Our mold illness and house remediation journey.
We got our house in 2018. 1955 construction, and it was meant to be a starter home, but our good interest rate and price kinda forced us to stay here. We put a lot of money into it, doing an addition, etc. I’d long suspected that something was wrong with it, though. There were too many health problems to ignore. Our very healthy dog died of cancer, unexpectedly. I lost three pregnancies. My kids had the oddest collection of food sensitivities and allergies. My son had a rash that never healed, despite all the prescription creams. My husband’s eczema was worse than it had ever been in his life.
The house had previous issues with water in the basement, like sewer backups. When we moved in, there was pooling in the corners after rainstorms. We installed an exterior French drain and always cleaned the floods with bleach, so we figured we were good.
We eventually redid our bathrooms. We had previous issues with the tub leaking into the kitchen if it was overfull (the overflow drain didn’t work properly).The contractors had mentioned that the sewer pipe had been disconnected in the wall when they opened it up, but they fixed it. When we came back to the house after remediation, we ended up catching Covid, or something similar (testing was inconclusive). It was a nasty virus, took us a month to recover. My oldest son, who was 5 at the time, got pneumonia. After that, his personality changed a bit. He was more edgy and irritable. I started looking into PANS, noting that some of his symptoms matched, but not others (he had gotten obsessive, but not compulsive, for example).
Just under a year later, we noticed a new leak coming from a sewer pipe in the basement. It took us a few weeks to figure out which fixture it was coming from, so the interior wall was wet for a while in between our upstairs and downstairs bathroom.
In those weeks, I developed new allergies to foods and soaps I had always had. My kids started complaining of stomachaches and headaches. Everyone in the house was fighting all the time. My 5 year old son was having regular explosive tantrums over illogical things. My baby had a horrible rash that wouldn’t go away, and soon enough the rest of the family did too.
So, we did mold testing. Not only was the sewer leak causing mold issues, but improper ventilation for our attic insulation was too. Plus, there was mold damage from the house's original basement water issues that we never knew about (the dust on the rafters was mold, the staining on some of the wood in the basement was mold, etc.)
We moved out, and into my in-law’s house. My kids were less moody overnight. Rashes healed.
We connected with a Functional Medicine doctor (she’s a double board certified MD in NJ, so not just some rando), who helped us order the right tests (we did realtime labs and mosaic diagnostics for the mycotoxin and organic acids tests), and helped us with the detox protocol. We had gut imbalances, so we took a three month course of nystatin and probiotics, with body bio PC binders.
Our DIY remediation protocol was to remove the mold, spray down anything we can’t remove with 30% hydrogen peroxide (don’t forget the full face gas mask and hazmat suit!), then do a DIY version of the superstratum protocol to save money (I got a Ryobi fogger for like $30, hypochlorous acid, and chlorine dioxide tablets online for much cheaper.)
It was overwhelming, especially since with three kids, we have a TON of crap we need to sterilize. The ads make it look like you can decontaminate the space in a weekend, it took us two months at least.
We did the protocol, moved back in, and the house tested mold free. But, within the first two weeks of moving in, we had ANOTHER basement flood (the hose got left on and started seeping in through the cinderblock, thankfully most of it was not getting wood or drywall wet.)
Plus, we realized the sewer hadn’t been properly capped, and sewer gas was filling the house.
And the Canadian wildfire smoke was everywhere.
My kids started showing mold toxicity symptoms. Rashes and moodiness came back.
So, we moved back to my in laws house. They started to recover. And then my in-law’s house had a catastrophic flood in the kitchen. So, we went back to our house, since their house was starting to cause symptoms in the kids as well.
Now we’re back in our house again. It seems better than last time, but time will tell. My hope is that it was just the sewer gas and wet basement causing them issues. We still plan to get out of the house, though. Our plan is to do a custom build to minimize mold possibilities, which is tough given the climate of NJ. But, that’s where we are now. Thanks for reading.