Topic: Resurfacing with "Noxious Fumes"

Industry friends, looking for advice. We resurfaced an apartment and the upstairs apartment says they had a severe asthma attack that not only caused her to go to the emergency room but miss two days of work as well. The husband saw the resurfacer in his respirator and white suit on and the resident questioned us regarding notification and how come we didn't place them in another location while this was being resurfaced. My staff told them the only person that had to be notificed and sign a waiver for the Noxious Odors was any resident living in the apartment that is being resurfaced. They are looking for compensation for going to the emergency room and missing work. Any advice?

Call your attorney and ask his/her advice.

Pardon my ignorance - what does it mean to resurface an apartment? As I have said before, hind sight is always 20/20; however, since fumes can go through porous objects, I am not surprised the upstairs neighbor who saw a worker in a "hazmat suit" reported a problem. At the very least, too, I would have thought the company performing the work would have advised you of this possible problem before they had you sign a contract.

Resurfacing is when we paint the counters, cabinets or tubs. The fumes are stronger fumes so we do not allow anyone to be in the apartment for 8 hours. If it is an occupied apartment, they have to sign a waiver that they will be gone the required amount of time. We have never had any additional apartments surrounding the unit sign a waiver. This is all part of our make-ready process.

I take it this has been done several times at your community and always by the same company? My next question is has the complaining resident notified you prior, at any time, of their allergies in such a way as you should have/could have/would have expected an issue?

I know some management companies who would just tell you to tell the Resident to send their bills to the corporate office and let their Insurance person handle the "supposed claim." I know others who would tell the Manager to "work it out." And still others who would say send the bills for medical expenses not already paid by the Resident's insurance coverage and we will send them a check "promptly." Of course, there is always the school of thought that if the company who performed the work did it differently from accepted practice, such as this time they didn't open windows or ventilate the area fully because it was raining, then the company who performed the work should be responsible for fighting the claim or compensating your Resident. Call your corporate office for further direction and/or your attorney.

Tell the Resident you understand their concerns and want to fully investigate the matter and that you will call them as soon as possible. Don't put them off - call them to follow up. Just don't over-react.

grr, this is a really sore topic for me...

Personally, I have asthma. It has been severe and out of control many times. But in my experience, asthma is not caused by these types of fumes. Asthma attacks are usually caused by allergens. If a resident is disabled to the extent that they need an allergen-free community to prevent or reduce symptoms, there are communities designed to meet their needs, but our community is not one of them.

We resurface counter-tops as needed, and we have 83 units in one building that share common hallways. Everyone's front door opens to the interior hallway. If there is an odor in the building, it spreads everywhere.

A few years ago, we had to refinish the counters in a unit. The lady upstairs from that unit did not call to complain about the odor and was at work during the process. About a week later, she called and said that the odors caused her to get really sick and that she had to go to the emergency room and had to miss a week of work so she wanted us to pay for that. She also said that all of her clothes and furniture had absorbed the odors. She had all her clothes professionally cleaned and wanted us to pay for it. She wanted us to pay to replace all her furniture. She then claimed that the dry cleaner told her that her clothes were permanently damaged so she wanted us to pay to replace all of her clothes.

I'm sure she could smell the odor in the hallway when she came home from work. But I've never had any complaints of illness or damage. We used the same vendor we had always used, and their process had not changed.

It frustrated me because I live in this same building so I know her claims were untrue. I probably shouldn't say how this was resolved other than to say we followed the advice of our attorney.

Your tenants have a reasonable expectation for a home free of what they can determine to be disruptions. In NY cigarette smoke coming into a unit has been defined as a violation of the covenant of habitability and the resident via lawsuit has won damages.

I would pay reasonable costs.

I don't think replacing everything someone owns plus giving them a paid vacation is "reasonable." If more than ONE resident noticed it after hundreds of occurrences, maybe.

I respectfully disagree. How can you think or feel the results to another. Assumptions are expensive. I would expect proof of her hospital bills etc. Then have the tenant propose a solution that would make them happy. Most times its a couple hundred bucks. Or we could throw them out. Attempt a drawn out eviction. Lose a couple months rent. Pay to turn the apartment. Deal with any negative press. Rent the apartment and move on. Sounds like a pay me know or pay me later...

Since my staff and I all reside in the same building, we don't have to assume. :)

We know the process we have used hundreds of times didn't ruin everything in just one apartment (not even one of the units next to the one refinished.)

The resident's proposed solution was that we pay her to replace everything she owned with brand new equivalents. We don't know if she had doctor bills or really took a week off work because she refused to provide documentation, but we know she didn't replace all of her clothing or furniture.

I will go to bat for my residents 100% until they lie to me. After that, they've lost my trust forever.

This incident should have gone to your CONTRACTOR'S insurance company or better still your Attorney. For the cost of Attorney advice it would likely be less than compensating the tenant with free rent etc. The Attorney could have sifted through the adminstrative process of proof & provided a legally reasonable settlement. I actually experienced a similar situation where the tenant was an Attorney. It's a burden of proof issue & what damages / effects are the responsibility of the management / owner.
In future consider doing resurfacing in-house with "kits" which are usually cheaper & less toxic.

Good luck !

P.S I also suffer from environmental asthma but fairness versus neglience is the issue here.

Asthma actually can be triggered by such fumes. Allergens are any particles the body finds foreign to itself and develops a reaction to, allergic reaction. Is possible!

Resurfacing is a standard practice that has been used for years. Yes it stinks for a while but does not linger in your clothing or furniture much after the initial application. It sounds to me like the woman demanding new clothing ect. is just another crook looking for her next victim.

Maintenance and repair must go on. Progress must go on. Sometimes progress is loud, smelly, dusty and definitely "inconvenient" but we are surrounded by it every day. All we can do is to try to set expectations beforehand and keep the inconvenience for our clients to a minimum. We cant allow ourselves to be walked all over though.

I call BS on anyone who says this "is no big deal". These fumes are toxic! I had my Aunts house resurfaced and they told us to stay out of the house for 2-3 days! Yet when they did the Apt down stairs from me the fumes were so bad that when i opened my bathroom door, the smell hit me in the face like a ton of bricks. My husband started uncontrollably coughing, I instantly got a headache, and my dogs were spinning around in circles. Did it last forever? "No". But did we have the right to choose weather or not we wanted to be inside the apt? "Yes" Did anyone notify us? "No". My father has COPD and there is no way he would have survived that. The apts should have to let the other tenants know before doing anything like that. And now on top of it we are getting evicted bc we said we were going to call the housing authority.

Our apartment complex is resurfacing the apartment directly next to ours and our apartment is full of the associated fumes thanks to the shared vents in our “old building”. When addressing our concerns with the front office we we’re basically told that nothing could be done, they don’t notify any neighbors, and that the fumes aren’t toxic at all.

We’ve had to leave because of the fumes causing us to get sick. Our son goes to dialysis three days a week, today being a day at home. His room smelled the strongest.

The men working on the next door unit all had heavy duty ventilator masks on and the windows and doors wide open. We opened up our windows to get some fresh air but it only helped a little bit.

Is there ANYTHING we can do?? How is it legal for them to not even notify us that we might have to be out of our unit for a while? They know of our son’s condition.

Just because YOU didn’t have problems doesn’t mean that woman didn’t. She could have Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. Look it up. It’s dangerous. Lots of chemicals involved in that process. I know because I have multiple chemical sensitivities and new carpet or anything that offgasses affects me greatly. I’m had to move out of an apartment I had just moved into because of it. Very stressful and costly. Educate yourself please

My wife and I own and manage about a dozen rental properties in Colorado.

There is a an objective way any VOC’s can be measured with a simple electronic meter from Home Depot.

A very large apartment complex near the Domain in Austin did this recently to our son, his wife and two babies only 2 and 1 years-old. They were not notified the apartment next to theirs would get the bathtub resurfaced yesterday. By evening, the noxious fumes and ammonia smell forced them to leave for obvious health reasons. Similar to the poster, the on-site manager used all the same excuses if we haven’t in the past had any problems etc…..

A good vendor will advise the landlord to use TVOC monitoring equipment to measure when the apartment is safe for re-entry AND absolutely notify anyone else in the building.

MC and other chemicals used can literally kill you. This isn’t about anyone being litigious but more about lazy and cheap landlords pinching Pennie’s while endangering tenant health.

There is an objective method for measuring air quality inside a home - use it!