A BUDDING PROBLEM

When Denise and Marcel Charbonneau bought their Greenwood Park
retirement house in 2003, they were told its previous owners had run a
sophisticated marijuana grow operation in the home's expansive basement.

The home had been significantly altered to create ideal indoor growing
conditions for the operation's 127 plants.

Holes had been roughly cut in the floor and roof to vent the smell of
marijuana outside and water had leaked into the attic. The electrical,
heating and ventilation systems had been reconstructed and a company
that inspected the premises worried that the high level of moisture
might have filled the house with noxious mould.

The bank that took ownership of the house on Rainbow Crescent
conducted a battery of tests on the house and had the damage repaired,
so the Charbonneaus felt comfortable buying it.

"Four years later, there's no mould. Everything's fine," Denise
Charbonneau said in a recent interview in her home.

True enough, a tour of the house revealed a clean-smelling environment
and a dry basement.

Considering that the house had been a fully functioning grow-op with
significant alterations, the Charbonneaus were lucky.

If Kingston Police hadn't shut down the grow-op, the house could have
been sold to an unsuspecting buyer after a quick cover-up using of
mould-resistant paint and a few air fresheners.

Instead, since the grow-op was busted, the house was seized by the
federal government, put on the real estate market and fixed up by a
bank that bought it before it was put up for sale.

The Charbonneaus are fortunate, not only that the grow-op was
discovered, but that the repairs on their home were done well because,
at the moment, there's nothing in law to protect potential buyers from
unwittingly buying a former indoor marijuana farm.

That could soon change in Kingston.

Taking its cue from a provincial law passed in 2005 called Bill 128,
the municipality and Kingston Police are drafting a bylaw that will
require police to inform the city clerk every time they bust a grow-op
that has resulted in significant alterations to a property. A notice
will be placed at the entrance to the premises informing the public of
its previous use, then the municipality will inspect the building for
hazards and do whatever it takes to make the building safe.

As of this week, the protocol was still in draft form and city
bureaucrats and police are still trying to figure out what exactly
constitutes a significant alteration to a property so that police know
which grow-ops they must report to the municipality.

The provincial legislation and bylaw comes amid growing concerns by
law enforcement agencies that marijuana grow-ops provide huge amounts
of money to other criminal operations of organized crime, such as the
hard drug trade.

There's more good news for home buyers.

In March, Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant said the province is
looking at ways to create a province-wide registry that will allow
home buyers to see if a house has ever been a grow-op.

It's also looking at creating renovation standards on homes that have
been grow-ops.

A Freedom of Information application by the Whig-Standard revealed
that Kingston Police have shut down 47 marijuana grow operations over
the past five years. The number of plants found growing in any one
place ranged from zero to 15,000, which was an outdoor marijuana farm
busted on County Road 38 in 2004.

The largest indoor grow-op was on Freeman Crescent, which had 842
nearly fully grown plants in a sophisticated setup that police shut
down in 2003. It was busted along with homes on Barnsley Crescent and
Chartwell Crescent as part of the same operation.

Shawn and Lillabeth Shillington bought their home on Freeman last
year, even after their real estate agent disclosed that the house had
previously been busted by police.

"I believe the plants were seized before the operation got up and
running," Lillabeth Shillington said. She said their real estate agent
told them this.

Kingston Police Staff Sgt. Chris Scott said the water and lighting
systems at Freeman were altered and the plants were mature, so the
operation had been running for at least a month.

Scott said it's usually impossible to tell how long a grow-op has been
in business, short of an admission from the operators, because one
can't tell if an operation is on its first crop or its third.

Using specially timed lighting, plant nutrients and huge amounts of
moisture, marijuana growers can usually produce a full crop in six to
eight weeks.

While there's no law in Ontario to prevent people from unwittingly
buying a former grow-op, there are some safeguards.

According to a handbook published by the Canadian Real Estate
Association to help real estate agents understand the issues
surrounding grow-ops, a buying or selling real estate agent can be
held liable for repair costs associated with making the home fit for
habitation, if they don't disclose the home's dubious history.

The document, "Grow Ops, What Realtors Need to Know," says buyer
agents must disclose if a home has been a grow-op while listing agents
must do so if there's a "material latent defect" that the sellers
knows about or should know about. Disclosure is also required if the
buyer expresses a specific concern, or if the agreement of sale or
purchase claims the property wasn't used for criminal purposes.

Derek McCauley, president of the Kingston and Area Real Estate
Association, said a realtor's obligation to disclose that a home has
been a grow-op is mandated in the industry's code of ethics.

It's the realtor's job to keep informed and it's the responsibility of
a realtor to know if a house was once a marijuana grow operation. "If
there's a bust in the paper, we should know about it," he said. Even
if someone decides to buy the property knowing full well it was a
grow-op, the property must be insurable in order to close the deal, he
said.

If the seller is aware that a house has been a grow-op, he or she is
obliged to list this fact in what's called the seller property
information statement, which provides answers to several questions
about the property, he said.

"That question is included on the seller property information
statement and that was added to the statement a [few] years ago,"
McCauley said.

Any listing or selling agent who isn't honest about a property's past
as a grow-op could soon put themselves out of business in a community
the size of Kingston, he said.

"Word of mouth is everything," he said.

To ensure their home was safe to live in, the Shillingtons and others
in Kingston who have bought former grow-op homes have hired a home
inspector, a person who checks out a home's structural soundness and
its operating systems.

Home inspectors tend to have a broad general background and
understanding of basic house construction, common problems and ways of
fixing them.

Alex Campbell of ACQSPEC Ltd. home inspections has discovered the
remnants of grow-ops at three homes he's inspected.

Although home inspectors aren't allowed to remove anything or punch
through walls to look for mould, there are a lot of clues that can
tell them if a home housed an indoor marijuana farm.

In the more sophisticated operations, cultivators may take the home's
heat recovery ventilation system, which normally carries excess
humidity outside, and instead vent it into the rooms where the grow-op
is, said Campbell.

Campbell said he also watches for a lot of fresh paint, which could be
covering mould caused by excess moisture.

"If everything is freshly painted - ceilings, walls, trim - and
there's newer carpet, if it's a true grow-op, then there's lots of
mould and it will start showing on the interior sides of walls as well
as attic spaces," Campbell said.

It's also common for marijuana growers to tamper with a home's
electrical system and the lines leading into it.

In one home Campbell inspected, he found freshly poured concrete in
the garage.

Someone had bored through the concrete and tapped into the incoming
electrical line upstream of the meter. This would have prevented the
utility company from easily detecting a spike in electricity use.

Grow-ops use an inordinate amount of electricity. Electrical utilities
will tell police about suspicious spikes, so grow operators try to
mask their electricity use by bypassing the metre. "The dead giveaway
is that when you get into the attic space, all the moist, warm air
will eventually migrate into the attic and it'll be pretty black in
the attic - a little bit of a mould forest up there," Campbell said.

Another type of home hazard created by the establishment of grow-ops
is structural change.

Renovations made to create an indoor marijuana crop can create serious
structural defects in a home that can make the home unsound, he said.

Marijuana growers have been known to tear down walls that support a
home's structure to accommodate a grow-op.

Repairing a home to insurable standards that has been significantly
altered and has a serious mould problem can cost the owner several
thousand dollars, said Campbell.

"There are two things to do with a grow-op like that. One is you
bulldoze the house down and start new, or you take everything back to
the framing structure, take the drywall and insulation off, clean the
mould sites ... and then reinsulate and redo the drywall," he said.

That's just what Joe Salamone did.

He bought his house on Woodbine Road after it had been on the market
for about two years, knowing full well its history.

"You could tell," he said. "There were hooks everywhere in the ceiling
downstairs where they must have had the [plants] hanging."

According to Kingston Police, Salamone's now immaculate home was once
a full-scale hydroponic grow operation with 81 plants. Hydroponic
marijuana is grown in water, not soil.

When Salamone bought the west-end bungalow in 2005, two years after
police raided it, the house was a mess.

The upstairs needed a total makeover, but it didn't have any mould.
The basement, however, was infested with black mould.

"I ended up stripping down every wall to its bare necessities ... just
to make sure I didn't have any health concerns," said Salamone.
Luckily for Salamone, he has good friends who work in the building
industry. Together, over six months, they ripped out the drywall and
insulation and scrubbed away any mould before putting everything back
together again.

After conducting air-quality tests, Salamone is confident his house is
safe and that he got a great deal by buying a former grow-op.

"I guess you could say I saved a small fortune," Salamone
said.

According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the average claim for a
damages at a former grow-op home is about $40,000, although most
insurers no longer cover damaged caused by grow-ops.

A report commissioned by the provincial government in 2002, called
The Green Tide: Indoor Marihuana Cultivation and it's Impact on
Ontario, says ideal grow-op dwellings have unfinished basements to
facilitate wiring, a fireplace to vent the strong smell of marijuana
and an attached garage to hide vehicles that are used to transport
the harvested crops.

Once the home is bought or leased, a renovation crew installs heating
and ventilation systems and an electrical bypass upstream of the
home's meter to subtly steal the electricity required to power the
operation and the advanced lighting required.

After these alterations are made, the growing equipment is moved in.
This typically includes several ballasts to boost electrical power,
powerful lights, fans to cool the circuitry and lots of liquid
nutrients, fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides, says the report.
When everything is in place, a crop sitter, someone who knows little
or nothing about the wider operation, is often hired to maintain the
plants. Sometimes their whole family will move in to avoid making the
neighbours suspicious.

The Whig's investigation revealed that indoor marijuana growers don't
appear to be a discerning bunch when choosing neighbourhoods in which
to cultivate marijuana.

The 47 operations busted in Kingston between 2002 and 2006 were
scattered throughout the city, in all manner of residential
neighbourhoods from Greenwood Park and Bayridge to The Heights in the
north end and also in rural areas.

Except for one operation in a unit on James Street, where 811 plants
were found last year, most of the larger operations were outside the
downtown area.

While some indoor farms are "mom-and-pop" operations, Staff Sgt. Scott
said many grow-ops are run by organized crime. The people working at
them are often people who owe money to the mob and are working off
debt, he said.

A single mature plant can bring the owner as much as $1,000, but the
people tending the plants usually earn a pittance.

The operations are often used by organized crime to fund other illegal
activities, including the trafficking of harder drugs such as Ecstasy
and cocaine.

As well as the dangers caused by structural alterations, there are the
health risks of noxious gases, which can be generated by overwhelming
amounts of mould and spores. Toxic contaminants caused by pesticides
can also remain in the air long after a grow-op is gone.

Dr. David Miller, an expert in biological contamination of indoor air
at Carleton University's Institute of Biochemistry, said one of the
most reliable ways to detect large amounts of indoor mould is by smell.

However, Miller said it's possible that there could be unhealthy
levels, even if they are not detectable by smell or sight.

Asthmatics can be particularly sensitive to mould and can act as an
early-detection system.

"That's probably the most reliable sign ... if there is no physical
evidence," Miller said.

Statistics Canada has tracked the number of marijuana grow-ops police
shut down across Canada and found that the numbers have actually
dropped from 8,403 in 2001 to 6,943 in 2005.

Ontario's numbers have also dipped from 976 in 2001 to 835 in 2005.
Staff Sgt. Scott warned that such numbers may provide a false picture
of what may be the real trend and that the real number of grow-ops in
business could vary greatly from the numbers busted.

National statistics suggest this could be true.

The Ontario government's Green Tide report estimates that somewhere
between 10 per cent and 50 per cent of marijuana grow-ops are actually
discovered.

Staff Sgt. Scott suggests the Statistics Canada numbers could also be
skewed if police forces are putting fewer resources into fighting
marijuana growing operations.

"That's the thing with drug enforcement," said Scott. "The easiest way
to take your drug enforcement numbers down is to pull away the
enforcement."

[sidebars]

GONE TO POT: HOW TO SPOT A NEIGHBOURHOOD GROW-OP

Some Signs

A Closer Look

The Canadian Real Estate Association says the following clues may
indicate a house in your neighbourhood is an indoor marijuana grow-op:

Buyer or tenant unloads unusual equipment, such as copper or PVC pipe,
soil, halogen lamps, fans and large quantities of ducting, and very
few household furnishings.

Tenants come and go at weird hours, but don't stay
overnight.

Little or no garbage is put out for collection.

Mail is rarely delivered and the mailbox is taped shut.

Windows are always dark or covered and may be protected by metal
bars.

A strong odour that smells like skunk cabbage comes from the
building.

The power metre spins fast or there are signs of electrical
tampering.

Heavy condensation on the insides of windows as well as condensation
or discolouration on roof.

Humming sounds of fans or generators.

Unusual amounts of steam coming from vents in cold
weather.

Rooftop with no snow on it when surrounding houses are covered in
snow.

People visit the house only to put out garbage, move toys in the front
yard, shovel snow or cut the lawn then leave immediately.

People enter and exit the home through the garage and keep the garage
door closed.

Excessive security such as guard dogs, "keep out" signs, high fences,
heavy chains and locks on gates.

The Canadian Real Estate Association suggests potential homebuyers and
realtors look for the following clues that may reveal a home was once
a grow-op:

Mould in corners.

Signs of roof vents.

Painted concrete floors in basements with circular marks where pots
used to be.

Evidence of tampering of the electrical meter or the ground near it.
Unusual or modified wiring on the outside of the house.

Brownish stains around a home's soffits that bleed down along the
siding.

Concrete masonry patches or alterations inside the
garage

Alterations to fireplaces.

Denting on front doors from police ramming into the
home.

Dr. David Miller, an expert in biological contamination of indoor air
at Carleton University's Institute of Biochemistry, suggests people
who are concerned they may have poor air quality take the Canada
Mortgage and Housing Corporation's home inspection program to ensure
their home environment is safe.

Dave Way, underwriting co-ordinator for the Insurance Bureau of
Canada, recommends that anyone considering buying a home hire a home
inspector before they close the deal.

However, Way reminds home buyers that the investigative privileges of
home inspectors are limited and may not always be enough to find
hidden damage.

"Their hands are tied. They cannot touch or move any item in that home
that they're inspecting," he said. "They can tell you your electrical
box has been tampered ... but they cannot punch a hole in a wall to
[explore] why that wall was freshly painted."