Crawl Space Ninja Show
Welcome to "Healthy Home ABCs with Michael Church," where we dive into the essentials of improving indoor air quality. Learn practical tips for fixing your attic, basement, and crawl space to create a healthier home environment.
Crawl Space Ninja Show
Mold in the Desert: Understanding Reno's Hidden Moisture Issues
Reno, Nevada, is known for its dry climate, yet this episode reveals a hidden truth: homes in arid regions can still face significant mold and moisture challenges. Join Michael Church, founder of Crawl Space Ninja, as he uncovers the complexities of managing indoor air quality in unexpected conditions.
Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!
Schedule a consultation: https://buymeacoffee.com/csninja/extras
Need help: https://crawlspaceninja.com or https://diy.crawlspaceninja.com
We hear from a homeowner who shares her personal story about returning home after a year away due to water and mold damage. The journey is a candid exploration of missteps taken during the restoration process, highlighting the vital need for trustworthy contractors and effective solutions. Throughout our discussion, Michael breaks down the factors contributing to mold growth, emphasizing that no house is immune, regardless of the external weather conditions.
He offers valuable advice on preventative measures homeowners can take to keep their living environments safe and healthy. Learn about the importance of proper ventilation, landscaping considerations, and the role of humidity control in mitigating risks associated with mold.
This episode is a must-listen for all homeowners, especially those in areas where mold might seem like an unlikely threat. Are you facing unexpected moisture issues at home? Don't forget to subscribe for more insights, and share your questions or experiences with mold management!
Check out Michael's book, "Crawl Space Repair Myths-Busted" now available on Amazon!
Schedule a consultation: https://buymeacoffee.com/csninja/extras
Need help: https://crawlspaceninja.com or https://diy.crawlspaceninja.com
Hey there, michael Church, founder of Crawl Space Ninja. Today we are going to be talking about a mold situation, along with a moisture problem, from a homeowner in Reno Nevada. So what we're going to be discussing is they have an issue with mold and moisture and it's very interesting that a town like Reno Nevada, which typically is dry, has a mold and moisture problem. They apparently have a crawl space and they're concerned about mold levels up in the living space. So we're going to dive into that question here on the Ask a Ninja program and if you all have a question for me, I'm going to put a link down below for the Ask a Ninja page. That way you can contact me if you have a question about foundation repair, basement, waterproofing, crawl space, encapsulation, paddock insulation and mold. I certainly want to hear your questions and share them with everyone on this program. Also, I hope you'll check out my book Crawl Space Repair Myths Busted. You can find that on Amazon. We just released the audio version of that book, so it is a very good book. If you have a crawl space or a basement, it's got some great tips in there for both, as well as if you're dealing with an indoor air quality or a mold problem. Most people don't realize that humidity is an indoor air quality problem if it gets too high or too low. I cover some great ways to control humidity and mold and proper process for addressing those things. So make sure you check out my book Crawl Space Repair Myths Busted. If you would like an autographed version of the book, you can find that on my Buy Me a Coffee page. I'll put a link to that down below as well. And a lot of people like doing one-on-one consultations with me, so we have a paid consultation that you can do. It's also on the Buy Me A Coffee link. If you have questions about your own home, maybe you're a DIYer wanting to fix your own crawlspace, basement or attic, or you got some mold questions going on, or maybe a contractor you're thinking about hiring you want to make sure the scope of work that they are proposing is good for the problem at hand. So we can certainly talk about all of those issues on a one-on-one consultation. Hope you'll take advantage of that as well. So let's get started with our question from Susan in Reno Nevada. As I mentioned earlier, reno Nevada is a very arid part of the country, so I find it very interesting that a homeowner has a mold and moisture problem in a part of the country that typically is dry and gets very little rain. So here is what Susan was asking about.
Speaker 1:We just moved back into our house after a year away due to water and mold damage in our crawlspace. We hired a water fire restoration company to remove the mold and it passed an environmental testing requirement for insurance. After the cleanup and restoration work, sump pumps and vent fans were installed, along with a vapor barrier. It was poorly done so we are hiring another firm to redo the work. Isn't that a pain, where you hire someone that you trust to redo the work and then they wind up doing it incorrectly, and not only are you out that money, but you've got to pay somebody else to go in there and undo what they did and then redo it. We do a lot of that type of work here at Crawl Space Ninja. I can't even tell you how many homes we've had to go in and redo that work. So you've got to find a trusted contractor and that's when my book might be able to help you out.
Speaker 1:I wrote that book to contradict a lot of the myths out there that a lot of these contractors will tell homeowners about mold and indoor air quality. So again, make sure you check out that book. The downstairs the first floor was clean. The upstairs the second floor had a high count of several kinds of mold. The upstairs has a smell to it. That's one of the first indications. Is an odor inside of the house or inside of a room? That musty smell is your nose telling you that there's a problem? So if you have that musty smell, don't discount it, don't ignore it. Do some research and see if there's some kind of mold or moisture problem going on inside the home. So her question is how can I determine where the mold is coming from on the second floor, so that way we can treat it All right. So apparently she did a DIY mold test kit and, by the way, we have those DIY mold test kits available on our DIY store it's diycrawlspaceninjacom. If you want to get a mold test kit, if you have a suspicious circumstance where you're concerned about mold, you can do a DIY mold test kit, and I just want to say that that's not necessarily the best way to go. If there's a lot of mold in the home, you might want to hire an industrial hygienist or a mold inspector to do some research on mold inside the home, especially in a second floor situation like this. But a DIY mold test kit is a great first step to see if you might have a mold issue. So I want to share a little bit, before I answer her question, exactly why I'm surprised that she's having an issue in Reno Nevada.
Speaker 1:Because Reno Nevada experiences a semi-arid climate characterized by hot summers and moderately cold winters. The city receives an average annual precipitation of only nine inches. Can you imagine you only get nine inches of rain a year and you're dealing with a mold and moisture problem in the crawl space? The majority of the rain comes between October and April. Snowfall averages around 22 inches per year. So basically, the average temperature in Reno Nevada the high side is between 45 degrees and 90 degrees. Obviously it's hotter in the summer, where the cold temperature is anywhere between 25 degrees and 56 degrees, and typically that happens in January.
Speaker 1:So humidity in Reno Nevada is also different than what we experience here in Knoxville, tennessee. They're more humid in the winter than in the summer. So they see 60, 63% average humidity in the cold months. Meanwhile in the hot months, arid summer, they're only getting down to 27% relative humidity outside. So Reno's climate is generally dry, with an average humidity of anywhere between 63% in the winter and 27% in the summer, and they only get rain about 50 days out of the year. Sunshine year round almost 252 sunny days per year. Overall, reno's climate is characterized by significant temperature variations between seasons, low humidity, limited precipitation and plentiful sunshine.
Speaker 1:So, again, you wouldn't expect a place like Reno, nevada, to have a mold problem, but what we get is that no house is immune to mold. Okay, usually these mold issues stem from some type of moisture problem. All right, so I wrote how damp is the soil in Reno, nevada? Is the soil damp enough to make a home build above it to have high humidity? So the answer that I found is that the soil levels in Reno is pretty dry. As I mentioned before, they're only getting seven to nine inches of rain per year, so it's not like they're taking on a lot of flooding or having to deal with a high water table like you would find in other parts of the country. Yet they still have more than 15, that I counted mold remediation companies in the area. Now, of course, many of those mold remediation companies are probably dealing with plumbing leaks and different things like that.
Speaker 1:But the point is is that your home is still subject to high humidity and mold even in an arid climate. And I just want to be clear about that because you should not ignore the crawl space just because you live in the desert. If you're heating and air ducts are going through the crawl space, if you're heating and air ducts are going through the attic, you got really cold air ducts. With warm temperatures you can still run the risk of condensation in those areas. So in most cases, since they don't get a lot of rain and it's pretty dry out there, many of the time the cause of the problem is irrigation or landscaping issues. The problem is irrigation or landscaping issues. So, just like in Tennessee, if you're dumping that nine inches of rain that you're getting right by the foundation of your house all that water, the path of least resistance is to go in in most cases. So you still need to make sure that your downspout extensions are extended, that you got some kind of French drain or curtain drain, that your landscaping isn't pooling water around the home, because all of that can create a humidity problem inside the house.
Speaker 1:Remember, once the humidity gets in the home, it's kind of trapped. We make our homes so airtight today and so well insulated today that once an air quality problem gets started, it tends to grow and multiply due to how we build our homes, and a lot of the materials that we use are prone to absorbing moisture and growing mold as well. So not only are you dealing with irrigation around the house and all that, but something Reno has a big issue with is a lot of snowfall. They get 22 inches of snow and that snow can melt and create more water intrusion into the foundation as well, as you've got the possibility of ice dams that can form on the roof. All right, poor drainage is always a problem. High water table usually is not that big of a deal, from what I can understand in Reno Nevada, but if you live in a neighborhood perhaps where they've got some kind of pond or water feature going on, then you could be suffering from the effects of that pond or water feature if it's around your home.
Speaker 1:So some of the solutions to addressing high humidity and indoor air quality issues in Reno Nevada obviously you could still encapsulate the crawl space, install vapor barriers, do that proper drainage and grading like I was talking about, and then install dehumidifiers in the crawl space and possibly even in the HVAC system as a whole home system. So what I would recommend you do is, if you're trying to determine where the mold is coming from inside your home and you live in Reno, nevada, if you've got mold on the second floor, that's a high level, but you don't have high levels of mold on the first floor, which is where that crawl space is. Remember she had the crawl space addressed, sump pumps installed and a vapor barrier installed and she got normal levels of mold on the first floor but high levels of mold on the second floor. So here's what could have happened. I don't know if she tested the mold on the second floor prior to doing mold remediation in the house. It would be nice to know that, because you could have already had high levels of mold on the second floor, but perhaps the mold remediation company didn't suspect the second floor as having high levels of mold, so they only address mold in the crawl space and on the first floor, so that could be leftover mold from the crawl space contamination that you had in the past.
Speaker 1:The second thing is, since you are prone to ice dams and to 9 to 12 inches of rain a year and a lot of snow, you could have some moisture problems in the attic. So the attic could also be the source of the moisture for that second floor, especially if you have heating and air ducts going through that attic. So it's creating condensation. It's perhaps picking up moisture up in the attic and then pushing it down into the living space. Perhaps you don't have proper ventilation installed in the bathrooms upstairs. A lot of times the second floor is where the bedrooms and the majority of the bathrooms are located. If you all like to take really long hot showers and you don't turn on that ventilation fan, or maybe the tile in the tub is staying moist or you have a leak from the bathroom Perhaps I had a shower that was leaking all the time and all the tile around that leak was growing mold and of course, once mold gets growing in that bathroom then it can expose the rest of the living space as well. So these are some of the things I would recommend you take a look at. Make sure you fix the plumbing issues if you have any in those bathrooms. Make sure your toilets aren't running.
Speaker 1:Check the humidity coming out of the heating and air unit. Check and make sure it's below 50% Usually whenever the AC is running, humidity coming out of the HVAC system, out of the ductwork, should be between 40% and 50% relative humidity. If it's coming out 60%, 65%, 70%, either, the condensation coils inside the heating and air unit could be clogged. You might need to get some kind of maintenance on that HVAC system to address that. So those are just some of the tips that I would recommend, and then, of course, if you can't figure all this out, I recommend that you call someone locally perhaps call the HVAC contractor, a plumber or, like I mentioned, an industrial hygienist or a mold inspector to do a full inspection of the home and to make sure all those things are addressed properly. You can also buy a humidity meter and just go around the house and see if you see changes in humidity from room to room, and then that room might be the indication of where you're having some issues.
Speaker 1:Some other things I would recommend, as I mentioned check plumbing leaks.
Speaker 1:Make sure your ventilation is working in your bathrooms, as I mentioned before.
Speaker 1:Check the irrigation and the landscaping.
Speaker 1:Check for ice dams and roof leaks.
Speaker 1:Get the roofer up there, make sure the roof decking is in good shape, make sure there's no leaks coming through and then check for condensation issues, especially in the wintertime, cold outdoor temperatures combined with heated indoor air can lead to condensation on windows, walls inside poorly insulated attics and crawl spaces that, over time, can contribute to these moisture issues.
Speaker 1:Also, it sounds like you're getting the crawl space taken care of. You want to make sure you address those. And then, of course, any type of flooding. If the kids are splashing around in the tub, make sure you're cleaning all that up very quickly before the humidity spikes up too high in the house. So these are some advice that I would give you if you live in Reno, nevada and you're looking to take care of that moisture problem and that mold problem that you might have in an arid area like Reno Nevada, and, of course, no matter what part of the country you live in. And don't forget, if you have a question for me, I have the Ask a Ninja link in the description of this episode so that way you can send me pictures and questions on anything you have. And I'm Michael Church with Crawl Space Ninja, and I hope you make it a happy and blessed day and we'll