Mold Remediation in Madrid, New Mexico

Madrid sits in a narrow canyon in the Ortiz Mountains on NM 14, about half an hour south of Santa Fe. It was a coal town. Industrial-scale mining began in the 1890s and by the 1920s the Albuquerque and Cerrillos Coal Company ran it as a company town of around three thousand people, providing housing, water hauled in by tank car, and medical care. Coal production essentially stopped in 1954 and Madrid emptied out almost overnight. It sat as a ghost town for decades before artists began restoring it, and today it is a working village of galleries, shops, the Mine Shaft Tavern and a quiet residential side street.

Every one of those facts matters for mold work here, because Madrid does not have the building stock the rest of Santa Fe County has.

Why Madrid houses get mold

They are wood, not adobe

Company towns got company housing: simple wood-frame houses built quickly and cheaply in the early 1900s, on piers or shallow foundations, with wood siding and pitched roofs. That is unusual here, and it means Madrid's mold problems look more like a hundred-year-old Midwestern town than like Santa Fe. Wood-frame walls hold much less water than adobe but they rot, and rot is a structural problem rather than a surface one.

Decades of vacancy left damage in place

Many of these buildings sat empty and unheated for twenty or thirty years. Roofs failed, water ran through framing for years, and later restorations sometimes closed up walls over material that had already been compromised. Opening a Madrid wall regularly reveals old damage nobody knew about.

A canyon concentrates water

The village sits in a narrow canyon, which means a monsoon storm on the slopes above sends a great deal of water through a very confined space, fast. Runoff moves along the road and between buildings and into crawl spaces and foundations. This is a very different exposure than an open lot on the mesa.

Crawl spaces and pier foundations

Older frame construction on piers with skirting means enclosed dirt crawl areas with no vapor barrier, directly under wood floor framing. See crawl space treatment.

Mixed-use buildings

A gallery downstairs and living space upstairs, or a shop that closes for the season, means parts of a building go unheated and unwatched for months.

What to check on a Madrid property

• Under the floor, first. Pier and skirted crawl areas with bare soil are the default here.
• Sill plates and the bottom of wall framing, especially on the uphill side of the building.
• Roof valleys, flashing and any place a later addition ties into original framing.
• Evidence of historic water damage inside walls if you are remodeling: staining, old rot, previous patches.
• Where runoff actually goes during a storm, which in a canyon is not always where the grade suggests.

Renovation and old damage

If you are restoring a Madrid building, plan for the possibility that opening a wall reveals decades-old damage rather than a current leak. That changes the job from remediation into repair, and it is much cheaper to find it during a planned renovation than during an emergency. Buildings of this era can also contain asbestos and lead paint, so testing comes before demolition.

Getting somebody out there

Madrid is about thirty minutes down NM 14, no travel charge, free written estimate before anything starts. Neighboring coverage includes Cerrillos and Galisteo. For how the work itself is run, see containment and removal.

Frequently asked questions