Q. Water leak to personal home Jan 2010. Professionally removed sheetrock, insulation cabinets 35K worth of rehab. Sat dried out with commercial vacs, commercial cleaners on wood studs. etc All wet wood was dreid professionally for 5 days, washed and scrubbed with bleach. New sheetrock insulation etc. All old hauled away. New carpet new kithcen and baths yes the damage was extensive. home sat "SHUT" up with no Hvac heat or air for 9 mnths.Home sold. Buyer asked for Air quality test. It failed. MOLD SPORES EVERY WHERE. I am cleaning today with HEPA vac and washing everywhere with Hydrogen peroxide. RE test on Tuesday of next week. DId not runing air cause major spores ? Am I going to have to possibly retear out walls again and start over ? Why did professional contractor not tell me to turn air on ? DO most professional contractors have liabilty insurance for redo work ? Or am I just scared of another 35 k rehab over spores ? HOw does the LAb air quality guys and gals test for mold in the walls ? Jill Cremens 678 524 4112 Cremensjill@yahoo.com

A. I would also get the duct work and furnace clean and certified it is mold free.If there is mold in the wall it will show up on the drywall.If it was there and cleaned and only bleach was used it will come back. once it is cleaned and removed properly the entire house needs to be professionally cleaned and painted.If there is carpet any spores are in there too Also run the heat up to dry out the house even rent heaters if you must.Good Luck As for the contractor if he did the work and the house was left closed up for months unless you can prove he missed something he is not liable.If he was a mold specialist and gave you a certificate the you have a claim!

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Q. I am opening a quick service restaurant and need a new hot water heater. Very small - less than 1,200 sq. ft. mostly carry out. 40 seats max. Two rest rooms, 3 compartment sink and one hand sink in kitchen. No dishwasher. Health Department more interested in recovery gallon per hour. Must be 105 degrees min. Is there a difference between commercial and residential in hot water heaters? Does Home Depot sell both?

A. 50 gallon should be more than enough. most heaters are now energy efficient and quick recovery. Most home water heaters run at 120 degrees so that is not a problem. Unless you own the building, I would go with a tank since you will not be able to remove an expensive tankless if you move out.

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Q. I am specifically interested in the SETS and American Home brands and would like to know if anyone has them and how they do or do not like them. Also, I am interested in information on other brands if you have them. Thanks. I NEED THIS INFO ASAP AS OUR WATER HEATER BROKE THIS WEEKEND AND NEEDS IMMEDIATE REPLACEMENT.

A. Eemax is a widely used electric tankless water heater in the commercial industry. They are refered to as IWH or Instantaneous Water Heater. However 1. If you are replacing an existing electrical instantaneous water eater, make sure the power and voltage match the existing one you are removing. 2. If you are working on your primary residence or a high hot water usage and you are trying to replace a tank style water heater - stop. Stay with the tank style. Really, only instantaneous gas water heaters are recommended for the primary residential environment.

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Q. I am thinking of installing a tankless water heater in my home.( 4 bedrooms 2 1/2 Bath) There are so many makes on the market and every installer recommends a different make. Does anyone have experience with this system and give me the pros and cons of their make.

A. Rinnai Water Heater is your best I have had several diffrent brands from Lowes, Home Depot, Ferguson, etc.. The reason we go through so many is we use them for commercial diving.. pumping hotwater down to divers to keep them warm.. we put nasty water through them that clogs them and causes failure, we also run them 24 hours a day until the project is complete and usually in the middle of winter outdoors, only one brand so far has taken the abuse the outside weather, and the continous use. Rinnai Water Heaters.. this unit has been dropped thrown out of the back of trucks, the water inside was not drained once and frozen we had to heat it up and thaw it out and it started right up.

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Q. I've fitted several wetrooms with a tiled finish, but never done the more commercial/disabled vinyl finish with the curved upstands, hot welded joints, etc. Anyone direct me to a good system, manufacturer or installation guide?

A. Check out this link. http://www.tarkett-commercial.com/floors/site/en-fr/topic/inst_wet_floors/topics.asp Have done loads of these - the only thing to watch is that you create an adequate fall to the drain, otherwise the water will end up in the next room, and you want a non-slip vinyl finish.

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Q. I'm a do it your selfer. I was looking into buying a used commercial carpet extractor for home use and found one for sale by an individual which was modified to also clean chimneys and air vents. He says it has microfilters to prevent contaminants from leaving the vacuum. Is this too good to be true?

A. Yup. Considering that a carpet extractor is designed to suck wet from the carpet and dump it into water and thus has no filters, adding them would be a mess and absurd. A heavy dry vacuum with microfilters added to regular filters would make more sense.

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Q. Men and materiael had arrived- taking up strips around heavy items that had been left in place. After carpet up, straight hoe was used to remove old pieces of pad stuck to the floor and staples left in floor. As this was going on , I noticed MANY places where pad had turned black / green "melted " to the wood floor and not all coming loose. Of course , much "dust" flying ! I asked what was going to be used to mop the floor with before laying new pad and carpet. " Mop ??" I was told - " Lady we do not mop- we sweep/vacuum up the pieces ,lay the new pad and carpet period" A halt was immediate - these floors were nasty and gummy in places and lots of UNK materiael along floor where baseboards had been. I requested the owner be called when crew refused to mop . He informed me any thing left on the floor would be "covered up " by pad and carpet and not to worry about it. He said his crew did not mop. I said no go until floor vacuumed extremely well and mopped with at least a Lysol with bleach or Mr. Clean product. Best of what was available here I thought -20 mile to a Commercial Supplier He agreed to give me time- 30 minutes -clock still running for crew - to find some one to do so. Luckily, I was able to find a local handy man who would come right now , bought mops xx buckets,scrubbers and supplies, . Note- my cousin, 83 already had persistent dry cough and SOB problems, yet undiagoisned at that time, There had been a fire in the house and all repainted and central ducts cleaned also along with new flooring in all uncarpeted areas. Plan made all could tolerate- that vacuum emptied many times and also so much swept from cracks and along base board. The mop water was filthy immediately , changed out xxx and mops too, Rinsed in mild bleach water. Some of the materiael stuck to floor was gooey black, smelled nasty and took a lot of work to remove! My questions are.... was that mold from old pad falling apart down thru time or a fungus or ? did we do enough ? what may have been stirred up from carpet and pad removal ? would it have been better if I had just let them cover it all back up without major sweeping/ mopping and getting so much into the air ? We know now she has Pulmonary Fibrosis and on Oxygene-3% surface appearance of carpet was not bad in any of the 5 carpeted rooms meticilous house keeper vacuumed twice a week and shampooed twice a year at least Please tell me if correct thing done and what problems if any may come along from under that carpet that would affect her breathing ? Just could not see leaving the filth plus what ever had settled in because of the house being smoked so bad! I did not mean to imply in any way her Pulmonary Fibrosis was caused by the removing of the old carpet . Her Pulmonologist stated she has had it for many years and is just progressing faster now. The men were very well paid indeed. Had no objection to that.

A. You went extremely overboard with your request to vacuum and mop the floor. What was left on the floor was old sticky pieces of carpet pad and glue, but after talking to my brother (he's laid carpet for over 20 years), you should never have wasted your time and especially not theirs. Your cousin is not sick from that old carpet being removed. Besides, you were the one that stirred up all the dust by doing what you did. You should have just left well enough alone. That has nothing to do with that. It was all going to get covered by brand new pad and carpet anyway. Those people probably thougth you were completely off your rocker and don't be surprised if you get a bill for their time that you wasted.

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Q. Just chatting about this with a friend, trying to evaluate some different options. He already has a Canon 5D II and feels that the external mic input is just not going to cut it for serious amateur level movie recording. I'm considering buying a 5D II in the next 6 months or so (I already have a good selection of high end Canon glass and an older DSLR) and starting mucking about with making some music videos. He's looking at doing small scale commercial movie work. We live on opposite sides of the planet, so we won't be working together. Both of us are well familiar with professional level photo editing and video editing software, but as we are both photographers before videographers, we are a bit behind on the times with audio equipment. The thinking is that if the 5D audio quality is insufficient, we would just use externally recorded audio source. Now for his uses, he's been looking at portable solutions. Stuff with batteries that can record very high quality audio on to either a HD or SD. He found one with a 40GB HD, but really, that just doesn't seem modern enough (both of us shoot multiple 16-32GB CF and SD cards and burn through 250GB+ hard drives like water). Also, it doesn't seem to have battery power options. So what would you recommend for audio mixing and digital recording? I've actually been pretty happy with inputting directly into my PDA with Resco Audio Recorder at 192kbps. I have a pretty basic Roland Micro Cube which can run for hours on 6 AA batteries and can handle clean audio from an instrument and vocals. My mike of choice is a Shure SM58. As far as I'm concerned though, I'm just mucking about. What is out there for 4 channel mixers that can be battery powered? What is a pro level recording device that works on batteries, can record at very high quality and can deal with removable media? Input please? Thanks. thanks zook. yeah, I'm personally only planning on doing music videos. Max length is probably about 5 minutes or so. The Edirol 4 channel was actually one thing that we had been discussing, but the price is a tad steep. Now the only other question is - for long duration vids, will digital recording keep consistent enough time that I can just sync sound up at the beginning of the clip and have it stay in sync for several minutes? I've had problems with this in editing from tape before.

A. Although the 5DII can shoot 1080i HD video it appears that the audio capabilities are quite limiting so you will need a versatile portable recorder to make up for the shortcomings. Unfortunately one of the key elements to using a field audio recorder is the ability to sync your audio with your video, a feature which the 5D does not have so you will have to do your best to position the audio in the time line so that it will be synchronized with the video. Also, you need to realize that the 5D II is limited to 12 minutes of HD video recording so long clips will not be possible. In any case, here are some recommendations for audio field recordres from best/priciest to simplest. Your best option would be something like the "Roland R-44" Four-Channel Portable Field Recorder: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/542280-REG/Edirol_Roland_R_44_R_44_Solid_State_Four_Channel_Portable.html#features It has all the bells and whistles and can record unto SD media and is battery and/or AC powered. The advantage to this recorder is that it is a four channel recorder which means you can record up to 4 audio channels independently. It also has four XLR mic inputs giving you total quality and control in field recording. This is useful when you are doing interviews and need to isolate different audio sources. In post you can place each audio on its own track and process it separately. It also has a built in stereo mic pair to capture ambient sound. If you are looking for something simpler and less expensive, the "Ikey Audio" portable recorder is your next choice. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/457042-REG/Ikey_Audio_IKEYPLUS_iKEY_Plus_Portable_USB.html#features It has a USB plug and can record unto any USB device such as flash drives and iPods. It does not have balanced inputs but the two RCA line inputs will do just fine with an additional Direct Box. It only has two channels so it would not be ideal for multiple audio sources. Edited to add: There are ways to record two sources on a stereo only recorder and that is to use two mics, each receiving a signal from each stereo pan. You then bring the audio file into a software that can split the stereo signal into two mono tracks and you have two independent audio sources. Lastly, for a much simpler solution you can't beat the "HHB DRM85-CLI FlashMic" http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/529796-REG/HHB_DRM85_LI_C_DRM85_CLI_FlashMic_Handheld_Microphone.html This is a simple battery operated microphone which has built-in flash memory so no inputs are necessary. It also has a built-in preamp so you can control the gain right on the mic. Battery operated and USB connection makes it simple and ideal for interview type single source field recording. Again, with no sync capabilities you will need to record is short bursts with small audio segments. Then you will need to drop those audio clips into your video editor and manually align them to the video which can be quite tedious. Edited to add: I guess the above does not matter much if all you will be doing is music videos. Good luck

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