Extensive pet waste damage and odor. C4 or C5?

[Surf Cat]

My question is how do you estimate the cost to cure?

This is what I was wondering. The op did not state whether this is on a raised foundation or a slab.

Nevertheless, IMO, you need a professional remediation company to come in there if it was that bad. If the dwelling is on a raised foundation, that urine could be soaked into the subflooring which would have to be removed.

Estimating a cost to cure with new carpet, padding, a cleaning service, and a paint job would have the interior looking real nice but wafting of urine.

Put the onus on the lender to figure that out. Appraiser's not the expert....

 

[jay trotta]

C 8

 

[Sandra Koutsopoulos]

I've worked in chicken houses, dairies, and worked cattle, sheep, and horses where one had to deal with the poop day in and out. I've cleaned out chicken houses - 20-30 tons of chicken poop- with a scoop shovel. Ditto horse stalls, and we hauled cow manure out on a skid and slung it onto the pasture for fertilizer. I've appraised chicken houses, hen houses, turkey houses, and hog farrowing houses. I've never appraised a feedlot per se (just cattle auctions.) And we had a dog kennel and nothing gagged me worse than dog poop but dad built a huge kennel so that there was plenty of grass and dogs rarely had an odor related to their poop. But a couple of houses I've been in....they were almost too much. My assistant was also raised on a chicken farm and she agreed. A bad dog pooped house is worse than any chicken house.

OP's appraisal sounds like a C5 for sure, and maybe C6 if the structure has had the urine soak into the flooring, walls and baseboards, b/c typical buyers won't buy that, and will take into consideration the $$$$ required to strip it all out and try to start over.

Actually, I'm not bothered much by horse apples, but piles of doggie-doo, & especially cat mess?!... Gag a maggot! That is one of the hardest smells to get out of walls, upholstery, floors, baseboards.

Terrel, I'm a farm gal too, and the cows, sheep, chickens, and shoveling it all out then spreading it in the field with a manure spreader... well, that was just another day on the farm. I do think that we become used to some odors in our environment and tend to 'cancel them out' to a certain degree.
Did an appraisal on newer construction built on a former industrial-level dairy farm here where they packed in the animals like sardines so there had been mountains of manure. Anyhow, the odor was pretty oppressive in this new neighborhood, and I asked the guy, "Does the odor bother you?", and he responded: "WHAT ODOR!" OMG! Later, I saw they had installed pipes to burn off the methane, and this was near the (15) Xway, so many folks would take an alternative roads due to the concentrated acres and acres of odor. Out in the 'country' the cows were in the pasture, so a plotch over here and a splute over there didn't hit ya... except if they had pigs. 'Nuf said.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

dry litter is not a problem for me. Lagoon for either hogs or hens...way too much as the ammonia is over-powering.

 

[Zoe]

Cats are relatively easy if you confine them somewhat to their litter box. Dogs can be trained fairly easily with time, treats and patience and knowing how to do it. A puppy needs confined at first until they understand the program. Confine them, take them outside and reward with a treat when they go outside. Bring them back inside and confine again. Rinse and repeat. Then slowly let them have more unconfined time and keep rewarding every time they go outside.

VA says if the odor is that bad, then it needs to be fixed somehow and some way. It will either have to be sanitized and cleaned professionally or the floor covering replaced (carpet mainly), because tile can be cleaned. It is a minimum property requirement for VA.

It is a safety issue with VA if the odor is that bad. They don't see it as being healthy for anybody to live in.

 

[Zoe]

I did a house in nice old neighborhood. It was a refi and the owner in the neighborhood said that is the cat lady. I swear the smell knocked me down when I went in the house. I swear I bet there were 50-100 cats in that house. Everywhere I turned there was a cat up above me or at my feet or in front of me. She was taking care of them all. They were everywhere. I would look up and one was perched up on something. I would look down and one would be at my feet. I would straight and they were everywhere.

I think the bank shot that loan down.

She had litter boxes and cat boxes(like dog houses) everywhere. Relatively small house. Maybe 1100 sqft GLA.

A few had scars on them. If you get that many cats in a small area, they will fight sometimes.

 

[Sandra Koutsopoulos]

I did quite a bit of dog rescue during the Great Recession when people were abandoning their pets, often due to losing their house in foreclosure and rentals not wanting pets. One of the saddest things was the rescue community saying "we can't save them all", which was heartbreaking, as animals ended up in 'shelter', only to be taken straight to the kill room because the 'shelter' was over-crowded. Subsequently, LA County required spay/neuter for dogs unless owners paid a big license fee for their intact dogs. That step cut the problem dramatically.

It is unfair to animals to be in 'hoarder' situations, as they have a poor quality of life, but some people think they are 'rescuing' and 'saving' animals when the 'rescuers' actually have a mental sickness, and are just keeping that animal away from being in a better environment. Most of the 'rescues' that I worked with used multiple volunteers to care for and house a few animals at a time that they took responsibility for until they were adopted, and they had regular adoption events and websites to promote adoptions. In Lake Elsinore (Riverside CO) now I'm told that the 'shelter' is full of kittens, and so any new kitten that comes in the front door is killed right away. So sad. The fault lies with people not doing spay/neuter to keep the numbers down to the animals they can properly care for, but people are people, and many treat animals like a used newspaper. Free spay/neuter would go a long way to reduce excess populations, thus saving the County 'shelter' and animal cruelty money, but it is very rare to find free spay/neuter.

 

[Mark K]

A buddy bought a house like that years ago.

After stripping out all carpet/pad and cutting out and replacing the worst of the urine-soaked sub flooring, he mopped with bleach water and then pine-sol. After it dried he painted the floor with polyurethane to seal the floor. While the flooring was out he primed and painted all of the walls and had the furnace ducts cleaned. He also used a couple of ozone generators to help kill any remaining smell. After that, new flooring and it was in good shape. He lived there for about 10 years and I was in it on numerous occasions, never got a whiff of odor.

It can be cured much the way that smoke from a house fire can be cured. Not easy or cheap, but curable.

 

[Zoe]

We have densely populated areas with like HOA or neighborhood watch and neighbors will ask what are you doing? That is what happened on the cat lady's house. Probably 5 feet between houses with neighborhood watch and/or HOA.

They were like get ready. LOL

I was scared everywhere I turned inside. Her following helped. The cats trusted her. I can only imagine the fights she had to break up. I think she took any stray cat she could find. Dead serious.

 

[Zoe]

For her, the cats' and my sake, I didn't have to kill one. The cats knew we better not go down that road. Smart choice.