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!
The required EPA Lead Renovator’s course takes one day and costs $225. It isn’t a lot of time or money to learn the safe practices required in every pre-1978 dwelling.
OP here.
I tried to respond before and it didn’t go through so forgive me if this is a repeat. lmw35, that’s exactly right. we were advised, by Lou Martinez in fact, that scraping flaking paint was a bad idea, even if it was outside. Since the windows are over our entryway into the apartment, it’s hard to avoid tracking it into the house and is difficult to totally contain, even with spreading plastic everywhere. Also, even though we are keeping the windows closed, they are drafty and we were still getting above threshhold readings right below the sills. We suspect that there is just years of lead dust from the paint or even from leaded gas trapped in the sashes that was blowing in. In any case, the most thorough (and most expensive) solution is replacing all the windows. I was hoping to just submit one permit rather than doing it piecemeal. Lesson learned. But they are all wood Pella, same style as other people on landmark blocks, so hoping they will be acceptable. Thanks for this advice about dealing with the violations department.
I’ve been bugging my pediatrician to have available more of the DOH’s literature about avoiding lead poisoning. We thought that as long as the lead paint inside the house was all encapsulated and in tact, we’d be okay to move in. We had the house thoroughly cleaned (although not with HEPA vac) and wet-mopped. Too late, we learned that the HEPA was crucial and then you have to wet mop with an agent such as Cascade or Ledisolv that binds with the lead and removes it. Luckily our son’s development doesn’t seem to be affected–although it’s hard to tell with a 20 month old– but his levels are still far above the acceptable threshold and have plateaud for the time being it seems.
I wish in hindsight that we’d done lead testing AFTER our renovation and cleaning to see how well our abatement efforts worked. I think for lots of people, and definitely for us, budget restraints make the “right way” to do lead abatement out of reach. But I now know that you could do swipe tests with some local guys, including Lou, for as little as $20 a test, which means that for $200 you can have some peace of mind.
Of course, lots of people don’t go to all these lengths and their kids are fine. So hard to know when it’s necessary until it’s too late…
Anyway, hoping the LPC will understand why we moved forward without the permit. And thanks for listening/reading.
PTF
Check the soil in your yard. That’s where my friend’s child picked it up long ago. As a note of encouragement — they went through this too and he’s totally fine now.
By “landmarks approved” I assume you mean that whoever sold/installed the windows told you they were “Landmarks approved”, or pre-approved.
There is no such thing.
If the windows were installed without a permit from LPC, they are not “landmarks approved” and are subject to a violation.
That said, if the new windows are wood and match the profile, color, dimension and operation of the historic windows, you should be able to appeal to LPC staff to approve the windows and clear the violation.
So – the first thing you should do is call LPC, speak to the violations officer (who is quite nice, btw), explain the circumstances and ask that they not issue a violation (a warning is easier to clear than a violation).
If the windows were sold to you as “landmarks approved” but don’t meet LPC standards, your beef is really with the person who sold/installed the windows. Hopefully what they sold you are “landmarks approvable”, otherwise you will get a violation or have to go through a public review to legalize the windows.
Lead paint in and of itself is not an excuse to circumvent another agency’s rules. I’m not saying that to be callous – I know how scary this kind of thing can be when the DOH comes into your house and starts marking everything with big “LEAD” signs. You want to act fast, and you should act fast – but you (or your contractor) should get the proper permits too.
Agree with denton. This is confusing. If it’s only the outside that has the flaky paint and assuming you did not have your windows open in the winter or your child outside, why would that be the culprit? Lead does not leach through the wood or glass, you know. So it may be something else in your house which you need to look at. Lead poisoning (I assume you mean elevated blood levels) is not that easy to get if there’s no obvious vector, and intact paint (or floor tiles, or all those things people worry about) is typically not an issue until removal/renovation etc.
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.
But if you’re not that DIY kind of person, I would agree with lmw35 and get a real professional, give the risks.
Be completely up-front with LPC. They are likely to be much more sympathetic towards an individual home-owner with extenuating circumstances than they would be towards a professional contractor or architect who might be trying one on.
OP here. Yes, lmw35 you are exactly right. We didn’t want to scrape the windows since that would just release more lead paint, so we had to have the moldings removed and dipped/wt-stripped and then repainted offsite. But the original windows, we were advised by Lou Martinez in fact!, had so much lead dust in the sashes that had built up over the years that the best thing was to replace them too. We are doing aluminum clad in the back. Mostly we weren’t able to do it faster since we didn’t have the money. Budget constraints also explains why I was trying to file the job as one rather than piecemeal. Lesson learned.
And Stargazer, not that your judgment and general dinkiness warrant a response, but our initial concern was dealing with all the lead paint inside the house on the moldings, window interiors, doors, etc. We hadn’t anticipated that the flaking lead outside the house would find its way in so easily.
sorry to hear this. the lead paint issue can be really traumatizing, because in the middle of a grave health concern for your very small child, you are faced with some not very good choices to be made on a short timeline. you can know which things are possibly causing the problem, but you can’t know for sure. and even if you could, you can’t always know which changes might actually make the problem worse than better.
anyway, i have heard that landmarks can be sympathetic to external time pressures, but if i were you i would contact the LPC asap about the front windows and be prepared to submit an application (or whatever they call it when you do it after the fact) for them separately as soon as possible. if the city is involved to the extent that they’ve driven the change in the windows, that will help your argument.
good luck.