Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
Listen and learn how some stand out from competition and gain market share. Information helpful to agents and buyers. Conversations with professionals and entrepreneurs regarding their stories and what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain competitive advantages. Listen to stories from Ohio real estate agents and related businesses to help you know how to improve and who to consider using for yourself or friends. Created by the owners of a highly rated home inspection company in Ohio and the Winners of Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest https://homeinspectionsinohio.com/
Standing Out in Ohio Podcast
The Forgotten Maintenance That Could Save Your Health And Home
We investigate a case where a homeowner was feeling ill in specific areas of her home, tracing the problem to hidden moisture issues causing mold growth that had developed since her home purchase two years prior.
• Importance of starting with a full home inspection before specialized testing like mold or VOC tests
• Disconnected downspouts and sump pump discharge pipes causing water to recirculate back against the foundation
• Discovery of rotted wood in kitchen cabinets with corresponding mold spot in garage
• Tracing the moisture source to likely plumbing leaks from upstairs bathroom pipes
• Poor landscaping practices by HOA contributing to negative grading and foundation issues
• Regular home inspections recommended every 2-3 years to catch developing problems
• First-year inspection critical for new construction to identify issues while builder warranty still valid
Get your home inspected regularly – don't wait for symptoms or problems to become severe before taking action.
The video of the sump pump discharge
Resources - Environmental Consultants Of Ohio
To learn more about Habitation Investigation, the Two-time Winner of the Best Home Inspection Company in the Midwest Plus the Winner of Consumer Choice Award for Columbus Ohio visit Home Inspection Columbus Ohio - Habitation Investigation (homeinspectionsinohio.com)
Continuing Education for Ohio Agents Scheduled classes
Continuing Education for Ohio Agents Course listings
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For home buyers: What to expect from a home inspection. YT video for home buyers
Home Buyer and Seller Resources | Habitation Investigation
Heartland Commercial Property Inspections
If you would like to be a guest on the podcast contact us and let us know. You can visit Home (jimtroth.com) and go to the podcast page or message Habitation Investigation.
Welcome to the Standing Out in Ohio podcast, where we discuss topics, upcoming events, news and predictions with real estate professionals and entrepreneurs. Listen and learn what makes their companies and themselves stand out and gain advantages over the competition and gain market share. Subscribe for the latest news and discussion on what it takes to stand out from the crowd. Now here's your host, jim.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody, Welcome to the Standing Out Hot Podcast. This is Jim and, of course, Laura who is with me. The office goddess, Hello everyone, All right, Raining a ton lately A ton.
Speaker 2:Well, all right. So in wintertime people stay in their house and when it's rainy people stay in their house. But over the course of living in a house for a couple months, a week, two years, you maybe notice changes in the house. We had a call from a person who had a home inspection done two years ago, three years ago 22 was when they bought the house, so about two and a half years ago.
Speaker 2:We'll be pretty close. We didn't do the inspection, but they called us over to check things out and we're going to discuss that. But first listen to this.
Speaker 3:Habitation investigation is the way to go for a home inspection in Ohio. Listen to, this can't go wrong. Visit Home Inspections in Ohiocom.
Speaker 2:Okay, so they bought the house about two and a half years ago. The wife was. You talked to the wife right On the phone.
Speaker 4:No, I talked to the husband.
Speaker 2:Okay, so she is feeling. The wife is feeling sick when she comes home from work, like in the garage and kitchen area. Yes, so, laura, you talked to the husband.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:He was scheduling something, trying to figure out what to do, because they're looking at VOC testing, mold testing, and what did you suggest to start with?
Speaker 4:A full home inspection. A full home inspection Because that way, if anything has changed in the house, if the roof is leaking, if there's something going on that you know like normal Joe Schmo doesn't know, he'd be able to tell them and they'd be able to fix it.
Speaker 2:Well, it's also areas of the house where people just don't really look at like you mentioned, the attic crawl space corner of the house where there's a sump pump.
Speaker 4:How many times have we found sump pumps that were disconnected or blowing water back into the house Like huge amounts?
Speaker 2:Pretty often, pretty often. So we went there and we told Mike listen, you may not need a mold test, you may not need a BOC testing.
Speaker 2:Let's do the whole house inspections, look for moisture, see what we can figure out is going on. All right, if we do a mold, just straight up, get there and do a mold test. All right, yeah, you got mold in the air. Where's it coming from? I don't know where it's coming from because we're not doing an inspection for it. So there's always, if there's a mold concern, mold is a symptom of moisture, so that needs done. So we did the home inspection, or I did.
Speaker 4:You talked to the guy Chatted with the hubby.
Speaker 2:Kind of analyzed where the issues are, Because you know a lot about indoor air quality. So you found some things. I found some things. There's definitely a moisture issue at this house.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 2:So what I found? Because I started outside. We have a sequence when we do the inspections. I started outside the house. I found a couple of downspouts not connected Right, they had disconnected where they entered that buried drain line. They were disconnected there, dumping water next to the house. Fortunately it was not raining immediately, was at the house, okay, but when it's not at that minute yeah, well then the sump pumps the discharge pipe when it comes out to the exterior.
Speaker 2:That was not connected, so probably about half the water that the sump pump is kicking out is going on the soil right next to the house and probably circulating back down from the sump pump to kick it out again hitting that foundation again yes, so I took a little video of that.
Speaker 2:So, if I remember, I'll put the link to that video. I put this on youtube. I put on facebook as well. I'll to that video. I put it on YouTube, I put it on Facebook as well. I'll put that video, a link to that video, because you can see all the water is kicking back out. And just imagine if it was raining and all the water in that downspout not all of it, but say half of it comes out. That's a ton of water in there.
Speaker 4:What is it? They said that like an inch of rain gives.
Speaker 2:I think it's on a 1400 square foot roof. A half inch of rain is like 600 gallons of water and that's just insane to me.
Speaker 4:So imagine 600 gallons pushing in on your foundation we have this in.
Speaker 2:Is it in our mold class? We would talk about how much moisture comes off the roof. It might be our mold class.
Speaker 4:Mold, or yeah, it's one of them.
Speaker 2:But a gallon of water is like eight and a half pounds, something like that.
Speaker 4:That was 14. No, no, no, it's eight.
Speaker 3:It's a little over eight, because we measured it like years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so because I remember this, because I weighed laundry pre and post-dryer and there was a 12 pounds difference and that was a gallon and a half water that gets dried off the laundry. So you imagine that, okay, I see old houses and the dryer vent is riled into the basement to bring moisture into the basement and heat. I'm like that's bad, that's super bad.
Speaker 4:Or that one where the guy had a crawl space and the vent was put in the crawl space and it rotted out the dryer duct. The dryer duct was in the crawl space and it damaged yes you've got to control moisture.
Speaker 2:You've got to do a maintenance special in your house every two to three years just to keep up with it. A lot of the stuff.
Speaker 4:It can change fast it can change.
Speaker 2:Now what you find I saw, saw it also, but we took the moisture meter. You, I don't know. Did he show it to you? No, I found it. He never saw that it looks very much.
Speaker 4:It looks very much in the out, in the open well, he said it was there when, when they did, when they bought the house. So I had him pull up the home inspection report. It wasn't on. And he's not sure, because I was like well, how much worse has it gotten? He's like I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 2:Okay, you need to go to inspection.
Speaker 4:When I checked it with the moisture meter, it was just that thin layer of wood at the top that was held together with the polyurethane. That was the only reason the rest part was rotted. Everything else was rotted underneath it. Yeah, so the weird thing was it wasn't.
Speaker 2:It had moisture it was wet.
Speaker 4:It had moisture, completely different than the surrounding area On the opposite side of that wall in the garage.
Speaker 2:So the garage.
Speaker 4:Backed up against the kitchen Backed wall that wall shared into the kitchen, right in the cabinets, okay, and directly across from that area was a probably two and a half inch circle of mold in the garage, in the garage in that area, and that area too was higher level of moisture than the surrounding area. So there's something going on, it is wet, it is probably growing. And I told him, like there was no sink near there, no refrigerator, no obvious sources of water, so we went and looked upstairs to see what was going on upstairs and there's pipes from the master bathroom Sinks and the sinks that would go straight down through there. So at this point our best guess is that there's some kind of a leak or a disconnect right around that area that's impacting that and making it wet and deteriorating.
Speaker 2:Down in the basement, right along that same area, there are a waistline and drain pipes connected, so you have something that's going on. Above that area in the kitchen, that kitchen garage wall, you have the master bathroom, which you have, the sinks, the shower, the toilet. They all kind of join together to one pipe that then goes down. So somewhere there's a small hole or a little leak, some kind of disconnect. Yeah, it's not like a huge amount of water. They would have noticed there's a flood and everything.
Speaker 3:Just a small leak.
Speaker 2:But apparently it wasn't caught during the inspection or things changed.
Speaker 4:We've seen things change quickly, but in houses but whatever it was, I think is enough that it's making her sick which tells us it's the mold which tells us that it's probably a mold, it's a good indicator so did you do mold testing at the place? No, I didn't, and here's why it's mold. You don't need to know what kind of mold?
Speaker 2:Darn good chance.
Speaker 4:Darn good chance Very good probability, if it looks like it, it's fuzzy and there's moisture.
Speaker 2:and it's on a food source? Yeah, probably, but no matter what, there's a moisture issue. There's a moisture issue.
Speaker 4:So I actually have a contact at a mold remediation company who does a really good job, because they're going to need somebody to come in and do some figuring out that we can't like. They're going to have to pull that wall off, they're going to have to pull that cabinet off in the kitchen and they need to have that containment set up so that she doesn't get any sicker.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're going to make small holes, maybe small holes in that drywall and look up inside and try figure that out, because the thermal imaging which we don't charge right, the thermal imaging took there, yeah, it showed some cool spots, but nothing like really. Nothing like really sticking out, other than where that wood is wet in the cabinet so like it was really screwy.
Speaker 4:So, and at this point we're limited by what we can do, like we can't just go and tear into it. We're not a remediation company we don't we don't do things like that.
Speaker 4:So I I hooked him up with the remediation company the remediation company owner and I talked and I gave him the scoop and send them some pictures and they're gonna get together and see what they can figure out. Now they were thinking of trying to go through the garage just so they don't damage anything in the kitchen and there's less likelihood of impacting her breathing that way.
Speaker 2:To me that's a brilliant idea. That's a smart way, because it's a garage, you keep the garage door, the vehicle door open.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Keep the air flowing. You know what, if you do this in the kitchen, you got to rip out cabinets. Well, you know what, if you do this in the kitchen, you've got to rip out cabinets, and that sucks.
Speaker 4:Go through the other side. Well, the cabinet was damaged too, so they probably need to do something with that. But this way they can keep the door closed to the kitchen, seal all that up, keep the other open.
Speaker 2:And certainly there's some handyman who can go. I can just replace the bottom of that. You don't need to replace the whole cabinet.
Speaker 4:The outside of cabinet. The outside the cabinet looked okay, these are refinishing. But once again, though, what does that back look like? Or underneath that cabinet like, if you're looking at the potential for mold that should still come out, just to clean all that up, because it's going to still be there and then it'll source any other moisture issues.
Speaker 2:Yep and there was negative grading on the outside the house because this place is in the HOA and landscape capers come by every year and throw more mulch on there, which eventually just builds up hills, the slope the soil and mulch back towards the house. So that was part of the moisture issue, Right? Landscapers don't seem to understand that they look like dude you're going to mess up the house?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't. Oh, and this house also had some brick veneer and some decent-sized cracks on it and that's where they had a lot of native grade from, I'm going to assume. Mulch being added every single year, which means porous routing of the water going toward the house adds pressure to the foundation and then that foundation settling moving is what can cause that brick veneer to crack Right. Plus, that basement wall couldn't see it. It has some weird like paling over top, not wood man, like the foam board paneling or fabric, like you see in offices, like the environment that has that stuff up huh which I understand is insulation is quiet, but anyway, it's really important to make sure you get your house inspected every two to three years.
Speaker 2:What does epa say about radon?
Speaker 4:every two years get it. Get it tested even if you have a mitigation system, because mitigation systems the fans can wear out. It's a mechanical, you know device they can wear out. Um, flows can change, patterns can change. So always test it and make sure and you know once again, even if you don't have a mitigation system and it was low the first time you tested it patterns can change.
Speaker 2:Yeah your furniture movement. Let's do another episode about radon, okay, because I we just picked up one the other day, oh yeah, so we'll talk about that, but I think that's it for this one, but yeah get your house inspected, get your house inspected every two to three years. I understand it was newer, maybe go a little bit longer, but I would definitely get done the first year for that warranty.
Speaker 2:Before your first year warranties up from the builder and get the house inspected, and then every couple of years after that. I understand you take a little bit longer.
Speaker 4:Right, that makes sense because it is newer.
Speaker 2:First couple of years you're going to have a lot of settling in the soil.
Speaker 4:A lot of seasonal changes as it dries out, you're going to have a lot of things that it's probably better, just once you're in there, to have somebody come out every so often you need to catch things easy.
Speaker 2:I found brand new houses, a lot of moisture on the toilet and eventually that would rot out the floor. Yeah, it needs caught.
Speaker 3:So, anyway, that's it for this one.
Speaker 2:Get your home inspected every two to three years. And then, if you're a real estate agent, yeah, use this information to uh, help your client, your past clients stay top of mind with them and, like I said, I'll try and have that link to that video in here, it's like a minute six seconds and it's pretty short but, that's all it takes to takes what's going on and that would have been a super easy fix yeah, just put that up, screw it back in and call it a day, maybe a little work on the downspout if it's not reaching a little extra work for that.
Speaker 1:But still nothing terrible, alright, everybody bye, bye, bye you've been listening to the standing out in Ohio podcast. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify or Google Podcasts to get new, fresh episodes. For more, please follow us on Instagram, twitter and Facebook, or visit the website of the best Ohio home inspection company at homeinspectionsinohiocom or jimtroffcom. That's J-I-M-T-R-O, t R O T H and click on podcast until next time. Learn and go do stuff.