LIVE! Home Inspections and Biohazard Cleanup with Rikki Neel & Jim Greene

Hey everybody, this is Craig from The Homeowner Show. So glad that you could be with us again for another episode of The Homeowner Show. We so appreciate you tuning in every single week to get more information on how to be a better homeowner. This week we're bringing you a special holiday edition of The Homeowner Show from a live event that we did here in the Houston, Texas area. We hope you enjoy. We're going to break this one up into two parts, and so we'll be back with you in two weeks with another great interview here on the Homeowner Show. Until then, enjoy the episode. Awesome.

Dum dum dum dum dum.

All right, we're probably gonna get kicked off Facebook for using unlicensed music. Probably. You gotta be careful about that. Oh good, here's some Bon Jovi. We'll probably wind up in Facebook jail if nothing else. That's cool. Yeah, I've always wanted to go to virtual jail. I've never been there, but what's interesting is once you get there, I think it's real easy to get back. It's much less rapey.

Than what?

Than actual jail. Oh, that. Not that I would know anything about that. You act as if you've got some experience there. I do. Well, with jail, not prison. It's a totally different ballgame. Am I even on? Yeah, there you go. Yeah, you're on. I think my— I think— okay. It keeps going in and out, I thought. But I think we're good. Yeah, yeah, I got you. Oh look, I see us on, on the Facebook Lives. Yeah, is anybody watching us? That's the question.

We'll see.

So far, no. We'll get, we'll get it up and going here. Yeah, I'm gonna share it out. I'm gonna do that as well to all the things. We're gonna get going here in just a few minutes.

Hey guys, what's up? How y'all doing?

Good.

It's been a minute since we talked.

I know, you might have inspected a house or two since then.

I have. And you know what was really cool is the last one that we did, I told anybody that needed— no matter where they were in the country— to reach out if they needed help. And we've actually been able to help several people in other states, actually, just by getting them connections to good inspectors. So that was kind of cool. Yeah, you know, it's like one in Florida, one in Florida, and I have one in Colorado, one in, uh, Michigan. or something like that. Okay, that was cool.

Nice.

I happen to know a little bit of a lot of people.

And you're a little busy right now?

I am slammed right now. It's great. You know, so it's crazy.

How far out are you? I mean, like, are you just booking them day by day? Are you having to go like, look, I can't get to these 2 weeks?

It depends on the week. But yeah, there— and if we get a cancellation, either financing falls through or something, but you can always call us. We've got a number of inspectors that we can get you to. And if we can't take care of you, I will find you an inspector that can take care of you. So, you know, we network. We don't believe in competing with each other. At least my little group doesn't. We try and complete, you know, whatever the client needs. So, you know, if I'm not the best inspector for the job, say, you know, they've got something that's seriously electrically wrong, I have an inspector that is actually, actually also a master electrician. So, you know, he might be a better fit for their particular inspection. So you do, you know, what suits

the client the best is really what our goal is.

Nice. Is there anything that's come up that's kind of weird since the freeze?

So when a property has a pipe bust, they do not have to disclose water damage like they would if it was flooded.

Oh, really?

Not in the same way. So they can say, well, a pipe busted, but they don't have to say my house flooded. But they should really be taken care of kind of in the same manner with remediation and having— making sure that those areas are treated for any kind of bacterial growth that might occur later. Or, you know, if like we had one the other day that had wood floors and they're like, there's no water damage here. I'm like, man, every single plank of this floor is buckled.

Yeah.

So you had water at some point. So I'm just saying. But yeah, so after the freeze, you know, they can say, yeah, pipe bust, but they're not really required to report a flooded type property.

That's crazy.

So it's not handled in the same way it would be if it had been a flooded property with remediation certificates and things like that. So it is a little bit different. But yeah, we've done a lot of damage inspections and stuff and, you know, trying to find where the leak is with infrared. And, you know, it's been fun. It's interesting.

Wow.

It's very interesting. What?

So I don't understand, why, why do they not have to do that then? I mean, like, is it just— is that just like a weird loophole in the law? Yeah. Okay.

It basically boils down to the state of Texas.

Okay, so—

Which, while we have some amazing things in place here, we also have some very interesting things in place here as well.

So, well, I can imagine that that's, that's just going to be a really, really big deal for years to come here, where, you know, people may not sell their house now, but they've been living in it. They maybe they forget that they've got— had some damage or whatever and never get it fixed.

And yep, and it likes to grow things because we have a very humid, hot, and environment, as you guys all know.

See you, Patrick. So, see you, dude.

Um, you know, it is what it is, but it, it's been interesting when people try and hide things that it's like, yeah, well, we can tell though.

Yeah.

Okay, so see it.

So how does that change the inspector that I find? I mean, it's easy if you live in the Houston area, you call Ricky. Well, yeah, but if you don't if you don't live in Houston or you live somewhere else, I mean, call Ricky and she'll find you one. Okay, there you go.

I still can help you, I promise. I know inspectors literally all over the country.

I mean, like, you have a massive Facebook group of like—

I do. I have, uh, we just hit over 2,000 followers this week actually. Um, uh, Jim Green from the biohazard cleanup, the, uh, they—

Is that this guy right here?

Yeah, the Crime Scene Cowboy.

Okay.

Uh, so he does like cigarette cleanups. So if you got cigarette smoke smoke or pet smells or somebody unfortunately passed away in the home. He does all that kind of icky gross cleanup.

Does he want to come over here?

Yeah, he's out here.

I need to talk to that guy.

Say hi, Jim.

Yeah, we need it. We need it.

I actually did his daughter's house and they had some— it's a brand new home and it had some massive framing issues. And so I had put up a video on my Pink Flamingo Inspections Facebook page and Jim shared it. And for an inspection video, and I hate this word, but it kind of went viral. So we've had almost 12,000 views on just this one video about a brand new $300,000+ home that had framing that was literally built with scraps.

Whoa.

It is a wild video. If you go to the Facebook page, it's the first video when you hit my videos. It's— it is mind-blowing.

It's on the Pink Flamingo page?

Yeah, on the Facebook page. Um, it's Pink Flamingo Inspects, I think is what it is. Um, but yeah, they— that was a wild— that was a wild inspection. Um, literally scraps were holding up the entire peak of the front of the roof.

Oh my goodness.

It was— and you know, if one nail doesn't work, 20 is gonna, right?

Yeah, well, obviously.

Well, unless you don't nail them into anything.

Oh.

And they just go straight through the material.

Yeah, so the real question is, did they buy the house?

Um, My understanding is it's currently in a process that I am not allowed to speak about.

Okay, yeah, there you go. Oh, there's litigation going on.

It sounds like that is probably going to be the situation, so I'm going to reserve my comments on the further progress of that situation at this time.

But that's the direction that goes, isn't it?

Well, you know, if you can't put a bird's mouth cut into a rafter and set it on the top plate of a house and you've got like a 3-inch gap and it's every single one of the rafters, yeah, that's a problem. So—

And you ought not be doing that for anybody.

No, that should never happen.

So, because I can just imagine, like, right now in this market, it's like, yeah, they glued a bunch of Jenga pieces together to frame this thing up, but it's the only one available.

Yeah, and then, and we're gonna pay over asking to do it. That's the fun part. And materials are in such short supply right now.

They just don't want to pay for the wood. Yeah, that's right. But nails are cheap.

Nails are a lot cheaper than wood, and Lord help you if you need a piece of OSB right now.

Oh my goodness, good luck finding it. When you do— yeah, how much did Eric say it was up in Portland right now? Like $53 a sheet?

Before COVID hit, a sheet of OSB was like $7.26. It's now like $52.90-something cents.

It's mostly glue.

Yeah, it's literally the offshoots of when they process 2x4s. Yeah. So it's literally scrap material that they've made into another material that they sell for a premium.

Have you, have you seen that, uh, that meme that's out there? Said, my wife told me to take her somewhere expensive.

Yeah.

And he takes her to the hardware store. Yeah, they're sitting in the, uh, the lumber section.

I like the hardware store anyway because I'm just that kind of girl. So that would be an ideal date. But you know, not every chick likes that. So I'm just saying, maybe, maybe not do that if you want a good outcome. Okay, fellas.

Yeah. All right.

Unless your wife's a home inspector, and then she might like that.

All right. So we're up here. We got the crawfish going. You've been cooking crawfish since like yesterday, right?

Well, the inspection company Pink Flamingo did sponsor the crawfish, and I just happen to know these guys at Texas Boil Team, and I invited them to come out and cook their crawfish because they only do private events.

Okay.

And their crawfish is amazing. So I've been cooking and cleaning and helping with crawfish for quite a minute now. Crawfish Nick's up on La Weta is Uh, some of my friends, and so I've been helping them process crawfish coming in from Louisiana for a number of weeks now. So they helped us sponsor crawfish, and nice, we have like 300 pounds of crawfish. Everybody needs to come eat some crawfish.

Yeah, and like you said, all the proceeds are going to—

If anybody donates anything to the crawfish, uh, it's all going to Habitat for Humanity and Rescuing Angels Rescue, which I highly recommend if you don't even come out to please check out their information and donate. Habitat for Humanity obviously benefits anyone in our community because it provides sound housing for, you know, lower-income families. And a lot of single parents depend on some of those communities to be able to afford their— actually their home and make an investment that actually is going to be worth their time in the long run. And they're not just spending money on rent, they're actually going to own their home. And the great thing about Habitat for Humanity is you actually have to serve a certain number of hours of Working on the home. So they learn skills and they learn

about the process of building their home and taking care of their home once they're in their home. So we're really big into Habitat for Humanity. I've actually worked on a couple of the neighborhoods off Aldine Westfield. It's really cool. I love going because a lot of times it's retired tradesmen, and so they teach you so many skills that just— Yeah, you learn your average information. And then Rescuing Angels Rescues, which special for me because if any of you know me, you know about my little Chihuahua that I found on an inspection named Baba Yaga. And she was like less than 4 pounds, had no hair. She just looked like a mess. She looked like a little

chupacabra. We're like, we didn't know what she was. And this rescue, because I didn't intend to keep her, um, helped us vet her and get her healthy. And they asked us to foster her in the meantime because they didn't have any fosters. And I Ricky Neal, I'm a foster failure. Um, Baba Yaga still lives with us. Oh man. She's been with us over 2 years. She is such a joy and a love, but I really can't—

Still looking for a home.

Uh, yeah, if you can get— if you can pry her away from her daddy, you let me know, okay? Her and my husband are real tight. But, uh, Lori Haney over at Rescuing Angels Rescue helped us out and helped us save this little dog's life and She transports anywhere from 100 to 150, 160 dogs a year all over the country to try and find them homes.

Wow.

Make sure they're cared for and vetted and loved. And so both of those causes are really close to me and Freddie's, uh, heart. And so that's why we were doing this event, and we're gonna do another one in the fall. We're gonna try and do a Happy House Haunted Home and try and teach people about the process of buying an actual home, from credit score all the way through maintenance and air conditioning maintenance and plumbing maintenance and just your normal stuff, you know, that not everybody is either taught or knows about, you know, because, you know, not everybody's into doing small maintenance things.

Well, someone starts somewhere. You have to.

Yeah, everybody starts somewhere.

And it could be your first home.

Yeah, and it could be your 30th home. It's just not something you know, you know. So if you're going to be an investor, it's really really great because then you'll learn how to take care of your investment properties yourself and not spend so much money.

Right.

But yeah, so it's been, it's been really great.

Well, not only that, I mean, you come out to an event like this, you're gonna meet a lot of those people that are gonna help you like actually get your house in order.

Absolutely. And that's, I mean, like Jim doing, you know, if you buy a house where, you know, somebody smoked in it for 30 years and that, that, that, that leaves a smell.

Yeah.

Yes. And it's hard to get rid of that smell. And, you know, Jim can get rid of that smell. And then we have a bunch of agents here here and mortgage brokers and investors.

And there's that roofer guy right there.

And there's a roofer guy. Connor Mack for the win.

It's the only shady— no, never mind.

I literally have him programmed in my phone as Connor Mack for the win, and I love it when he calls me and I'm in my truck because she says, Connor Mack for the win.

Um, nice.

But yeah, Connor's great. He helps me a lot on inspections, especially roofs that are extremely tall or extremely high pitch. So if, you know, I got a 10 and 12, I just call Connor because he's got the cougar paws and I don't have to spend $700 on a pair of shoes. He's already spent $700 on a pair of shoes.

That's right. Make him go up there.

It's him that's falling off, not me.

Exactly.

I'm not afraid of heights, but I am afraid of gravity.

Every time.

That's the law and she's not playing.

So who should we bring up next?

Uh, let's see. Have you talked to Jim yet?

We have not talked to Jim.

Oh, Jim.

I don't think we've ever met Jim.

Come on.

Never met Jim.

Come talk about that decontamination, cowboy.

I got— when I pulled up in the parking lot, Kev, I saw that truck and I was like, I really hope this guy's here. Yeah, no kidding.

No kidding. It was actually this guy's daughter's house that is that framing video that you see on my Facebook page. Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Which we can't ask questions about. Right.

You can't ask her questions. You can ask me.

I can ask you. Oh, okay.

Because I will blast the hell out of that company. There you go. Do not buy a Coventry home.

Oh, okay. What? So she didn't buy it?

She did buy it.

Oh, she did buy it.

She did buy it because it's still worth about $50,000 more than what she closed on.

Okay.

So they tried to get her not to buy the house because they could have sold it for another $50,000 or $60,000 more than what she bought it for.

Good grief. Wow. All right, so Ricky was telling us a little bit about what you do. I want to hear it in your words. Like, what— because she, she was telling us some of it was a little scary.

Yeah, some of it can be. So in a nutshell, I'm the stinky house guy. Cigarettes, cigars, cats, curries, cadavers, whatever. It doesn't really matter. If it stinks, we fix it.

Okay.

So, but aside from that, we also do the things that most people don't want to do or unwilling to do or unqualified to do. We do biohazardous cleanup. We do crime scene cleanup. We do a lot of unattended death cleanups and hoarding houses.

Okay.

So we really do the nasty stuff. So we're biohazardous cleaners. Yeah, is really what we are.

So nasty animals. And like, can you actually go find them? Like if they're like in a wall?

Yes.

You have a way to locate them?

Yes, I do. Yeah. Yeah, we use an infrared camera for that.

Okay.

Yeah, it doesn't always work.

Because sometimes they're cold.

Yeah, sometimes they're cold or sometimes the house is well insulated and they're harder to find. And so in those cases, you know, it can be very costly to find those animals.

So like before you can get there, 'cause I imagine sometimes people call you like, look, there's this god-awful smell in my house. And you're like, listen, I can't get there till Tuesday. In the meantime, why don't you do this? What do you typically tell them?

We typically tell them we'll be there in a couple hours.

Okay.

We're a 24/7 company. Okay. pretty fast response time.

Yeah, um, well, you almost need to in order to make sure that it doesn't go cold, right?

That really is kind of a thing. Besides the fact that by the time you start to smell it, especially if it's in an attic or in a wall, by the time they start smelling it, it's pretty well decomposed, right? And depending on the size of it is going to depend on how long that smell is going to linger. So if it's just a mouse and it's winter, you know, you may never smell it at all. But if it's a rat and it's summer, you're gonna start to smell it and you're gonna have to figure out where it's at. And we had one, uh, actually last winter that we did. It was 2 dead possums. Oh, um, and one of them had to have been close to 27 pounds.

Oh my goodness.

It was, it was like this.

Are you sure it wasn't a raccoon?

It was not a raccoon. That's what I thought at first. I thought it was a raccoon. but it was a huge possum. And it was a million-dollar listing. And what's worse is this, that it was— when we finally did find it, it was 100 feet from the front door in the master bedroom. But as soon as you open the front door, it just knocks you over.

Ooh.

So, and it took us 3 days. There were 2 of them because we found the first one and thought, okay, we're good. So we did our treatment to get the smell out of the house, but then the smell came back right away. So we knew there was at least one more dead animal in there. So it took us, uh, it took us actually 6 days to find all the dead animals in this place and get them out.

See, you could be a really good resource for Craig here who does pest control, because a lot of times I, I would expect that a lot of people don't know who to search for whenever they're looking for someone to do biohazard cleanup, they're probably not looking for that on Google, right?

Well, and most people don't know that they, that they want somebody like that. They, you know, they think, oh, I got a dead animal to deal with, I just call a pest control company, right? Most pest control companies, companies though, they don't want to come and get your dead animal either, you know.

Not really. We will, we just, you know.

They'd really rather keep them out of your house, which is really kind of the whole point of pest control. So I work with a lot of pest control companies, at least in Cypress and Katy area.

Okay.

Um, and then I work with a lot of animal control companies as well, um, because I've got one guy in particular, he, he owns a company that deals with wildlife. Um, but anytime it's a— he only deals with the living. If it's dead, he calls me. And so we also do a lot of attic decontaminations, uh, from, from rodent infestations. We did one, in fact, 2 weeks ago, and it always happens on a Friday night at 6:30 when I'm getting ready to take my wife out for dinner. I get a call, you know, our house smells so bad we can't even go in. And so we go in and, you know, of course— and by the way, I love getting those calls at 6:30 on Friday night when I'm getting ready for a date because I charge

$450 an hour for that.

Oh, wow.

So please call me on Friday night.

That's right.

My margaritas are on you.

That's right. This place is open late.

Yeah, so we got up there, we found the rodent hanging out above the master bedroom, but there was not a single square inch of this attic that was not— I mean, literally, if you did a per-inch count, there was at least 10 feces per square inch in this entire attic.

They'd had a problem for a while.

Yeah, they had a problem for— so we went in and it took us an entire day. Literally 42 man-hours to clean out and disinfect that attic.

Did you have to remove like all the insulation?

Yeah, every square inch of it. In that case, when it's that far gone, it all has to come out. There are cases that we can go in where if it's a recent infestation or if it's not so bad, we can just go in, we can, you know, HEPA vacuum the stuff up and then decontaminate the entire attic. But this was a thing where the entire attic had to be just completely gutted.

It was And so that's a costly problem. So after you're done with that, like, what's it like? Unless we're like revealing some industry secret, like, what's the process to get the air clean, to get the surfaces clean so it doesn't smell, so that you're breathing? Because I mean, like, that's an air quality problem.

It is an air quality problem. And her children were suffering from allergy issues, right, in that particular case. So we have a product that we use it in the attic first, and that's made by Neosan. You have to be qualified to use the product. Stupid expensive. It's— I charge $480 a gallon for this stuff.

Wow.

But there is no biological substance known to be harmful to man that this doesn't kill. So it kills every disease, it kills every virus, it kills every mold, it kills every fungus, every— if it is biologically harmful to humans, this kills it. Kills it instantly.

Wow.

And once it's applied to any wood surfaces, that wood becomes anti-microbial or antifungal for life, and it's guaranteed for that. Wow. So when we do apply this stuff in an attic, we heavily— we fog out the entire attic and apply it to every single member that's exposed. And then not only have we decontaminated the place, but I actually give them a certificate that says that that attic's going to be mold-free for life. So that's how good that stuff works. Yeah. So, and we use that same product for crime scene cleanup, for blood, um, for, by, you know, bodily fluids, anything.

Does it actually remove them or just like—

It turns them into nothing. It, it literally turns them into nothing.

So you can get up blood and like, and things like that?

Yeah, yeah. So we used to have to use 2 or 3 different products for cleaning up blood First, we'd have to use an enzyme to break down the blood and kill all the proteins in it, and then we use a disinfectant after that, and then a second disinfectant. With this, it's one shot. We just put the same product on it and it gets rid of all that stuff.

So, man, man, that's crazy. That is crazy. We probably need to actually bring you in the studio to do like a deep dive on some of this.

I'd love to do that. That's— I love talking about this stuff.

No, man, we could, we could talk for hours about this. For sure.

Yeah, so yeah, we work— yeah, I get calls from pest control companies all the time. And you know, it's because even, you know, a lot of pest control companies, they don't want to deal with some of the stuff that I deal with because, you know, quite frankly, what we do is hazardous, especially when you're dealing with rodent waste. You can— there's things like hantavirus, um, and it's mostly known to be in raccoon feces, but, but the CDC considers it to pretty much be Or can be in all rodent feces.

Okay.

And so once, once that rodent feces dries, it can become airborne and you breathe that in. And hantavirus is basically— it's, it's kind of like, um, uh, hepatitis.

Okay.

You're not sick every day, but 2 or 3 times a year you're going to be sick and you're going to be down for a week or 2 at a time. So it's— you don't want to be breathing that stuff in. As well as all the allergies and stuff, issues that it can cause. So, so once we get done with those decontaminations, we do that stuff in the attic, then we do a clean air treatment in the house to treat the entire house and make certain that everything is sanitized. And it sanitizes every surface and all the air in the house. And generally, you know, depending on, on the air quality of where you're at and how often you have your doors open, these treatments

can last for up to a year. year.

Hmm, that's, that's amazing. So yeah, great. I mean, $480 a gallon, I mean, like, like how many gallons does it take to treat a typical—

Generally, it's, it's about, uh, we, we generally do about 2 gallons in the attic.

Okay.

Um, depending on the size.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, we do an ultra-low volume fogger. So what we, we, we, we specifically make certain that we wet all the lumber with it Yeah. And then we fog out the entire place so you can't see from one end to the other.

All right.

So anything living in there at that point becomes toast.

That's awesome. I know we got to move on to some other, but let everybody, if you have a website or a phone number, be sure and share it with everybody so they can get ahold of you.

Yeah. So, so, uh, for the, uh, for Green Air Technology, you can reach us at 346-254-9217. And you can find us at greeneairtech.com, and that's G-R-E-E-N-E airtech.com. And then our 24/7 biohazardous and crime scene cleanup company, that's Houston Clean Response, and you can reach us at 713-303-9393 and houstoncleanresponse.com.

Dude, thank you so much for sitting down.

Thank you.

It's really good to meet you. We're gonna be reaching out to, uh—

Yeah, give me a call, man. I'd love to get in the studio, man.

Who do you think we ought to bring up next?

You know anybody that's, uh, you know, I, I think that you might want to talk about mortgages.

Yeah, who you got?

You want to come up here, Joel? There you go. All right, here we go.

Next victim.

God bless y'all. Have a great day.

Thank you, Jim.