Captain Pike's Ship Log II
Fungus among us!
by , 10-27-2008 at 10:57 PM (2657 Views)
Still operating on the assumption that we're protected under the umbrella of guidance from the Great Ambitious One, we seek her, occasionally vague-but-only-because-I'm-not-a-very-good-listener, guidance. We will not be purchasing the wonderful house.
Remember this house was listed by a couple of house-flippers, so it was with a bit of apprehension that we entered into an agreement to purchase the property. A professional home inspection yielded the typical laundry list of items; missing electrical box covers, cracked glass and a missing handrail were among the very doable items one would expect. I'm not sure who's idea was to get a radon measurement, but it yielded at an unsafe level of 6.8 -- the ideal house is under 2.0, plenty of people opt to do nothing between 2.0 and 4.0, but 6.8 necessitates a remediation plan. It turns out that for less than $1500, a guaranteed, verifiable method of reducing the radon levels to an acceptable level is available from many sources here. Somewhere between 60% and 70% of homes in Maine have a measurable amount of radon in the basement.
Most people I talked to hadn't heard of doing a "mold test". The LMW has some asthma I have a physically reduced diaphragm function, this together with the fact that the place was ruined by "the elements" -- it sat with a leaky roof for years before was renovated made us interested in doing everything we could to make sure that there wasn't excessive mold hiding in the buildings walls.
The place is loaded. Penicillium, in particular, was measured at over 15,000 ppm in a cubic meter, three orders of magnitude beyond typical and tolerable levels -- for people with no breathing issues. The sellers had simply put new walls up over the existing colonies. All they would've had to do to eradicate the mole permanently would've been liberal dousing with bleach. But the testing lab indicated a level of this and other species of mold which implied that no eradication methods were used at all.
It actually didn't take that long for us to accept and ultimately be grateful for all the expense and excessive testing that we did do. There were some other items, like excessive taxing and the fact that nobody really knew what it would take to heat this over 3000 square-foot home which jogged us out of denial and down the road toward rational thinking.
So we are back house hunting again, belts a little bit more tightened and a relationship that has been made stronger by the struggle and the distance between us as she gets used to working a new job 400 miles away.
Go to Profile
Mark as Read
