Location
Santa Fe
Mold in Santa Fe and New Mexico
When people think of mold, they usually don’t think Santa Fe or New Mexico. After all, Santa Fe is a dry climate and gets plenty of sunshine throughout most of the year. In fact, taking in to consideration the other places and states I frequently work (Utah, Arizona, Colorado, California, Oregon), Santa has a higher percentage of homes with mold in the West and Southwest. How can this be?
Mold needs three things to grow: water, time, and food. It does rain and snow in Santa Fe, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. When it rains a lot or for longer periods of time, mold has time to grow.
Forgetting about other sources of moisture for a moment (Mold can grow as the result of plumbing leaks, water splashed behind kitchen cabinets, leaky showers for example), let stick with outside sources. The primary cause for mold in homes in Santa Fe is doing an inadequate job or preventing water from getting inside. The food is inside: the lumber a house is constructed with, and drywall (wall board) on the interior side of the walls and ceilings.
The primary reasons for water intrusion in Santa Fe and New Mexico are: leaks in flat roofs, canales (known as roof scuppers outside of New Mexico), homes built too close to the ground (no clearance at grade), cracks in stucco, particularly around windows, and windows which are not flashed correctly, and missing or improperly installed weep screeds to name a few.
For those new to Santa Fe and New Mexico, a Canale (roof scupper) is a spout installed in between the parapets of a flat roof building to drain water. Parapets are fake walls rising up from the roof that make the walls of the outside of the home seem taller than they are. The word comes from the Italian parapetto.
Think castles with gaps in the castle walls for soldiers to look out. Where extending above a roof, a parapet may be the exterior wall that continues above the edge line of the roof. The issue it the top of the parapet should have a metal cap installed to prevent water from leaking in. You rarely see a metal cap on a parapet in Santa Fe or New Mexico. Builders, roofers, and the city believe layering the top of the parapet with stucco will keep water out. Stucco is not water-tight.
Stucco (cement or acrylic) is not intended to be what keeps water out. Rather, that’s the function of the felt (tar-impregnated building paper put on the outside of the house before the stucco goes on. Stucco cracks. That’s OK. As the building paper is installed correctly, windows are flashed properly, and weep screeds are installed at the bottom of stucco walls. These allow water that gets behind stucco to drain out.
Unfortunately, in Santa Fe and New Mexico, a combination of things go wrong: windows are not flashed properly, windows are installed such that it’s impossible to seal the gaps between the windows and stucco until after cracks develop, weep screeds are missing, installed upside down, or the holes are covered by stucco, or stucco goes into the ground with no clearance between the ground and the weeps.
Crawlspaces are another common place we find mold in New Mexico and Santa Fe. Some homeowners are not even aware their home has a crawlspace. The term is know as “sleepers”. When the house is built a shallow hole is dug aorund which the foundation is laid. There may or may not be access to the space under the house. The source of water can be plumbing leaks, or as common, water that drains next to the house from the scuppers (canales) as the canales don’t have gutters that drain the water away from the house.
These are a few of the things I look for when doing a mold inspection. Musty odors and stains on walls and ceilings are indicators of a mold problem. Half of the time, mold is hiding, without visible sings or an odor and we need to test for it to determine if mold is present.
When I do a mold inspection in Santa Fe, I start from the outside. I walk around the house and look for where there are canales, windows, and so forth. Then I go inside and finish my inspection, paying attention to where I noticed there are canales or windows. Paying attention to where the floor in the home may be at to below the level of the ground outside.
Click here to learn more about how I look and test for mold. Click here to speak to me now or to schedule an inspection or ask a question.