Watch the blog here!
I had no idea how many lives were going to change when my phone rang. Unwittingly, I picked it up and said, “Hello..” This is what happened – “Hey, Russ, my name is Ray and I’m a friend of your brother’s – you gotta help me. My whole family is sick. We bought our first home last fall – the American dream – and over the winter we all started getting sick. My kids all have allergy symptoms even for the first time in their lives. My 7-year-old daughter – who has never had respiratory issues – was diagnosed with asthma and is on an inhaler. My wife has frequent, unexplained migraines, and Me – Russ, it’s awful I have chronic fatigue and aches and pains. The doctors have tested for everything under the sun, Lyme disease, MS, lupus – SO MANY tests and medical bills and they cannot figure out what is wrong with me. My heart is breaking on the phone with, Ray…but it doesn’t end there.
He says, “Russ – we had a bad winter and as all of the snow melted – we got some water in the basement – we got it cleaned up but it immediately started smelling musty. We think we have a terrible mold problem. In fact, it’s gotten so bad we had to move out of the house and started staying with my in-laws. The kids and my wife started feeling a little better, but I still don’t know what to do about the house. To make matters worse – staying with the in-laws got too difficult, so now we’re all packed into a hotel room. I NEED TO GET MY HOUSE BACK, Russ. Can you help?”
Ray had already talked to another company, but their scope of work was limited to the couple of walls with visible mold on them, and after finding out that Ray’s insurance company wasn’t going to cover the damage – that competitor didn’t really want to work with Ray on payment.
Because Ray had been dealing with this issue for a while – environmental testing had already been done and he sent me a few pictures of the basement where he thought the issue was. The test results were off the chart – Spore counts in the 100’s of thousands and positive for stachybotrys – aka toxic black mold.
I met Ray at the property the next day and we created a plan to gut the finished basement back to the studs and remove any trace of mold.
Ray agreed to the plan and we got to work
- We set up containment to keep from cross-contaminating the rest of the house
- Then we started removing everything
- Once the foundation was exposed it was clear that water had been seeping in for years and rotting the building materials from behind – causing more of an issue every time they got wet
- Then once everything was removed we started cleaning
- After we finished cleaning….we cleaned it all again to make sure we didn’t miss anything!
Now that it was clean we wanted to be sure it would never happen again – so We made some additional recommendations for extending gutter downspouts and altering grading around the exterior of the home to prevent seepage in the future.
Follow-up environmental testing showed great results. Spore counts were in the single digits and there were no more RED FLAG molds. Within a week of calling me, Ray was able to get his family out of that cramped hotel room and back into their home.
I called Ray several months later to see how things were going. He was so appreciative. He said, “Russ, you helped me take back home. Everyone is feeling better – even me – no more tests, no more Dr. visits. Thank you.”
No one should have to live in fear of a house that is making them sick.
Ray is the one that saved the day. The chips were down, everyone was sick and Ray found a way to get his home healthy and safe and he got it done for the ones that count on him most – his family.
It’s not fair that this happened to Ray and his family, but we helped guide him through the process of reclaiming the health and safety of his home.
If you need help like Ray, call us today, before it’s too late.
From my experience with Reliable Remediation, I would recommend them to anybody! Not only did my family get a clean and healthy home — we also got a friend in Russ. Thank you again ~Ray H.
