Do what you need to do to get rid of the mold. Mold and fungi are a very serious issue to someone being treated with chemo. My good friend passed away from a fungus in his lungs as a result of his weakened state getting chemo. His job, prior to being hospitalized, was in a lab raising fish and there was a lot of mold/fungi. The doctors advised him to leave this job.

Get the word around in your community that you need some help - some professional carpenter will probably help you with this at no labor cost. I know when my friend's family needed help around his house when he was in the hospital, many people (including myself) were more than happy to help out.

My heart goes out to you.

Can you create a barrier to the fungi/mold on the INSIDE of the wall with plastic and duct tape?

I'm thinking of this as a temporary solution so that you can concentrate on your daughter's needs right now.

Perhaps the definitive fix can wait until the chemo is finished and she is no longer vulnerable.

Do only what you must to make the house safe for your daughter. The rest can wait.

just a temperary fix have you tried putting thompsons water seal on the outside stucco a gallon will go pretty far on the wall i couldn't tell if you said that the stucco was leaking or the window if the window is leaking the might be able to pull the window out and recaulk it.good luck and god bless

thanks for your reply, my daughter is doing better, we have pass the heavy duty stage of the chemo, and we are now on the "maintenance" part, still no construction and/or dust (and other restrictions)

no I have not, I did try something called radonseal three years ago, before the diagnosis, when we first discovered the leak, but that did not work. and according to the manufacturer, radonseal will repel other coatings too, as well as water, but since it did not repel water, or the water is not coming from the stucco, I am looking for other solutions.

what we temporarily did was to not allow her into the room, and put a "hyper hepa" filter in the room and run it at all times. and fortunately, we only had 3" of rain this year in the Los Angeles area.

however, now that she is done with the heavy duty chemo, and her immune system is picking up a little, she really wants to get back to her old life as much as possible, and next winter might be much wetter... so I would like to do something this summer.

thanks again,

-avi

You will need to remove the windows to find the cause of the leak---if that is where the water gets in. If the water is coming in somewhere else---ceiling/walls---the problem is in the roof.

It might be much less expensive---and faster, to remove ithe drywall and start that way. Any mold contaminated drywall/insulation will need to be completely removed to be certain it is all gone.

There is new mold proof lumber and mold resistant sheet rock on the market. Just in case that might help.

But, finding the cause of the leak has to be done---you can't fix what you can't find.

thanks,

I actually thought of doing it from the inside.

i.e. taking the dry wall out, and putting some sort of water proofing tar, like the stuff they use on roofs, all over the inside... studs and all.

what do you think? it will make the wall "unbreathable" is that bad? on the other hand there is supposed to be a layer of tar paper under the stucco... which is visible after taking some of the drywall out. so smearing tar goop all over the inside might not be too bad...

I agree about finding the location, I think I know where it is coming from.

from a water hose test, the water is coming from above the window, not directly from the window, but a foot or so above, I worked my way up with the water hose.

I'll redo the water hose test again on a hot dry weekend, just to make sure I know where it is coming from.

thanks again,

-avi

The smell of roofing tar or any kind of tar-based sealant is going to permeate the wall and will be far worse for you and your daughter than any construction dust you might generate from the outside.

Honestly (and I have a LOT of experience with this, unfortunately), I would bit the bullet and remove the stucco from the outside around the window, reflash the window, correctly place 2 layers of tarpaper, and restucco. It won't create much dust on the inside - we did our entire house and there wasn't much mess at all inside. If you're worried, you can use poly plastic to tape off that entire wall inside to contain the dust. Feel free to email me if you want more info - I can tell you what we did exactly, and I have lots of articles, etc. that show the correct way to reflash/restucco. We had a contractor remove our stucco, sheathing, and insulation, we did our own mold remediation on the studs and drywall, and the contractor put everything back. Like I said...lots of experience....

Hope your daughter is well on her way to a full recovery.

Here is a link that might be useful: Our leaking stucco saga....

wow, that looks really bad what you had, much worse than our wall, (also, in Southern California we do not get as much rain)

did you have to pay for all the repairs? looks extensive and expensive...

you are correct, the best way to go is to redo the stucco, but I do not think that I can afford to do it right now. maybe after my daughter is better and my wife can get a job. meanwhile I'll hope for another dry winter (this winter we only got sporadic rain, about 3" total the entire season)

and will be even more expensive if there is a need to take out the windows, these are monster windows, 12ft x 6ft, and we have two of them, one on top of the other, no floor in between the wall height is 18-19 ft on the inside.

though it seems that you did the repairs without taking out the windows.

however, in my case, I also suspect the window frame. it is vinyl, and it is cracked in the corners (when they mounted this monster windows, they probably bent/flexed and destroyed the frame. I did put a lot of caulking in the corner of the frame, and it did seem to help a bit. I think we actually had two leaks, one from frame, and the other from the stucco on the other side of the window. however, water seem to travel along the beam from one side of the window to the other.

by the way, I was not thinking of roofing tar, but more of the synthetic elastomeric seals. but you are correct, might as well do it right this time around.

yes, please do send any info you have to: avi [at] carmi [dot] us

My daughter is doing sort of OK, seems that the maintenance chemo is too strong for her and she got anemic, going to get a transfusion tomorrow, and reduce the chemo. hope it will help her feel better (while still strong enough to fight the leukemia)

thanks,

-avi