to have them replaced, or at least buy new mattress covers.

So what have we learned?  I’m just jotting down some things in randomness, because that’s pretty much the extent of how my brain works right now. 

What we have learned:

• There is mold throughout our attic.  There is mold in the roof/insulation of the den. There is mold in the basement.    But how long have they been there?   The attic appears to be an old problem due to an improper roof design, likely from before we moved here, the basement is an ongoing issue since it is not a dry basement (even though we were told it was), the den could possibly be recent as we had water damage to it in the fall when we were re-shingling it (synthetic underlay not waterproof as we were told), but we’re not sure if the problem was already there before.
• The attic is only about 12 inches high, no one can get into it to do anything about the mold – hence the challenge of finding someone who will be able to rectify the problem.  Either the roof has to be opened from the outside or the inside, or according to some, both.  The roof is not properly insulated nor is it  properly ventilated, creating a perfect place for moisture to collect and for mold to grow. 
• There are two camps in the mold world: those who think that the worst that mold can do is be an allergen and cause respiratory issues, and those who support the fact that mold produces toxins that can have many adverse effects on humans, causing kidney, liver and neurological issues as well as cancer. 
• There are many different suggested ways to treat mold and many arguments on which way is effective… if any method is truly effective. 
• Mold needs three things to grow – spores (mold seeds) food (wood/paper, etc) and moisture.  We cannot do anything about the spores, nor about the food part, but we can (try) do something about the moisture aspect.
•  There is no perfect way to test for mold problems.  Each testing method has its pros and cons … most have more cons than pros.  We have done the DNA testing via ERMI as well as had a hygienist in to do air testing and VOC testing as well as a few other things.  These tests each have their issues and are not helping to clarify how we need to move forward.  We wanted to avoid the large expense of testing ourselves for toxicity via urine (which would indicate whether we are processing toxins in our bodies), but since we weren’t getting accurate help through house testing, we gave in and sent our urine off to be tested for the mycotoxins that mold produces.  It will still take another 2-3 weeks to get those results 😧
• The best way to find out if a home is really the problem is to leave it for a period of time and then return and see how you do.  When leaving the home it is best to leave the entire area, (since there’s mold in the outside air) taking none of your current belongs with so that you are completely removed from all the common allergens/spores, etc in your current area.  The very best is to tent camp in the desert (no thanks). 

What we have learned needs to be looked at in light of the few things that we do know at this time.

What we do know:

• We have three sick kids – two have very similar symptoms, the other is not able to get better from a concussion over 14 months ago.
• Home insurance DOES NOT cover structural or maintenance damage on a home.  Our problems are because the roof was neither built nor ventilated properly, and because the basement leaks – these are structural problems.  So far we have also been advised that Title Insurance will not cover these issues … we are still trying to make sense of the legal wording in the policy, but we’re 90% sure that there is no loophole or coverage through this insurance.
• In 8 weeks we are supposed to leave to spend 10-12 weeks in Edmonton for Rebecca’s Lyme Treatment and we haven’t had any time to really think about or plan for this.
• Lyme Disease and Toxic Mold Sickness (CIRS) are often seen together as they both attack the immune system in similar ways. It is because of our reading about Lyme Disease that we learned one needs to deal with mold before dealing with Lyme.  This in turn made us investigate the mold situation in our home as we would get reoccurring mold growth in certain areas upstairs … we just didn’t realize how much more mold we would discover once we started actually searching for it. 
• Thankfully HBOT (hyperbaric oxygen treatment) can be used to treat both Lyme and Mold and the clinic Rebecca is going to is experienced in both as they often see a combination of Lyme and mold sickness

If I started a list of the things that we don’t know or haven’t figured out, I would be here for a long time.  So I will just try my best to try summarize where we’re at now.  The joke around here right now is “Ask me an hour from now and I’ll probably give you a completely different answer”.  Sad, but true.  We really are not able to make up our minds on what to believe or what to do half the time.  We have to factor into our decisions the fact that the kids are sick. The thing is, we really don’t know if mold has anything to do with them being sick, as probable as it looks.   We may have just stumbled across a problem in the home that isn’t actually affecting us.  But given that we now know there is mold throughout the house, we need to consider this a high possibility.  Hopefully the urine tests will give us some indication on this aspect. 

Just before we got the mold test results, we were at the Pediatrician and she had been doing her own thinking and researching into whether there is a link between all the kids being sick.  Her advice was to suggest that we try to spend the summer away from our home.  We didn’t get into great depth of what she meant by away from home (in the same area, but just not our house? far away from here in another area?) as we explained that we would be doing this by spending our summer in Edmonton.  It is a bit of a peace of mind to know that even a doctor suggests we try leave the home and see if there is improvement, maybe we aren’t completely crazy?!?.  Since then we have also been in contact with the clinic in Edmonton and were advised to take 2-3 weeks before treatment to go elsewhere and see how the kids feel in a new environment prior to treatment.

With regards to the actual house, we have been thinking to sell prior to all this, simply because the house does not suit our family for a few different reasons.  We had already concluded before the results came back that we wanted to move and the results just escalated that desire to sell, but now we don’t know how to sell with a clear conscience.  Do we need to fix our house to the standard that we would if we were living in it?  Or do we fix it to the standard of the general public since we are not planning to live in it again?  We are trying to taking into consideration that the average person does not end up with weird and difficult health issues like our family seems to.

A factor that really sent us for a loop was that fact that we had ERMI test results from four other properties in the area, and sadly they ALL failed the ERMI test.  Part of this test also includes a HERSTMI-2 scoring, which gives you a score based on the most toxic molds, and only one property came back borderline, the others failed.  Is there something in our general area making moldy environment? 

Prior to doing the ERMI testing on our home we had done reading on different testing methods, and on the support groups people would often post their results and ask for advice, so I had looked at a fair amount of test results.  I had never seen a test on the groups as bad as ours or with as many numbers in the 1000’s like ours.  We were truly shocked when we got our results back.  When we got the results back from the other places we tested we were even more shocked.  The results of our home made us investigate, and from that we found mold problems.  Two of the other houses which we tested, we visually inspected for mold extremely thorough prior to sending the tests away, because we were thinking of renting the one that came back with the best score.  We found a tiny bit of mold in each home, one on a window and the other by the hot water tank, but no signs of water damage in the past (keep in mind, mold is a part of life, and not all mold is toxic). 

At first we were just frustrated with these tests and wanted to dismiss them, but with time and deeper thought and some consulting with the support group we have come to realize that these test results are likely an indication of the *great* quality of air that we breath here in Southern Ontario.   We continue to hear about how asthma, thyroid, Parkinson’s and cancer rates are higher in our area, how air quality is poor, and we all know how humid it can get, making it a prime area for mold to produce.  Being sandwiched between lakes seems to have some sort of factor in these air quality issues and more than once we have heard how being near fruit farms can be an issue due how they spray the crops.  Two years ago we did a road trip to the west coast, during that trip my allergies were gone until a day after we returned to Ontario. We were still further north in Sault Ste. Marie when they returned with a vengeance, so I can’t even blame it directly on this specific area, but I can definitely say I was better outside of Ontario.  In the past few weeks we continue to hear more stories of people that have left this area for the better air in the west (usually Alberta) or who immediately suffer from the air quality if they are visiting this area.

The ultimate test is to leave the area for a period of time and test for ourselves if it makes a difference.  This is our plan for the summer.  We are planning to drive to Edmonton for Rebecca’s Lyme treatment and are considering taking a bit longer than originally planned for that trip and possibly postponing the treatment for a week to see whether air from elsewhere will do the kids any good.  So in the end the ERMI tests continue to be an extreme disappointment, but also a reality check.  We were taking into consideration that we did not want to spend a huge amount of money on treatment for Rebecca, only to return to a problematic house, but now we have to think further about the fact that we don’t want to spend all that money only to return to an area that will now be problematic for us 😟 

After much tugging and pulling back and forth we made the decision to follow the Hygienists report once we got it … which we finally received on Monday. At one point we were thinking the money spent on this report was a waste, but in the long term it will serve its purpose.  Hygienist reports seem to be the gold standard in the home inspector and mold remediation world.  There are different levels of mold remediation and mold abatement/remediation companies want to see a third party report from a Hygienist once they have to deal with Level 2 or higher (which ours is).  So at least we have the report done and ready for whoever wants to know what the verdict is.

When the Hygenist visited he told us it was okay to just leave the mold up in the attic since it’s considered outside space and shouldn’t get into the house and all we needed to do was seal up the light fixtures and attic door and it would all be good.  In his opinion it wasn’t worth the money and effort to actually get rid of the mold in the attic.  We weren’t impressed with this suggestion since it seems ridiculous to be leaving mold up in an attic that is not insulated or ventilated properly so that it can continue to grow and rot the roof … never mind that many argue that it can still get into the house.  This is where we felt so much frustration with so many different ways of looking at it.  But when we received the actual official report it came back singing a different tune with the suggestion that “for the best possible air quality inside the residence, mould growth inside the attic should be removed and or chemically treated” and then goes on to say that because of the type of roof it is the only way to do this is to remove and replace insulation, plywood and the shingles (that we just put on in October 😒).  While we agree that this should be done, we were a bit disappointed that his verbal message was different then his actual report.  Included in the report was also a suggestion on how to remove the mold in the basement, something we can likely do ourselves.

So now we have to decide whether to fix the roof or take a cut and sell the house “as is” with a copy of the Hygenist report and allow the next person to decide how they would like to tackle this.  We are DIY type of people, hiring someone to do the work is not in Rob’s character, (nor our budget) but right now there just seems to be so much going on that he’s finding the idea of taking on this project a bit overwhelming. There’s so much to co-ordinate… roofers, abatement crew, insulation crew.  So here we go again with arranging people to come look and give us quotes.  At least now we can just ask them to follow this report, although I’m sure we’ll still get opinions.   I have a feeling once the quotes come in Rob will revisit the DIY theory.  Ultimately we’ll have to decide whether it’s just best to cut our loses and unload this headache, selling it “as is” and let someone else deal with it since we have too much going on right now to try get it fixed, sold and packed up before the kids and I leave in June … did I mention it’s only 8 weeks until we leave ... and that Rob doesn't want to pack up the house on his own while we're gone 😕??

This post is getting extremely long, so I think I’ll have to tackle some of the other issues (contents, treatment, new home, etc) in another post.