Guest guest Posted January 14, 2002 Report Share Posted January 14, 2002 http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/011202/dsd_8305867.html Saturday, January 12, 2002 Rico Guevarez and SkyeTec employee Ted look at a cell phone, covered with mold, in Guevarez's home. -- Pemberton/Staff The Mold War Fungus causing problems in homes and leading to lawsuits nationwide By Marcia Mattson Times-Union staff writer Armstrong said less than a year after her family moved into a new Mandarin home in 1998, they noticed the living room floor was wet and the room was developing a strange odor. Tests by ville toxicologist Lipsey concluded that mold had colonized the home, Armstrong said. The family learned water outside was draining toward the house, rather than away from it, she said. A contractor removed a chunk of the concrete slab in that room and the family learned a moisture barrier was not consistently applied under it, Armstrong said. Armstrong and both her children are taking medications to deal with symptoms she said were mold-induced. The family is suing the builder and has sealed off the room. " It's just not financially feasible for a family of four to up and move, " she said. Like the Armstrongs, homeowners nationwide are increasingly suing builders and insurers over mold damage. Publicity about multimillion-dollar verdicts in Texas and California mold cases, involvement by celebrities such as Brockovich, as well as ads by trial lawyers and stories about toxin-producing molds are helping drive lawsuits. So are shoddy construction practices, trends toward using cheaper building materials that attract mold and attempts to make buildings air-tight that resulted in trapping moisture inside, said some experts following the issue. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Moisture in the walls of a house can cause the wood to rot and mold to grow on it, any Sheetrock and tile. -- Pemberton/Staff ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Nowhere is the mold frenzy greater than in Texas. Residents there deal with humidity, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and other home-damaging weather that enable mold to grow. And before recent regulatory changes, many Texans also had unique homeowner insurance policies that covered damage from slow water leaks that are difficult to detect. Policies in most states, including Florida, only cover damage from sudden water problems such as a pipe burst, said insurance experts. Also, many of the severe mold problems nationwide are occurring in new houses that were built improperly, or in existing homes with faulty remodeling work, said Laurie Pegler, an attorney tracking mold issues for the Property Loss Research Bureau, a national organization that serves insurance companies. Texas has the most new homes in the United States, but it's unlikely the state has had enough properly trained workers to do the construction, Pegler said. Many mold problems, for instance, are happening because synthetic stucco was improperly applied so it trapped moisture, she said. " Synthetic stucco is not evil, " Pegler said. " A faulty application of synthetic stucco is the enemy. " ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Rico Guevarez wears a respirator to go into his children's bedroom. The Guevarez family is living in a friend's mobile home because of mold in their house. -- Pemberton/Staff ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- New vinyl or plastic windows also can cause moisture problems if they aren't installed correctly, Pegler said. And ripping out existing home walls for an addition might break down a house's moisture barriers, she said. and Cason were told on Dec. 18 to immediately leave their 5-year-old Callahan home, after tests found high levels of mold spores. The Casons are now living in a hotel suite at the airport with just a few of their belongings, including toothbrushes they had to bleach. They were told to leave most everything behind because it probably was contaminated. A relative helped Cason unwrap, wipe with bleach and rewrap 80 Christmas presents that had been sitting in the house. " We're not even supposed to go into the house, " she said. " We have 2 acres of land and a brand-new house, and we can't live in it. " The couple never suspected their house had a mold problem. They called a pest control company about a month ago because ants were coming into the kitchen. The pest control worker told them the bugs were carpenter ants -- pests that eat rotting wood. The Casons looked under the siding and found the wood beneath wet, molded and covered with ants. The couple paid a contractor to rip out and replace the damaged wood. The contractor told them moisture from an improperly installed kitchen window, kitchen vent and outside porch light were allowing moisture to wet the wall. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- and Cason had to leave most of their belongings behind when mold forced them from their home. -- Pemberton/Staff ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Their insurance company denied their initial claim to cover the damage, but arranged for environmental tests after a representative found wet Sheetrock at the house. On Dec. 18, the insurance company received the environmental test results and advised the Casons to leave immediately. The insurance company is paying for them to stay at the hotel and told them the house will be fixed. The Casons have been sick with bronchitis, fatigue, sore throats and respiratory problems for about a year but are feeling much better since they left the house. Still, their doctor is arranging tests to see if fungus is growing in their lungs. " That's my biggest thing, " Cason said. " What if we're contaminated? " Serious mold problems are happening in older homes, too. Potential home buyers are increasingly asking for a mold test -- a roughly $500 expense -- as part of a home inspection, said Phyllis Staines, a realtor with Re/Max Coastal who sells houses at the Beaches and the Southside. If the test finds mold, the homeowner may have to pay to remove it. " I'll tell you, those little spores are causing more trouble, " Staines said. " It's like termites. It's never-ending. " Rico and Guevarez bought their Westside house four years ago. Before they moved in, they only saw the house with the previous owner's furnishings still inside. The house looked fine. But shortly after the family moved in, they saw mold start to grow on the walls and some ceilings. They wiped away the mold with bleach, but it would return within a couple weeks. Rico Guevarez replaced the house's windows, changed the flooring and painted with mold-resistant paint. " It just keeps coming, " he said. SkyeTec Indoor Environmental Solutions, a company that tests for mold and writes a remediation plan, advised the Guevarezes to leave the home after tests found high concentrations of stachybotrys, as well as aspergillis and penecillium -- all molds that can produce toxins. The family's insurance company won't pay to fix the problem. But it is giving them a living allowance while they stay in a friend's mobile home. And it arranged for an engineer to find out why the house is getting wet enough to mold. The house slopes down from Timuquana Road, which may be causing the crawlspace under the house to stay soggy, the couple said. " We obviously can't sell a house like this, and we can't pay two mortgages, " said Guevarez, who also is pregnant and expecting her seventh child in June. " I want something to be settled by the time this baby's born. " The family's children were constantly having cold or asthma symptoms. Their 3-year-old daughter also had started throwing up at night -- a problem a doctor now attributes to the mold in the house. " Since we've been out of the house, she's been fine, " Guevarez said. SkyeTec advises people in about 30 percent of homes it tests to leave until the home's problems are fixed, president Uhland said. Most people can continue to stay in their home, with about $1,200 in tests and an average $10,000 in remediation work, although occasionally the work costs significantly more. Testing for mold Anticipating an increase in Florida mold concerns, mold testers and remediation specialists are coming out the woodwork. Many of them took certification courses that taught them to collect mold through tape samples, material samples and air samples that a lab will analyze. The mold companies then might write a plan to tear out and replace molded construction and belongings without spreading the mold spores around the house. Some companies also do the actual work, although others said they consider that a conflict of interest. The owners of Mold Finder, a new ville company, also run a roofing company. They started Mold Finder because they were seeing and hearing about mold problems. " I'm getting a lot of calls from people saying they were looking for people to do this work, " said co-owner Steve Hickey. Lipsey, the ville toxicologist, does what he calls " worst-case sampling. " He takes swabs of visible mold and removes the air conditioner filter, dust from the vacuum cleaner and a piece of insulation while people are in the house, stirring up mold spores. Then he figures out the occupants' health risks based on the mold and takes a family history. He writes a clean-up plan and refers people to doctors who specialize in mold poisoning, if he thinks they may have mold-related illnesses. If part of a bathroom needs replacing, for example, Lipsey's plan calls for a sheet of plastic to cover the doorway, the windows to be opened and a fan to be running while the moldy material and any porous items such as linens or carpet are ripped out and double-bagged. Some molds can't be cleaned from items, even with washing, he said. Then the plan would call for scrubbing down the area with a biocide and replacing the material. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention takes the attitude that any mold in a house isn't good and needs to be cleaned up, so families with an extensive mold problem might be better off to skip testing and just spend the money to get it cleaned up. Insurance coverage So far, the trend to sue insurers for mold-related costs hasn't moved to Florida. " I am not aware of any lawsuits against insurance companies, but it's an issue we're concerned about, " said Sam , vice president for the Florida Insurance Council. " It seems to be moving from state to state. " Texas homeowners have been filing so many lawsuits that some insurance companies temporarily stopped writing new homeowners insurance policies last year. In November, the Texas insurance commissioner decided Texas policies should be more like other states, and homeowners must pay for extra mold coverage if they want it. About 50 Florida insurers filed requests with the Florida Department of Insurance earlier this year for mold coverage exclusions from homeowner and commercial coverage, said department spokeswoman Tami . The department, in turn, has asked the Insurance Services Office, a national organization, to suggest a model policy. The insurers aren't asking for mold damage to be completely dropped from homeowner policies, said. Some want caps on coverage -- an idea considered and dropped in Texas. Others are asking it be made clear that Florida policies cover mold damage only when it relates to a " covered peril, " such as storm damage or a sudden water leak, he said. Problems that occur because homeowners did not do routine maintenance or because of faulty construction are not considered to be the insurance company's responsibility, said. In faulty construction cases, it would seem the homeowner should try to get satisfaction from the contractor, said. Policyholders who aren't sure whether their particular mold problem is covered are encouraged to file a claim, he added. Staff writer Marcia Mattson can be reached at (904) 359-4073 or at mmattson@... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.