Naples Daily News Mold Article

[Guest guest]

Getting bold with mold: Ancient nuisanace now high-profile problem

for builders and home occupants

Sunday, September 29, 2002

JOHN HENDERSON, jfhenderson@...

Mold infestation is nothing new — it is even addressed in the Bible

(Leviticus).

What is new is the attention it's getting lately.

Locally, at least one builder is being sued by homeowners over mold;

the topic is more often mentioned in sales contracts, and homeowners

and renters are complaining more vociferously and frequently.

Nationally, an ever-increasing number of lawsuits are being filed by

homeowners against builders and insurance companies, and the issue is

receiving major media attention.

Some insurers have asked the Florida Insurance Department to let them

exclude mold damage from coverage, or limit the payout amounts.

" It's probably the most litigious issue facing the building and real

estate industry this year, said Reitmann, executive vice

president of the Lee Building Industry Association. " The critical

issue is that there is no standard of what constitutes mold that is

harmful to your health. "

Reitmann said there are many different types of mold, and the

National Association of Homebuilders is working with the Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to try to develop a

standard.

Ellis, executive vice president of Collier Building Industry

Association, was reached by telephone as he was attending a home

builders conference in Alaska. He said mold intrusion was at a topic

at that conference.

" Lately, a lot of attention has been drawn to those issues as the

result of legal cases, " he said.

Ellis said the moist, damp climate in Florida is conducive to the

development of mold, but building methods are being developed to cut

down on the risk.

" Moisture-protection systems are constantly improving, " he said. " As

a matter of fact, we're building a green (environmentally friendly)

home in Naples that is designed to deal with that in a more

sophisticated way than in the past. It (mold) is an issue that is

really coming to the forefront of the industry from a design

perspective and from a contractual perspective. "

L'Hommedieu of Microscope, a Fort Myers firm that specializes

in removing mold and fungus from homes and buildings, said business

has picked up substantially lately. He said changes in construction

methods are causing mold to breed more often.

" We build our homes today much differently than we did 100 years

ago, " he said. " Homes today are much tighter. They don't breathe as

well. When we do have moisture intrusion in a home, there is less

opportunity for it to dry out in an expedient way. There are not the

air exchanges that we have in an older home. "

L'Hommedieu said the mold issue has also come to the forefront

because people are more health conscious nowadays. He said he is

currently working with a Naples builder with a mold problem in a home

built a year and-a-half ago. " We advise builders to not touch it (the

moldy area). They can create a much bigger problem. "

His firm is also renovating a 25-year-old timeshare building in Marco

Island that had mold problems.

L'Hommedieu said it's often not difficult to determine whether a home

has mold in it.

" I say, 'Mold generally wags its finger at you.' If you don't

perceive you have a problem, you probably don't, " he said. " What

affects one person, may not affect another. "

L'Hommedieu recently inspected a condo unit in Tarpon Bay in Naples.

" (The owner) bought several of the condominium units in the pre-

construction phase. He was getting ready to put that one on the

market, " he said. " The Realtor went in and found a horrendous amount

of mold. The home buyer had never lived in it. It was vacant. He had

no idea why mold was growing. "

L'Hommedieu estimated the mold cleanup alone will cost about $22,000.

And the replacement of sheet rock, carpeting, cabinetry will cost an

additional $20,000. " The unit needs to be completely gutted, " he

said.

The owner, 97-year-old Isaac Weis, lives on the east coast of

Florida.

L'Hommedieu said the problem could have resulted from a leak from

another unit in Weis's building.

" The cabinets are actually sagging off the wall... The condo was not

saturated. It was an ambient humidity in the home. "

Ken Plonski, a WCI vice-president of public relations, said it is

unclear whether it is WCI's fault or Weis was negligent. He said

there is a question whether Weis had the air conditioning turned off

while the unit sat empty for several months. That could add humidity

inside of a unit, which helps breed mold.

WCI has brought in several environmental inspectors who are trying to

determine what has happened, Plonski said. He said when there is a

complaint, WCI will immediately respond. WCI will fix the problem if

it is the company's fault, he said.

San Marino, a new apartment complex off Collier Boulevard, has also

had mold problems. Mold was growing on the walls of an unoccupied

first-floor unit in a building, and tenants living directly above

were concerned that they were being exposed to it. Robbins,

the general manager of the complex, said the mold problem has been

taken care of.

She said the landscaping around the building was initially graded

improperly, and that caused rainwater to leak into the first floor of

the building. The problem has been fixed and the mold is gone, she

said.

But Christensen disagrees. She and a roommate live in an

apartment on the second floor of the building.

" My son also lives in the unit and has been experiencing a cough for

month and-a-half, " she said. Christensen has been having problems

with carpet getting wet when it rains.

" Every time the carpet gets wet, we give her humidifiers, " Robbins

said. " We have the carpet extractors come out and extract water from

the carpet. We'll leave the humidifier and or blower to dry the

carpet. "

Carol Sykora, code enforcement investigator with Collier County,

investigated the mold problem in the first-floor unit below

Christensen's unit. She said Christensen was concerned that this

problem might be causing air quality problems in her second-floor

unit. Sykora said the apartment complex did fix the landscaping to

stop the water flow into the first floor.

" The last I inspected it (water problem) was corrected, " she said.

But Sykora said she kept the case open because she did not want

anyone moving into the first-floor unit until another inspection for

mold was complete.

Sykora said she has never been in Christensen's apartment so she

could not say if there was a mold problem there, but she did talk to

environmental health inspector Tom Booth with the Collier County

Health Department about possibly doing an air quality test in

Christensen's unit.

Booth said when the health department does get a complaint about

mold, it will ask the caller a list of questions to determine whether

an air quality test is warranted. He said his office does not have

this air quality detection device, but a health department employee

in Sarasota can conduct such tests.

Booth said he is getting more calls lately from people complaining of

mold in their homes.

" I believe it's because more people are aware (of the mold problem), "

he said. " In the last couple of years, there has been more awareness

since Hurricane . That's when we first started equating mold

and mildew with illnesses. You can have respiratory distress and all

kinds of things like that arising from (poor) indoor air quality. "

Tamela Wiseman, a Naples real estate attorney and City Council member

who recently wrote an article on mold for the Naples Daily News, said

she is not sure why mold has become such a hot topic.

" There seems to be trends in these kind of claims, trends in

litigation, and who knows what is really driving it, " she said. " I

know when I wrote the newspaper article on the subject, I was

inundated with calls from people who said their homes had toxic mold.

We've suddenly had a proliferation of these cases like we've never

had before. Obviously, especially in Florida, you can't eliminate

mold from environment.

" Even (exposure to) large amounts of mold doesn't necessarily make

most people ill. There is no doubt it exists in some locations for

varying reasons. It's hard to explain the phenomenon. . . People are

making serious money on this mold issue.

" I'm not seeing anything that is necessarily new, although there are

some claims that certain newer construction methods and products

could have something to do with the mold problem, " she said.

Pulte Homes has been sued by homeowners in the Gateway community in

Fort Myers, who are alleging that construction flaws led to massive

mold infestation in their homes.

Wiseman said in these type of legal disputes, there is often finger

pointing over who is at fault for the mold intrusion.

" A lot of time homeowners or property associations will say, 'It is a

construction defect,' " she said. " The builder or developer will

say, 'No it's not.' Their argument is it's a failure (by the

homeowner) to properly maintain and inspect the home. Maybe the fault

lies with more than one party. "

Wiseman said the topic of mold is more frequently being adressed in

home sales contracts.

" Information is given to (home) owners. It is very important to

educate people about how moisture can cause all kinds of problems,

and what to do in terms of cleaning it up, " she said. " A lot of

builders are coming up with an information guide to give out to

purchasers (of homes). It's definitely a topic they are paying

attention to.

" I went a national home builders convention in January. It was

standing-room-only when lectures on mold strategies were given. "

Phares Heindl, an Altamonte Springs lawyer who has handled several

mold cases, said he has been representing clients in these cases for

four years, and he typically would get a call about once a month from

a person soliciting his help.

" But now I get four or five calls or e-mails a week (from people)

wanting me to represent them in mold cases. I've gotten inquires down

there (in Southwest Florida). It looks like I'll be handling a case

in Fort Myers, " he said.

Heindl said he has heard people accuse lawyers of being the cause of

the mold frenzy.

" I've heard the saying, 'Mold is gold,' that type of thing, that we

(lawyers) are trying to hype it up, " he said. " But new building

requirements and new materials make houses tight and energy

efficient. When you trap water, that inevitably grows mold. "

He said he is now handling a case in which an apartment complex is

being sued by tenants who became sick from mold in the building. He

said the complex didn't maintain the apartments properly.

" The building didn't have adequate air (flow) supply, and it had a

lot of water damage and that caused mold to grow, " he said.

He said the insurance industry is lobbying hard to have mold excluded

in many cases from coverage under homeowners policies.

" You've got different battles going on, " he said. " Insurance

companies are trying to get mold exclusions from the legislature, and

there is also a bill in Congress. "

Policyholders of America is the insurance industry's main foe on the

mold issue, and its president is Melinda Ballard. In 1999, a jury

awarded her $32 million in a mold case in Texas. In that case she

accused Farmers Insurance of dragging its feet to clean up a mold

problem in her home.

Fred Sylvester, owner of Accredited Building Consultants in Fort

Myers, said in the 1930s and 1940s, mold was not a major problem in

homes because they were not as well insulated as they are today.

He also said building materials such as vinyl-backed wallpaper

contribute to the mold problem. " You take that vinyl and peel it off

the wall, and that drywall is black with mold, " he said. He said all

homes leak, but mold results when a home is not allowed to

breathe. " It's what you do with that moisture where you into

problems. We call it a drainage plane, " he said.

" If these (building) materials get wet and then dry out, mold won't

grow on them, " he said. " It may grow temporarily, but it will dry

out. Let me put it this way: If you have a small, leaking window, and

it gets wet and dries out, mold doesn't grow.

" There are other things that will happen, but mold doesn't grow. If

it constantly gets wet, then mold will grow. This is not rocket

science.

" The Readers Digest version of this is: We built houses in

the '20s, '30s, and '40s, even up to the '70s and '80s (that were

able to breathe). And in the '90s they started building really,

really tight houses with a lot of insulation. A lot of plastic

materials were starting to be introduced in the building business.

The moisture vapor doesn't pass through (these materials). "

http://www.naplesnews.com/02/09/realestate/d823881a.htm