VAUDREUIL-DORION – Five years ago, Magalie Seabrooke and her family moved into their dream home.
But during their first winter, they say they realized something wasn’t right.
“It was 95 per cent humidity in the house, we didn’t know what was going on cause we never had this in our previous houses,” she said.
“Our first reaction was to call the builder cause it was a brand new house, it wasn’t even one year old.”
“My father-in-law would walk in and his glasses would fog up.”
Every year, Seabrooke said they had the same issue with the home.
Then, this past fall, the couple said they made a gruesome discovery.
“My husband and I were just tidying the basement and we realized it’s so damp, why is it so damp? I mean, we’ve had the AC on all summer, it’s hot,” said Seabrooke.
“As we were cleaning up we realized we had mold all along our baseboards.”
After calling numerous experts and inspectors, Seabrooke said the problem is in the home’s heating, ventilating and air conditioning system, set up in the basement – right near her children’s playroom.
“My middle daughter is allergic to the mold we found,” she said.
“So she was very sick and I had actually taken her to my naturopath and she said this is what she’s allergic to.”
She said her seven-year-old’s allergies are so bad that she’s scheduled for surgery next week to alleviate the problem.
Seabrooke said she took her case to the Quebec Homebuilder’s Association (APCHQ) and last week, they decided the builder, Habitations Sylvain Ménard Inc., was not at fault.
“They said that we weren’t maintaining our machine even though we had proof that we were,” said Seabrooke.
“So they went with their word against all of our facts.”
Global News reached out to the builder for comment, but our calls were not returned.
Seabrooke said she’s taking the matter into her own hands and has hired a lawyer.
“We’re not monsters, we have little kids,” she said.
“We’ve done everything you’ve told us to do in terms of maintaining our house, we’re doing it properly, there’s something wrong with the machines and we just need help.”
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