Window Replacement Landmarks Violation?
My one year old has lead poisoning to the point where the city’s health department is involved. After much testing and concern, we determined that the main culprits are our windows, the outside of which are covered with flaking lead paint. We have been replacing them as we can come up with the money. We…
My one year old has lead poisoning to the point where the city’s health department is involved. After much testing and concern, we determined that the main culprits are our windows, the outside of which are covered with flaking lead paint. We have been replacing them as we can come up with the money. We are in the process of filing for permits to change the front and back windows (and to add a deck at the same time to have access to our backyard without having to go through our kids’ room), but it’s been taking a while to get the deck drawings, etc…
In the meantime, we changed the front parlor since they were in the worst condition, flaking paint outside all over where our kids walk and play. We just received a warning letter that the windows are in violation. I assume that one of our neighbors must have told on us, which given that most know about our son’s lead poisoning, is kind of depressing.
anyway, has anybody been in this position and can offer some advice?
thanks!
As a temporary containment measure, you might think about protecting your child by encasing window frames and moldings in plastic, until you can get to them.
Better than encasing your child in plastic…
Also, I highly recommend Dyson vacuums; better than Miele, and better looking too.
Good luck.
lead gas in the sashes? that doesn’t make sense. I also don’t understand lead dust trapped in the sashes. this stuff is just paint.
as someone who lives in an old house, i would strongly recommend you buy a top quality hepa vacuum (like a dyson or miele) to frequently remove dust on the floors and other surfaces. The filter keeps it from being spread back into the air by the vacuum’s exhaust. I suspect a lot of children get exposure to lead dust brought in from the yard, subway platform, windows and doors in use, basements, etc. tracked in on shoes and settled on the floor where kids play.
PTF – thanks! obviously, we are going through some of the same issues and i would really appreciate it if you might be willing to talk offline. i am at park(dot)pl(dot)brownstone(at)gmail.
Hope this comment goes through… Does anyone know why they aren’t showing up promptly? Are some people on a delayed list or some aren’t?
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Ray and Bxgirl: The violations woman at LPC wasn’t able to say who ratted on us, but she did say that it was a regular informant, so not a neighbor and not personal. What a relief! And a good lesson to not be paranoid.
I Disagree: We didn’t use Lou for the brick moldings, since his price was $1800 just to strip the two moldings. We ended up having the contractor who replaced our windows to take them off and do them offsite. We paid $200 for each, but I think he gave us a break since he was also doing the windows.
But I agree that many contractors, even though they have taken the EPA lead certification course (which I believe is required) don’t as a matter of practice follow the guidelines, even when you have emphasized the lead concern to them.
None of the various contractors or even the big window company we dealt with have brought a HEPA vac with them, even though we’ve been very clear that we are trying to abate the lead. I have had to educate myself (with help from Lou) about how to avoid spreading lead around further, making sure they don’t walk in and out of the work site, tracking lead around the house, etc. And then I clean with a HEPA vac and wipe everything down with ledisolv myself afterwards.
You can buy Ledisolv online from a company in Westchester. It comes in a day. I didn’t know that Cascade no longer had phosphates. I think since phospates are the key agent, then it’s no longer effective. I switched to Ledisolv when our son’s levels stopped going down, and am waiting a few months to retest to see if it’s made a difference.
Also, if you need some more guidance with the health part of it, you might try Dr. Rosen at Montefiore (sp?) It took some effort but my husband finally got him on the phone, and it seems that the lead takes a lot longer to leach out of the system that we were led to believe by our pediatrician. You might see a 50% drop over 9 to 12 months, not 2 or 3 as we thought.
As for the city’s involvement, we learned after much anxiety that you can deny them from entering your house and doing their own lead inspection. If they do inspect, then you have to abate to their standards, which could have meant covering every wall with new dry wall, removing original molding and pocket doors, or stripping them, which we worried would just release more lead into the environment. They don’t accept encapsulation as a means of abatement. That said, if you are in an owner-occupied unit, they suggested that there is more flexibility. But we didn’t have the means to strip everything nor did we want to for the increased lead exposure risk. It seems that as long as our son’s levels go down and we demonstrate that we are abating the areas that our own lead test proved troublesome, they will leave us alone.
PTF – who did you use for stripping and repainting your mouldings? i assume that you had a lead-abatement cleaning done this time around? was it lou who did that for you? or did you do it yourselves? also, do you mind saying whether the city told you specifically what you had to abate?
as for cleaning, i have tried to confirm that cascade is still effective for cleaning even though it doesn’t contain phosphates any longer. do you know the answer? also, is there someplace in brooklyn that sells ledisolv?
people may not realize that the city somewhat recently has significantly reduced the threshold lead level for concern and required abatements. as such, a lot of the guidance people are giving is outdated. and once you are on the city’s radar, you don’t have a lot of leeway even though it is still a guessing game as to what is the actual cause. a lot of the guidance also seems to be based on fantasy – i.e., that painting over lead paint is somehow enough to solve the problem. our mouldings had been painted so many times that even a nice thick coat could not hold off the peeling for longer than a few years. we also have been finding that there just aren’t that many people out there who want to do the kind of projects this issue requires in the right way, regardless of cost. they will say that they work safely, and they will have the certification, but at the end of the day they do not promise to carry the project out in the correct manner. that is really cold comfort.
Do what you must to address the immediate issue and screw the LPC. If they stop you from abating the issue and you are forced to live with the existing conditions to remain longer for any period of time because they more concerned about historical apperance instead of your children’s health, sue them big time.
–your kids come first, screw everything else. You can take care of that later. Still I agree about scraping the paint, since you say it is the _outside_ of the house that has the problem. Scrape and pick it up and hose down the rest into a drain.–
yeah, that is basically what I was suggesting, what is so hard about that.
the LL thing in my comment was a ‘for instance”
I am sorry your child has lead poisoning, truly.
I am sorry your child has lead poisoning.
I second the recommendation to check the soil in your yard.
Also I want to say that it may have not been that someone (a neighbor) reported you but that one of LPC staff discovered the change themselves. My understanding is that they walk the streets and look around, and will certainly do so before/after you apply for a permit.
While I have no idea how they found out, I’m telling you this so that you may feel better about your neighbors.
Good luck!
Check here re LPC facts: http://www.crownheightsnorth.org/lpcfaqs.html
It’s not as scary as it sounds 🙂 They really don’t have a lot of teeth- worst, they fine you- and it won’t be in the thousands. I’d be more upset over the “neighbor” who called it in. Seeing as you replaced the old ones with wood (LPC loves wood windows) and I assume they weren’t far different than what you had), the nosy neighbor was kind of an ass.