
Mercury Spill - luu
http://www.jefftk.com/p/mercury-spill
======
ccvannorman
It may have cost you $50,000 but you now have +50 karma on HN and rising. Some
would say a bargain! ;-]

In all seriousness, cool story, glad you're okay, and this makes me think
"insurance" as a business needs to be re-thought entirely. How many times has
it happened that insurance companies weasel out of paying? Objectively you
might think THAT was their primary job.

~~~
nostromo
Insurance is such a scam. A friend of mine made two claims within about five
years: once for water damage and once for a burglary.

The insurance company agreed that she was covered. So they paid her and then
dropped her. No big deal, right? Wrong. Once you've made a claim or two
against your insurance, it can be very hard to get any new insurance company
to cover you. She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way
up -- negating her original claims.

Did you know every claim you make goes into a CLUE report? It's like a credit
report, but few people know about it. Once you make "too many claims" \- even
if they're legit and beyond your control, you become an insurance pariah.

Because of this, I avoid making any claims unless absolutely required.

~~~
chimeracoder
> She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way up --
> negating her original claims.

This isn't a scam at all. That's exactly what you'd expect from insurance.
Insurance isn't there to save you money. In fact, the expected value of an
insurance plan is _always_ going to be negative on an infinite time
horizon[0].

The whole point of an insurance plan is to _smooth risk_ : instead of the
small possibility of a catastrophic failure, you take the relative certainty
of having a fixed monthly payment (your premium). At a very high level, it's
sort of similar to taking on consumer debt (credit card debt): in the long
run, you'll _always_ pay more than if you just paid cash up-front, because of
the interest. The difference between credit cards and insurance is that you
don't know when the expensive event is going to happen, so you agree to
_always_ pay the monthly payment regardless of what happens. And while banks
charge interest based on the risk that you won't pay back and the opportunity
cost of that money, insurers charge you a premium in exchange for the luxury
of not having to guess whether next month will have an expensive event or not.

In your friend's case, the fact that she had two claims adjusted her relative
risk profile, which means that her premium had to adjust accordingly.

[0] If it weren't, there'd be no point to going into business as an insurer,
because you'd be guaranteed to make an operating loss. The only way you'd be
able to make any money is based on the investments that you make, at which
point you might as well eliminate the insurance side of your business and
operate as a bank. (Interestingly, this is why the relationships between banks
and insurers are so close in many countries, and also why most insurance
markets - car insurance and health insurance[1] being two notable exceptions -
have surprisingly slim profit margins).

[1] Health insurance is a special case because, strictly speaking, it's not
really "insurance", but that's a whole separate discussion.

~~~
hyperbovine
What? The point of insurance is to _pool risk_. The expected value of
insurance is _not_ automatically negative. Look up the term "actuarially
fair". Yes, there is moral hazard in insurance and it is sometimes necessary
to exclude bad actors to prevent markets from unraveling, but to not to the
extent which has become common in many sectors. Your whole post reads like an
specious apology for bad behavior in the insurance industry.

~~~
runako
> The expected value of insurance is not automatically negative.

I'm curious how this math works. In my (quite likely incomplete) mental model
of insurance, there are only a few terms: premiums, payouts, profits. It would
seem that they have to balance. So if you pool risk, you are summing the
payouts. Those payouts are covered by the sum of premiums. Any profit is the
sum of premiums minus the sum of payouts.

Profits = Premiums - Payouts

Is this right so far?

Because then it seems that the expected value of insurance to the customer is
the negated value of the expected profit of the insurer. Put another way: if
the expected value of insurance is _not_ negative, shouldn't the insurer raise
premiums or exit the business?

Again, I know next to nothing about insurance and I'm asking to learn.

~~~
Retric
Insurance companies need a lot of cash on hand to cover low probability
events. However, they can invest this money, so things like life insurance
where risks increase over time but the premiums are fixed, can end up with a
higher average payout than insurance premium, the difference being time value
of money. In other words you end up paying the opportunity cost, but not
nessisarily a nominal cost in the long term.

------
mirimir
That's arguably overkill for domestic contamination by elemental and inorganic
mercury. Even that family in that contaminated house was probably at far
greater risk from methylmercury[0] in predatory fish. So cutting predatory
fish from the diet would have arguably been more cost effective. But it's hard
to say. CDC[1] is more nuanced on the topic than EPA[2]. And I do tend to
trust CDC.

[0]
[http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html](http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html)

[1]
[http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf)

[2]
[http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html](http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html)

~~~
brianpan
They have a 1.5 year-old that undoubtably puts everything in his/her mouth.

Even the CDC factsheet says the impact of low levels of exposure is unknown.
And we're not talking about the milligrams in a CFL bulb, a speck of mercury.
This was _cups_ of mercury.

~~~
vixen99
Impact unknown! Meanwhile many American dentists install mercury amalgam
(about 50% Hg) in tooth cavities inches from the brain where it will sit for
years on end. How can anyone support this with a straight face. The response
is something like 'yes,we know mercury is a devastating neurotoxin but it's
tightly bound in the amalgam and there is no proven statistical relationship
to say it's dangerous'.

~~~
jvdh
Haven't amalgam fillings been phased out yet? At least in the Netherlands most
dentists now use composites to fill cavities.

Wikipedia seems to suggest that the performance of those is comparable to
amalgam:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_composite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_composite)

Cost also seems to be comparable, where composites may even be cheaper than
amalgam, because of all the environmental issues surrounding the amalgam
material.

~~~
w__m
In Poland you only get composite if you pay extra, National Health Fund
(mandatory insurance) gives you the amalgam. And a month of waiting, where
time is crucial. And no anastheatics for drilling. SLAVIC FUN!

~~~
Cthulhu_
Yeah, I believe it's the same in the UK. I don't think the month of waiting is
too bad, cavities take a long time to develop. A checkup every 6 months should
be enough to prevent them from developing too far.

~~~
phpnode
In my experience NHS dentists in the UK will give you composites if the
filling is in a visible area. Also, they _do_ provide anaesthetic!

------
steven777400
I wonder how this kind of thing plays out for people that don't have anywhere
near $50k available. I'm assuming since the company worked first and then
invoiced, that the options would be either (1) sell the house and use the
proceeds (assuming equity exists) to pay off the cleaning, or (2) declare
bankruptcy.

If the company were to require pre-payment for cleaning, then it's really just
down to either (1) abandon and have the bank seize the house, or (2) sell the
house for pennies on the dollar to an investor.

Things like this (well, not this exotic, but like a busted sewer line which
could cost $20k to replace) used to keep me up at night after we "bought" a
house. I've found I can rest by mentally reframing the mortgage as rent and
knowing that an "out" (strategic default) is always there if something goes
very expensively wrong.

~~~
prodmerc
(3) clean it up with a dustpan :-D

Seriously, mercury is not dangerous unless inhaled or ingested. Suit up with a
cheap hazmat and gloves and clean away...

~~~
mingabunga
Yeha, I'm a bit dumbfounded about the calling of the fire dept, the reaction
and so on. I would have just figured out where it was coming from and cleaned
it up myself with some gloves and a dustpan.

~~~
Xorlev
And if you miss any, your young daughter is going to find it. Seriously isn't
something you want to mess with.

~~~
hliyan
This happened to me when I was about 9, when I didn't know what mercury was.
There was a few droplets on the floor and I ended up poking it with my index
finger for a few minutes. To this day I don't know what the medical effects
were.

~~~
beeboop
Unless you licked your finger afterwards, nothing.

~~~
alextgordon
Even if you lick your finger, if it is elemental mercury then probably nothing
either. But don't try it!

~~~
cytzol
Just curious: what would it need to be for it to do something? Not that I'm
planning to...

~~~
beeboop
Atomized somehow so that it would be inhaled.

------
fragsworth
I had a physics class in a community college that had us handling open
containers of mercury for our experiments. It was maybe 15 years ago.

Someone in one of the classes managed to knock one of the jars over, and
mercury spilled everywhere on the floor. Either the students hid their spill
from the staff, or the staff just had some janitors do a simple sweeping of
it, because I noticed spheres of mercury everywhere in that classroom
throughout the semester.

I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently.

The professor also seemed to be going crazy, which suggests to me that this
happened more than once in the past and he was suffering from the effects of
mercury poisoning.

~~~
cjbprime
> I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently.

As the post mentions, the world at large didn't realize that vapors from
mercury spills are toxic until recently.

~~~
newjersey
Um, someone (not saying I) may or may not have played with mercury from a
broken thermometer as a child. Is that person (not necessarily I) a walking
health hazard? How does this work?

~~~
duaneb
Short term exposure isn't much of an issue, unless you inhale or ingest it.
(Simply playing with it isn't going to send out massive amounts of vapor; it's
not super volatile.) The real fear is that it seeps into a hard to clean place
and provides a steady stream of vapor over a long time.... basically what the
OP illustrated about his house.

Previous generations had no qualms playing with it or lighting it on fire in
science class. While it might not have been super healthy, we also don't have
a generation of mad hatters.

------
jpatokal
_So people would use a mercury seal to put pressure on the water, allowing the
system to run hotter without boiling._

I didn't quite follow this part. Where in the system does the mercury go, how
does it add pressure, and does it have anything to do with Wikipedia's
description of using mercury in glass-to-metal seals?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to-
metal_seal#Mercury_se...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to-
metal_seal#Mercury_seal)

~~~
fsavard2
This page describes that system, I think:

[http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-
water-h...](http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-water-
heating-continued.shtml)

(the "Honeywell Heat Generator")

~~~
cbr
I've now linked that from the article; thanks!

(I read that page when I was first reading about this the night of the spill,
but had forgotten about it. Holohan is amazingly knowledgeable about old
heating systems.)

~~~
tadfisher
Did your home inspector note the upfeed system in the pre-purchase report? Did
you sign a waiver limiting the inspector's liability?

~~~
cbr
Just reread the inspection report; they didn't notice it.

------
grecy
A friend of mine has a "mercury blob maze" [1] where you have a little blob of
mercury trapped in a plastic container and you have to get it through the maze
- it was fun to use at different temperatures, as the blob would want to break
apart when hot, or not move at all when cold. Shaking it turns it into 300
blobs.

Upon seeing it, my science teacher dad had some cool stories about playing
with Mercury 20-30 years ago in high school classes. They used to take it out
and handle it, no big deal :)

[1] Like these
[https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X)

~~~
jandrese
Elemental Mercury isn't especially dangerous though. People freak out over the
word "Mercury" but forms like that aren't bioavailable for the most part and
are reasonably safe. I wouldn't go breathing the fumes for extended periods of
time, but holding a pool in your hand in science class isn't going to kill
you.

That's why it's a bit frustrating to read stories like this where the cleanup
crew goes overboard and racks up tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills
for a simple spill.

~~~
cbr
Breathing the fumes for an extended period of time? That's exactly what we
would have had without the remediation.

~~~
atomicUpdate
Not necessarily, since there was nothing to vaporize it. He even shows an old
picture he'd taken of it where the drops had sat undisturbed for so long that
they had a chance to oxidize.

~~~
cbr
The techs measured vapor at 37,000 ng/m3 after the first day of cleanup, at
which point there was no longer any easily visible mercury. Like water,
mercury doesn't need something to vaporize it; you just end up with some vapor
as long as there's liquid present.

(Post author here.)

------
gwern
What's really crazy is that apparently some people have the idea that mercury
is an 'investment' and will voluntarily keep jugs of it in their home:
[http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/Attachmen...](http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/AttachmentA.pdf)

~~~
kragen
That document says, "People often keep jars of mercury in their homes because
they think that mercury is worth money, like liquid silver. In reality,
mercury is nearly worthless, but the cleanup cost after a large spill easily
can exceed the cost of a home."

[http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs...](http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs-2015-mercu.pdf)
gives the price of mercury as US$1850 per 76-pound flask, up from US$1076 in
2010. That's US$54/kg, or US$730 per liter at 13.5 g/cc (cf.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29)).
Silver is currently
[http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html](http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html)
US$15.76 per troy ounce, which is US$506.70/kg or US$5315 per liter at 10.49
g/cc (cf.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver)).
Silver also has the advantage that it won't make you sick if you spill it.

As a point of comparison, copper is sufficiently expensive that people steal
copper pipes and wires from unoccupied houses. Copper costs US$2.41/lb.
(US$5.31/kg), less than 1% of the cost of mercury. The junk man in the slum
where I'm going this afternoon will pay you AR$35/kg for it, which is
US$2.23/kg, which is enough to incentivize the cartoneros to break the yokes
off any CRT discarded on the street within hours. (He doesn't list a price for
mercury on his sign.)

So "nearly worthless" seems like an exaggeration — mercury is worth more per
liter than any other commodity substance you're likely to have in your house
other than silver and Freon-22 — but it also doesn't seem like a really smart
investment, especially if you have kids.

~~~
gwern
I'm not sure it's exaggeration. Who do you _sell_ your jug of mercury to at
$1850/flask...? Would any scientific or industrial consumer want to buy random
flasks of unknown quality from laymen at fair prices? Just quoting bulk
commodity prices for mercury is like noting that a particular diamond costs
you $2k at the department store and assuming that you must then have an asset
worth $2k.

~~~
kragen
Your analogy is a little off: $2k at the department store is not $2k in the
Antwerp diamond markets. The USGS prices are for wholesale markets, not retail
mercury.

The recycling shop in the slum has to deal with the same issues with the
copper they handle. My price from his sign was out of date, perhaps due to our
world-leading inflation: he pays AR$45 per kilo, which is US$2.87. The
difference between that US$2.87/kg and the US$5.31/kg that CME copper
contracts trade at is exactly the cost of converting random chunks of copper
of unknown quality bought from laymen into copper acceptable to scientific and
industrial consumers, plus his profit.

If you're not a neoliberal, you could reasonably argue that it's unfair that
the junk man pays you only half of the bulk commodity price for your copper.
This does not defeat the point that the price he pays is sufficient to
motivate people to aggressively recycle copper. In fact, even the AR$8/kg he
pays for aluminum is high enough that _cartoneros_ remove heatsinks from
discarded computers.

Maybe whoever handles mercury recycling in the US is willing to pay somewhere
between 25% and 50% of the bulk commodity price for jugs of metallic mercury
of unknown purity. In fact, maybe they'd be willing to pay even more: maybe
removing the impurities from a kilogram of impure mercury only costs one to
five times as much as removing the impurities from a kilogram of impure
copper, not ten times as much. The USGS report I linked notes that more than
50 companies in the US currently collect mercury for recycling from "Mercury-
containing automobile convenience switches, barometers, compact and
traditional fluorescent lamps, computers, dental amalgam, medical devices,
thermostats, and some mercury-containing toys," and even more companies
collect metallic mercury.

…that said, my attempts to find offers in the US on the internet to buy
mercury for recycling for anything approaching US$54/kg are not finding
anything. At all. So maybe the EPA guy is, in practice, correct.

~~~
gwern
> $2k at the department store is not $2k in the Antwerp diamond markets. The
> USGS prices are for wholesale markets, not retail mercury.

A _retail consumer_ investor, who is storing it in their home, is paying
_retail consumer_ prices. They aren't showing up at the cinnabar mines and
tapping a spigot for bulk prices. My diamond analogy is exactly correct.
That's why it's a scam: because you are paying inflated prices for something
you cannot possibly sell at anything remotely like what you paid for it, and
in the case of mercury, it's worse than if you bought some diamonds because at
least diamonds aren't ticking timebombs.

~~~
kragen
you're saying you pay the spread because you're taking prices, not making
them. diamonds have a huge spread at retail, and so you get screwed; gold's
spread is so low that you can actually make money doing this, although more or
less only by chance. i'd've expected mercury to be more like gold, but so far
i can't find much evidence of a current functioning mercury market.

~~~
gwern
At least in the case of gold, there's a very large retail market with lots of
connections to the investment market, and as far as I know, gold is easy &
safe to store & refine, so if you sell some scrap gold to a gold dealer they
don't have _too_ much trouble refining it into something standardized. The
rarer something is, and the more dangerous, the more you're going to pay in
costs.

~~~
kragen
Basically I agree with everything you say, with one exception. There are many
methods to refine gold, but none of them are particularly safe, involving, for
example, the evaporation of substantial amounts of mercury, gold cyanidation
(what Turing's mother believed killed him), chlorine gas, or boiling _aqua
regia_. This kind of thing can be made safe, but it's even more difficult than
making mercury processing safe.

So I suspect that the main issue is storage and transportation, not
refinement.

------
kragen
Does US$38k to clean up a few cups of mercury seem ridiculous to anybody else?
That would be a very dangerous quantity of mercury if it were in a form like
dimethylmercury, but it was metallic mercury. Wouldn't it make more sense to
dump some powdered metal into it to amalgamate it, sweep it up and put it in a
bag, and open the windows to let the house air out for a day or two?

~~~
jobu
This was my thought as well - I've heard metallic mercury is relatively safe.
However, a little bit of googling turned up this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_mercury)

The issue with metallic mercury is the vapors are easily absorbed through the
lungs, and not easily filtered (requires an activated carbon filter).

~~~
kragen
It is indeed _relatively_ safe, in the sense that it takes thousands of times
as much metallic mercury to kill you as it would take dimethylmercury. But
vapors from metallic mercury have been known to cause acute poisoning for
centuries; that article mentions a well-known case from 1810.

------
cbr
Author here: happy to answer questions.

~~~
FrankenPC
How long have you owned the house? Toxic waste like that are grounds to sue
the previous owner if not disclosed during the purchase...at least in
California.

~~~
rtkwe
> I talked to a lawyer, who didn't think we'd be likely to succeed if we tried
> to get the insurance company to pay anyway. They did think whoever owned the
> house at the time of the spill would be liable, but it would be hard to
> prove that the spill happened at a certain time and they may not have the
> money.

Right from the article. Sounds like there have been multiple owners, no way to
assign blame. Last owner probably can't be fined for something they had no
knowledge of.

~~~
Gibbon1
I'm not sure, but maybe this is something title insurance is supposed to
cover?

~~~
rtkwe
Doesn't seem to from my short reading, I'd not heard of it until now. Title
insurance seems to be more for issues with the records about financial liens
against properties that aren't properly recorded. It doesn't seem to cover
this scenario and who knows if the author had it.

------
function_seven
Yikes. I'm glad my house was built in the 80's. No asbestos, no lead in the
paint, no mercury hiding out in my ceiling.

How dangerous was this contamination, though? I know mercury evaporates, and
that it is an air quality concern, but given its location and assuming normal
levels of indoor air movement, is it worth $50k to abate it?

I tend to be skeptical of mold issues, for example, but I also imagine that
mercury is way more harmful than mold spores, mostly because you can't smell
mercury.

~~~
detaro
The article says: _There were still areas in that room that were .037
milligrams per cubic meter._

Wikipedia gives the following info: _Chronic exposure by inhalation, even at
low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 μg /m3, has been shown in case control
studies to cause effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep
disturbance in workers._

Even if the first number is as high as it is because they handled it, things
like that they found it while sweeping the kitchen suggests that not all of it
was sitting quietly somewhere, but was possibly disturbed regularly or even
ingested. Given that mercury stays in the body for decades and is especially
bad for children, that doesn't seem like something one should risk.

(+ of course once the building is condemned, you can't really say "yeah, ok,
no, we'll risk it")

~~~
steckerbrett
I would definitely be very uncomfortable with my health had I been living
there, balls of mercury in the bathroom seem to suggest that there was quite a
high degree of exposure.

------
PhasmaFelis
> _Call it $50k total?_

Jesus fucking _Christ._ So I guess the lesson here for the average homeowner
is "if you find a mercury spill, don't tell anyone or you'll lose your home"?

Also:

> _They were using a Jerome meter, which can only measure down to 3000 ng /m3
> when the safe indoor limit is 300 ng/m3_

Huh? Why would a mercury-abatement crew use a mercury detection meter that
can't actually detect hazardous levels of mercury?

~~~
FussyZeus
Exactly what I was thinking, I'd consider myself pretty financially solid but
$50k would ruin me. I'm assuming the OP was doing renovations of some kind
already and had the cash on hand, or at least the majority of it.

~~~
cldellow
OP could just cut back on their charitable giving.

And, perhaps that's what they did:
[http://www.jefftk.com/donations](http://www.jefftk.com/donations)

~~~
matthewmcg
Wow--that really is an extraordinary level of giving, relative to what they
have earned. I suppose that's one way to cushion the effect of a financial
shock--get used to living on only a fraction of your total income and donate
the surplus when available.

------
shawnee_
Disagree with his last point here:

 _(One thing this illustrates is that the downside risk of owning is much
higher than with renting.)_

Financial risk, yes; health risk, no. Only a homeowner who _owns and lives_ in
the dwelling would care enough to follow the proper procedure for cleaning up
a hazardous materials spill such as this.

Landlords who invest in buildings (old, decrepit buildings) for the renters'
income have almost zero incentive to handle a situation like this correctly.

~~~
crzwdjk
In this case, I believe OP is actually a landlord, who invested in this old
decrepit building for rental income. But what do you know, he has plenty of
incentive to handle this situation as thoroughly as possible, because he lives
there too! Moral of the story: "homeowner" and "landlord" are not mutually
exclusive.

------
nrjames
This sounds so familiar... Here's a story about my 1961 house that is built on
concrete slabs.

About 18 months ago, we noticed a bit of the hardwood floor was bubbling up.
We ignored it. About 6 months ago, our water pressure started to drop and then
disappeared altogether. The plumber came and told us that our well pump (which
was relatively new) wasn't working. They pulled the pump and the PVC bushing
around it was cracked, so it had been running nonstop trying to keep pressure
up. Plumbers fixed the crack, put the pump back in, it still wasn't working...
They pulled it again and replaced it.

I mentioned to the plumber that the floor was bubbling up and he told me that
what likely happened is that the supply line was leaking under the slab (where
they put them in the 1960s), probably causing the floor to bubble and the well
pump to turn on and off frequently, increasing torque on the bushing, which
caused it to crack and subsequently burn out the motor. He referred me to a
contracting group that could help with the problem under the slab.

Fast forward to June of this year. Contractors begin to pull up the wooden
floor, only to find there's asbestos-laden linoleum under it. An asbestos
remediation firm came and removed the entire wooden floor and the asbestos.
(Note: the wooden floor was parquet, of a formerly-standard size that no
longer is made, meaning to replace it and match the rest of the house, we
would have to find somebody to cut each tiny little board.)

Early July, contractors jackhammer into the slab and cannot find a leak. While
investigating, we discover that the septic tank is full and backed up, likely
from some landscapers running over the septic field with a bobcat about 3 yrs
ago. It had been slowly draining and we had it serviced 18 months ago, but it
was again full and plumbers began to speculate that sewage was standing in the
lines under the house and that an old septic line was leaking -- not the
supply line. Nobody can figure out what to do because the original plans to
the house are missing, the plans to an addition are missing, and nobody knows
where the supply lines or septic really run, in spite of the fact they had
snaked cameras through them 4 times.

Meanwhile, we have a huge hole with ragged pieces of rebar and concrete
everywhere in our family room. My 2 and 4 yr old daughters learn to walk
around it carefully because it's impossible to get to the kitchen without
walking through the family room.

Plumbers come back 4 weeks later with a plan to replace the supply lines and
the septic lines. We have to take a break to get insurance approval and take
out a HELOC to cover costs that insurance won't cover. This takes a while.

Ten weeks after the first hole in the slab, they start digging to replace the
septic/supply lines and they mistakenly break into the air ducts running under
the slab (the fancy new thing to do in 1961). Surprise: the air ducts are made
of a fibrous material that sort of looks like cardboard but might contain
asbestos.

Today, the asbestos remediation people came and took a sample. The HVAC repair
people (took 4 companies to find somebody to attempt to repair the 'cardboard'
ducts) put a camera in them and found that the vibrations from the jackhammer
used to cut the slab (likely) had caused many other collapses in the air ducts
in the same room. The only saving grace here is that it appears that the
'cardboard' ducts only were used in that room and that they are metal in the
rest of the house (please please please). Now, the demolition team has to come
back and remove most of the rest of the slab in that room and in the kitchen
in order to replace the 'cardboard' ducts that are collapsed; all prior to
doing final repairs on the supply and septic lines running under the slab.
When that's done, we'll have to repair the slab, get new floors, new kitchen
countertops, and hope that we can move back in.

We've been in a hotel with our two daughters on-and-off for the past 3 months.
I really hope we're in the house by Christmas.

Please be very careful if you purchase an old house.

Here are some pictures: [http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl](http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl)

FYI, ours is an old Westinghouse Total Electric Model Home (pdf):
[http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf](http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf)

p.s. That was way more than I intended to write here.

p.p.s. Total bill, to date is > $50k. Insurance is covering 95% of it. Amica
is wonderful.

~~~
mkjones
I had a similar but less-awful experience (fortunately as a renter rather than
owner). Living in a similar slab house, I was surprised when my shower became
slow to drain and draino had no effect. I called the plumber, he came by, and
eventually told me he'd fixed the problems. Two days later, the drain backs up
again.

Second plumber comes and is somewhat perplexed - he pulls up roots and
suspects they've grown into the line. But it's drilled out and should work
now. Two days later, the drain backs up again.

Third plumber comes out and goes in from the roof vent. After about an hour of
rooting around, his snake pops up through the drain and starts whackkity-
whacking around the shower. He's very surprised and a bit sheepish, and
suggests there's a bigger problem and we should rip out the shower to have a
look at what's under it. Doesn't pretend that he's fixed it. I'm using a
different shower at this point.

Fourth plumber arrives to give a second (err, fourth) opinion and is similarly
perplexed, saying we likely need to rip the shower up to fix things.

Fifth plumber agrees, and says he knows a guy who can do it.

Sixth plumber is actually not just a plumber, and arrives with a jackhammer,
two buddies and a fancy proble that lets him follow where all the pipes go
under the house (both with a camera in the pipe and a machine that follows
where it goes physically). Scopes things out for a bit, and then goes to town
on the other bathroom, eventually jackahammering and digging a roughly 5 foot
cube out from under the bathroom.

It turns out when they redid things in the house 15 years ago, someone failed
to actually connect the drain from the shower to the sewer, so it had just
been draining into the ground. Whoops!

While they were down there, they ran a new sewer pipe out to the municipal
line as well. This part was pretty cool. Rather than digging up the whole
yard, they just ran a 1/2" steel cable through the old masonry pipe, hooked it
to a solid steel cone, and pulled the cone through with a hydraulic winch,
trailing some pvc behind it. As it went, it busted apart the old pipe and put
a new one its place. All in all a pain in the ass, but neat to see how they
approached things.

Aside: I also have and love Amica. They've covered a couple claims for me and
have been very easy to work with.

~~~
liotier
> they ran a new sewer pipe out to the municipal line as well. This part was
> pretty cool. Rather than digging up the whole yard, they just ran a 1/2"
> steel cable through the old masonry pipe, hooked it to a solid steel cone,
> and pulled the cone through with a hydraulic winch, trailing some pvc behind
> it. As it went, it busted apart the old pipe and put a new one its place.

A month ago near Paris I have seen that method used to replace water mains
along a whole street - very impressive !

------
DanBlake
wow. I remember as a kid ~20 years ago playing with mercury (my grandfather
was a dentist and had a 1lb bottle of the stuff for some reason)

I think if I found mercury in my house I would literally just scoop it up and
bring it to the fire department without thinking about any health hazards of
it. Is mercury truely that bad that short exposure is that dangerous? I mean,
I wouldnt eat the stuff (or breath it in for extended periods) but I used to
roll it around in my hands and whatnot as a kid without any effects.

Considering how some people work with mercury ( see this :
[http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado](http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado) ) ,
I feel like you need quite a bit of exposure to be up shits creek.

Then again, I'm not a doctor so dont listen to me.

~~~
Terr_
IIRC one time touching cold liquid elemental mercury isn't that bad, the
short-term problem is _breathing_ mercury fumes or encountering various
compounds that it can react to form.

Any sort of persistent chronic exposure is definitely bad, of course, since
like most "heavy metals" it accumulates and has long-term effects.

~~~
emddudley
If you haven't seen mercury vapors under an ultraviolet light, it's quite
dramatic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI)

~~~
spyder
It looks like same happens with dental amalgam fillings too (which also
contains mercury):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA)

Most say it's safe (the FDA too) and that video just shows water vapor because
mercury vapor wouldn't rise like that due to it's weight, but I'm not sure
what to believe.

[http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth-
ge...](http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth-gets-smoked-
out.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy)

------
mindslight
For $50k I'd at least get some further legal opinions. I believe there's also
state laws about what the specific HOx policies can actually exclude
(regardless of what the actual policy says), so perhaps there's something
there.

Although the causality is a latent condition from when you bought the house,
which doesn't bode well. If you yourself had caused the spill when doing demo,
I think you'd be in a stronger position.

------
ghshephard
I once had a ceiling leak of water from my upstairs neighbor. I called a
contractor, and he broke open a segment of the ceiling where my vent was - and
the entire gap between my unit and upstairs looked like something from Venus -
terrifying colors/growths taking place. The contractor said that there was a
massive mold infusion, and that we would need a hazardous material team to
come clean it up, and we were looking at a bill of around $20,000 - $30,000
for the team to come do the full cleanup of the riser.

I freaked out a little, and thankfully had a calm property management company
that just said, "Look the area above bathrooms _always_ looks like this, and
we just need to have the people upstairs caulk a bit better around their
bathtub, and we'll be fine.

I'm not going to claim I have any idea whether calling the
HazMat/FireDepartment team makes sense here (Hell, Mercury is dangerous) - but
it's always a good idea to see if there are _safe_ alternatives that might
save you several tens of thousands of dollars.

~~~
dhbanes
Wait, so the property management company (which would be responsible for
facilitating the mold remediation at the very least, or paying for it if they
own the property or were liable for the issue in the first place) told you
that mold was no big deal and your upstairs neighbors just need to caulk a
little more around their bath tub (also the responsibility of the property
owner) and that calmed you down?

Mold and fungi can certainly be harmful to humans. The interests of your
landlords and property managers are not aligned with yours in this case.

~~~
jessaustin
From the context it seems likely that GP owns a condo, so bills like that
would not be sent to property management. Also if anyone has an interest to
lie it is mold remediation contractors whose entire business is built on
exaggeration.

~~~
ghshephard
Exactly correct. It was my Condo, and if it was an exterior wall, then the
Home Owners Association would be charged a "Special Fee" (We had recently
dropped $100+K on repairing wall damage from a rain leak) - but ceiling damage
would have been on me. To make matters worse, they were renters living in the
upstairs unit, and when I contacted the owner, it turned out he was a lawyer,
and initially all he said was, "If you have a problem, sue me."

Thankfully, the manager of our property management board was much more sane,
had seen the space above bathroom vents, knew that it _always_ looked funky
(lots of moisture going up through those vents), and saved me $30K.

I guess my point was - given a choice, a subcontractor can always turn a minor
clean up into a $50K project, but it's entirely possible, there is a $5K
choice as well that the home owner might want to consider pursuing.

~~~
jessaustin
Lawyer or no, I would be surprised to find that an HOA couldn't force an owner
to re-caulk a bathroom. What's the purpose of all those damn inspections if
not to discover and fix this sort of problem?

~~~
ghshephard
It's hard to force a lawyer to do anything. Thankfully the property manager
had a personal relationship with him, and could just say, "Look, don't turn
this into a big deal - just caulk the bathtub and stop the leaking already."
But for that single phone call, I would be at least $15-$20K poorer.

------
paulsutter
Maybe the lesson is to save.

There's a huge number of very unlikely risks. Too many risks to carefully
avoid them all. Something unexpected will happen. Insurance can help, but as
the articls shows, not always.

~~~
nathanb
Seriously. I don't know a lot of people for whom a surprise $50k bill would be
"unfortunately" rather than "disastrously".

~~~
odonnellryan
I don't think there are that many people. 50K is a lot.

~~~
gozo
I know plenty of people that live in $1MM apartments that doubled in value
over the last 10 years. So while they might not be able to "spare" $50k, it's
not that big a deal overall. Of course I know other people for which that
would be a lifetime of savings.

------
unicornporn
Does anyone get near aroused by this kind of web design? I love it and wish
every site could be "dumbed down" to this kind of easy navigation and reading
experience.

I know there are "reader views" in many modern browser, but I'd also like the
site structure and navigation to be easier to overview. Sort of a WAP view for
the twenty-tens.

~~~
cbr
Thanks! I'm glad you like the design.

It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html readable
as things change. It started out as completely unstyled, then gained a max-
width as screens got wider, and eventually a little bit of media-querying to
make things look better on phones, but it's still really basic.

~~~
unicornporn
> It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html
> readable as things change

I like it and I've been experimenting with exactly the same thing. However,
it's kind of hard for me to not get carried away and start adding a
superfluous line CSS here and there. :-)

How do you pull in the comments from multiple sources BTW? Is it a manual
process?

~~~
cbr
I pull the comments in with:
[https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/commen...](https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/comment_requester_wsgi.py)

(Which isn't completely up to date; I have some changes I need to push public
like hn-support.)

------
baudehlo
This does seem like a good case for small claims court against Honeywell. It's
probably limited in what they could recover but they could at least get some
of that back.

~~~
duaneb
Why small claims court? Surely the payout for such a huge health risk would be
significantly higher than small claims court could provide.

------
hugium
You have saved your children a few IQ points.

------
tomlock
I wonder how many of these spills go unreported! In high school one of my
classmates told me how he used to crack open thermometers and play with the
liquid. I don't know if it was mercury or not, but it seemed to be, and he was
completely unaware of how toxic it was.

~~~
ubernostrum
My mother told me that when I was very young (too young to remember), I was
sick and she stuck a thermometer in my mouth to take my temperature. And I
promptly bit the end off it, and had to be rushed to the hospital to have my
stomach cleaned out of mercury.

~~~
leni536
>in my mouth Was that common in the US for mercury thermometers? In Hungary it
was always "under the armpit" but as far as I remember I have seen the
thermometer in mouth method in US cartoons.

~~~
ghaff
Yes. I always had my temperature taken orally. (Although I don't use mercury
thermometers these days.)

------
ksec
Is there anything else in the modern world where we still uses mercury in this
large amount of quantity?

If so why?

~~~
mirimir
The standard low-tech approach for gold mining: 1) mix crushed ore with
mercury; 2) let sit for a while; 3) boil off mercury over a fire; 4) sell
gold. Maybe you try to condense some of the mercury. But mercury is cheap
compared to gold, so why bother?

Also, we burn lots of coal. And coal contains mercury.

Anyway see this cool EPA page: [http://www2.epa.gov/international-
cooperation/mercury-emissi...](http://www2.epa.gov/international-
cooperation/mercury-emissions-global-context)

------
davidcollantes
When I was a child, me and my nephews (which are about my own age) used to go
to the pharmacy to buy thermometers, and break them for their mercury. With
time we accumulated enough to fill up a mid-sized crystal jar, I would say
around 200 grams.

We played with that mercury a lot. We passed it between our hands, which later
held treats we ate. We laid down on the grown, and pour it in our closed eyes,
letting it drop on the side of our faces. The only thing we came short of
doing was putting mercury in our mouth. No harm ever came to us as a result.

I would have cleaned the spill for free, if I get to keep the mercury. ;-)

~~~
cbr

        No harm ever came to us as a result.
    

I think you're probably right, but how do you know? It's very hard to compare
yourself to a version of you who didn't have that kind of exposure as a kid.

~~~
davidcollantes
True. What I meant to say was, I was not poisoned, nor felt sick, and so far I
am into my 50s. I know there might still be time to pay for what I did as a
child...

------
Too
In the end he is using the $50k expense as an argument for renting instead of
buying.

I am wondering, if you were to rent, would your landlord actually cover this?
Sounds like that would be equally hard as claiming it on insurance or previous
owner of house. I can imagine the response being something along "our janitor
was qualified to clean it up and you shouldn't have called haz team" or simply
that the leak wasn't their fault. On the other hand you can easily bail out
and just rent another place, unless the queue to get a rental is 3years+ in
your city.

~~~
mirimir
No, you just move. Not your problem. And I doubt that the lease would stand in
court.

------
SQL2219
Effects of Mercury on Brain Neuron Degeneration

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A)

------
spacecowboy_lon
Do American house buyers not have a survey done. In the UK its a requirement
of a Mortgage application.

~~~
cbr
We did have a home inspection, but the only way to find this would have been
to rip up the floor or bring in a mercury vapor analyzer, neither of which are
customary (in the US or UK).

------
31reasons
As a kid I often played with mercury used in a blood pressure monitor.
Spilling it on the table and mesmerized by its look and feel. I am not sure
what damages that might have caused to my brain now that I know its toxic!

~~~
tirant
I did the same. I broke an old thermometer just to play with the mercury. I
used to keep it in a small metal box. Some years later I went to check it, and
I had all disappeared from the metal box!!

------
sirseal
Wow. That's crazy expensive. I'm glad to hear about this story. I don't think
I'd pay $50k for something like this.

------
c1sc0
This makes me feel bad for breaking a thermometer as a little boy just to play
with the mercury inside.

------
gcb0
> there was a dusy little puddle

what's a dusy?

~~~
gruez
reworded:

there was a [little puddle that was dusty]

~~~
gcb0
was that a slang/neologism/typo? honestly curious. english third language and
all...

~~~
davidcollantes
I assume it a typo.

