Mold-safe & 100% fragrance free home in NE Cape Coral, FL

We will soon be selling our one year old 3b/2ba home in Cape Coral. I have pretty severe chemical sensitivities, as well as CIRS. I react very strongly and quickly to mold as well. When touring homes, ours was the only home I didn’t react to in terms of VOCs or mold, and I believe it has actually gotten even better since we have lived here in terms of the efforts we have taken to mitigate both VOCs and mold.

I can not figure out how to upload our ERMI/HERTSMI-2 results, but you can email me at beth2okangen@gmail.com and I will share them with you and any other information you’d like.

Some facts about the home: all tile floors (low VOC), whole home reverse osmosis system, zero fragrance or toxic products used anywhere on the property, whole home dehumidifier installed in HVAC, as well as UV lights on the HVAC coils to prevent growth and a hypoair bipolar ionizer inside the HVAC. Our furniture and any decor is also low VOC and will have the potential to be included with the home for free (note – we do not have a couch right now). The reason we are willing to leave our furniture/wall art is that we are going to be living out of an RV and will not need or be able to take any furniture. We also believe it could help a family who is fleeing mold but does not have the funds to completely start over with all new furniture, which was our situation when we moved here and we know how tough it is to come up with about $25,000 to replace everything. We would be able to include our leak alarm system as well. We have leaks alarms under just about every sink and appliance.

For complete transparency, we are not fleeing our home – which is safe, but we ARE fleeing SWFL as we do not feel this area is safe for extreme canaries like ourselves. Although we do great in our home, we struggle with just about every other aspect of living in this area. We have lost 3 cars to mold here, and we struggle/react in just about every store, office, grocery store, and friends and family’s homes down here. Mold is extremely prevalent in this area and it is not the ideal area for canaries. Some canaries are forced to live here though, which is who our house is for.

Negatives: neighbors in the neighborhood use fragranced laundry products and at times I cannot be outside. Thankfully, these smells never permeate into our home. Also, the air handler is located in the unconditioned garage which is not ideal. Also, Cape Coral is in the long slow process of moving everyone on well water onto city water, and some areas run very low on water during droughts – but we are ‘lucky’ in our home in the sense that our particular corner of NE Cape is blessed to be on the “better” part of the aquifer that is at a much lower risk of running out of water, so we do not have the ultra strict restrictions on lawn watering that other areas do. Our area is the absolute last area slatted to be switched over to city water so that switch is not expected to happen for another 35-40 years. But when the time comes to switch to city water, there is a large expense attached to the process. I don’t know the exact amount but I have heard about $30,000. So, (only if you plan to stay here for 35-40) years that is something you would need to budget for.

History: When we first moved in, the air handler was sweating which led to a small amount of growth on the HVAC coils and air handler insulation. We had everything remediated/cleaned by a CIRS- literate HVAC company, replaced the insulation, they cleaned the ducts and registers as well, and small particle cleaned out home after. We installed the UV lights and the bipolar ionizer as preventatives and we have also been running a dehumidifier in our garage ever since which completely stops the air handler from sweating. My understanding though is that it would be preferable to move the air handler inside, perhaps into the laundry room in order to do away with this concern all together. Since we are planning to move, it doesn’t make sense to us to do this now, however, if a buyer was interested in our home, we would be willing to include in the contract that we would have the air handler moved indoors and we would work the cost of this into the sale price so it would be rolled into your mortgage instead of a separate cost. We are willing to do the same kind of thing for installing a fence – if that is a non-negotiable for your family, we can have it installed and work the cost into the sales price.

We will be having professional pictures taken soon and I will upload them when we have them. I know how hard it is to find safe housing for MCS and mold, especially in this area, so I truly hope someone who values and needs these things and will maintain the home to keep it this way will be able to inherit our home.