Water damage, mold, and the ensuing remediation work required is something no property owner or manager ever wants to have to address. Water is one of the most common sources of damage to properties and can happen due to failing water heaters, broken pipes, roof leaks, and more. On this episode of the podcast, Bob speaks with Jason Widmer, owner of KIC Restoration, here in the San Diego area.
On this episode, you’re going to learn how to know if you have a potential water damage issue that needs to be addressed, what to do about it, and what the typical water restoration job looks like and how long it will take. Jason holds nothing back so be sure you listen to this helpful episode.
A time-stamped transcript of the episode is below.
Outline of This Episode
- [1:25] Jason’s expertise with water restoration and remediation
- [7:02] The most common examples of water intrusion into properties
- [10:50] Warning signs that you may have a water restoration issue in the making
- [12:30] The first things to do if you have an active water leak
- [18:50] The conditions that promote mold growth and why it’s a big deal
- [24:47] What does the entire process of water restoration look like?
- [37:01] Insurance issues and how they can help or complicate things
- [44:01] The best piece of advice: work with the right people for water restoration
Signs that you may have a water restoration leak in the making
If you can hear the sound of running water in your property and all water sources are turned off, it’s pretty obvious you have a water leak. But how do you verify that a water issue may be happening in your property if you can't hear running water? Water stains on ceilings or walls
- Bubbled paint or texture on ceilings or walls
- Warm floors
- Visible splotching from mold
What should you do if you find a water leak in your property?
If you are fairly certain you have a water leak in your property, what should you do? Jason says it’s time to call someone who has the experience and equipment needed to identify for sure that water issues exist. You need to make sure the people who come to do work on your property know what they are doing when it comes to water remediation and restoration.
Does every water leak produce toxic mold growth?
Jason says there are hundreds of different types of mold and most of them are not anything to worry about (we even breathe some of them every day). When it comes to remediation, there are four types of mold that are of concern with the most important being what is commonly called “black mold” (Stachybotrys). If you have a black mold issue, deliberate and careful steps need to be taken to ensure it is dealt with properly.
Connect with Jason Widmer
- Jason’s Company:KIC Restoration
Connect With Bob Preston
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Bob Preston: 01:11 Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Property Management Brainstorm Podcast. This is Bob Preston, your host of the show, broadcasting from our studio at North County Property Group in Del Mar, California. On today's episode, we're going to discuss one of our planets mightiest elements, water. Water is essential obviously for everyday life of ourselves, humans, animals and is a standard feature in every home and it could even be a beautiful architectural treatment. It can also be incredibly destructive to a property. Our guest on the show today is the founder and president of one of our best partners here at North County Property Group, Jason Widmer of KIC Restoration. He's become a regular visitor here at the office. He drops in every now and then. He's become a good friend of mine. And by the way, he's an uber smart dude. So thank you for being here today, Jason.
Jason Widmer: 01:57 Thank you very much for having me.
Bob Preston: 02:00 Yeah, we appreciate all those little treats and all the pens and Gizmos you bring in every now and then for us. But, um, no, I mean that we've had a pretty good partnership here. What's it been a couple of years now? We've worked together. Yeah. And sometimes we, um, work on things that aren't, you know, the most, uh, pleasant to work on, but they're super important. It's important to get it right. So maybe, uh, you could just introduce yourself a little bit. We met a couple years ago on a water incident that occurred at one of our properties. We were really impressed with you and your services of, of KIC and we've been using you guys as a partner ever since. So maybe you can just tell us a little bit about yourself, your company, and how you got into this business.
Jason Widmer: 02:38 Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me as a guest speaker on your podcast. Well, a little bit about myself. I was actually raised in a small farming community and Watertown, Minnesota back in Minnesota. How I got out to San Diego. I actually joined the military At the age of 18 years old, served in the military for 12 years as a nuclear machinist mate. I was a combat action veteran. I did two tours over in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. A little bit about my company, a KIC was founded in 1998 we are a a disabled veteran owned corporation, a full-service restoration and reconstruction company serving all areas of San Diego and my corporate headquarters is located in beautiful Poway, California. I've been married for 25 years. The father of three beautiful children. Very happy to be living in San Diego as long as I have.
Bob Preston: 03:42 Okay. You started working very young and I think I read in your background that this line of work you even even were doing in the navy a little bit. I'm handling hazardous materials, I think it's asbestos, right? That you were involved in, perhaps?
Jason Widmer: 03:56 That is correct. So I was what they call a propulsion engineer. So I worked down in the engineering plants and a lot of the piping and valve assemblies down there. Back in in the 80s a lot of the steam pipes were wrapped with an asbestos containing material. So from time to time we'd have to do repairs on the ship. So we'd actually have to abate the legging wrapping around the steam pipes prior to performing our work.
Bob Preston: 04:28 So is that kind of the genesis of how this KI’s company now known as KIC? Is that where thing started or how would you describe that?
Jason Widmer: 04:36 That is where I, I understood the general knowledge and you know, got some of my preliminary certifications that just unilateral bow to the civilian world when I in fact got out of active duty status of the military. Another way I got into this line of work was actually prior to being in restoration, I owned a cleaning company. So we serviced all areas.
Bob Preston: 05:02 Highly related to this line of business.
Jason Widmer: 05:03 Over a period of time, after about two years of being in the cleaning industry, it got more and more known that because I had the keys to the building, 24 hour access, that building owners or property managers would start calling me because they would have a water leak. And since I was doing their carpet cleaning for them in their buildings and was always sucking out water, that was the first person they would think of and they would call me to come suck water out of their carpets. And that's how I actually.
Bob Preston: 05:34 First guy on the job. Sure. And that's sometimes the most important time is to get it done quickly.
Jason Widmer: 05:39 I started with cleaning company and then segway into carpet cleaning. And then you know, by the early 2000’s I had pretty much got out of solely doing cleaning and more focusing on, on the restoration.
Bob Preston: 05:54 Interesting. I always enjoy hearing people's stories about their journeys and stuff. So today, uh, what is the proper term, uh, of, of what KIC does? Is it, you're a property restoration company, is there, just to make sure I have the right vernacular as we continue on?
Jason Widmer: 06:09 So we uh, we are in the industry what is known as a full service restoration company, meaning that we are certified to do all phases of restoration, whether it be fire restoration, water restoration, mold restoration or what they call bio-hazard cleanup restoration. So we are a certified firm in all aspects of the certifications needed to do this type of work. And also I'm a licensed general contractor, so not only can we do the mitigation work, get rid of the water, dry the structure, get rid of the mold, get rid of the smoke or the char burn from the fire. We can also put it all back together as a licensed general contractor in the state.
Bob Preston: 06:57 So from A to Z, so to speak. Okay, so for the purposes of today's episode to get into some of that other stuff, fire, biohazard, we'd be here all day, so can't do that. So let's focus on water if that's okay with you today. It's like I mentioned, just kind of the topic of the show, and this is a very broad question and maybe too general, but I'm hoping you can drill down a little bit. Water intrusion, I think that's what we would call it. It could come from leaks, you can come from rain, it can come from the sprinkler system outside, whatever. What are the most common, I guess, examples of water intrusion into a residential home that you know, you see, I guess out there every day, right? You're out in the trenches.
Jason Widmer: 07:38 Two of the biggest ones in the water mitigation industry to where we come out and inspect. Well, I'd say one of our biggest ones are failing water heaters. Yes. Due to the hard calcified water.
Bob Preston: 07:52 That seems to be an issue in this town. Right. Because the water is not of the greatest, well I guess it's okay quality, but it just has a lot of mineral, high minerals.
Jason Widmer: 08:00 High mineral content, and then by them adding the, the chlorine and everything to keep the levels of bacteria, that combination over time just wreaks havoc on plumbing, copper piping, faucets, water heaters, dishwashers, and all those things you just rattle off are all culprits. Correct. Are All sources of water losses.
Bob Preston: 08:24 Okay. All right, so water heaters, what else do you see?
Jason Widmer: 08:28 Uh, another big thing, it's that I, I tell customers in, it's a very cheap insurance because water can do a severe amount of damage very quickly, especially if you're not home yet. And something would happen. Uh, the cheapest ways of insurance that you can just general maintenance, angle stops and supply lines. So the angle stop is the fitting that supplies water to your fixture. Yes, a lot of the older homes have what they call a stem style angle stop valve, which are very prone to failing and leaking.
Bob Preston: 09:12 Those are the kind you turn to the left or the right, kind of like a knob.
Jason Widmer: 09:15 Yes. That you turn. We recommend removing and replacing those all with the new quarter turn style angle stop valves. They're less prone to fail leak or even blow off the wall. Sure. Completely. Like the older style angle stops the stem style.
Bob Preston: 09:34 Okay. Now this last winter we had severe rain. I'm sure you got a lot of calls. Unusual stuff. Right. So a not the norm here in San Diego, which is kind of part of the problem because a lot of homeowners don't even realize they might have an issue with their roof until we have that kind of a rainy season.
Jason Widmer: 09:51 Correct. And especially in my career of over 20 years of doing this with this last year with the, with the amount of rain and the wind that we had, there were a lot of problems that people had with their roofs that normally in San Diego they wouldn't have these type of problems. It'd be more prone to the Midwest where they have, and in the south where they have the heavier torrential rains and the real high winds that are really pretty much other than a Santa Ana once in a while it's very abnormal. Out here I saw a lot of wind pushing water into areas and coming into properties that normally would never even leak.
Bob Preston: 10:35 Yea we had one of those this season, right? Yes, we did out in Pacific Beach well you know, you just gave me a great idea for another episode. Maybe come back someday and we'll do one regarding prevention. Right. Cause that's a big part of this too, is making sure that you're, yeah. Okay, so we'll do that another day. This may seem like an obvious question and I don't mean to ask an obvious dumb question, but what would the signs be of water intrusion?
Jason Widmer: 10:55 That's actually a great question because a lot of people don't even realize they have a problem when they actually do, so having knowledge of what to look for can really minimize the extent of damage you can potentially. Sure. It could potentially create if it goes unnoticed. The big things are, I've got a little water stain in my ceiling. Sure. Another one is my wall looks like the paint or the dry wall is bubbling out. It looks like you have blistering on your walls. Another thing is my tile in my kitchen are loose and starting to pop up or could be hot, which is what I was alluding to and another one is I'm walking on my tile floor with my bare feet and my floor is warm. That would give an indication that you have a slab leak. Yeah, I have a hot water side.
Bob Preston: 11:55 It's interesting. I mean hot water seems to be the one that often will go, right?
Jason Widmer: 11:58 Correct. Hot water due to the, to the physics and, and thermo transfer. The hot sides are always more prone to fail than the cold side.
Bob Preston: 12:08 But why is that just science, chemical cycle reaction. I know that hot water atoms move faster and maybe.
Jason Widmer: 12:16 In the chemical breakdown in the characteristic changes when you heat water up with the minerals and the chemicals that are in them probably causes it to be more on the corrosive side.
Bob Preston: 12:27 Interesting. We've had a handful of slab leaks in the companies, you know, long history and it's always been hot water. Yeah. So that's good to know. Right? It's a very interesting, okay, so if I'm a resident at a property, a tenant, or maybe a homeowner or you're friendly property manager, right. And I suspect that there might be water intrusion. What should I do?
Jason Widmer: 12:48 First thing you should do is if you think you have an active pressurized water leak, the first thing you should do to stop the damage is to turn your water off. After you turn your water off I would recommend you call a competent plumber that your, that you feel safe based on either a recommendation from a family friend or, or go online. Like I tell my Pacific Beach customers, know who's going to be working in your house, do research on them before you allow them to come in and do work and pay them.
Bob Preston: 13:21 Right, right. And by the way, if, if one of our tenants is listening to this, call us, let us be the one who to recommend the next step to call us quickly, please.
Jason Widmer: 13:30 Correct. Furthermore, always make sure that whoever is working in your house has a California contractor state license. They have liability insurance and they have a bond because if they don't have those things, you have no recourse legally in the state of California to go back on them.
Bob Preston: 13:46 If they cut your wall open and they blow something, make it worse. Right. Okay. So in a water leak, time is of the essence obviously. Right. So and why is time of the essence?
Jason Widmer: 13:56 Because the longer that the water intrudes into your property, the more damage it's potentially doing. So as we say in the industry, first we want to stop the bleeding. So you turn the water off. You would then call a plumber, get the plumber out to assess the situation, find out where the cause of the leak is coming from, have the plumber go ahead and address that, fix the problem, get your water back on. Then I would recommend that you call a licensed and certified restoration contractor, hopefully KIC Restoration to come out and give an inspection and do what we call in the industry as a moisture mapping of your home to find out what the actual impact of the damage to your property is.
Bob Preston: 14:48 Water is one of the most interesting proof that gravity does exist on our planet, right? Because I mean basically the water will just run to the lowest point where gravity is pulling it. And so one thing I've noticed in my years of experience is that an owner or a tenant will say, well the leaks right here because that's where I see the water damage. But that's not always the case, right? It could be on the opposite end of the room or the house and it just finds its way in that direction until it can come down.
Jason Widmer: 15:17 That is a very accurate statement. Water will travel the least flow of resistance, so it will just go wherever. And a lot of times you have to open a bunch of things up because sometimes when you open where you think it was leaking in, the water's dripping out of actually isn't where the source, like you said, is coming from.
Bob Preston: 15:37 And what I've seen, and I don't know you, you're the professional here, is that when water's flowing quickly it, it's flowing. So it's not really having a chance to sit there and absorb and necessarily leak into things maybe as badly as it might if it's pooling or there's accumulation in a play in a spot, I guess.
Jason Widmer: 15:53 Correct. And another thing is you've got to keep in mind that building material is like a big sponge. So dry wall is absorbent and will absorb a lot of water. Insulation will absorb a lot of waters dug for wood, which most of these buildings are built with. Will absorb a lot of the older ones that are dry and that are dry, so taking in carpet, carpet pad, wood sub floor, all these things are very absorbent, so sometimes when you see, oh well it's just a little bit of damage by the time we get done doing our inspection, doing our moisture mapping and doing a forensic documented inspection report showing all the signs of the water damage people are, I've heard this a thousand times, oh my gosh, I didn't realize there was that much damage. Sure. And it's very, very important to mitigate and get all the saturated building material out and get your structure dry as quickly as possible to prevent the potential of microbial growth. Starting to grow.
Bob Preston: 17:01 Sure. We're going to touch on that here in a minute, but oftentimes someone may not even know how long it's been leaking because it could be that it's been leaking in there for quite some time. Only recently has presented itself. Now you mentioned moisture mat being, I'd like a couple of the tricks of your trade here. So you have specialized equipment. I think you can, you have the probes and you also have some sort of a infrared device.
Jason Widmer: 17:24 Yes we have. So we have what they call in the industry is it's a flare infrared camera that will allow us to do infrared pictures so we can get a general idea because with infrared it will show a darker color where all the water is going to be. So you can kind of segue and figure out what isn't metal and what is really water. Because on some of these other types of meters, like my pinpoint meters, if you poke those into the wall and you hit metal, it can give you a false reading. There's other contributing factors. A lot of these higher end homes have wallpaper in it. A lot of the higher end wallpapers have a metal foil backing on it. So when you're doing your moisture mapping and you stick your probe in through the wallpaper into the wall to check, it can give you a false reading because.
Bob Preston: 18:21 How about green board like the green, does that offer some moisture resistance?
Jason Widmer: 18:24 Yes it does. But the way I was taught and in my years of experience in doing this, water will break down everything. Nothing, waterproofing over time, even waterproofing over 50, 60, 70 years of overexposure. It will break it down. There is nothing known to mankind that is bulletproof.
Bob Preston: 18:48 Powerful element for sure. Okay. You mentioned microbial growth a minute ago. This is one of the reasons also why time is of the essence, because I understand mold conform in as quickly as 72 hours. I think you told me this one time. Thank you.
Jason Widmer: 19:08 In an ideal situation. It can start to incubate and grow and as little as 72 hours.
Bob Preston: 19:11 Okay. But certainly that's one reason why you don't want to screw around. If you think you have a leak, jump on it. Get us involved. If we're your Pacific Beach property management company, you get Jason and KIC involved. If, uh, you know, you own a home now, molds received a lot of attention, you know, on the news and you know, health sort of, uh, yeah, health risks, concerns, all these kinds of things. What's the big deal? What's the big fuss about mold?
Jason Widmer: 19:29 So, with mold, um, first of all, you gotta look at this with at a 360 degree foot level. When we're outside walking, we're breathing mold spores in all the time outside.
Bob Preston: 19:43 In the exists, it exists in our environment everywhere. Especially on the coast, right? Yeah.
Jason Widmer: 19:49 We eat mold, cheese. It's this, that rule of thumb that, you know, the wise man once said, too much of anything isn't good for you. It really, and my 20 years of doing a lot of mold work and having some very, very big specialized projects over the course of my career that we had to figure out and get clearance tests on. Every human body is different. It's just like medication. Some medication works on one human body and it doesn't work on another. It's kind of the same analogy with mold. I've had people that have been living in a science project for years and never. You're a soccer bag like, yeah, that's a science project. Looking back at all the situations I've had. We've had, like I said, situations where they've been living in a science project and it's like I'm looking like how can you guys even be living in here and they are perfectly healthy, no problems. And then I've had other situations where just a little bit of exposure and the customer starts getting lesions, open sores, respiratory problems from the microtoxins associated with overexposure of mold.
Bob Preston: 21:15 Now we're not, at least, I don't think you're a microbiologist. I'm like, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a microbiologist. So I don't want to get too carried away here. But from what I understand, are there different types of molds? You might know a little bit about this, like which ones are, you know gnarlier than others I guess?
Jason Widmer: 21:31 Yes. So there are hundreds of different types of mold spore screens, the four biggest ones that are of a risk in the air industry because we go out to all these jobs, we've got to get air clearances. So I'm constantly talking to air testing people, microbiologist, and now you're looking at the results of what can correct. And then we peer review the results together. The four known mold spores that are the real bad ones with number one being the stachybotrys short term is called in the industry we call it stachy. That's the black nasty one. That's the one that really can get people sick, proven by health in studies and in research. The other ones that are that can be a respiratory irritant and can cause rashes and lesions like, like I had stated earlier, the two other strains are what they call acremonium and penicillium are the two other types of strains. And then the last one being cladosporium that's the least harmful of the four.
Bob Preston: 22:38 Okay. So to our listeners, you know, don't expect Jason or I to walk into your house and identify these things on the spot. That's not going to happen because we're not, you know, we don't have petri dishes and we're not scientists, but I mean it's just important to understand that there are significant risks to this kind of thing. What about the length of exposure? I think that that might have something to do with kind of health risks as well.
Jason Widmer: 23:04 Correct. Like I'd stated earlier, there's some people that are very hypersensitive and then some people that don't have any health problems or concerns at all. Usually what I always recommend because here at KIC as the owner and founder and probably more prone even being with my ex-military background is attention to detail and health and safety. Yeah. Those are my big.
Bob Preston: 23:28 Being conservative and uh, being thorough.
Jason Widmer: 23:30 Correct. So when you walk into these properties, like I tell my staff, you have to look at it with an eye towards, you've got to treat this like this your mother or one of your loved family members is living here. And that's how we need to treat customer. Sure. Because it portrays, we’ll be listening, listen to the, to the tenant or, or the homeowner's concerns, be receptive. Answer the questions they ask. Because you know, a lot of people, they have a disaster like this, you know, and they're caught off guard, their worlds turned upside down, you know, and most of the time when you get into mold, a lot of times you're displaced from your home. So we were actually removing people out of their house, you know, to get everything mitigated, contained, mitigated, cleaned up with an air clearance and get them back into it.
Bob Preston: 24:22 Yeah. I want to talk about what you just mentioned too in the context of kind of what is the entire process, right. So I, when I think of you, I think of that farmer's commercial, you know, we know a thing or two because we've seen it in a thing or two, right? That's kind of a, the catch phrase for them now. But you have, and um, we're in the property management business. All the properties we bring you in on typically have a tenant. And so for owners of properties who were thinking about becoming landlords out there, just realize if something like this comes down, it's sometimes a very lengthy process. One in which you may not be able to expect your tenant to actually stick it out. And in some cases there could be dehumidifiers, fans, lengthy dry up process, maybe kitchens, bathrooms might be shut down. And it essentially from a practical standpoint is uninhabitable. So yeah, right, exactly. Going back, right. So these things are real. So I think owners have, or property investors just need to be realizing that when they, when they rent to somebody that, you know, there might be cases where you have to allow somebody to break their lease or very minimum go live someplace else temporarily when, when a this is going on in, there might be rent abatement, uh, in the process. So let's go back to my original thought is very general case here. I know everyone's unique. Everyone's different. Leaks come from different places. Damages is different, but run us through the process. Like you said, a to z earlier. Like when you first arrive at a property, you're evaluating something to the point where that property is now ready for full live in, move in, everything's put back together.
Jason Widmer: 25:55 All right, so the call come in either from the property manager or a customer that googled me online or a previous customer. We get a lot of people unfortunately, that have another problem and they, they call us back, which from a business standpoint, that's a great thing because their first experience they had was great and I'm honored that they called me back again. So with that being said, uh, first thing we do, the phone call comes in, we book a time for an inspection that's convenient. If it's an immediate, oh my gosh, which I've had a thousand of them do after hours. 24/7, 365 days out of the year. And the 2:00 AM calls are never at a good time. They're never fun, but it can happen. But, and that's the business we signed up to do. We're in the service or emergency services business, just like a fireman, just like an ambulance. But we're on the other side. So we'll get the call. If it requires immediate water removal, we will deploy a truck out with a team to start moving contents and start extracting water and going through the process.
Bob Preston: 27:15 And this is kind of what you referred to earlier, like sucking up water with vacuums. You have, you guys have water extraction.
Jason Widmer: 27:24 What I will do first is I will introduce myself, get a workout sign, get the team to start extracting the water. And then I myself or one of my estimates will start doing their moisture mapping, taking a detailed forensic documentation report, showing the water damaged areas, showing elevated moisture levels with the readings of our equipment and kind of writing the story with the inspection report for either the homeowner. Most water losses are covered by insurance companies. So we're at that time creating the inspection report for the homeowner and for the insurance carrier.
Bob Preston: 28:06 And I've seen your inspection reports because you've done several for us they are. They're very comprehensive. They have obviously moisture levels, photographs, yes. And then at what point do you need to start exploring? I guess.
Jason Widmer: 28:19 So what we will do first, there's a lot of variables we have to, before we can break into any structure. In the state of California, we can't break dry wall open without testing under two circumstances. One it being 84 or older, if the dwelling is 1984 or older, we'd have to do what they call led and asbestos sampling prior to demo in any building material. The other thing that just came out into law at the beginning of this year, any dwelling apartments that have three or more attached units in one dwelling, you automatically have to get led and asbestos testing, does not matter what age the year was built. Any commercial building now doesn't matter if it was built last year.
Bob Preston: 29:22 Okay, so you guys aren't allowed to just start cutting open walls? No, you have to. You have to get your clearance before.
Jason Widmer: 29:28 Within the state and federal guidelines. So what we'll do, if the loss is on a weekend, labs are closed on the weekends. So what we'll do is I'll get my testing company out. We'll pull samples on a Saturday or a Sunday and get them so that way they're turned into the lab Monday morning. So by Monday afternoon we have results and we can start planning our job outline for the job to go into recovery state. And in the meantime what we will do, we will extract as much water as we can, pull out the wet carpet, pull out the wet pad. If there's laminate flooring that's clicked that we can remove that we just can't break building material. So, and then what we'll do is we'll temporary deploy some dehumidifier, some air movers to start controlling the environment and starting the recovery stage until we get our test results to open and complete. Okay.
Bob Preston: 30:23 Yeah. That starts to dry out. So you're talking about putting fans in to circulate the air dehumidifiers to start pulling water, you know, getting in and out of the area. Let's now say you get your clearance. No asbestosis. So then what I'll do is I have a question before you go there. Sorry to interrupt. What if you get on site and there's visible signs of mold, like right. Sometimes you might be able to see it. Do you take mold samples or you get into that or is that all later?
Jason Widmer: 30:48 It's a very, very good question. Okay. All right. So there's two parts of my inspections. When we go out to do a mold inspection, you have your visual and then you have your air test. So those two, if you can physically see black mold growing on the wall, in my opinion and my professional recommendation, what I recommend to my customers, don't hire the air test company to come out and pretest to tell you that you have mold when you can already physically see it. Right? Because a lot of mold is not covered under insurance companies. So this stuff can get very expensive and very quick. When you get labs and scientists involved, the price just go up. So what we will do if I go out for an inspection and I deem that there's, you know, evidence of a major amount of microbial growth, then what I will do after my inspection is I will go back to my truck, get some plastic, get some tape, and contain the area right over with plastic just so it doesn't continue to keep floating and becoming airborne. Right. Until we can set up for the mitigation.
Bob Preston: 32:07 Right. It keeps the rest of the environment, uh, presumably more healthy from more healthy. Okay. So now thank you for answering that. If you now have the clearance on asbestos led, what are your next steps again? Generically.
Jason Widmer: 32:19 So what we'll do is I tend to team up and we're going to set up what they call a controlled environment, which is a containment. It acts as two purposes. I'm not going to be turning the rest of the house into a dust cloud. I've got a controlled environment. Furthermore, once we start the dry out process, it acts as a drying chamber. So it increases the drying efficiency. So rather than having equipment in your house for eight or nine days like we used to back in the day, our standard dry at now is only three to four days for us.
Bob Preston: 33:00 Right. You're not stuck in the moisture of the Pacific Ocean and you're correct. You're focused. Right. On the end point drying is what I explained to my customers so and it is very, very s we get great results. So you're now at this point cutting open walls, you're pulling out insulation perhaps? I mean yeah, obviously it depends upon what you've found. Correct. Taking sometimes I understand there's this sort of holes that are cut I guess. I don't know if you guys still do it that way. That will potentially.
Jason Widmer: 33:10 So we'll come in and we'll do based on the amount of extent of damage. Usually it requires a one to a two foot flood cut of like of a perimeter of a room if you had impacted damage. If the water loss came from the upstairs, a lot of times there'll be a ceiling above where the water loss occurred. Usually above a bathroom or a big custom thousand gallon aquarium that broke. I've had them all, all shapes and sizes.
Bob Preston: 34:03 That happened to me. We won't go there. It wasn't a thousand, but it was I think 300 and it was salt water. Yeah. Very corrosive. Anyway, we'll talk about that Sunday over a beer. Yeah. You've opened up things, you're starting to dry out. You've got containment sort of, so we have number, if you will.
Jason Widmer: 34:10 We have our drying chamber. We'll do all the demo. After the demo is completed, we'll come in, we'll have a vacuum, the whole area to remove all the dust. Then we will come in with an antimicrobial agent, its an industry standard and even just regular general water losses where we'll spray a disinfectant over all the wood, the floor, all the areas where the water came in contact with something that we take microfiber rags, we'll wipe the whole area down. And it's great you brought that up because a lot of times we opened the walls and there'll be little black spotting on. It's that way at home depot and that that in the industry, what they called is called lumber mold. Okay. It's very, very common. It's not toxic. It's not a health hazard contained inside the wall and it's in the walls. It just happens because when you build a structure, the builders don't stop. They start rough framing. They come back the next day, it's still moist out. They start could be winters raining, yet their objective does it get the structure built not to make sure the moisture content is in the structural building material and that's where the lumber mold comes from.
Bob Preston: 35:35 All right, so you've sprayed it, you've got cleaned. If cleaned it, now we're into three to three to five days or standard drying time. Right, and now you're probably at a point where you could call in for the microbial tests?
Jason Widmer: 35:45 So, if it had mold by then we'll dry the structure because that is one part of the air clearance. When the lab comes in, they check, they check your structural building material to make sure it's within this industry standard guidelines. Prior to even doing the air test. If you have elevated moisture anywhere in your, in your lumber, they'll fail you right on the spot. They won't even take the sample right until you're fully dry. Correct. So we get the dry and then what we will do is if we have an air test, I will send my detail team in and we will tape off all the stud cavities with plastic because we can't have any other influences from addicts or crawl spaces or anything that would give an improper reading or influence the air test in a negative way. So we will contain what we need to contain. Then we will do another half a vacuum of the complete contained area ceilings, floors, walls, stud cavities, a wet wiping. We will deploy a HEPA air scrubber in the containment and run it for another 24 hours and then we will call the lab to come out and do the air test.
Bob Preston: 37:00 Okay. So I would, I would guess at this point, let's say the air test proves you're clean. You're good. So this sort of what you've described now, would you say that's sort of the first phase? That's phase one of the mitigation. Okay. So a, you mentioned earlier insurance, you know more about what insurance will and will not cover. But I think that the typically they will usually cover that sort of initial phase without getting to.
Jason Widmer: 37:27 A lot of older homeowners policies still have what they call a mold writer coverage policy within their homeowners policy. And most of them are between 5,000 and a $10,000 cap. So if we get into a problem and all of a sudden there's a bunch of mold in there too, sometimes we have to go back to the insurance carrier with forensic documentation saying, Hey, we've got some mold in here. It's not just a water loss. Now we've got some additional work and some additional protocols we need to follow to get this clean. Some cases it's covered and unfortunately in some cases it's not covered.
Bob Preston: 38:10 So this is really important for our listeners to make sure what their policy says. Because the other thing I know, uh, cause I've seen a thing or two also is that if it's an emergent leak, in other words, all of a sudden if something happens and finally sudden lost, okay, that's the turbine versus maybe a pinhole leak that's been happening in there. Maybe there was deferred maintenance on the property. You didn't do anything about. If it sits there and open it up and there's dry rot and there's some stuff like this that typically would not be covered. Right. Am I correct about that?
Jason Widmer: 38:42 I've had them both. So usually the dishwasher supply line ruptures, the toilet overflows an angle stop supply line. My shower valve behind my wall failed when I turned it on and now I got water downstairs. Those are all covered. Assuming you act quickly and say yes, you don't act quickly, you could get yourself a very expensive, right. If you don't act on it right away, you do take the chance of your insurance carrier coming back to you and saying, you should have called us right away when this happened. You are way too far down the rabbit hole now and there's so much other damage that was caused by you not notifying us right away when you have the problem, therefore it's neglect on your part and we are going to deny the claim. And now you as the Pacific Beach homeowner are stuck with the full financial responsibility to, of getting your home back to a premium loss condition.
Bob Preston: 39:40 Now when you were describing kind of the process of, you know, sealing and containing the area and all that, and the dehumidifier, I mean the insurance companies, they want you to do it correctly, right? So it may seem a little, uh, overboard, overboard at times, but that is what the insurance companies are paying you to make sure that it gets treated properly, that you're clean. And then, okay, now let's talk about putting it back together. Liability, am I? Yeah. Right. Cause they don't want so, so look, if you've got an insurance claim out there as a homeowner and it's going to be covered, let these guys do it the way they know how to do it. They're, they're professionals. They know it.
Jason Widmer: 40:17 When you hire KIC, that's what we do. We fight, we're very transparent, but we are gonna fight on your behalf to make sure that you are made whole from your insurance carrier because we have the software to write the estimates just like the insurance carriers do. It's called a software program called exact donate. Right. We use it, you're in the insurance industry, you primarily have to use it to be a preferred vendor for insurance carriers. Otherwise it's an estimator nightmare to come to an agreement on a cost.
Bob Preston: 40:59 Okay. So in a typical scenario, this is sort of what we were talking about your what maybe 10 days in at this point in time and that's if everything goes swimmingly smooth.
Jason Widmer: 41:11 That's, you know, the asbestos testing, uh, a general water loss from start to finish is like you said, usually 5 to 10 days and we've got it dry and cleared and ready to be reconstructed.
Bob Preston: 41:25 Okay. So now what do you want to build up back as there are some, there might be some home owner decisions about materials, assuming you've, you've had to tear some stuff out. Correct. There might be insurance limitations on what they're willing to pay for the insurance company. You guys could do it right? That's one option.
Jason Widmer: 41:43 Yes, and we do this all the time. We'll get an eighties kitchen that we rip the whole kitchen out. The insurance company makes us save the face frames and the doors and drawers and they'll pay us money to put it all back together, use the existing door and drawer fronts and then re-stain everything. And a lot of times now my customers will, I'll go, do you want to do it like this and have your old kitchen or do you want to take all that money that the insurance company is paying you and get you a brand new kitchen towards what will probably cost more money. But at least you're at this year upgrading now and now it's, instead of it being $20,000 you might only have to pay $2,500 out of your pocket to have a brand new kitchen.
Bob Preston: 42:18 Okay. All right. So then you guys might do that. Sometimes insurance companies might bring in another contractor to bid, right?
Jason Widmer: 42:42 Yes, I am a preferred network providers. So a lot of times people that aren't on the network that are doing work, a lot of times the big insurance carriers will ask me to come in and do what they call a comp bid to make sure that they are paying what they’re suppose to be paying.
Bob Preston: 43:02 This is how we met you. You actually came in, uh, after Paul Davis came in and did a comp in and end up getting the job and that's how we first met. So, okay, so you know what the insurance companies are going to want from you, you know, kind of the drill. And so, another benefit of using KIC. Okay. God, this has been, I could go on and talk to you about this kind of stuff all day. We could get into fire, we could get into all these other categories. But unfortunately we're at the, kind of the lengthy end of a typical podcast here. So gonna start to close this down. But I guess any last comments, tips, pointers to our listeners, take away from this. We've covered a lot of ground today. Really, really good information. Jason, anything else you'd like to.
Bob Preston: 43:44 I just want to remind your guests. The best piece of advice I guess I can give you or a recommendation is make sure whoever is working in your house is licensed in the state of California, insured, insured, and has a bond. Yes. And source. Whether that's Google and go to the CSLB website, type in the contractor's license number and it will pull the whole history of the contractor up that you are thinking about letting work in your house. Yeah. Don't hire your handyman in a different down the street and in the state of California, and it's one of the biggest abused rules there is, but the law states that any non-licensed contractor cannot do any work on any property to exceed $500 that means the total value of the job on the property in a whole can only be $500. Right. And I see it all the time and I've gotten a lot of floods over the years where a handyman will come in and think something and the homeowner doesn't know because they're not the contractor. They just think this guy is, knows what he's doing. And unfortunately he doesn't. And I've had cases where I've had handyman due north of $100,000 in damage to their not licensed and they're probably not insured and they're not now as unfortunately you have no recourse to fall back on.
Bob Preston: 45:17 So listen, if any of our listeners wanted to get in touch with you or KIC, how would they go about doing that?
Jason Widmer: 45:23 Yes. Uh, there's a few ways you can reach me. I have a website, my website is kicrestoration.com or please, if you want to email for all you emailers out there, my email address is info@kicrestoration.com or please, you can give my corporate headquarters office a call our office hours are from 7:00 AM to 4:30 PM Monday through Friday. And that number is (858) 859-1998.
Bob Preston: 45:59 Wow. Well Jason, thank you so much for taking time. I know you're a busy guy and for you to get over here to our office and into our studio, very much appreciated and fabulous episode. Really good information you've passed on to our listeners. Well, that will conclude today's show. I would like to make a quick plug to post a positive review. If you can please take the time for our property management brainstorm podcast that we'll make our day and pay it forward and encourage more great guests like Jason to come onto our show and be with us for your listening. Pleasure. Thank you to everyone joining in the Proper
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