Full Transcript What Defines a Water Damage Building 0:05 What is a water damage building? 0:07 In a Water Damage Building, the humidity is higher than what it should be. 0:11 You can live in places that are humid, such as Florida or Houston. 0:15 Hello, that's where we are. 0:18 And the Humidity can be ideal. 0:20 But if the humidity goes up, all you got to do is provide food for mold, bacteria, and then they grow. 0:29 Inside the interior of a water damage building may not only be just mold, but it can be bacteria that's from basically toilet water or comes in under the foundation, 0:40 or actinomycetes. 0:42 If you're colonized with that, you take it with you. 0:45 You breathe it in, it hits the back of your throat, and you swallow it. 0:49 It can get into your bloodstream, into you lungs, in your skin. 0:54 So drywall and what covers dry wall, which is paper cellulose, that feeds mold. 1:02 So the interior of a water damaged building means the humidity is too high and you may have all three of those things growing in your home. 1:10 People say mold is everywhere. 1:13 That's true. 1:14 But if you're in closed walls, the humidity is too high, and there's only five species of mold that make people sick.
Health Effects and Warning Signs 1:24 We'll put those in here. 1:28 There's five types of molds that only make sick people. 1:35 However, if the wrong types of mold grows, it can cause all kinds of things like narcolepsy. 1:41 You may be chronically fatigued or you may suffer from insomnia and think, what's wrong with me? 1:48 But it may related to a water damage building. 1:55 One of the first questions is, do you have musty smells? 1:58 Musty Smells aren't necessarily mold, but it might be bacteria. 2:02 So that's number one. 2:04 If you see anything, when you look at the air conditioning registers, you don't know if it's bacteria or mold. 2:19 You must test. 2:20 Another is if you live in a water damaged building, there might be peeling of paint. 2:27 There might buckling of baseboards and just the visible stuff around you. 2:32 So look at the ceiling tiles. 2:35 Look at outside of the home too. 2:40 You want to make sure that there's weep holes all the way around a building. 2:46 and you also want to be sure that there aren't water stains. 2:52 Another thing that you need to remember is that the absolute humidity within a structure needs to lower. 3:00 You don't need 60% humidity. 3:02 50 or less, or maybe even a lot less. 3:08 So this is where an indoor environmental professional can help you.
Humidity Control and HVAC Inspection 3:11 You want to put into your air conditioning system a whole-home dehumidifier, if at all possible. 3:18 There are special ionization things that you can put in to the HVAC. 3:22 there might be growth in there, but there's a thing in your conditioning air system called the plenum. 3:27 A plentum is like the hood of a car. 3:29 If you look in it, there should be no microbial growth whatsoever. 3:33 Additionally, you can ask an air conditioning repairman to do what's called a pressure test. 3:39 That's where they put pressure through the ventilation system, and there should not be a leak greater than 3%. If there's a lead greater 3%, then air that 3:51 is not clean can get into your HVAC system beyond where the plenum is. 3:56 Additionally, you should have someone look at the coils. 4:00 So you have the condenser on the outside of your house and then it comes in and there's coils, there should be no growth anywhere in there. 4:10 If you live within the interior of a water damaged building, even if you're in new construction, Sometimes they'll lay plywood out, 4:20 throw it up into a wall cavity, then they will put drywall, float it, tape it and seal that, but that wood was water damaged and it's going to grow mold 4:32 in that enclosed space and then it is going off gas to the rest of your home. 4:37 You can have the cleanest home and brand new construction and you might have water damage and not know it. 4:44 So the only way to test is by doing an environmental test. 4:53 How do you know if the interior of your home has water damage? 4:57 Well, we recommend doing one of several types of tests.
Hidden Water Damage in New Construction 5:02 I'll go through those. 5:03 The company that we recommended is EnviroBiomics. 5:06 They're based out of San Antonio, Texas. 5:09 Inside this little kit, you can pick this up at our office or we can ship it to you. 5:16 If you're one of our patients, what I love is we get notification of what the results are. 5:21 There will be a set of gloves and a Swiffer cloth that has been vacuum sealed into a bag. 5:28 You take the Swipper cloth out and the object of testing is to avoid rooms that have a relatively high humidity because that's going to be distorted from 5:40 what's in the dust of your home. 5:42 So think of this. 5:44 You go high and you want to collect lots of dust from at least 10 surfaces. 5:52 wipe back and forth. 5:54 You want to wipe one direction. 5:56 So put your gloves on, stand up on a ladder. 5:59 If you have ceiling fans in large rooms, you wipe down one blade, wipe on the underside. 6:06 you can do the other surface behind TVs, behind furniture and pictures.
Environmental Testing Methods 6:13 We don't clean the backs of our pictures routinely. 6:17 Well, if you've got a housekeeper that does, I don t do mine. 6:20 Anyway, start, tilt your picture out, wipe one way, Next, and don't rub back and forth. 6:28 So the object is to cover that swiffer turn it gray or black with dust. 6:35 And if that means that you have to Not clean for three weeks or so. 6:40 That's a good thing to do. 6:41 Another great way to collect dust in your home is take green contractor trash bags, cut them in strips and use painter's tape and put it along the walls. 6:55 The electrostatic attraction of the dust will allow you to collect large quantities of dust in a short period of time. 7:05 you're going to be looking for number one mold. 7:08 So, mycotoxins, there's only five that cause disease in people. 7:15 A HERTSME2 test measures that. 7:19 Now, if you rent a home, or you're planning on moving, I would just do a Hertz Me Too to check for those five species of mold. 7:27 Or if you are in an apartment, because if your not investing for the future, you just need to know if the air you breathe is clean for you. 7:37 If you own your home or your planning building and moving into a new home, When that structure's ready, we recommend test number seven. 7:47 Test number 7 from EnviroBiomics includes three things. 7:51 The HERTSme2, which is the five species of mold. 7:55 Endotoxins,which come from those nasty little gram-negative poopy water bacteria that come in under the foundation of the home or from overflowed toilets 8:05 or leaky dishwashers or refrigerators in your kitchen. 8:09 or and I should say and Actinomycetes, which is a gram positive bacteria.
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