24H Mold Inspection of Pomona

Lincoln Park is a 45-block, 230-acre residential district of more than 800 structures, mostly single-family homes built from the 1890s through the 1940s — late Victorians, National Folk houses, Craftsman bungalows, and Colonial, Mission, Tudor, and Classical Revival designs. The city designated it in 1998 and it joined the National Register in 2004. Nearly all of these homes stand on raised wood foundations over crawl spaces built without vapor barriers, with original or early-replacement galvanized plumbing and a century of re-roofs, additions, and enclosed porches. Damp crawl space soil, subfloor growth under bathrooms, and leaks at old chimney and roof penetrations define the risk here.

Pomona incorporated in 1888, and its downtown still holds the brick and masonry commercial blocks of the citrus era, many now converted to studios, lofts, and apartments over storefronts. On February 28, 1990 a magnitude 5.7 earthquake centered just north of the Pomona Valley broke windows and caused structural damage in Pomona, and older buildings here carry the cracks and repairs of that and earlier quakes. Unreinforced and lightly reinforced masonry wicks water and holds it, flat roofs pond behind parapets, and conversions add showers and kitchens to buildings designed for retail and storage, often over slabs with no vapor barrier.

The Los Angeles County Fair has been held here since 1922, when the city donated the first 43 acres; the Fairplex grounds now cover 543 acres, and during World War II the Army took them over. Above the fairgrounds, Ganesha Park dates to 1888 and the Ganesha Hills neighborhood climbs the slopes with older hillside homes and views across the valley. Homes cut into the hillside take runoff against their uphill walls and foundations, retaining walls and terraced yards collect water when their drains clog, and older houses on stepped foundations hide damp lower rooms and crawl spaces below the main floor.

Louis Phillips built his mansion here in 1875 on land he acquired in the 1860s, and in 1964 Louis Lesser Enterprises bought what remained of the ranch — one of the largest undeveloped parcels in Los Angeles County — and began building a master-planned hillside community the following year. Phillips Ranch homes sit on graded pads with retaining walls, terraced yards, and long downhill drainage runs. In heavy storms, runoff concentrates against uphill walls and enters at the joint between slab and foundation, and clogged V-ditches turn a normal rain into a wet wall. Homes here are now 40 to 60 years old, adding aging attics and HVAC to the slope risks.

Cal Poly Pomona occupies the former W.K. Kellogg ranch, and the neighborhoods around it carry a large stock of single-family houses rented by the room and small apartment buildings that turn over every academic year. South of downtown, postwar tracts of single-story stucco homes on slabs fill much of the rest of the city. High occupancy means more showers, cooking, and laundry than these houses were built to vent, and the gap between tenants is when slow leaks and failed bathroom fans go unnoticed. In the postwar tracts, slab leaks, cracked cast-iron drains, and garage conversions on unsealed concrete are the recurring sources.