My House Is Killing Me! by Jeffrey C. May

Author:Jeffrey C. May
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2020-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

A CRAWL SPACE WATERFALL

I inspected an apartment for a tenant who was paying a substantial rent for his exclusive unit but had never been able to live there because the air had a foul odor that made his allergies worse. The first-floor apartment was directly above a sandy crawl space with two sources of unwelcome water. First, the downspouts dumped water directly at the foundation wall rather than directing it away from the building. When it rained, water seeped through the foundation and formed meandering streams that ran through the crawl space. Second, the crawl space contained a pond of sewage seven feet across and six inches deep at the bottom of a concrete sump that contained the uncapped clean-out for the building sewer system. And finally, rodent burrows lined several of the sand mounds near the sump.

I vacuumed the living room carpeting in the apartment, using a special filter cassette to obtain a sample of dust so I could quantify dust mite allergens. I observed the dust in the cassette with a low-power microscope and was astonished to see a silverfish scurrying frantically through the dust. The microarthropod was preying on dust mites in the dust; six mites crawled out of the dust and were upside-down on the cassette cap trying to escape their fate. It was the food chain on a microscopic level, all sucked from an apartment carpet!

I believe this living jungle was caused by the elevated moisture conditions in the crawl space below. Moisture saturated the air in the crawl space as well as the wood framing, the flooring, and the carpeting above. Microarthropods thrived in the high humidity in the carpet. In addition, an unwelcome smell rose into the apartment from the sewage pond. The tenant used the evidence of the damp stench as well as my report to break his lease.

Another desperate homeowner asked me to inspect the crawl space under his three-year-old dining room addition. The previous day he had stood outside by the crawl space ventilation louver and heard water dripping, though he could not recall having any plumbing installed in the room above. He had not looked into the crawl space in five years.

The crawl space was above grade, and when I removed the access vent and looked inside, I could not believe my eyes. White and tan ten-drils of macrofungal hyphae (mycelium) hung from every joist, and dark stains covered the wall framing. The soil was damp, and there was an odor of mold. What was the source of moisture? The archi-tect had not wanted to put gutters on the addition, and the builder had neglected to put a vapor barrier over the soil. Moisture from the damp soil evaporated into the space.

The most extraordinary part of this scene was not the fungus but the main beam. Although it superficially appeared satisfactory, it was cracked from top to bottom at the center of its longest span. The man told me he had held a party for thirty guests the weekend before.

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