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It's alive: Mold knows no social boundaries as it threatens homes and health
by Dan Howley, Staff writer Timesunion.com
It may not be Halloween yet, but if you own a home you may find this story a little spooky: It's about a woolly black thing that could be hiding and growing in your walls, in the darkest reaches of an attic or in your basement. It's not as sinister as the blob that ate Cleveland, but it could become the mold that ate your rafters and a pretty good chunk of a bank account.
Mold, which also comes in delightfully ghoulish shades of purple and cobweb white, has been found in homes in all 50 states, and sightings in the Capital Region are on the upswing.
"We get calls three times a day, and of the dozens of inspections we make each week 80 percent of the time it turns out to be mold," said Eric Dingleman, director of engineering and operations for Air Quality and Environmental Services in Ballston Spa. "When I started here four years ago, mold calls made up about 10 percent of our calls, now it's grown to 50 percent."
One of the calls he got about a year ago was from Chuck Graber of West Sand Lake, who couldn't see mold anywhere but couldn't understand why his eyes were running and he was sneezing all the time. "I told my wife there was something wrong with the house," said Graber, 75, retired from the state Education Department. "It was on a basement wall where it was wet. They got rid of it, patched the wall up, dried everything. It's been the difference between night and day."
Getting attention
The national mold Geiger counter reached a deafening pitch in 2001 when a jury awarded a family from Dripping Springs, Texas, $32 million after an insidious mold overran their 22-room home and left the owners and their child seriously ill.
The landmark case, which set off a frenzy of homeowner litigation, did for mold what Roswell did for UFOs, bringing it into the public consciousness and sending unsuspecting home owners bearing flashlights and mold meters on search-and-destroy missions.
Left unchecked, mold can cause severe structural damage to a home and can trigger health problems ranging from hay fever-like allergic symptoms to breathing difficulties for those with chronic respiratory disease.
Dan Osborn, who owns Upstate Home Inspection Service in Clifton Park, knows how mold gets a foothold and that it's an equal-opportunity invader as likely to move into a $1 million mansion as a $40,000 mobile home.
"In attics, it will be found on the roof trusses and sheathing or floor joist," Osborn said. "You'll see a discoloration and it will smear if you run your fingers across it. The attic holds heat from the sun, and then it just needs a moisture source, like a leak, and the mold will start growing."
Other fertile hosts are damp basements, around furnaces and hot water heaters. But it can also be hidden behind finished walls in basement family rooms.
"The moisture can get in the concrete walls, and since the finished room is being heated, the mold will wind up behind the finished wall," he said. "Then you have to poke holes to take air samples for a spore count."
Osborn said he's seen it spread in as little as three months from a small patch to 100 square feet and, depending on the surface, it can be expensive to remove. "I've seen it run up to $28,000 on a 20-square-foot area," he said.
Finding, ridding
Small mold growths can often be removed from places like kitchens and bathrooms with bleach and warm water, but frequently it takes a professional armed with chemicals and know-how to cast it out.
Osborn said he often discovers mold during inspections done before a home is listed for sale, and sometimes it's found in inspections requested by buyers before a contract is finalized.
Dingleman said there are proactive steps homeowners can take.
"Like going up in the attic and checking the ventilation," Dingleman said. "It shouldn't feel real humid and you should see light coming from the soffit vents and make sure all the attic vents are working properly. They can get clogged."
"Occasionally, I hear a story about it but it's not pervasive in the housing market here," said Jim Ader, chief executive officer of the Greater Capital Association of Realtors. "Our inventory is not overwhelmed by it at all."
Ader said it would be wise for buyers to have a home inspected before finalizing a transaction. He said there is a contingency attached to any offer that gives the buyer 10 days to have an inspection done, and that if a problem like mold is discovered the original offer would become nullified.
Then, he said, the buyer and seller would negotiate the price or who would be responsible for removing it.
Dan Howley can be reached at 454-5321 or by e-mail at dhowley@timesunion.com.
Are you covered?
From the insurance perspective, damage from mold, like rust, rot and mildew, is specifically excluded in most standard homeowners policies. Mold contamination is covered under these policies only if it is the result of a covered peril. For example, the costs of cleaning up mold caused by water from a burst pipe are covered under the policy, because water damage from a burst pipe is a covered peril.
But mold caused by water from excessive humidity, leaks, condensation or flooding is a maintenance issue for the property owner, like termite or mildew prevention, and is usually not covered by the policy. Most people routinely clean up mold before it grows large enough to become a hazard. Caught early, mold usually can be removed by a thorough cleaning with bleach and water.
Source: Insurance Information Institute, New York City. To learn more go to the institute's Web site at http://www.iii.org.
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