Our Beautiful ‘Dream Home’ that Turned into a Nightmare!!!



View Video: Our Family’s Mold Nightmare

Drees Homes built us a house we cannot live in-due to severe mold contamination

My health and the health of my family has been severely harmed.

In Nov 2005 we moved into our “dream home”, we had experienced a number of construction issues along the way including a lot of leaks!!

However when we moved into our beautiful new home we were excited about the future and all the memories we would make together in this new place., we trusted Drees that they had taken care of all the problems and that they had built us a home that we could live in. If only we knew about the nightmare that we were about to begin.

Here is a rundown of the events as they occurred:

  • The basement windows and doors continued to leak and we notified the Warranty Manager as per Drees instructions and he professed that he “never heard of such a problem before”.
  • In early Feb 06 I started to experience headaches that would last for weeks on end, I became very light sensitive, having to sleep in my walk- in closet to get away from all the light and noise. Thus began my medical adventure.
  • By April 06 I had been to the ER twice (by April 07 I had been 7 times) and was admitted on April 4 for 4 days as they tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Over the course of the next 6-8mths I had MRI, CAT scans, EKG, EEG and numerous blood tests, they tested for brain tumors, carcinoid tumors, adrenal gland tumors-all of course were negative. The doctors were baffled, I was getting sicker every day even having to wear a heart monitor and taking many different kinds of medications.
  • I had lost 35-40lbs and after testing practically every part of my body, the doctors had no leads as to the cause.
  • I was bed-ridden and my husband had no choice but to stay home and take care of me and our 2 girls who at that time were 10 and 8. They were used to Mom always being there to help with homework, help out at school, go on field trips. Their lives had been completely turned upside down!!!
  • All through this time my husband was still trying to get Drees to take care of the leaks in our home. We had no idea at the time how damaging those leaks were to our lives, but he was very concerned about the constant moisture coming into the house.
  • Fast forward to Christmas 2006, I am able to be up with the family on Christmas morning-yeah!! However by 2pm I am back in bed not being able to withstand the light and pain anymore. I take my Demerol and go to bed.
  • The next day my husband so tired of not having his normal life with a healthy, happy wife started thinking about causes for all of this. He decided that since I had been in100% healthy until we moved into our new home and that the doctors couldn’t find anything obvious-that it must have something to do with our new home!! He went to the local hardware store and purchased two indoor air quality tests for Mold and Radon-he set up the tests and then sent them away to the lab for testing-imagine our shock when the Mold test came back positive!!!
  • So now everything started to make sense; the leaky windows and doors, my continued sickness, my 10 yr olds’ nosebleeds and headaches…..

Here is what happened after we discovered the mold problem:

We contacted Drees immediately to notify them that we had found mold and to ask them to please help us take care of the problem, fix all the windows to prevent any more moisture for the mold and to have a company clean and eradicate the mold. We felt very assured when two representatives of Drees Company came to the house (Matthew Graves and Lucky Simmons and they let us know that they were committed to finding all of the mold and would in fact bring in a company to find it and get rid of it).

The company that Drees hired found the mold on an old leather couch in the basement that had been sitting up against the windows , THE LEAKY WINDOWS- ones that Drees admitted had been leaking over 18mths!!!

Drees told us their experts said to get rid of/clean the couch and vacuum our dusty unfinished basement-we did but I kept getting sick.

Over the next few months we repeatedly asked Drees to help us. All we wanted was a house we could live in. We ended up moving out of our beautiful but very sick home in May 2007 and I have not been back to the hospital since.

The real report that DREES decided not to give us (see link) says that anyone remediating the house should wear; EPA approved clothing, eyewear, gloves and a respiratory mask! but DREES thought it was okay for my family to continue to live there. Our house is severely contaminated with mold, we have lost everything,including our health and still after winning our court case in December 2008, DREES still refuses to allow us to have a life, they are still fighting us in appeals.

Please help us by sending an e-mail to ddrees@dreeshomes.com. Please let them know that we won’t let this type of catastrophe happen to anyone else!!!

All we did wrong was buy a home from DREES homes (aka Zaring homes). Now our lives are changed forever.

Please don’t make the same mistake we did!!!!