Thursday, October 21, 2010

Marijuana, Moisture and Mold Oh My!


This isn't a pitty party of one.  This is just the latest in our fun filled adventure into home ownership.  So if you have been reading my blog for a while you know all the ridiulousness we have encountered during our dream home search.  There were cars crashing through fences and landing in yards.  There were realtors loligagging for weeks on Disney cruises.  There was cat pee, there was graffitti and there was house after house which we spent countless hours traipsing through to find just one house that was right for our family.

We are a week away from closing.  We are supposed to sign docs tomorrow.  Then Tuesday night the email arrived.  Weeks overdue we finally got the disclosures.  I quickly took a peek while getting Baby Posh Play all dried off from his bath, in his pajamas and ready for bed so if your wondering I didn't retain much.  Good thing the hubs is an attorney and SCOURS documents for a living.  Tucked away on like page 37 or a packet of over 60 pages he found one quick little mention.

Upstairs bedroom formerly used to grow marijuana.  Hole drilled into guest bathroom.  Holes in roof patched by painter.

Now I don't want to get all political here only I will leave it at.  We don't smoke pot only don't really make judgements either way on those who do.  Whatever.  To each his own.  As long as you aren't getting behind the wheel or doing anything stupid.  Whatever.

That is until now.  See the thing about illegal stuff is it isn't so much the end user that is harming anything other than possibly themselves.  It is the whole process of how the illegal stuff gets imported, produced and sold into the market that I have issues with.  Especially now!

So it turns out our house wasn't so much of a grow HOUSE it was more of a grow ROOM.  You know whose room was used?  That's right our cute little Baby Posh Play's future room. Ack!  At first we didn't think it was too big of a deal.  Sort of annoying.  Maybe a little creepy.  Definitely not a deal breaker.  We decided to swap his room with my office so I would be writing in the former greenhouse and he would be slumbering in a nice clean environment.

Then we started doing some research.  It turns out grow rooms and grow houses have all sorts of lovely issues which I never even considered.  See hydroponics require water so growers drill holes wherever they see fit to find water.  In our house that would be right through the closet.  Then these tubes or pipes used often drip and cause water damage, mold and dry rot.  Fun!  Want to know more?  Lots of growers also are experts in jacking HVAC systems to ventilate their grow environments.  Since HVAC systems aren't built for this they rust and grow yep you guessed it more MOLD!  Then these tricky modern day gardeners also need electricity for high tech lighting so they just drill away, swap wires, tap into the electrical panel, steal electricity from the street and overall turn homes into fire traps waiting to happen.

I never knew just HOW MANY houses were being ripped apart and abused until I did a quick search and found COUNTLESS cases right in our home town.  Crazy!

So this gets me back to the basic issue for today.  It isn't the end users who are tearing apart our country (literally) piece by piece it is the process of getting it to the end user.  When money is involved some people have no regard for anything.  Property, people or the future.  Example of our house.  Cute little family buys new house in the 90's.  Start having financial issues and move away back to their home town and rent house to nice enough looking 20 somethings.  The 20 somethings rip the house apart piece by piece and turn it into their own money farm.  Who knows who they give their product too and who knows who is getting hurt or hooked in the process.  20 somethings either get busted or move along to the net victim and original owner can't afford to fix the house when they find out what happened so they go into forclosure.  That's where we come along.  We happily put an offer on the house.  Do necessary inspections and are never the wiser.  Then find out lurking underneath the tranquil exterior there is a sorta seedy past.  Now we are stuck with a house that required almost $1,000 worth of extra inspections, the bank is getting stuck with our requests to remidiate issues and we might not even buy the house at the end of all this and will be out over $2,000 in total inspection costs.

Enter Mold Man.  So now the future of our family resides in Mold Man's control.  Mold Man needs one business day to process our house.  For now let me share Mold Man's tips for keeping your house mold free.

-Ventilation is key to keeping mold away.  Open bathroom windows after showers.  Make sure your attic is breezy.

-Don't clean with bleach.  About 20 years ago bleach mannufacturers replaced more aggressive ingredients with water.  Bleach actually just dissolves mold shells so they are now food for even more scary molds that take over.  Instead clean with white vinegar.  Easy right?

-Clean your house!  Lingering moisture, dirt and dust amazingly all transform into mold if left to stew for long.

-Buying a house?  Call the mold man in your area.

-Most importantly?  Don't turn your house into a grow house.  If you need to smoke.  Plant a garden or build a greenhouse.

So instead of becoming a real life Nancy Botwin (she does have a ridiculously cute wardrobe and is a pretty hot mom) I will hope that our house is mold free and I can continue on being a struggling stay at home mom in a mold free, drug free house.

1 comments on "Marijuana, Moisture and Mold Oh My!"

Unknown on October 27, 2010 at 8:19 AM said...

Hi, I'm following back from Adorn on a shoestring.

That is just crazy about the house you're planning to buy! I hope that after all the searching, that your inspections come back clean!

My mil had a grow-op right next door to her. They tapped into her electricity, so she was getting hydro bills for $900, when it should've been about $200. The growers eventually abandoned the house, and it had to be demolished because of all the damage. And she lives in the middle of nowhere, in Ontario, Canada! We live close by, in a city with a population of about 200, 000, and I've heard of several different grow-ops being discovered. Crazy.

You are so incredibly lucky that your hubs is a lawyer! The average Joe probably would've missed (or possibly misunderstood) that little disclosure, and could've found themselves in a real mess!

Anyways, great blog you have here, and I'm really looking forward to adding you to my daily read!

Chrystal
www.adornonashoestring.com

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