Bioclean and Biobreeze

[tpotter]

We just had the a/c guys out here...having problems for the past 5 years with smell, and the a/c making us sick.

 

OK. they showed me what it looked like inside my ductwork using a camera, and they said it looks like the last cleaning, 1 year ago, was done very poorly (there was a lot of dust, and possible old areas of water leakage from the old a/c unit (of course I'm thinking mold, and they said possibly.) So, they are saying that they use a brush to clean everything, it goes straight into a double hepa filter (supposedly none into the air...I'm scared, anyway), and then they spray with this stuff (bioclean and biobreeze) that is supposed to kill the mold completely (they said it goes in as a mist, and circulates through the entire house, so should get rid of any mold that way.

 

1) Does anyone know if this stuff is safe (I looked it up, and it looks like it is water, alcohol, and fragerance)

 

2) Does it work?

 

I asked repeatedly about getting new ductwork, and they said this makes more sense (there area lots of little holes that could be sealed up.)

 

Now, here's the really interesting part. I turned my a/c off 2 nights ago, and left it off until last night with the windows open upstairs. I turned the a/c back on last night, because allergies from outside were killing us, and the heat was too much for my kids. This a.m., my husband reported that the humidity in the basement had dropped 25% (we've been struggling with it all summer, and have a dehumidifier going all the time). Also, when I went down to the basement this afternoon with the a/c guys, it actually did not smell musty like it has been smelling. The a/c guys couldn't explain this one. Any ideas? It was really freaky (btw, our basement is sealed extremely well...no water leakage that I have ever seen.)

[red]

We just had the a/c guys out here...having problems for the past 5 years with smell, and the a/c making us sick.

 

OK. they showed me what it looked like inside my ductwork using a camera, and they said it looks like the last cleaning, 1 year ago, was done very poorly (there was a lot of dust, and possible old areas of water leakage from the old a/c unit (of course I'm thinking mold, and they said possibly.) So, they are saying that they use a brush to clean everything, it goes straight into a double hepa filter (supposedly none into the air...I'm scared, anyway), and then they spray with this stuff (bioclean and biobreeze) that is supposed to kill the mold completely (they said it goes in as a mist, and circulates through the entire house, so should get rid of any mold that way.

 

1) Does anyone know if this stuff is safe (I looked it up, and it looks like it is water, alcohol, and fragerance)

 

2) Does it work?

 

I asked repeatedly about getting new ductwork, and they said this makes more sense (there area lots of little holes that could be sealed up.)

 

Now, here's the really interesting part. I turned my a/c off 2 nights ago, and left it off until last night with the windows open upstairs. I turned the a/c back on last night, because allergies from outside were killing us, and the heat was too much for my kids. This a.m., my husband reported that the humidity in the basement had dropped 25% (we've been struggling with it all summer, and have a dehumidifier going all the time). Also, when I went down to the basement this afternoon with the a/c guys, it actually did not smell musty like it has been smelling. The a/c guys couldn't explain this one. Any ideas? It was really freaky (btw, our basement is sealed extremely well...no water leakage that I have ever seen.)

If your humidity in the basement dropped 25% after shutting off the A/C then that means the A/C unit is either dumping water into the basement or it is drawing humid air in through outside sources.

It is nearly impossible to get duct work clean. THe only thing to do is replace it. But then you still have the problem of the air handler which if you have had mold will be contaminated. So if you put in new duct work or even if you had perfect cleaning of the ducts which is nearly impossible to do you will still have an air handler that is contaminated. It has to be hand cleaned. It has to be exposed and removed and taken outside and washed properly if you are serious about doing it correctly. If you are going to put in all new duct work then is your A/C in good enough shape to justify keeping it?

As for spraying something in the duct work and "poof" all the rest just disappears is just plan garbage. Do not trust these guys. Again it if virtually impossible for them to claim that it will all disappear into thin air and you will not be breathing it. You cannot get rid of mold any other way than to physically remove it. Even if you "kill" the remaining mold it is still toxic and when it breaks loose from whatever it is they are going to spray in there it will circulate throughout the house. If you decide on new duct work also put in a whole house HEPA filter inline. I have been down this road and have learned that the vast majority of people dealing with duct work and mold remediation are dangerou

Red

[tpotter]

Thank you Red. I was hoping you would weigh in on this one. My gut was telling me the same.

 

First of all, my dh corrected me...the humidity dropped about 5%, but I noticed a HUGE change (for the better) in the loss of odor in the basement (didn't have that horrible musty odor today that it's had before.)

 

The A/c is only 1 year old, so yes, I think it could handle it.

 

Also, when they remove the old ductwork, isn't the mold going to shake lose? We've got a ton of stuff down in the basement. Do we need to have mold remediation experts work along with them to make sure it is blocked off with plastic, negative air pressure, etc, etc? We just had a bunch of mold released into the house a few weeks ago when our handiman didn't know there was mold in the bathroom (water leak), and removed the floor and cabinet improperly. We are now all seriously paying the price, and my 16 y.o. just had a massive rage attack that I am sure is, at least in part, related. I don't want to go through this anymore.

 

How much did you pay for new ductwork? What would you thoroughly clean the air handler out with? Who would you have do that in order to make sure all the mold didn't get all over the house. Our basement is not a walkout, so everything would have to be carried upstairs. We used insurance for the bathroom, but I don't know if this would be covered, because there wasn't an overt leak that we know of that caused this problem (just an old a/c probably.)

Edited August 22, 2012 by tpotter

[tpotter]

Ooops...double post

Edited August 22, 2012 by tpotter

[JuliaFaith]

Tpotter, we have had to deal with a lot of mold issues in our current home over the past 13 years and with the continuing high humidity in the 1/2 basement it is continuing to be an issue. The air outside is so moist that keeping the humidity down inside is a challenge especially with underground springs flowing down towards our house. After just spending 5g on our attic we found mold growing in the basement bathroom again because my husband installed a shower incorrectly. My son just went to dr. yesterday and she said he is showing high mold so put him on Sporanox (anti-fungal) again. He is also in the middle of a flair we think from that and a lot of other things that have caused inflammation in his body (i.e., concussion, broken arm, dental work...).

 

Anyway, we had a mold remediator come in to check air quality (after doing ERMI) to pinpoint continuing mold problem. He found the attic was really high for mold so sealed it, took out old insulation, and had new insulation put in. We left the house when the initial cleaning and removing insulation was done, but my older son was at home and told me what they had done. They had sealed the area around where the moldy insulation was removed, but after that, a portion of drywall that 'had some mold' around the skylight was removed without any barriers put up! Never saw the drywall and how much mold was there but was shocked that they had not taken more precautions. So you never know what you will be getting. One thing I wish I would have done was call past customers and talk to them. I did google to see if anyone had posted any neg. info. about their services.

 

I would be hesitant to have a product used with 'water, alcohol, & fragrance'! I.e, You do not need more water...alcohol is not recommended for mold remediation in anything I have read...there is a lot written on the unhealthy side effects of fragrance. Just my thoughts. When I had vents cleaned this last time, the guy said he had a 'mold-killer' that he could put in the ducts but that it was a bit toxic, so I did not have it done.

 

Here is info. on remediation from the surviving mold website:

 

http://www.survivingmold.com/legal-resources/environmental

 

Best wishes on the mold remediation. It could well be worth it. Two weeks after we had attic done, my son, for the first time in over 2 1/2 yrs. actually admitted to starting to feel better. He was on other things so not sure if that was the deal breaker but starting to think so.

[tpotter]

Getting the ducts replaced will cost at least $10K I just found out, and even then, he said that if there was mold in the ductwork, there would be mold in the walls. I called my insurance adjustor, because the bathroom (that was covered by insurance) had the a/c duct uncovered for 2 days before we got the remediation work actually done (as far as I know) correctly. But, we started getting extremely ill that very first day, and I suspect it may be in through the ducts. I want the insurance company to test the air all over the house, and the ducts. I've even turned off the a/c, except at night, because our allergies are out of control when trying to sleep with the windows open.

 

So, if we get the house officially tested, as well as the ductwork, and it turns out they are not finding mold, would you suggest we get the ducts completely cleaned? They also said that the stuff they spray in the ducts is the same stuff they use in hospitals, but that doesn't mean anything to me. That's why I wanted people's opinion on this product. And, of course, as well on whether or not to get the ducts cleaned, given the fact that I'm not so sure that even getting the ducts replaced is going to help.

 

DH and I have owned 3 houses since we've been married, and each of us owned one before we got married (a total of 5), and neither of us have ever had this problem before this house (which, incidentally, is the newest of them all...one of our houses was over 80 years old!)

[JuliaFaith]

Someone on this forum recently had their dr. tell them that 'mold stays in your body for a long time and is difficult to get rid of". So my son is showing high MOld again and dr. does not know if it is from a recent exposure or past.

 

Now Dr. Shoemaker, author of "Surviving Mold" attributes the reaction to mold as genetic and an inflammatory reaction to the biotoxins. He believes 25% of the population has a genetic predisposition to an inflammatory reaction to mold above the rest of the population. Mold is not good for anyone, however, certain genetic types it can be very bad. This book just came out in 2010 so the information is very new and some dr. are just beginning to take a closer look at mold. He believes that mold illness can creates symptoms similar to lyme. Have you done any of his recommended blood work? My dh did the TGF-beta 1 test for inflammation and found his 'higher than the dr. had every seen.' Just another lovely surprise! High amounts of allergies may mean that there is some high inflammation going on. Have you done an ERMI test on your house? We have done two - first one was 13.7 (recommend '2' for chronically ill) and our 2nd was '8.' That is why we had a remediator come in and do some more sampling.

 

Somewhere in reading about mold there was a test done with mold in two petri dishes. The one subjected to higher EMF (Electrical Magnetic Fields) grew several times faster. We actually bought a bunch of EMF stetzer filters to keep the EMF's down a bit. We were also recommended to put up EMF curtains and even paint with EMF paint. Have not done these things yet. It only takes 2 days for mold to grow in ideal conditions!

 

Did hear recently that new houses can be worse than old houses for mold because of how they are built enclosed in plastic now. In our area, they build houses in the pouring rain and then enclose in plastic!

 

Getting the vents cleaned can only help your situation if it has been more than 3 yrs. since it has been done. You may want to be outside during the cleaning. Our vent-cleaning guy had a hepa filter on his machine and I spoke with him on the phone before hiring him. Another guy I had several years ago, silver-taped around inside of every vent inside the house so that the suction was really good and now I realize it probably kept stuff out of the walls as well. This new guy did not do this.

 

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that it is great that you are exploring this and it may be a big key to healing even if another thing on your plate drives you a little crazier! Good luck.

[Familyof5]

My personal experience with mold (and an entire family suffering from mold illness) is that if your family is reacting to "cleaning" and "construction" in your house, that you are all very well "primed" as I like to put it. The air handler is only making the problem in your house worse and I would suggest you take steps to shut it down and install new "local" window units to improve your health. I do this in the summer and have used space heaters in the winter for three years because we all become extremely ill when the air handler is on---our immune systems are just too sensitive. It has been our saving grace as all of my children and my husband are healthier now than we have been in many years. I think air handlers and the duct work may be able to be cleaned, but it is usually only a temporary solution. Air handlers are the most efficient way to spread biotoxins throughout your entire house. So, even if the units are cleaned, you may have a serious mold problem in the bathroom and that toxic air will be distributed throughout your entire house through the ductwork and cause the problem all over again. Use the money you would have spent on cleaning the ducts to buy local cooling/heating units. Then, if your family begins to feel better, you will be able to start pinpointing where the problems are in your house. For example, once I had days where I felt good, I would react everytime I went into our bathroom. Leading us to find that we had a problem with mold in the bathroom. For what it is all worth! Good luck.

[tpotter]

My personal experience with mold (and an entire family suffering from mold illness) is that if your family is reacting to "cleaning" and "construction" in your house, that you are all very well "primed" as I like to put it. The air handler is only making the problem in your house worse and I would suggest you take steps to shut it down and install new "local" window units to improve your health. I do this in the summer and have used space heaters in the winter for three years because we all become extremely ill when the air handler is on---our immune systems are just too sensitive. It has been our saving grace as all of my children and my husband are healthier now than we have been in many years. I think air handlers and the duct work may be able to be cleaned, but it is usually only a temporary solution. Air handlers are the most efficient way to spread biotoxins throughout your entire house. So, even if the units are cleaned, you may have a serious mold problem in the bathroom and that toxic air will be distributed throughout your entire house through the ductwork and cause the problem all over again. Use the money you would have spent on cleaning the ducts to buy local cooling/heating units. Then, if your family begins to feel better, you will be able to start pinpointing where the problems are in your house. For example, once I had days where I felt good, I would react everytime I went into our bathroom. Leading us to find that we had a problem with mold in the bathroom. For what it is all worth! Good luck.

 

Very interesting idea. I will discuss this with dh in the morning. And, the mold from our bathroom was sucked throughout the entire house after the handiman had removed all the moldy flooring and cabinets improperly. Now, we are fighting all of that. We were not having such severe problems until this just happened, which is why I am still hopeful that we can resolve the problem. But, the local units may not be a bad idea at all. Personally, I would like to just move, but it's a huge hassle, plus our house is currently worth considerably less than we paid for it.

 

I have actually been shutting down the a/c off and on the past few days (during the day, and leaving the windows open.) The house actually has a nice, sweet smell, but it's terribly hot at night, and DS19 went a bit crazy this evening, so I turned it back on. Even the basement smell went away, but then came back the other night after running the a/c for another 24 hours.

[red]

My personal experience with mold (and an entire family suffering from mold illness) is that if your family is reacting to "cleaning" and "construction" in your house, that you are all very well "primed" as I like to put it. The air handler is only making the problem in your house worse and I would suggest you take steps to shut it down and install new "local" window units to improve your health. I do this in the summer and have used space heaters in the winter for three years because we all become extremely ill when the air handler is on---our immune systems are just too sensitive. It has been our saving grace as all of my children and my husband are healthier now than we have been in many years. I think air handlers and the duct work may be able to be cleaned, but it is usually only a temporary solution. Air handlers are the most efficient way to spread biotoxins throughout your entire house. So, even if the units are cleaned, you may have a serious mold problem in the bathroom and that toxic air will be distributed throughout your entire house through the ductwork and cause the problem all over again. Use the money you would have spent on cleaning the ducts to buy local cooling/heating units. Then, if your family begins to feel better, you will be able to start pinpointing where the problems are in your house. For example, once I had days where I felt good, I would react everytime I went into our bathroom. Leading us to find that we had a problem with mold in the bathroom. For what it is all worth! Good luck.

 

Very interesting idea. I will discuss this with dh in the morning. And, the mold from our bathroom was sucked throughout the entire house after the handiman had removed all the moldy flooring and cabinets improperly. Now, we are fighting all of that. We were not having such severe problems until this just happened, which is why I am still hopeful that we can resolve the problem. But, the local units may not be a bad idea at all. Personally, I would like to just move, but it's a huge hassle, plus our house is currently worth considerably less than we paid for it.

 

I have actually been shutting down the a/c off and on the past few days (during the day, and leaving the windows open.) The house actually has a nice, sweet smell, but it's terribly hot at night, and DS19 went a bit crazy this evening, so I turned it back on. Even the basement smell went away, but then came back the other night after running the a/c for another 24 hours.

Well I just got my computer back so here I am. I have been through this big time with 3 different mold remediation people. For those of you in the nothern Va/DC area I would highly recommend Greg Weatherman @ http://www.aerobiological.com/ I actually brought him down NC to diagnose my house. He taught me a great deal about remediation.

As for detox Shoemaker uses cholestyramine and it is the best product available hands down. Mold is fat soluble and loves the brain (hence our crazy reactions to exposure). I works by binding to the cholesterol in the liver and mold is floating around in the cholesterol and so the mold and cholesterol go out as a pair. I herxed from it for 2 weeks I had so much mold in me.

That your smell goes away when you shut down the A/C unit is very telling. I would think your 1 year old A/C unit/air handler is maybe a big problem.

 

 

As for your house I think you have had a significant breach and you now have spores everywhere due to the extremely poor deconstruction of your bathroom. We literally threw everything way that could not be washed in a washing machine. Dry cleaning does not take out mold. Then for the furniture we recovered including new foam 2 couches we wanted to keep. Anything wood can be washed down with soapy water and or use swiffers on them. As for the air handler it can be taken outside (that means new freon when they put it back) and can be power washed to remove all spores. As for the duct work they need to treat it like they would if it was contaminated with asbestos. If they do not know how to treat asbestos then they do not know how to work with mold. Asbestos is a much larger particle than mold and easier to contain. If you have carpet then, the spores are in your carpet and the only true way to get it out is through the carpet out IF THE PROBLEM IS AS BAD AS YOU MAKE IT SOUND. You may need an ERMI? We threw away our whole library. We took everything out of the house, had the remediation and then fogged the house multiple times with Sporicidin. http://www.sporicidin.com/ Sporicidin is non toxic and kills all mold on contact. As a fog it will kill the spores and the spores break up and fall onto horizontal surfaces. You then just swiffer up the surfaces. Remember even dead spores are toxic. The house will smell like phenol for a week or two. We then cleaned washed all clothing etc. outside and brought it into the clean house. We had the couches redone and bought new mattresses and futon pads. You have to realize that spores can make their way into foam bedding etc. and when you sit on the foam the spores come out and you breath them in. So CROSS CONTAMINATION is the name of the game. If you leave mold behind somewhere the spores will find their way back into the environment. As you can see we went to great lengths to get our 40 your old house clean. I do not know if I missed anything but that is a good shot at it. Any room that has mold in the walls should be sealed off and all material should be bagged before removing it from the house. Our house had been moldy for years and so we had to treat everything like it was contaminated which it probably was.

Both my wife and I had HLA subtypes making us susceptible to mold: different HLA markers but non the less markers that popped up on Shoemaker's list. When he test our Hypothalamic pituitary axis function/hormones we both had identical suppression on our brain hormones!

I think someone made reference in a post to TGF-beta being very high. Dr. Shoemaker is using vaso intestinal peptide spray to bring down TGF-b. It worked wonders on my wife and I also tired it. It brought both our TGF-beta down to normal. I had trouble tolerating VIP in the long run but now I know why. We did not know that I had bartonella when I tried the VIP spray. Whereas the VIP brought down my TGF-b it also aggravated my bart.

As for the person who posted about taking out their contaminated fiberglass I would hope everything was bagged and sealed. Then the area should have been at a minimum vacuumed. I also hope they put formaldehyde free fiberglass otherwise you got standard fiberglass which will unfortunately off gas.

As for the person putting in window A/C units and individual space heater units I think you are fooling yourself that you are doing anything healthy. If your house has mold you have to remove it plain and simple. Spores are extremely light and just walking through the house will cause them to move. Each individual A/C is basically a portable air handler. If you put HEPA filtration in your whole house air handler as well as cleaning and new duct work you will keep the house clean. I have a MERV 16 filtration unit in my whole house HVAC system. MERV 16 is equal to HEPA. It is just different terminology.

Different molds grow under different circumstances. For example aspergillus needs moisture content in the air in the 60% or above range and it usually is found on the wood surfaces of subfloors in basements and crawl spaces: hence the use of sealed crawl spaces and local dehumidifiers to keep those areas at or less than 50%. Then their is the dreaded stachybotrys we all hear about growing in the paper covering on sheet rock. Stachy requires direct contact with water at 70% to grow on the paper in sheet rock. Stachy also grows on fiber board which is used a lot in cabinets. So bathrooms with leaking water is a prime area for stachy. When we put in new sheet rock we used the kind that has a fiberglass covering that does not grow mold even if it gets soaked (now do not mistake that for mold that grows on the paint on top of that sheet rock).

Red

Edited August 24, 2012 by red

[tpotter]

Wow...great suggestions. I am getting the air tested by a professional that I picked out (insurance is paying for it, because I told them that I didn't think that the job had been done correctly by the company they called out to remediate. Our guy was blown away that they had left the aluminum foil covering taped to the a/c duct that dh had put there before they came in (after the mess was first made.) He said that they should have put on a thick plastic and sealed it properly. As a result, when the a/c was blowing, the whole thing was lifting off the vent, and of course, everything they were doing in the bathroom that was supposed to be kept at negative air pressure, was getting sucked right back into the house.

 

Of course that company was trying to claim that the mold wasn't anything that bad, and that it was "nothing compared to other jobs we do." When I told them I could care less about other jobs, and that I had told them and the insurance company very clearly that we had immune deficiencies and were very sick from it, he still tried to get out of it all. He also told me that they didn't retest the air, because they only do that on rooms that are bigger than 25 sf, and I pointed out that our bathroom was 25 sf, and again, that should have nothing to do with it.

 

Unfortunately, the insurance company is only limited to $2500 in total cost per incident, and I have to wonder what is going to happen when we are able to prove that they caused an even greater problem by not sealing the area properly. The insurance adjustor said that she would send out one of her people, and I told her I wanted someone that I chose. We are now waiting until Tuesday or Wed. for the results.

 

We have 1 area of carpeting (on the stairs and upstairs hallway, and will have to pull all the spindles out of the banister in order to put down new carpeting. But, I have the carpeting guys coming out on Monday to give me a quote. My hope is to get the carpeting replaced on Thursday, and then get the air ducts etc. cleaned on Friday. I will take my DS out of town to my h.s. reunion (and he can visit with his grandmother), and DH can stay in a hotel or something (he can supervise the guys.) Our mold guy can put up protective sheeting and negative air surrounding the stairs. If the air comes back high, I'm going to fight insurance that they GUARANTEE the work of their guys, and despite the fact that they are limited to $2500, their mold guys made things worse.

 

This whole thing just sucks...we were finally starting to really get better.

 

Luckily, DS19 is now out of the house...we just dropped him off at college, and I'm praying that he doesn't have any problems with his room (it smelled good to me.) Even the dog was having problems.

 

We are starting go calm down a little with the breathing, and such, but that has involved keeping the a/c off much of the day with the windows open, and only using it at night.

[red]

Wow...great suggestions. I am getting the air tested by a professional that I picked out (insurance is paying for it, because I told them that I didn't think that the job had been done correctly by the company they called out to remediate. Our guy was blown away that they had left the aluminum foil covering taped to the a/c duct that dh had put there before they came in (after the mess was first made.) He said that they should have put on a thick plastic and sealed it properly. As a result, when the a/c was blowing, the whole thing was lifting off the vent, and of course, everything they were doing in the bathroom that was supposed to be kept at negative air pressure, was getting sucked right back into the house.

 

Of course that company was trying to claim that the mold wasn't anything that bad, and that it was "nothing compared to other jobs we do." When I told them I could care less about other jobs, and that I had told them and the insurance company very clearly that we had immune deficiencies and were very sick from it, he still tried to get out of it all. He also told me that they didn't retest the air, because they only do that on rooms that are bigger than 25 sf, and I pointed out that our bathroom was 25 sf, and again, that should have nothing to do with it.

 

Unfortunately, the insurance company is only limited to $2500 in total cost per incident, and I have to wonder what is going to happen when we are able to prove that they caused an even greater problem by not sealing the area properly. The insurance adjustor said that she would send out one of her people, and I told her I wanted someone that I chose. We are now waiting until Tuesday or Wed. for the results.

 

We have 1 area of carpeting (on the stairs and upstairs hallway, and will have to pull all the spindles out of the banister in order to put down new carpeting. But, I have the carpeting guys coming out on Monday to give me a quote. My hope is to get the carpeting replaced on Thursday, and then get the air ducts etc. cleaned on Friday. I will take my DS out of town to my h.s. reunion (and he can visit with his grandmother), and DH can stay in a hotel or something (he can supervise the guys.) Our mold guy can put up protective sheeting and negative air surrounding the stairs. If the air comes back high, I'm going to fight insurance that they GUARANTEE the work of their guys, and despite the fact that they are limited to $2500, their mold guys made things worse.

 

This whole thing just sucks...we were finally starting to really get better.

 

Luckily, DS19 is now out of the house...we just dropped him off at college, and I'm praying that he doesn't have any problems with his room (it smelled good to me.) Even the dog was having problems.

 

We are starting go calm down a little with the breathing, and such, but that has involved keeping the a/c off much of the day with the windows open, and only using it at night.

DO NOT put down new carpet until the air ducts are cleaned!!!!! You are doing it backwards. If you get contaminated air from the duct cleaning then that will just settle out onto that nice new carpet. What about the air handler? That absolutely has to be cleaned otherwise the air handler, which is full of whatever is in the duct work now will just re-contaminate the newly cleaned duct work (not to mention that I believe it is not possible to completely clean duct work). After the duct work is done I say you HEPA vacuum the house multiple times. You cannot vacuum the house enough. If your old carpet is gone then you are vacuuming a nice and easy hard plywood subfloor. Depending on where you live cooler air is just around the corner. If you could postpone the duct work until you do not need the A/C then do so. Keep vacuuming and then when the season changes get clean the ducts (air handler too!!!) and then keep the system off. Let the house settle down and vacuum your way through the next few weeks. Just clean like you have gone mad. Then put in the carpets and use your HVAC system later. If you do not have a HEPA vacuum them go to your big box store and buy a shop vac with a HEPA filter. My shop vac has a reusable washable HEPA filter in it. This is a relatively cheap way to HEPA vacuum your house.

As for mold testing, air samples are very inferior to testing surfaces. The tendency for mold is to fall out of the air and settle on horizontal surfaces. Stachy is a very heavy spore and is almost never found in air samples. Go to this website http://www.mycometrics.com/ and find out how to do sampling the right way. These people have been in the ERMI business since ERMI was first developed. Slow down...... you are going to fast. There is a method to the madness of preventing cross contamination. You have already suffered as a result from shoddy handling of moldy deconstruction. The excuses by the guy who screwed up the bathroom are inexcusable. As for carpet removal it should be done slowly and carefully so as not to disturb mold spores. I would cover the carpet with a thin sheet of plastic and then have it very slowly and carefully rolled up.

Do NOT think about spraying water directly on the carpet before rolling it up. That might be fine if you were trying to contain just dirt and dust but mold spores are HYDROPHOBIC and when water hits them in an open area they are repelled by the water and go air borne. It is just one of their ways of breaking loose and repopulating a different area. THink about mold in its natural environment. THe spore is the reproductive part of the fungus. It wants to distribute those spores far and wide. If a rain storm comes along and all the spores fall just around the ground repopulation is limited to the immediate area where there is too limited substrate(food). So treat carpets as if they are contaminated!!

Red

Edited August 25, 2012 by red

[tpotter]

I'm actually going quickly, because having the a/c on is spreading everything around, and it's too hot to keep it off at night (no one can sleep.)

 

But, I have been talking to a mold guy who can remove the carpeting with containment and negative air ($1400 which seems terribly expensive, but at this point, it's been almost a month, and I can't keep going with this.) I would also have him treat the subfloor, and he would also re-clean and encapsulate the floor of the bathroom if necessary. I am not putting down new carpeting. Once the staircase and bathroom are fixed, I was planning to immediately have the ductwork cleaned at that point. My husband said there is no way we can get the air handler taken apart like that, but I can certainly ask the a/c guys. All the rest of the floors in our house are hardwood or laminate, and we would be having hardwoods put in on the stairs and hallway.

 

I'm planning to insist that insurance (or better yet, the company that screwed up) pay for extremely heavy cleaning of the house (after the carpet is out and the ducts are cleaned)...using our own equipment only. Would washing the floors constantly rather than vacuuming work better or the same? I am just so angry, because I feel like they exposed us to even more mold and toxins, plus exposed us to whatever poison they were using to clean the floors!

 

That's interesting about the stachyb. I'll ask our guy about that.

 

Basically, though, we can't put this off, as we can't keep breathing this stuff in. We are all really suffering, and having major flareups of our lyme and co-infection symptoms. DS even had an instantaneous rage attack against his brother last week, and I had to leave a doctor's appointment of my own, and race home. My other son was able to get away from him somehow (had him in a headlock,) and got to his car, and drove away to safety! He was pretty badly injured. My son hasn't done that in several years!

 

I have 2 HEPA filters running continuously. I know many people are able to move out of their houses while all this is going on, but short of moving into a hotel, we just have nowhere to go. So, I have to pray this is going to take care of most of the problems, because I just don't have the money to completely replace the ductwork, and can't replace the a/c again (just replaced it last year.)

[red]

I'm actually going quickly, because having the a/c on is spreading everything around, and it's too hot to keep it off at night (no one can sleep.)

 

But, I have been talking to a mold guy who can remove the carpeting with containment and negative air ($1400 which seems terribly expensive, but at this point, it's been almost a month, and I can't keep going with this.) I would also have him treat the subfloor, and he would also re-clean and encapsulate the floor of the bathroom if necessary. I am not putting down new carpeting. Once the staircase and bathroom are fixed, I was planning to immediately have the ductwork cleaned at that point. My husband said there is no way we can get the air handler taken apart like that, but I can certainly ask the a/c guys. All the rest of the floors in our house are hardwood or laminate, and we would be having hardwoods put in on the stairs and hallway.

 

I'm planning to insist that insurance (or better yet, the company that screwed up) pay for extremely heavy cleaning of the house (after the carpet is out and the ducts are cleaned)...using our own equipment only. Would washing the floors constantly rather than vacuuming work better or the same? I am just so angry, because I feel like they exposed us to even more mold and toxins, plus exposed us to whatever poison they were using to clean the floors!

 

That's interesting about the stachyb. I'll ask our guy about that.

 

Basically, though, we can't put this off, as we can't keep breathing this stuff in. We are all really suffering, and having major flareups of our lyme and co-infection symptoms. DS even had an instantaneous rage attack against his brother last week, and I had to leave a doctor's appointment of my own, and race home. My other son was able to get away from him somehow (had him in a headlock,) and got to his car, and drove away to safety! He was pretty badly injured. My son hasn't done that in several years!

 

I have 2 HEPA filters running continuously. I know many people are able to move out of their houses while all this is going on, but short of moving into a hotel, we just have nowhere to go. So, I have to pray this is going to take care of most of the problems, because I just don't have the money to completely replace the ductwork, and can't replace the a/c again (just replaced it last year.)

OK so funds are limited. Then you need to prioritize. What is you biggest problem the carpet or the HVAC? Now you say every time you turn on the HVAC the place smells moldy (VOCs). That suggests the HVAC is the source of your problem. The carpets: are they growing mold? Not unless they have been wet for a period of time. So the only thing the carpets represent is that they have some mold that has settle out from the indoor environment. So you are going to spend $1400 on a negative containment system to take out the non moldy carpets when you can simply cover the carpet, cut it out, roll it out undisturbed and save $1000 of that $1400. Set up your portable HEPA systems where they are taking up the carpets and or put a few window fans in and draw lots of air across the area while they are doing this. Why does the carpet guy want to "treat" the subfloor and what is he going to treat it with? If the subfloor has had mold growing on it then it needs to be removed and if it is that sick then you need negative containment. But if there is no water damage then do not waste precious funds on a healthy floor. Either wash it down with soapy water and or HEPA vacuum. I am a big lover of HEPA because you can vacuum soft surfaces as well as hard surfaces. Meantime back to the beast: your A/C unit. It is possible your coil in the air handler was installed incorrectly and the water is not draining off the base of the coil unit. If you have a constant source of water in the unit then that is a place for mold to grow hence your constant complaint of smelling musty (VOCs!!!!) when A/C unit is on. So take the grand you save on the carpets and put it towards cleaning the air handler coils and air handler containment box which the duct work guys cannot touch with their fancy brush system (also known as BS). Make sure you have the highest MERV rating filter you can find for the HVAC unit. Have you ever checked indoor humidity levels? If your A/C is too large for your house it will cycle on and off too often and never get your humidity levels at or below 50%. This is a common design flaw when A/C people set up a system. THink about it and think about the biggest most important problem in your house and the limited funds. Heck maybe you do not even need to touch the carpets right now..... just vacuum often and keep pulling out whatever spores have settled into and go after the monster. Meantime the bathroom jerk owes you some big bucks big time. Unless you want to hear stories I will not go into it but i had 2 very badly done duct work cleanings. Absolute nightmare. In fact at every turn in my mold remediation I had to be on top of these jerks because none of them knew how to do a complete job. As for your "lyme flare ups" one does not need Lyme to flare from mold. Mold produces plenty of inflammatory cytokines all on its own. You may have Lyme but the mold is not flaring the Lyme it is just adding more poison to the process. Shoemaker's work has proven that mold can be as bad or worse than Lyme depending on how sick the building is. My house was plenty sick and when I took mold hits the symptoms went through the

roof. And then when the Lyme docs were feeding me antibiotics it only made everything worse. For 2 1/2 years I was told by different so called LLMDs that I was herxing. Of course "it was mold stupid" and they were only making me worse. Lots of clueless people out there from LLMDs to mold remediators to A/C jerks and plumbers who take apart moldy sick bathrooms and do not bag the contaminated products much less seal the bathroom. Just think if all he did was seal the bathroom and turn on the exhaust fan and cover the HVAC vent he would have had a sealed negative system. And then all he has to do is bag everything and vacuum when his is done and at least he gets most of it. But instead he dumps who knows how much into your whole house.

Red

Edited August 26, 2012 by red

[tpotter]

The dog has made on the carpet plenty of times, and then my kids, in an attempt to make sure they got all the pee up, added a whole bunch of 409, placed a towel over it, and left it (stayed wet for days!) Plus, the dogs before us had made all over the carpet that was downstairs that we eliminated already (although, it was obvious there were stains on the subfloor, there was no evidence of mold, luckily. But, my fear is that there may be mold on this carpet (even the dog scratches continuously when he's on it,and actually likes it...he rolls around on it...i think it feels good to him). I'm afraid that if I cut corners by getting the regular carpet guys to remove the carpet, they may release even more into the air.

 

On the other hand, I suppose I could get that removed first, then clean the ducts. The ducts are extremely packed with dust, and I'm sure, now, dry mold. We had the ducts cleaned last year, but I saw first hand the mess in the ducts when I had the a/c guys here the other day (they put a camera up the ducts.) I will call them, though, and ask how easy/difficult/impossible it would be to check the coils in the air handler,and get it cleaned out outside (it would have to be brought upstairs, and I'm sure the freon would have to be removed first. Not an easy process.

 

Mold test results are coming back on Tuesday, and he did test the a/c as well, so we'll see what that comes back as.

 

 

I agree, that all they had to do was properly block off the vent, and I intend to make sure they and insurance are well aware that they not only released mold and other toxins back into my entire house, but also poisoned us with who knows what in the cleaner they used. Short of suing them, I don't know what else to do at this time, unless they agree to pay for EVERYTHING (and I'm not so sure that the carpet is totally their fault.)

 

When the flooring guys come out tomorrow to give me a quote on putting down the hardwoods on the stairs, I'll ask them how carefully they removed the existing carpeting. Also, if they notice any mold, they will have to stop immediately, and I will get a mold guy out here. I don't want them putting down flooring on top of mold.

 

I will actually be out of town next weekend, and my son does not want to come with me, so he and his dad will probably stay in a hotel for a few days. But, I know that my DH cuts corners with stuff like that, and I won't be here to supervise it. So, I want to make sure that things go right the first time.

 

There are so many decisions to be made about all of this, and because we can't keep breathing in the bad air, I have to move quickly.

 

BTW...How are you feeling now?

Edited August 26, 2012 by tpotter