I was called out to a 1930’s era home in San Francisco this week to perform a mold inspection of a large flat. I could see obvious signs of water damage around almost all of the windows, and when I started using my meters to determine if the plaster next to the windows was wet, the tenant told me, “Don’t worry, those are all new windows.”
As I moved from room to room in the flat, I could see that none of the original solid wood double-hung windows were still present, they had all been replaced by a combination of vinyl retrofit windows and solid wood retrofit windows. These retrofit windows were all installed in the original sold wood window frames, and although all of the new windows appeared to have been properly installed, the plaster adjacent to each of the windows was wet.
What many homeowners (and some contractors) don’t understand is this…when a new window is installed in an original wood window frame, the condition of the window frame itself will largely determine if rain water will eventually make its way into the home. And not just the window frame, but the surrounding wood trim as well. If the wood trim (typically a piece of 1 by 6 redwood on old San Francisco homes), fails, then rain water has a clear path to enter the wall framing. And if water makes its way into wall framing, you’ve got serious problems!
I took several air samples within this flat, and as expected, the mold spore counts were found to be elevated by my lab. There were additional issues within this unit, including water detected behind the tile above the bathtub, and elevated humidity in the basement below the unit. The real challenge for the client in this process is the fact that she is a tenant, and not a homeowner, so she must now rely on the property owner to “do the right thing” by starting to address the myriad construction issues discovered during the inspection.