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Teaching at two miles high in Leadville, CO!
In 2007, I returned from a two week teaching stint in Leadville/Twin Lakes, Colorado. The elevation in historic Leadville is over ten thousand feet in elevation, making it the highest incorporated city in the United States! I was contacted by Bob Ogle, Associate Professor for the Historic Preservation Program at Colorado Mountain College (CMC) in Leadville to see if I would be willing to participate in an educational venue which included teaching a two-week course to students and volunteers on adobe preservation/restoration that was scheduled in July of this year (2007).
Bob's timing could not have been better as I was indeed available for the time he requested. The project I was going to be associated with was the only known adobe building in all of Lake County, CO known as "The Clarion Hotel." This distinction in itself makes this building worthy of attention, and with it being historically significant to the area only adds to the value of the property.
The Clarion Hotel was built in Twin Lakes circa 1880. For its age it is in remarkably good condition. Built out of unstabilized mud adobe with a layer of lime-based stucco applied over it, I was stunned at just how well this structure had held up in the harsh Colorado winters for over 130 years! My job was to teach the students and volunteers condition assessment (why the adobe portion of the building was in the current shape that it was in, particularly the areas in need of repair or restoration), material analysis, repair techniques, hands on training and stucco/faux finishes. We built mock-up walls out of 8"x8"x16" concrete blocks where the students and volunteers practiced applying stucco and texture techniques.
Twin Lakes, the tiny town where the Clarion Hotel was located, is perhaps one of the most beautiful places I have been fortunate enough to visit. The Lakes from which the town derives its name is stunning. Coming through and over the hills to reach the area presents a view at one point that can be considered breathtaking. A natural stream runs right next to the Clarion Hotel and helps feed Twin Lakes.
I met many wonderful people through Bob Ogles program. CMC partners with many different trades people, government agencies and organizations in training their students in Historic Preservation. I worked closely not only with Bob himself, but many of his students, Forest Service personnel, and other volunteers from across the United States.
Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3
Photo 1 above: (Click on each photo to enlarge) This is the scenic back yard view of the Clarion Hotel, just steps from the building. Yes, that is snow on those peaks, and this was in July!
Photo 2 above: A picture of Twin Lakes, taken several miles from the Clarion Hotel.
Photo 3 above: A shot of the Timberline Campus of the Colorado Mountain College in Leadville. I stayed in the Residence Hall located just a little left of this angle.
Photo 4 Photo 5 Photo 6 Photo 7
Photo 4 above: This is what is believed to be a later addition added to the Clarion Hotel with some of the volunteers standing in front of it. Bob Ogle is standing in the foreground conducting an experiment on the paint covering the lime-based stucco (the blue squares are test patches).
Photo 5 and 6 above: The original portion of the Clarion Hotel showing the damage that the Blue Spruce pine trees are causing to the building. Photo 6 gives a better angle and view of the roots lifting up the sidewalk on this portion of the building. The roots were also causing the stucco to buckle away from the wall just underneath the boarded up window. The white that you see on the exposed adobe is what is believed to be a lime wash which what is thought covered the entire exterior of the building and preceded the stucco coating that was added later.
The Blue Spruce trees are magnificent and were planted all around the building. These type of pines are rare for this area in Colorado. When first planted perhaps a hundred years ago, they were small and caused no damage. Now, they are threatening the health of this historic structure and the Forest Service is planning on cutting them down. As can be imagined, this is causing some controversy, but the sad reality is that if the trees are allowed to stay, the building will continue to suffer irreparable harm. This is a perfect example of not thinking ahead and stands as a warning to all of us who plant trees too close to our houses. Trees can grow huge, so plant them far away from your house!
Photo 7 above: Some of the volunteers and Forest Service personnel posing for a group shot at Cabin Cove in Twin Lakes. Cabin Cove is a cabin owned by the Forest Service where much of the planning and staging occurred for the preservation work that was done in the area. I am kneeling down in the first row, far left.
(Please take the time to read the following information...it could literally save you thousands of dollars and the headaches of a major lawsuit!!
Throughout my career as an adobe restoration contractor, I have done numerous bids for real estate agents and homeowners in the process of selling their adobe homes. Often, I receive calls from adobe homeowners after they have purchased a home to seek my advice on what to do with this "new" home that is disintegrating.
One question I am certain to ask them is "Didn't you get a home inspector to check the house out before you purchased it? If you had you may have been able to negotiate a price reduction based on his professional opinion that the adobe was in need of attention. Or else you would have made a stipulation in the contract that the home would first need to be repaired and treated before you would finalize the deal."
I have learned that many home inspectors have little, if any, specialized knowledge in the area of adobe. I have also learned that many people sell adobe homes without the slightest knowledge of what maintenance needs that home should have before putting it on the market. Conversely, many people purchase adobe homes without the slightest idea of what that home would need to enable them to make an educated and informed purchase of that particular home.
Recently, I was called by an adobe homeowner in Green Valley to come and look at his home. He wanted to sell it, but the home had terrible "curb appeal." Previous attempts at trying to repair the severely damaged and weathered adobe had resulted in a truly "bad" repair effort. Many of the adobes on the front of the house, facing the street, were colored pink. Many of the other bricks were severely deteriorated, giving a run-down, first impression to the home. Consequently, the owner had not had any offers from interested buyers.
I gave him an estimate to fix the most glaring and obvious problems. He accepted the bid, and we started and soon finished the job. The result was remarkable, and the homeowner was so pleased he called me later to thank me for a job well done.
The problem with this house was that the seller (my customer) was adamant that he did not want to spend any more money than what was absolutely necessary to get his house in a salable condition. Consequently, I did not do even one fifth of the work that should have been done to truly do the job correctly; my part was mostly cosmetic in nature.
I pity the unsuspecting buyer of this property, for he or she is purchasing a nightmare. The owner had an appraisal done to the house, but as is typical, that appraisal did not mention nor take into account the advanced and severe deterioration of the adobe. A home inspection report may have, but again, maybe not.
Unfortunately for the buyer of this property, they will probably not know that they are purchasing a fix-up special unless that person or persons has at least a rudimentary knowledge and experience with adobe. They will find out only afterward when they move in and soon discover that the condition of the home they thought was in great shape was actually in severely deteriorated condition.
The seller's price will not necessarily reflect this knowledge, at least in this particular case, for he did not take into consideration the problems with the adobe, choosing to "hide" it from unsuspecting buyers. Unethical? Of course. Against the law? Yes, and the whole transaction is just a lawsuit waiting to happen.
I see this scenario played out frequently. Usually I will get a call from a recent adobe homebuyer who never noticed the condition of their home until some time after they purchased their "dream home." After the newness and excitement of their purchase settles down a bit, they begin to notice that their adobe doesn't quite "look right." Maybe their concerns were raised after a particularly violent monsoon left an inordinate amount of "adobe dust" lying along the edge of their foundation, on on their concrete driveway or porch.
Upon closer inspection, they find out that many of the adobes are in different stages of deterioration, something they had never noticed before. Since nobody pointed it out, they simply never noticed it before--until now. Alarms begin to go off in their heads, and they start to do research their adobe home, finding out from neighbors or a website like this one that adobe is indeed a high maintenance building product.
This is when I get called. One of the first things I always, (see the second paragraph of this section) ask of my customers is, "Did you get a home inspection on the house before deciding to purchase it?" Many times they say yes, but the home inspection did not reveal any serious problems. Or maybe the home inspector made a brief note on his report that the adobe needed to be "sealed" and left it at that. Perhaps this brief note caused the seller to drop the price by five hundred dollars, when in reality the price should have been dropped by five thousand. Yes, this happens.
Here is another true, nightmare story that happened in November of 2005. I was called out to do a bid on an adobe home. After meeting the owner, a very nice woman whose husband is an attorney, we looked around her home and discussed the issues and problems with her adobe. It is standard procedure for me to go up on the customer's roof in order to investigate the adobes that cannot be readily seen from simply walking around the house.
Her roof had problems that were readily and easily evident on my inspection up there: tears in the roofing material where water could easily penetrate, clogged scuppers from debris falling from her mesquite trees which were allowing water to dangerously back-up and sit without draining, and a deterioration of the roofing material in those areas where rainwater was ponding in the low areas...quite typical maintenance problems with Tucson's flat roofs. This flat roof, coated with a white, elastomeric roof coating, was in need of a re-coat.
I sent her a bid for the needed work to be done and she accepted it. I scheduled the work and we completed the job as specified. Part of our contract was repairing a gate where the lag screws had worked themselves out of the adobe which was causing the gate to "sag" and become inoperable. (This process of repairing these common gate problems is a story all in itself. Our repair method is actually quite amazing and is a permanent fix to these annoying problems.)
Several weeks after completion of the contract, she called back to inform me that her and her husband had purchased another adobe home and that they were selling the one we had just repaired. She said that they had the same problem with the gate at this new home as they did on their old, and that she wanted me to come by the new home and look at this gate issue. She also mentioned that there were a few problems that she noticed with the adobe on this recently purchased home that she wanted my advice on. Since she did not express any urgency for me to come look at this second home, I assured her I would come by and look at the gate problem when I could get to it.
Several weeks later, she called me again. By this time, they had moved into this second home and she and her husband were planning on having an "open house" party. The problem gate was a gate that opened into her backyard pool and bar-b-q area, so she desired to have this repaired before the party began. I made an appointment and went to her home.
Upon my arrival, I greeted my customer and she showed me the gate issue. It was a beautiful home situated in the foothills of Tucson with beautiful views of both the Catalina Mountains to the North and the city lights to the South. Entering her back yard, I was shocked as I looked around at the wall surrounding this pool and bar-b-q area: the adobes were in a horribly, deteriorated condition! There were large settling cracks in several portions of the walls, hundreds of adobes that were deteriorated, and the mortar cap was hollowed out and breaking apart on many areas on top of the walls. The wall had been heavily mortar washed, and because the adobes were so severely deteriorated, there were large swaths of wall that were no longer mortar washed because the wash had fallen because of the advanced deterioration of the adobes.
Not wanting to alarm my customer, I tried to break the news as gently as I could. I asked her if she was aware of all these problems, and she basically said that she had indeed noticed the problems with the adobe but that neither her Realtor® (who I found out later happened to me an old friend of her husband's) nor the home inspector made mention of the advanced state of the deterioration. Since she herself was in a frenzy of activity that comes from selling one house, purchasing another and then moving out of the one and into the other, she had not thought too much about the adobe. Relying on the advice and expertise of both the Realtor® and the home inspector, she purchased the house.
We walked around the home, and my alarm only deepened as I inspected it more closely. This wall was in a severe state of deterioration, with many adobes completely blown out. I sprayed water on portions of the walls, and most areas readily absorbed water, indicating these particular walls had never been treated with a water repellent.
Directing my attention to the main house, I did some careful investigating. Though the house was in far better shape than the pool wall, there was deterioration of the adobes. I splashed water against many areas and found that the previous owners had sealed some walls and never sealed others. Climbing up on the roof and investigating the parapet adobes and the chimneys, I discovered that hardly any of the adobes on the roof had been treated.
To me, it was obvious what was going on with this home. The previous owner's probably sprayed the water repellent on themselves, doing a spotty job at best, and certainly not in any uniform fashion. They did not even bother to treat the adobes on the roof, for this would mean climbing up on the roof to do the areas up there (and with the large size of this home, there was many areas to treat up there). Something was just not right with this entire situation.
I shared my findings with my customer, and she was somewhat shocked herself. After going back to my home office and figuring out the estimate, the price for my company to do the repair work was almost ten thousand dollars! The sad part about this entire situation was that someone failed my customers and they purchased this house with almost ten thousand dollars in repair needs.
Please do not get the impression these above scenarios are uncommon. I assure you that they happen more than you would imagine. There are few experts on adobe houses out there, and one must be extremely careful when purchasing an adobe home if you do not know what you are buying. You cannot rely on the advice of either the seller, your Realtor® or a licensed home inspector if any of these individuals are not experts on the needs of adobe homes.
Though I give free estimates to any homeowner, there is a charge for me to come to a home that someone is thinking, or hoping, to purchase. If you are a buyer of an adobe home and have one currently under contract and wish to have me come and give you an exterior analysis of what I believe the condition of the home is, there is an inspection fee of $125.00 for this service.
For this charge, I will email you a written PDF report that will explain my opinion on the condition of the exterior adobe of the home and what my company would charge to repair any damage. If you want just a verbal assessment of my opinion, the charge is $90.00.
If you are a real estate agent representing a buyer, please be advised that you will be charged the above pricing structure for me to come to the property. Let us not waste your time, my time, or your client's time by calling me and seeking to have me come out to do a free estimate in these specific cases. Thank you.
