Question: In the process of selling my home, the buyers requested a home inspection. My problems started when the mold inspector reported elevated spores were four to five times the amount found outside. After paying a contractor to clean and treat for molds, the follow-up test showed the levels were even higher. The buyer refused to complete the deal. What made the mold grow so fast, and did we get ripped off by the contractor? Answer: With a little investigation, I was able to gain some additional information about the sale of your home. It seems that soon after the initial inspection, the home was left vacant with the utilities off. The resulting enclosed dark and damp environment created an almost perfect situation for mold spores to grow. In the summer, a closed house with the air-conditioning turned off will have higher humidity levels than an air-conditioned home. A vacant house also receives little or no sunlight through closed shades and no air movement with the fan off and the doors locked.

If you had simply left the air conditioning running, it would have cooled the home and removed moisture from the air and circulated and filtered the air. Molds thrive when the humidity levels exceed 70 percent. Because humidity levels vary from day to day, the thermostat should have been left at or below 74 degrees, and the fan should have been set to "On."small ac unit for window Normally, mold cleaning and remediation processes disturb the spores, which become airborne and can settle on unclean or untreated surfaces, where they continue to thrive in the humid, warm, dark conditions.ac unit size In my opinion, the remediation contractor failed you in that he did not warn you of the potential for recontamination.large ac unit The Environmental Protection Agency suggests that self-cleaning should be considered if the area to be treated is less than 10 square feet.

A guide to treatment and cleaning is available at http://www.epa.gov/mold/index.html. You can also learn more about mold remediation contractors and remedies for contaminated buildings. An article by Dr. Ronald E. Gots that appeared in The Laker magazine underscores the myth surrounding phobias about molds and mold contamination. Basically, the article states that there are no scientific studies that show molds are unhealthy at typical indoor levels. Reactions to molds that have been documented are: allergic responses, minor irritant effects and infections in individuals with impaired immune systems. Molds present at typical indoor levels have never been scientifically shown to cause any other illness. Even when mold spores were at elevated levels, there were no similar elevated reports of illnesses. Examples from the article show certain occupations that are exposed to extremely high concentrations of mold spores. Sawmills: 1.5 million CFU/m3 (colony-forming units per cubic meter of air).

Honeybee overwintering facilities: 2,200 to 13,931 CFU/m3 Spawning sheds of mushroom farms: 100,000 CFU/m3 Municipal waste-composting facility: 8.2 million CFU/m3it's 10 times greater (1.2 billion CFU/m3) on farms where adverse health effects are reported. In these highly exposed populations, however, there are no reports of brain damage or of many of the other fungal diseases now common in current indoor mold attributions. What I gathered from the article is that some people -- those with asthma, hay fever or suppressed immune systems -- can be affected by low levels of mold spores, while the majority are not aware of the spores in the very air they breathe, even when there are elevated levels. When mold spores are discovered at elevated indoor levels, you need to contact your doctor first to determine if the mold species will affect you or your family. Then you need to consider some type of removal or treatment of the affected areas. If the buyer is worried about mold spores, he should check the home or apartment where he lives.

I can guarantee that mold spores are present. Dwight Barnett is a certified master inspector with the American Society of Home Inspectors.2.5 Ton - 3.0 Ton Goodman 2.5 Ton 14 SEER Heat Pump Split System Goodman 3.0 Ton 14 SEER Heat Pump Split System Rheem 2.5 Ton 14 SEER Heat Pump System Goodman 2.5 Ton 15 SEER Heat Pump Split System Rheem 3.0 Ton 14 SEER Heat Pump System Rheem 15.5 SEER 2.5 Ton Heat Pump System Rheem 15 SEER 3 Ton Heat Pump System Goodman 3.0 Ton 16 SEER R-410a Two Stage Air Conditioning System with Heat PumpSelf-reliance and sustainability in the 21st century. I always thought “air conditioning” and “off the grid” didn’t belong in the same sentence, unless it was suggesting that you COULDN’T have air conditioning off the grid. But like so many things in my life I have discovered that foundations can shift and reality can be altered. Since moving to our off-grid home 13 years ago we have suffered through heat waves.

I am not one of those people who like the heat. I love being cold. In the winter I can just keep adding layers until I am warm. I find heat inescapable and debilitating. Of course you can’t grow food in the winter, so summer seems like a pretty essential season. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I suppose if I lived in a city and had an air conditioned house, and office, and car, and didn’t have to grow food during droughts, I’d probably love summer too. But summer just wears me out. Early on in a heat wave I can still function, but after a few days I start dragging more and more. First I lose my appetite, which isn’t a good thing because I’m still burning calories working in the garden. Heat waves are usually accompanied by a drought so watering the gardening becomes a full time job. I’m in the garden by 6 a.m. but I usually can’t work much past 11 a.m. and so I have to wait until after dinner to finish up. I think what wears me down the most is not sleeping.

I end up sleeping on the couch on the main floor, which is usually cooler than my second floor bedroom, but it’s never a restful sleep. So after a few days of not eating properly and not sleeping, I feel like a dirt bag. As I’ve described before, we have a solar domestic hot water heater that produces more than enough hot water for us at this time of year, especially since we often swim in a local lake during a heat wave, and we aren’t particularly anxious to have hot showers or baths. We also have the diversion load dumping excess electricity into a second hot water tank. So a few days into a heat wave when we are making lots of hot water and not using much, it gets scalding hot. And since these two hot water tanks are in our bedroom, they help to heat up the room just a bit more to make it really uncomfortable for sleeping. Yes, I know, what am I doing with hot water tanks in my bedroom? Turns out when they built the house in 1888 they hadn’t considered solar domestic hot water heating.

Well, they hadn’t actually even considered inside plumbing, so the only way I could configure the system was to put the tanks in the bedroom. Michelle has written blog posts about what she thinks of them. It ain’t pretty, but it works. So this summer I said “enough!”  I bought a 5,000 BTU “Haier” window air conditioner. And it’s working great! It’s helping to make this heat wave, which is unbelievably brutal and relentless and unending, seem tolerable. I’m not eating enough and I’m spending way too much time in that relentless heat trying to grow food, but at least I’m sleeping. I have a refuge. I keep kidding Michelle that we need to start eating dinner in our bedroom. I did not approach this purchase lightly. I realize that the HFCFCs or whatever the chemical that replaced CFCs is better, but not perfect. But it was $100 and it’s making a world of difference. It draws about 500 Watts of power. When the sun is out my solar panels are making over 1,500 Watts, so it’s using about 1/3 of my output.

So I’m running all my other loads, including the water pump, which is going full time, and still have enough to run the air conditioner. I am not using the “dump” or “diversion” hot water heater very much, so our water is just very hot, rather than scalding. Now Bill Kemp’s off-grid house has been air conditioned for a few years but Bill built an insanely efficient house, so I just assumed I was scuppered with one built in 1888. Bill recommended this unit to me and when he heard how well it was working he went out and got one. Here’s a quote from an email he just sent me. “I was looking at how they managed to get so much cooling with so little energy. A very simple design takes the water removed from the air and pumps it over the condenser radiator (the hot part that blows the heat outside). The water dripping over it cools the unit as the fan blows the heat away. Same process as how the human body cools itself. Funny that no one thought of this until recently???”

This is what I love about knowing Bill. He buys stuff and takes it apart to see how it works. His wife Lorraine calls it “MacGyvering” stuff. But then when he figures out how it works he can describe it with analogies that I understand.. i.e. the air conditioner works just like you sweating. Now that I can get. When we first started using it Michelle commented that it couldn’t be dehumidifying the air because it didn’t drip water out the back like all of the other AC units we’ve seen in action. So the heat wave continues and I am getting a reasonable amount of sleep. My grass is brown. Any plant that doesn’t produce food is in crisis and is not getting any water. Toronto, which usually gets 74 mm of rain in July, has had 4 mm. My gardens are crying out for rain. All I can give them is well water from the house and drip-irrigated water from the dug well in the vegetable garden. But all my food crops are doing OK. You can tell that at a certain point a lot of activity in plants shuts down when it gets too hot.