Mold Investigation: Is Your Home Built Properly?

[Guest guest]

WISC Channel3000.com

Tuesday February 19 07:22 PM EST

Mold Investigation: Is Your Home Built Properly?

You've heard a lot about mold lately, but why is it sprouting up in homes?

And what are builders doing about it?

I-Team reporter Eggert has been investigating the impact of mold on

the building industry.

Builders have cause to be concerned -- a full 20 percent of home builders in

the Twin Cities lost their insurance, and some builders say it's now

imperative to understand mold, and try to stop it, Eggert reported.

Like mold itself, related insurance claims and lawsuits are sprouting up

nationwide.

It's all about damage to property, and health.

" I've seen one lady in Lake Geneva lose a kidney and her son is at

Hopkins University trying to learn to walk again, " microbiologist Ken

said.

Last year an insurance company was ordered to pay a Texas homeowner $32

million. Her home became infested with toxic mold. An industry already

reeling from financial losses took notice.

Now, homeowners face cuts in coverage and homebuilders try to hang onto

liability insurance.

" They told me that they didn't know what was going to happen -- that I would

be covered, but the upcoming years, they weren't quite sure. "

Already, homebuilder Chuck Elliott of Elliot Construction is paying 30

percent more for a policy that may not even cover mold.

" They're not sure they cover it or not, " Elliott said. So Elliott is taking

matters into his own hands, building homes that fend off the fungus.

Elliott also uses a dehumidifier during construction; building products are

full of moisture.

As for the piping, it's mostly plastic.

" It's the same stuff used in kidney dialysis, " he said. " It's clean, it's

safe, and the other thing is, it doesn't condensate. "

And that's just the beginning. Elliott really concentrates on proper

circulation and ventilation. Bathroom fans must be vented outside, but

Elliott says gas stoves -- even microwaves -- should vent vapors, too.

" You can't leave it inside the home, " Elliot said. " These homes are so

air-tight today that if you don't do that, what you're going to do is create

a moisture problem inside. "

" You can never build a house too tight but you can definitely underventilate

them, " said Ed Carroll, program director of Wisconsin Energy Star Homes.

Carroll helps builders build energy-efficient homes and says older houses

used to dry out by themselves.

But since the '70s, building practices and materials have changed to save

energy and money.

Now things are tight, and the devil's in the details.

Wiring holes in this cavity lead to mold growth. To prevent that, experts

say you seal your home completely, and make ventilation a priority.

Going back to leaky houses, he says, isn't the solution.

" Let's instead deal with ventilation to make sure the moisture that wants to

get out -- there's no changing the physics of it -- goes out through a

system that was designed to handle moisture, not a wall, " Carroll said.

" We have to know what we're doing, and then we have to educate the people

that buy these homes, " Elliott said. " The consumers have to know how to

operate them to continue to be mold free. "

Good ventilation doesn't mean you have to spend a lot of money. Builders say

homeowners just need to be specific:

Ask up front about systems -- what they do and how to properly operate them.

Energystar, for one, doesn't believe changes to the building code are

needed. As proof, they say only three of their nearly 900 voluntarily

certified homes have seen mold-related complaints.