Moisture And Termite Damage
A home inspection is the most important part of buying a home. Before you purchase a home, you must hire a private home inspector of your choice to inspect the property that has no affiliation with the property to get an unbiased home inspection report. When you walk through a home everything may seem great, but hidden nightmares can be lurking behind every corner.
Anyone can see damages on the surface. When you inspect a home for sale a few things must occur to ensure that you are not buying a home that is going to cost you tens of thousands in renovations. No one wants a mold-infested home that will strike you sick, termites crawling from behind outlets, or having unstable dining room chairs because the home is shifting. By that point, your sale will be final and far too late to turn back.
Home Inspection
Your home inspection must include a low moisture content, no termites are visible, and no mold growth. Plus, a complete evaluation of the roof the plywood under your shingles observed in your attic. Evaluating underneath the subfloor including testing the moisture in the, supporting beams, floor joists, and sills.
We had a customer who made this huge mistake and purchased a mobile home in Slidell, Louisiana with no prior inspection fulfilled. She had bold and beautiful intentions and wanted to purchase a home for her family at a fair price so her family can live in it for years. What was under the surface was not so beautiful. Cheryl had realized that her home had a tremendous amount of mold, and her floors needed to be redone due to cupping and buckling from the moisture.
After further examination from Sunlight Contractors, we discovered 38 piers that could not be repaired they had to be completely replaced. The contractor who had previously built the home had done the pier and beams completely incorrectly. Cheryl was taken back when further damage was discovered when we started replacing the pier and beams.
Live termites’ in her floor joists had completely eaten through the wood under her home. There was no going back at this point. The floor and plywood had to be completely removed and replaced.
The home had already consumed $45,000 worth of work prior to the termite damage being found. The big problem was Cheryl’s insurance fell through and decided they were not paying for most of the work. Sunlight Contractors in the middle of this ordeal could not just leave a woman in trouble and knowingly leave her family to suffer. So, we decided to give back to Cheryl and her family absorbing over $15,000 in cost we finished her home and gave Cheryl a structurally impeccable home that will last for a lifetime.
Cheryl wanted to remain living in her home because during the covid-19 outbreak we could understand being somewhere unfamiliar or the amount of the hotel costs that would rack up was something Cheryl and her family wanted to avoid. So, we adjusted our work accordingly.
Closed cell spray foam is an air, vapor, and thermal barrier.
We went under the home and replaced one pier and beam at a time. We use 240LBs of concrete, reinforced steel rebar, cinderblocks filled with concrete, leveling the peers with a series of 20-ton jacks, hardy board shimmed in between. The key is that for that pier’s to never shift by leaving only the cinderblock on the soil. Soil can easily shift and should not be the force behind your home. We repeated this process 38 times. We removed the mold and moisture from Cheryl’s subfloor but not before wiping out the colonies of live termites she had roaming her crawl space. We had to rip up her hardwood floors, replace the floor joists, and plywood. Before, putting her floor back down the mold had spread to her bathrooms and had to be removed.
We assembled our crew and our licensed certified plumbers and removed everything from the bathrooms, we continued our journey remediated, renovated, and killed thousands of termites. We sprayed full coverage closed cell spray foam under her subfloor covering all wooden members.
After Sunlight Contractor sprayed closed cell spray foam underneath the subfloor forming a monolithic seal. This huge project was complete. Cheryl could not be any happier and now she had a home that was safe for her family, a complete beautiful renovation including new bathrooms and hardwood floors throughout her home.
Cheryl cried happy tears of joy and thanked us for her project being completed superiorly and professionally. She was so happy that she chose a contractor that not only fixes the problem but also chose a contractor that prevents the problem from ever occurring again.