House built around studio design/build thread

[TomVan]

Hey Greg,
As much as I hate these type of lawyers. Find a Construction defect lawyer. They are better than dealing directly with an insurance company. They know how to work the system and usually get a settlement instead of court.
Best
T

[Gregwor]

Thanks guys. I have the plumber coming tomorrow to change out/fix the sump situation. Now that I'm manually engaging the sump pump the walls are drying out. I also have a dehumidifier going. I filed a claim with the new home warranty company and now my home builder is saying I should just deal with them. Reading the new home warranty claim notes, it looks like it could take up to 4.5 months before a report is even created. Plus it will cost me $50 + taxes.

Right now I'm taking a supper break from working on the mold situation. I've removed all insulation and vapour barrier. With instructions from my bachelor of science friend, I'm applying a dish soapy water (an old windex squirt bottle is slow and hard on my hands!) and removing the mold with a wire brush --> I'm expediting the process using a small angle grinder with a wire wheel. It seems like it won't take long. After that I have to apply some other product that I haven't researched yet. I just don't want to wait 4.5 + months to get back to work in the basement. All of the snow is melting around here finally so if there is going to be water coming in, now is the time. Having said that, I suppose it's a good thing I have the foundation exposed to monitor it.

I have to admit that I do feel defeated and exhausted between life and studio building/designing, but I am more inspired than ever to make progress on it.

Greg

[Soundman2020]

Have you figured out if the moisture is coming through the walls from outside, up through the slab, or from house interior humidity? It's important to identify the source of the water, in addition to cleaning out the mold.

I'm applying a dish soapy water (an old windex squirt bottle is slow and hard on my hands!)

Do you have a compressor? If so, then do yourself a favor, get a spray paint attachment, and use that to apply the cleaning solution. A lot easier on the hands, and you can control the spray in various ways.

- Stuart -

[Gregwor]

Have you figured out if the moisture is coming through the walls from outside, up through the slab, or from house interior humidity? It's important to identify the source of the water, in addition to cleaning out the mold.

I have not 100% determined that. I can't believe the house builder hasn't sent someone out to try and identify the source of moisture. At this point, I'm quite confident it was water in the sump pouring out the side of the pump due to two things:
1. A intermittently working float (maybe just set incorrectly)
2. An oversized hole that goes a few inches below the weeping tile pipe (this is due to very sloppy workmanship)

However, all of the mold has been up high on the walls which leads me to believe the source of moisture is from up high. I'm going to reach out to people and see if anyone will investigate this further. Again, throughout my ceiling beefup/boxing final stages, flooring, and HVAC installation, I will leave the foundation exposed to keep an eye on it.

Do you have a compressor? If so, then do yourself a favor, get a spray paint attachment, and use that to apply the cleaning solution. A lot easier on the hands, and you can control the spray in various ways.

I got 2/3rds of the foundation walls complete today. This type of work is about a tenth as difficult as every other aspect of the studio build, so it's been awesome to see immediate results and a normal looking foundation one stud bay at a time! I will finish off the mold removal by squeezing the squirt bottle, but to apply the Benefect solution, I will probably go the air compressor route. I do own 3 compressors and my oldest brother is an automotive painter by trade so I'll see if he has a paint gun attachment I can borrow! Great suggestion. Thank you Stuart!

Greg

[Waka]

Hi Greg, you do seem to have some pretty bad luck sometimes mate.

Glad to see you keeping your chin up though! You seem to be a pretty connected dude, so I'm sure you'll get it sorted.

Dan

[Guit-picker]

Hi Greg,
I've been pulled away too, - since Christmas. I just looked up your progress and am so sorry to hear about your tough trials! Fight the fight and stay positive, my friend!

Just a long shot, but when I was asking questions about my concrete slab in my studio project, my friend who does masonry told me a story. He was stressing the importance of good drainage from the roof gutters. He said his friend in Montana had all kinds of problems with moisture in his basement and went to some extreme measures to fix it with no results, including digging out around the basement walls to treat. His point was that in the end, the thing that fixed the problem was moving the downspout outputs farther away from the foundation.

Like I said, this is a long shot and I'm not knowledgeable on ANY of this. I just thought I'd share the story just in case.

Hope things work out for you soon!
-Ron

[Gregwor]

Thanks Ron!

I think the plumbing dorks did something weird with the sump. He came and swapped the pump out and didn't even check if it would engage when it filled with water before he up and left. I reached down in and lifted the float to the height of the weeping tile and the pump didn't turn on. I called him and told him that I don't think the float was set correctly and THREE times after arguing with him, he kept saying "No, it'll be fine, it'll be fine." So, I filled the sump with water and sure enough, the float didn't engage the pump. The float and pump are fine, the float just has to be VERY low in order to engage in time. So, he finally came and "fixed" it. He had to zip tie the float line very low on the pipe which is bizarre. Why would a normal run of the mill pump not be able to be adjusted to engage in time without moving the float anchor point several inches below where it can normally be set? There is a big hole a ways below the weeping tile pipe that I never noticed as you basically can only see it when you hold your phone down in the sump to take a picture. This hole is a result of them cutting it in the wrong spot, then cutting a few other holes to finally get the weeping tile pipe to line up and penetrate the sump wall. When I checked the sump regularly, I would think to myself "yeah, that water level looks high but it has quite a bit to go before it his the weeping tile pipe". Then, I'd grab the float and the pump would run. I should've looked closer and put two and two together earlier I guess -- Or the plumber should have done his job better! I'm convinced that the pump never actually ran a day in it's life engaging on it's own.

Anyway, I've kept and eye on the sump and foundation every day and everything seems fine now. We'll see what the inspector guy determines on the 15th.

Greg

[Guit-picker]

Sounds like you got to the bottom of it (no puns intended there). I hope your hands are doing better now!
You've sure been through a lot!
-Ron

[Gregwor]

I hope your hands are doing better now!

I FINALLY get to see the specialist on Friday morning. I'm really looking forward to finding out WTF is going on with my body. Good news or bad, I want to know.

Thanks for the ongoing support!

Greg

[Gregwor]

I put everything on hold for a while waiting for the new home warranty dork to come assess the situation. The break was nice as it allowed me to catch up on a bunch of recording work and do other family/life things.

The guy showed up with the house builder people and basically intimidated me with a bunch of threats and had me sign paperwork saying that I'd just let him do his thing and not communicate or else it could result in my case being thrown out. It went the exact opposite of what I had hoped. I was hoping the guy would be awesome and he and I could have a real conversation about everything. He straight up said he never read my case as he wanted to come into the site with an unbiased opinion. At the end of the 5 minute visit to my basement, I asked him if there was anything I could do to prevent this from happening again and he said "No, just finish removing the mold because it looks like you're doing a good job". So, I waited another 2 weeks to receive his report (he couldn't give me any details verbally at the visit as per my signed agreement). The report does not once say what caused it and the conclusion was "no action needed". He referred to the mold as a "black substance". Among a bunch of clearly copy/paste foundation care notes the only thing I could make sense of conclusion-wise was that maybe the grading around the foundation caused water to enter from outside. Two points that piss me off about this are:

1. the foundation has two layers of water protection on the outside
2. we moved in in November and we are still not over winter. It snowed all week here. So when was I supposed to add clay to the sunken clay around the foundation? The moisture clearly came in and mold grew before November.

To the good news. I sucked it up and removed the rest of the mold and put the insulation back up. I back filled around the entire house with clay. I've had a few solid build days since and I've made a lot of progress. I still have a good chunk of crap to deal with before my ceiling beef up/box in is complete but the end is in sight for it. I feel refreshed and motivated more than ever after the build break.

Greg

[Soundman2020]

Wow. Conclusion I draw from this: the contractors got to the warranty guy first, and he was in their pocket. Deeply. It was probably a lot cheaper for them to pass him a bundle of notes under the table, rather than having to pay to actually fix the problem. The word "incest" comes to mind...

To be honest, it looks like you got shafted every which way imaginable by this whole contractor/realtor combination. I do hope you put out the word locally to be spread far and wide, that they should be avoided like the plague by anybody thinking of building a house. I would not even want them building a kennel for my dog! (I don't actually have a dog, but you get the point...).

I sure hope this is the end of your troubles with those guys, and you can just get the darn studio built now!

- Stuart -

[Purelythemusic]

Gosh mate, things are full on in your build, looks to be a good one to follow though!

Can’t believe the rubbish you’ve had to put up with the contractor!

You said the mould appeared at the top of your wall... could that be the coldest part of the wall so where all the moisture has condensed? If below that outside has been backfilled then it would be warmer...

Is it possible to put a monitoring system/alarm at the sump pump overflow level so you can rest assured that it’s clearing the accumulated water?

[Gregwor]

could that be the coldest part of the wall so where all the moisture has condensed? If below that outside has been backfilled then it would be warmer...

Totally.

Is it possible to put a monitoring system/alarm at the sump pump overflow level so you can rest assured that it’s clearing the accumulated water?

For sure I will do this.

Thanks for following! I have been hard at work on the build but I haven't posted pictures as it would be pretty boring to look at endless pictures of my boxing in/beef up.

Greg

[Waka]

No Greg, we like those pics. Wanna see that beefing up dudeo. It's good for the newbros to see how it's done too I think.

[Soundman2020]

No Greg, we like those pics. Wanna see that beefing up dudeo. It's good for the newbros to see how it's done too I think.

+1 !