[DIARY] House, house, house...

[jducoeur]

... at this point, my life seems to revolve around the house.

With any luck, and assuming the rain lets up long enough, the house will soon cease to be describable as "sort of like the Addams family house, but more unkempt". The painters are making steady progress, and things are about at the nadir now, with the powerwash done and the loose bits scraped off. It should shortly be an actual blue again, instead of a sort of faded cyan with bits of natural cedar coming through.

Visited Home Despot with msmemory yesterday, and picked out a new storm door -- this will not have the distinctive personality of "this screen once used as a scratching post", but will make a better first impression when the time comes to show the house.

Packing continues apace; the wall of boxes of books at the back of Storage Unit #3 now pretty much fills the 10' wide x 8' high space, and I'm working on the second layer of wall. The advantage of sticking with Store-Alls is that it stacks nice and neatly -- add a little mortar, and the thing could almost be load-bearing. Packed up The Harvard Classics this morning. In the next house, we need to either find real shelf space for these, or give them away. It's a wonderful set of literature, but it's been sitting on a shelf in the attic for ten years now.

I am forced to conclude that no, I don't have a cold. What I do have is allergies to a variety of dusts and molds. Guess what the attic is filled with? Claritin seems to do no good at all, so it may be time to break down and restart the allergy shots, at least while I'm stirring up all of these insidious motes.

The project still feels like it's going to take an eternity, but we're making visible progress. Another month or two of this, and the house might actually be in good enough shape to have people over again. That has much appeal; I'm feeling quite lonely at the moment, and need some excuses to see more of my friends...

Comments

[dsrtao]

You might want to get an electrostatic air scrubber with a HEPA filter; put it in the attic and turn it on full-blast for a week. Good ones can be had for $200 or less; how many allergy shots is that for you?

[jducoeur]

Hmm. It's an interesting idea, but probably not sufficient for several reasons. First, the air circulation will work against it -- the attic is semi-exposed to the elements, so it's going to be fighting against the windows. Second, the attic is huge and complex -- four separate rooms -- so each would probably have to be managed separately. Third, while it would probably clean out the stuff that's actually in the air decently well, odds are that it wouldn't get most of what's adhered to the boxes, which gets stirred up when I move them around.

If this was a long-term issue, then it might well be worthwhile to fix the windows, shut everything up tight, dust all surfaces off and install a scrubber for long-term maintenance. But it doesn't seem like the appropriate solution for the situation at hand...

[tpau]

try allegra. it is ncoe works better hten claritin and is less un-fun then shots

[keshwyn]

Neither Allegra nor Claratin do anything for me, alas - if you haven't tried Allegra yet, it might be worth it to see if it does help un-allergify you.

I'm stuck with plain ol' Sudafed since they took Seldane off the market. Fortunately, my allergies aren't nearly as bad as they used to be, before I moved.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

As long as we are all trying to be helpful - could you borrow a high quality dust mask with removable cartridges from someone? (I think we both know a few people that did a lot of fabric dyeing at one point, and aren't right now). A loan of those and some disposable cartridges would be cheaper than drugs or large area filters or time away from work to get shots.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

Even a paper dust mask like you can get in multipacks at HD would probably help...

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Probably - unless dust in the eyes is also a factor.

Being a big pain in the a$$ for a minute - if dust and mold and mildew are an allergen problem, putting these many paper goods and such in the new house will be just as misery-generating.

Maybe allergy shots are a good idea no matter what.

[msmemory.livejournal.com]

At least in the new place, it'll just be our papers that are dusty or moldy, not the attic itself. We hope.

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

I am not an expert allergist. But when my ex was first diagnosed with allergies to dust, they very specifically suggested that books were not only a contributing factor, but as paper aged it was a source as well. She promptly banished books from the bedroom - as well as the cat from the bedroom. :-)

Unless you plan to vacuum each book and box as you pack it, then do the same when you unpack into a new home, it will be a dust-rich environment. There is no getting around that.

I am comfortable in a dust-rich environment - I have my books. :-)

[jducoeur]

There's dust and there's dust -- I'm either not as sensitive or not as paranoid as she is.

It's true that books generate a *small* amount of dust as they age, but that amount is pretty small in the grand scheme of things. As opposed to the ambient state of our attic, which has a thick layer of crud all over everything. Books are the least of the issue up there. (*Almost* all of the books in the attic are boxed; the Harvard Classics are the exception. I'm quite sure that the crud in the attic is not principally paper-generated.)

[jducoeur]

if dust and mold and mildew are an allergen problem, putting these many paper goods and such in the new house will be just as misery-generating.

Empirical evidence says not: our house has *always* been chock-full of paper, and that's never caused a particular problem. It's only the stuff that's been in the attic that seems to be hitting my respiratory system hard. That's not really surprising: while the in-house stuff may collect small amounts of dust, it's literally a couple of orders of magnitude worse in the attic, and the stuff in the attic is *much* more prone to mildew (and bugs), due to the near-total lack of protection from the elements.

Also, having the dust sitting on top of things probably isn't the problem in and of itself. The moving process is stirring up everything, both inside and in the attic, so allergens that would normally be innocuous are getting into my face now...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

The problem is that mold grows once it's found a place to sit. The books in your house never got infested, so they weren't a problem. But the papers and boxes in your attic are now molded, and will take that mold with them when you move them.

I highly recommend setting up an air cleaner for a while. Try to avoid TOO much circulation of air: you don't want to "air out" the room, nor do you want to stir up major mold colonies that hithertofore couldn't hitch a ride on nice strong air currents to find new spots to live, you just want to cycle all the air in the room through a filter of some kind. Heck, I bet a box fan on low with a t-shirt over the intake side would do *something*.

The air cleaner I bought did wonders for our basement, though it's a bit pricey for a one-off. The less mold (and dust) you bring with you, the better...so if you can get what's in the air out of the air, it can only help. (Heck, you could set it on full blast, rush in with a handkerchief over your mouth, stir up a lot of dust, and watch it get sucked into the filter!)

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Okay, that's worth thinking about carefully. We're doing some light dusting as we pack things (part of why the packing process is so dust-filled), but not comprehensively so.

The implication of this is probably that we need to be careful at the receiving end -- setting up some sort of air filter there to clean out anything that comes with would probably be a Very Good Idea. And dusting a tad more carefully as we pack probably can't hurt. (See my response to dsrtao for the difficulties in properly cleaning the air in the attic as it is.)

It does lead me to wish I had power available in the storage unit, to do some filtration while everything is sitting and waiting. At least it's air conditioned...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

The air conditioning will help greatly, by keeping it dry in there. The mold will either die or lie dormant. Of course, from what I understand, it's *dead* mold that aggravates the lungs/etc., as when it's dead it isn't clinging firmly to whatever and drifts off to be inhaled; but at least the amount will be minimized.

Good luck!

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

For our garage-to-house bookmoving project, we're scrubbing book surfaces with a whisk broom *outside* so as to minimize mold spores and threads that come inside.

This would go fairly quickly if we didn't have kids; one person to scrub, one to ferry books.

[jducoeur]

Maybe allergy shots are a good idea no matter what.

That might well be. I've been toying with the idea of going back to them for several years now. (I was on shots for all of high school, then stopped when I went off to college.) While I have a mild aversion to needles, I know from experience that allergy shots aren't really all that unpleasant. It's mostly the inconvenience that keeps me from dealing with it -- regular trips to the doctor are a pain...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Can you give them to yourself? I thought I wouldn't be able to manage self-stabbing, but when I was motivated, it wasn't that hard.

[jducoeur]

Interesting question. My suspicion is not, because the dosage is always changing -- IIRC, the quantity goes steadily up for a while, then they remix to a stronger solution. But I'm by no means sure; it's probably worth inquiring...

[jducoeur]

Actually, I have some of the paper masks; it hadn't occurred to me to wear one for attic work (I normally use them for woodwork, when I'm kicking up a lot of sawdust), but it might well be a good idea. Problem is, I despise the things deeply -- the sensation of breathing through one feels very confining, almost a bit claustrophobic. I wonder if the fancy cartridge-based ones are any better...

Breathing masks

[dlevey.livejournal.com]

From my experience, the paper masks are "convenience" or "irritant" filters only - they tend to get the big stuff. I don't know how that compares with the likely irritant in this case, mold spores, etc. The cartridge filters are normally better if you get the right cartridges: they have them for dust, vapors (VOCs, etc), and such; many of the cartridges are multi-format. You can get a decent mask for about $40 IIRC.

The problem here is the beard. It's tough to get a good mask seal if you're bearded. Thus your beard becomes either the filter or the weak spot, as that's where much of the air flow will go. Nothing like sanding down a large piece of furniture with one of these masks and then seeing stripes in your beard when you remove the mask. The solution, unfortunately (short of shaving) is a dust/mask respirator hood. These look a bit like beekeeper hoods, with a back-mounted filter and batteries. They force good air into the hood keeping positive pressure. They can run you about $200, but I'm told they're well worth it for those who have more than a one-shot need for this. Planning on doing any heavy sanding or renovation after this packing run? Perhaps refinishing floors, lots of painting, refurbishing a damp basement? A bonus (such as it is) is that these hoods can act as safety glasses.

(for example:
http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?DeptID=1114&FamilyID=4873
http://www.woodturnerscatalog.com/cgi-bin/shopper?preadd=action&key=256-0500
http://www.woodturnerscatalog.com/cgi-bin/shopper?preadd=action&key=412-1000)

As to the claustrophobia, the hood might make that worse, or better, depending upon you. It's not directly against your mouth/nose, in case that helps. The cartridge mask will probably not help all that much.

For those reading: I've had to deal with this to some extent. I'm a woodworker with dust allergies. Most of what I'm doing now is turning, which in the finishing stages can generate lots of very fine dust (think of *starting* with 220 grit sandpaper and going on to 2000). Not that I'm an expert, mind you, but I've used the masks and have dealt wit hmisery in the sinuses, lungs, eyes, mouth, etc. Nothing like scheduling your woodworking time to leave plenty of recovery before you next need to sing...

Re: Breathing masks

[jducoeur]

Hmm; thanks -- that's useful food for thought. I'm not sure whether I'm up for anything as elaborate as the respirator hood, but it's worth considering. What really bugs me about the simple masks is the sense of confinement of the air -- the way it quickly feels hot and stuffy against my face -- and I suspect that the forced-air hood would address that. I don't know if it's worth it for this relatively brief task, but I should seriously consider that.

(And thanks for the beard observation -- that wouldn't have occurred to me as an issue...)

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

need some excuses to see more of my friends...

Would you and Jane like to come for food sometime? Email me if interested and you have some calendar time in the next few months.

[jducoeur]

Definitely possible, especially as we move into the quieter stretch of summer...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Zyrtec, which is only available by prescription and is somewhat expensive (a $35 co-pay on my plan, for example), is nonetheless formulated specifically to address dust/mold allergies. I think that it literally saved my life.

Another thing I find useful in dealing with my hideous dust/mold allergies is this (http://www.unimedprod.com/). I find that with a Zyrtec in the morning and a nasal rinse when I'm done working, I can spend a few hours a day in the dustiest, moldiest libraries without collapsing in wheezes. (This is making my Civil War book possible--I may wind up dedicating it to Pfizer and NeilMed.)

Hope some of this might be of some help. (Oh, and this is Julia, via Charley's friendslist.)

[jducoeur]

Interesting -- have you found this stuff to really work better than an ordinary saline rinse? The saline stuff is still relatively new to me, and I'm learning the ropes there...