Sewer backup flooded basement unit. How likely is mold (etc.) in walls?
September 12, 2023 9:48 AM Subscribe
My basement apartment was entirely flooded by a sewer backup a week and a half ago. The water came in under the walls, got maybe two inches deep on average, and the place stayed flooded for about 17 hours. Landlord refuses to do any assessment of damage. Am I right to be concerned about nastiness growing inside the walls, etc.?
It wasn't blackwater, but it smelled like a toilet. A FLIR scan of the walls five days later (done by a restoration professional I hired) showed moisture in all the walls going up a foot from the floor. There's no external mold I can see in the places I can access (ie. can't get behind fridge, oven, cabinets, shelving unit) but for instance some wooden door frames and trim have split and swollen. I've been running a dehumidifier since the place became accessible again. The place still smells faintly of damp wood.
Tiled floor (not wood or carpet).
The landlord insists it's fine. I'm skeptical to say the least. Hoping people here with a bit of relevant insight can help me figure out if I'm being gaslit about a real health/safety concern, or just anxious... especially since a legal process to get action taken will take months.
Thank you!
It wasn't blackwater, but it smelled like a toilet. A FLIR scan of the walls five days later (done by a restoration professional I hired) showed moisture in all the walls going up a foot from the floor. There's no external mold I can see in the places I can access (ie. can't get behind fridge, oven, cabinets, shelving unit) but for instance some wooden door frames and trim have split and swollen. I've been running a dehumidifier since the place became accessible again. The place still smells faintly of damp wood.
Tiled floor (not wood or carpet).
The landlord insists it's fine. I'm skeptical to say the least. Hoping people here with a bit of relevant insight can help me figure out if I'm being gaslit about a real health/safety concern, or just anxious... especially since a legal process to get action taken will take months.
Thank you!
A massive storm hit our neighbourhood a last month and sewer backed up into basements in about 30 or 40 homes. Fortunately not ours, but from talking to people who were flooded and the remediation being done on their houses now, mould is 100% likely. Anything that was touched by the backup (storm water into sanitary, so smells like sewer) is considered to be contaminated and a health hazard because of the sewage and was put into dumpsters.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:59 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:59 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Best answer: My basement apartment has flooded twice due to extreme weather in the last 3 years. In both cases my complex manager (who works for the actual landlords who are headquartered in California) hired assessment teams to evaluate the damage, do moisture mitigation using heat, air movement, and humidity monitors, and then hired other teams to come in and rip up wallboard, replace trim, paint, refloor, etc. The first flood was only about an inch and there wasn't much mitigation required--just all of my flooring. For this second flood, which was roughly four inches, they had to drill holes in my wallboard to remove all the moisture. In the hallways they literally had to rip out the wallboard to studs. I haven't had access to my possessions for a month, and there are several more weeks of remediation to complete.
So, yes. Not even having an assessment is wholly unacceptable.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 10:15 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
So, yes. Not even having an assessment is wholly unacceptable.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 10:15 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Your landlord is unable to cope right now. Maybe it's that the landlord has cash flow problems and can't afford repairs especially if you get moved out and stop paying rent, maybe it's because your landlord doesn't have insurance, or maybe it is because your landlord is personally not functional.
Document everything, look for a place to move into. Likely the walls will have to come out, so one way or another it is doubtful you can stay there. Take photographs. Record any steps you have taken and are taken to dry things out. If your heat is included in your rent turn it up so that your places is barely liveable to bake the moisture out as much as possible.
You want to document every thing so as to leave your options open to break your lease, or to get your place back at the same nice low rent after the repairs are made.
If you are really, really lucky your landlord was just asking you to bear with them while they got organized and you will be hearing back from them about getting it repaired. That could happen. They didn't say they would repair it because they didn't want to answer you if you asked when until they knew. And when they said "it's fine" they meant it was just another repair to add to their long list of landlord responsibilities and not an emergency that required hazmat suits to escort you out of the building.
But it IS a very serious problem if there is toilet sewage in your home, not just storm sewage. You need to find that out. If there is toilet sewage you may need to get out ASAP. Contact your municipality to find out. They should know if the two systems were completely separate. You can also get sterile swab kits to test for sewage and septic contamination.
If you can get an air purifier and a dehumidifier it would help you while you are still stuck in that apartment and make things safer for you. You might be entitled to get your landlord to pay for that.
I'd be looking for an apartment you can move into October 1rst, while preparing to negotiate with the landlord for it to be just a temporary move until they get repairs done. I would be contacting my location's rentalsman or whatever the equivalent is, and figuring out what type of rights I have of breaking my lease without penalty, or of getting the apartment back after repairs are done, or of forcing my landlord to make repairs. But I would be working from the assumption my apartment is probably a write off - not least because if there was a flood once - there could have been one in the past meaning the walls are already full of mold - and there could be more in future.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:21 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Document everything, look for a place to move into. Likely the walls will have to come out, so one way or another it is doubtful you can stay there. Take photographs. Record any steps you have taken and are taken to dry things out. If your heat is included in your rent turn it up so that your places is barely liveable to bake the moisture out as much as possible.
You want to document every thing so as to leave your options open to break your lease, or to get your place back at the same nice low rent after the repairs are made.
If you are really, really lucky your landlord was just asking you to bear with them while they got organized and you will be hearing back from them about getting it repaired. That could happen. They didn't say they would repair it because they didn't want to answer you if you asked when until they knew. And when they said "it's fine" they meant it was just another repair to add to their long list of landlord responsibilities and not an emergency that required hazmat suits to escort you out of the building.
But it IS a very serious problem if there is toilet sewage in your home, not just storm sewage. You need to find that out. If there is toilet sewage you may need to get out ASAP. Contact your municipality to find out. They should know if the two systems were completely separate. You can also get sterile swab kits to test for sewage and septic contamination.
If you can get an air purifier and a dehumidifier it would help you while you are still stuck in that apartment and make things safer for you. You might be entitled to get your landlord to pay for that.
I'd be looking for an apartment you can move into October 1rst, while preparing to negotiate with the landlord for it to be just a temporary move until they get repairs done. I would be contacting my location's rentalsman or whatever the equivalent is, and figuring out what type of rights I have of breaking my lease without penalty, or of getting the apartment back after repairs are done, or of forcing my landlord to make repairs. But I would be working from the assumption my apartment is probably a write off - not least because if there was a flood once - there could have been one in the past meaning the walls are already full of mold - and there could be more in future.
posted by Jane the Brown at 10:21 AM on September 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Hi. Sewer backup flooded my finished, mostly tile floor basement about 6 weeks ago. It was combined storm and sewer water (mostly stormwater, it rained like 9 inches that day and overwhelmed the sewer system, which is why it backed up into everyone's basements). It didn't really smell bad but my city combines the sanitary and storm sewers so we have to treat it like sewage contamination.
We had about 4 inches of water, which sat there for maybe 1 hour then drained back out.
Fixing this properly is very expensive. It is what we did, but lots of our neighbors didn't. If a lot of people flooded in the area, mitigation companies get booked up really quickly.
FYI, proper treatment would be:
1. A "flood cut" of all the walls- cutting and removing the bottom 2 feet of drywall, removing insulation, baseboards and trim.
2. Renting high capacity floor fans and dehumidifiers and running them 24 hours a day for 3-4 days.
3. Sanitizing and treating all the wooden sills and studs to kill mold, treat any bacteria from the sewage, and prevent future growth.
4. We had one room that was carpet and of course that had to go.
We also had to throw out everything that was absorbent or stuff like cheap Ikea pressboard furniture that absorbed water and swelled.
You could not live there while it is happening; we have a medium-sized basement but a lot of rooms and weird nooks so we needed 36 fans and 2 industrial sized humidifiers. It takes so much power that they brought in an electrician to combine 2 breakers so they weren't constantly blowing the circuit. It is insanely loud, and gets very warm.
I did see some mold on the back of some of the drywall and baseboards they pulled. Not a ton. I could not say if that was from the flood or just general basement dampness. The carpeted room started to stink really bad, really quickly. Glad you don't have that.
The fact that your landlord isn't pulling back any drywall to see what's going on is not good. Maybe letting it dry out will be enough, maybe not! I am not a "panic at the first sign of mold" person but at the same time, 17 hours of standing water would worry me. Even more so if there's insulation in any of those walls.
posted by misskaz at 10:37 AM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
We had about 4 inches of water, which sat there for maybe 1 hour then drained back out.
Fixing this properly is very expensive. It is what we did, but lots of our neighbors didn't. If a lot of people flooded in the area, mitigation companies get booked up really quickly.
FYI, proper treatment would be:
1. A "flood cut" of all the walls- cutting and removing the bottom 2 feet of drywall, removing insulation, baseboards and trim.
2. Renting high capacity floor fans and dehumidifiers and running them 24 hours a day for 3-4 days.
3. Sanitizing and treating all the wooden sills and studs to kill mold, treat any bacteria from the sewage, and prevent future growth.
4. We had one room that was carpet and of course that had to go.
We also had to throw out everything that was absorbent or stuff like cheap Ikea pressboard furniture that absorbed water and swelled.
You could not live there while it is happening; we have a medium-sized basement but a lot of rooms and weird nooks so we needed 36 fans and 2 industrial sized humidifiers. It takes so much power that they brought in an electrician to combine 2 breakers so they weren't constantly blowing the circuit. It is insanely loud, and gets very warm.
I did see some mold on the back of some of the drywall and baseboards they pulled. Not a ton. I could not say if that was from the flood or just general basement dampness. The carpeted room started to stink really bad, really quickly. Glad you don't have that.
The fact that your landlord isn't pulling back any drywall to see what's going on is not good. Maybe letting it dry out will be enough, maybe not! I am not a "panic at the first sign of mold" person but at the same time, 17 hours of standing water would worry me. Even more so if there's insulation in any of those walls.
posted by misskaz at 10:37 AM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yes, you should be concerned. There is a reason why insurance companies pay to rip out the lower foot or two of drywall, baseboards, flooring, cabinetry, etc, and bleach everything any time even minor flooding occurs. Which is often down here in Florida.
Mold is no joke. It's not going to kill you immediately if it's only on the inside of the wall, but there's still enough air circulation that it can cause respiratory issues with long term exposure. Since it's not your place, using a dilute bleach solution on everything that is accessible (this means the cabinets and behind the fridge and the stove, too!) can buy you some time to vacate if you can't leave immediately for whatever reason. That will keep mold from growing and kill any possible poop bacteria. If there is a risk of contamination from sewage (which is basically always in a flood situation, even without a combined sewer) you'll definitely want to wear gloves and other PPE.
Really though, you should only have to be dealing with your own stuff, the landlord should be handling their property without you doing that kind of work. Most of them will freak out at the m word, at least where I live.
posted by wierdo at 10:45 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mold is no joke. It's not going to kill you immediately if it's only on the inside of the wall, but there's still enough air circulation that it can cause respiratory issues with long term exposure. Since it's not your place, using a dilute bleach solution on everything that is accessible (this means the cabinets and behind the fridge and the stove, too!) can buy you some time to vacate if you can't leave immediately for whatever reason. That will keep mold from growing and kill any possible poop bacteria. If there is a risk of contamination from sewage (which is basically always in a flood situation, even without a combined sewer) you'll definitely want to wear gloves and other PPE.
Really though, you should only have to be dealing with your own stuff, the landlord should be handling their property without you doing that kind of work. Most of them will freak out at the m word, at least where I live.
posted by wierdo at 10:45 AM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
*de-humidifiers, obviously, too late to edit typo.
posted by misskaz at 10:46 AM on September 12, 2023
posted by misskaz at 10:46 AM on September 12, 2023
What worked on reoccurring mold long term for me. Mixed 1/4 oz oregano oil into one pint of latex acrylic paint never had mold on that shower ceiling again.
Maybe emulsify oregano oil with isopropyl and spray you walls to impede the mold and speed he drying out .
posted by hortense at 12:21 PM on September 12, 2023
Maybe emulsify oregano oil with isopropyl and spray you walls to impede the mold and speed he drying out .
posted by hortense at 12:21 PM on September 12, 2023
Best answer: Seconding misskaz, who lists pretty exactly the typical professionally recommended typical work scope.
Speaking as certified mold consultant who does mold remediation work plans professionally (not the actual remediation, just the before and after bits), I can tell you that per industry guidelines, anything porous that stays wet for over 48 hours (where wet for drywall is over 17% moisture) is supposed be replaced to at least a foot above the wet area, because it's pretty much impossible to stop it from molding eventually. It's sounds like you are outside that window already. If the area is carpeted, you really want to get rid of that as well.
At this point- drying the area (which often calls for removing the baseboard and cutting holes into the bottom of the drywall so the interior wall cavity can dry as well) might still help if things aren't going to be replaced, but you probably have wet materials inside the walls, and you will probably get mold down the road, even if it takes a while to work it's way through to the interior of the rooms.
Also, anything soaked with Category III waste water (blackwater ie, might contain feces) needs to be removed, no questions- I am not sure if this is a concern since you say it wasn't blackwater, but it's hard to be completely sure. Also, by typical flood restoration guidelines, Category II wastewater (graywater, may contain urine, dishwasher, sink or bath water), still has enough bacteria that it becomes Category III if it is not cleaned up within 2 days.
So yes, your landlord absolutely should be dealing with this.
Given the sewer related source, there is the potential for bacteria and such that could be more of an immediate health concern than mold.
This might be something you can try complaining to the local board of health about-I can't guarantee it, but "we had sewage in the apartment and the landlord won't clean it properly" may be the sort of potential health issue they might react to.
posted by Dorothea Ladislaw at 2:46 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
Speaking as certified mold consultant who does mold remediation work plans professionally (not the actual remediation, just the before and after bits), I can tell you that per industry guidelines, anything porous that stays wet for over 48 hours (where wet for drywall is over 17% moisture) is supposed be replaced to at least a foot above the wet area, because it's pretty much impossible to stop it from molding eventually. It's sounds like you are outside that window already. If the area is carpeted, you really want to get rid of that as well.
At this point- drying the area (which often calls for removing the baseboard and cutting holes into the bottom of the drywall so the interior wall cavity can dry as well) might still help if things aren't going to be replaced, but you probably have wet materials inside the walls, and you will probably get mold down the road, even if it takes a while to work it's way through to the interior of the rooms.
Also, anything soaked with Category III waste water (blackwater ie, might contain feces) needs to be removed, no questions- I am not sure if this is a concern since you say it wasn't blackwater, but it's hard to be completely sure. Also, by typical flood restoration guidelines, Category II wastewater (graywater, may contain urine, dishwasher, sink or bath water), still has enough bacteria that it becomes Category III if it is not cleaned up within 2 days.
So yes, your landlord absolutely should be dealing with this.
Given the sewer related source, there is the potential for bacteria and such that could be more of an immediate health concern than mold.
This might be something you can try complaining to the local board of health about-I can't guarantee it, but "we had sewage in the apartment and the landlord won't clean it properly" may be the sort of potential health issue they might react to.
posted by Dorothea Ladislaw at 2:46 PM on September 12, 2023 [5 favorites]
I had two apartment floods and second everyone else. One of those fire-water-repair-recovery joints (ServPro is what I had here) needs to be called ASAP. Your landlord not doing diddly is going to be hideously bad if the pros don't come to deal with the potential mold.
Unfortunately, what I can't advise you about is forcing your landlord to do anything and it sounds like that's the territory you need to get into :/
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:27 PM on September 12, 2023
Unfortunately, what I can't advise you about is forcing your landlord to do anything and it sounds like that's the territory you need to get into :/
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:27 PM on September 12, 2023
You should definitely be concerned. We had a major fire in an adjacent apartment and the initial cleanup team assured us confidently that the fans were sufficient. We wound up having to rip out all of the drywall.
You should send your landlord a typewritten, formal letter, along the lines of:
"As you know, my unit was flooded for at least 17 hours on {date} and the walls are still damp. I'm very concerned about mold growth, because the walls are still damp. I'm concerned that you are taking these unhealthy conditions seriously. The damaged drywall needs to be replaced."
Include any photos you have and a catalog of attempts to discuss it, with the dates and times. (eg. "I have tried to discuss this with you previously. On Thursday Sept 6, we discussed it in person; on Friday Sept 7 I left you two voicemail messages")
Include any additional detail about what you want the LL to do. (There are several good answers here on the subject of what actual remediation would look like.)
Send that to your landlord by USPS. You can also email them a copy.
Other steps I would take:
If you have renters insurance, reach out to them about help filing a claim.
If you have any kind of rent guidelines board or housing agency, look into what it takes to file a claim with them. Agencies will vary but they're likely to want you to try to work it out directly with your landlord before coming to them. In some cities you will be entitled to back rent for the time that your apartment was not being maintained to livable standards.
posted by amandabee at 4:17 PM on September 12, 2023
You should send your landlord a typewritten, formal letter, along the lines of:
"As you know, my unit was flooded for at least 17 hours on {date} and the walls are still damp. I'm very concerned about mold growth, because the walls are still damp. I'm concerned that you are taking these unhealthy conditions seriously. The damaged drywall needs to be replaced."
Include any photos you have and a catalog of attempts to discuss it, with the dates and times. (eg. "I have tried to discuss this with you previously. On Thursday Sept 6, we discussed it in person; on Friday Sept 7 I left you two voicemail messages")
Include any additional detail about what you want the LL to do. (There are several good answers here on the subject of what actual remediation would look like.)
Send that to your landlord by USPS. You can also email them a copy.
Other steps I would take:
If you have renters insurance, reach out to them about help filing a claim.
If you have any kind of rent guidelines board or housing agency, look into what it takes to file a claim with them. Agencies will vary but they're likely to want you to try to work it out directly with your landlord before coming to them. In some cities you will be entitled to back rent for the time that your apartment was not being maintained to livable standards.
posted by amandabee at 4:17 PM on September 12, 2023
Seconding misskaz and Dorothea Ladislaw. We had a sewage backup into a finished basement and that describes what the remediation company did (all soft/carpet flooring is removed and trashed, ditto anything porous that got wet, drywall cut away about two feet above the floor, moisture meters for everything else; anything non-porous that had contacted the sewage water - no matter how clear the water looked - got sprayed thickly with industrial anti-bacterial spray; many days of industrial fans and dehumidifiers that caused major demand on the electrical). The remediation was paid for by the homeowners insurance and the insurance company was urgent to get it done ASAP.
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:50 PM on September 12, 2023
posted by LobsterMitten at 6:50 PM on September 12, 2023
In Florida, and in many states, landlords are required to remediate things to maintain a 'healthy environment'. Find out which state agency is in charge of landlord/tenant laws and regulations and ask them what your rights, and your landlord's responsibilities, are.
posted by TimHare at 7:27 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by TimHare at 7:27 PM on September 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
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