This inspection report pertains to the bottom-level suite at 14540 John Marshall Highway, Gainesville, VA 20155. This serves as a warning to the public to not rent the said suite because of its multiple problems and issues.
Please do not rent the bottom-level suite at 14540 John Marshall Highway, Gainesville, VA 20155!
This official Inspector Report pertains to the Bottom Level Suite in the commercial building located at 14540 John Marshall Highway, Suite 100, Gainesville, VA, 20155. View the full report here: https://14540johnmarshall.com/
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Our Story Renting This Suite
I am a local business owner and I rented the bottom-level suite at 14540 John Marshall Highway, Gainesville, VA 20155 for one of my businesses. Over the course of a few months, I started noticing that my employees were routinely sick or when at work were coughing and wheezing. The air felt musty and muggy. When I brought the matter to the landlord, he assured me it was nothing and he’d look into it.
A couple of months later, nothing was better, in fact, the situation was getting worse as we approached winter. You could feel the dampness everywhere. That’s when I decided to hire my own building inspector. Below is his report to me.
Needless to say, we quickly served our notice to vacate the premise and have put together this website to help others beware of this bottom-level suite in particular at 14540 John Marshall Highway in Gainesville, Virginia.
We hope this report helps you make an informed decision before deciding to rent at this building and if you find this report helpful, please simply leave a comment below.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter,
Local Business Owner
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An Inspection Report Presented to a Local Business Owner
for the bottom suite at
14540 John Marshall Highway
Gainesville VA 20155
Dear Local Business Owner:
Thank you for having me to your business today to evaluate the temperature/moisture situation in your suite. I understood from you that there was discomfort and employee turnover associated with the humidity and temperature/moisture, and investigated with that in mind.
I arrived at 11am and a hygrometer measured the relative humidity at 68%. In the morning when employees arrive the humidity can be as high as 77%. That is not surprising as the door had been closed all night. This morning the humidity was said to be 75% when opening the door. This is much too high for breathing and working comfort. It can also contribute to health issues such as too much perspiration, lethargy, headaches, muscle cramps, etc. A healthy indoor humidity is 30 or 35%. So higher than 60% is a definite problem. When papers are left on the floor or even on the desk they begin to curl from moisture! I saw that today.
Another problem is this: above the 30 - 35% ambient moisture level molds and fungi are invited. As such a mold test by an ACAC-certified mold company would be recommended.
The suite is below ground. Certainly this can be one contribution to the indoor air quality as moisture accumulates against the foundation walls. A second is the HVAC system. There were no HVAC returns in any of the rooms. Air must circulate, not only for proper humidity control and temperature comfort but also air quality. Dead air is never a good thing indoors, summer or winter.In my evaluation I determined there are two causes to the excessive humidity. The first is the front wall in both rooms beneath a window well. And the second is that the HVAC is not cooling the air. While there was a good air flow the temperature differential between the air coming from the registers and the ambient air in the units was not great. Ideally there should be a 15 - 20F degree temperature differential and today it was less than 10 degrees or less.
So to sum it up, I believe there is a confluence of three things — the moisture in the walls, the low HVAC temperature differential, and the lack of returning air for circulation, seem to be conspiring together to cause such high humidity discomfort in the entire unit. One can feel the humidity upon entering the suite.
It was not very warm outdoors today. However, these problems would likely be exacerbated by continually-high temperatures outdoors. I believe that on many days the combination of temperature and humidity will be quite unhealthy and uncomfortable, and well outside any range considered normal.
Today’s construction techniques would have all the window wells connected to a drainage system all around the foundation of the building which would drain into one or two sump pumps to remove the water pressure from around the foundation walls. It is unlikely that there is any drainage of water that gets into the window wells. It accumulates and sits until it can percolate away into the soil. That natural reduction of water pressure would likely take longer in shady window wells than in sunny ones. Until that happens water pressure against the foundation walls is a certainty.
Very kindly,
Jay Markanich
Virginia Licensed Home Inspector
#3380-000723, with NRS designation
Learn more about the inspection report by visiting the official business notification and report page.
