MILFORD – The stain on the bedroom carpet should have been a tip-off.

Debra and Ron Shusterman noticed the six-inch long brown spot during a walk-through of their new home in May 2008.

But the house at 170 Badger Hill Drive had served as a model for the recent phase of the Badger Hill development, and everyone thought it was just a coffee or soda stain.

Four months after the couple moved in, heavy rain from a nor’easter sent water into the house, damaging and discoloring the ceiling and wall of the second-floor bedroom, right near the carpet stain, indicating it was not spilled coffee or soda but the result of a leak.

Downstairs there was more water damage and discoloration to the wall of the family room and water was also leaking into the firebox and through the fireplace.

In the garage and basement there was damage and discoloration to gypsum wallboard.

The stains were unsightly, but what was most worrisome was the possibility that they were signs of mold.

You could walk into the rooms and smell a musty smell, said Debra.

The Shustermans tried to contact the builders and when they didn’t respond, they contacted the Milford building department.

William McKinney, the town’s commercial building inspector and health officer, also tried to contact the builders.

In a letter he wrote to Robert Pace at Starter Building and Development in Londonderry, McKinney said the “leak is substantial and most likely involves improper flashing at the chimney” and that due to discoloration of the gypsum “this appears not to be a recent situation or a one-time event.”

McKinney told The Cabinet later, the leaks were caused by poor workmanship in the flashing installation and there were ”significant roof leaks” in the area of the chimney that caused water damage to two rooms, the basement and the garage.

In his letter, McKinney also wrote that the situation “violates the state of New Hampshire Building Code, while posing a serious health threat to the occupants.”

“Although not everyone is affected by mold,” he wrote, “like any allergen it can cause serious health issues in humans if not properly mitigated.

“This causes me great concern with regards to the potential for unseen damage within the walls and/or floor/ceiling areas,” he wrote and recommended air sampling for mold, which he called “a definite possibility” and recommended that Starter Building hire a mold-hazard mitigation firm to check on the presence of mold and asked for a written plan of action.

Health problems associated with high levels of airborne mold spores include allergic reactions, asthma episodes, irritations of the eye, nose and throat, infections, sinus congestion and other respiratory problems.

When no one heard back from the builders, the Shustermans had air testing done and the results confirmed that there were dangerous levels of mold.

The air sampling report from Scientific Air Solutions based in California showed mold levels in the bedroom, family room and basement that were well above acceptable. More than 300 cfu/m3 (cfu stands for colony forming units) is considered unacceptable, and the count for the three rooms was 2,120, 1,180 and 600 cfu/m3. One of the species of mold in the house was considered especially dangerous.

McKinney reviewed the tests and reported to the builders that “it is evident that mold, at an elevated and potentially dangerous level, is present within the home” and wrote that he supported a proposal from a Wilton mold mitigation firm, Airsurance Environmental.

The Shustermans continued to try to get action from the builder, and eventually the company sent a worker to repair the faulty flashing on the roof, and then told the couple to clean the walls with bleach and paint them, they said.

By then, the Shustermans had gathered all the information they could about mold and safe clean-up methods and rejected that suggestion.

“The EPA (federal Environmental Protection Agency) Web site clearly states that cleaning large areas of mold with bleach is not acceptable,” the couple wrote in a letter to Starter Building.

“I told them (washing and painting) was not good enough,” Ron said. “The walls were wet.”

Finally, a project manager from the company came to the house, he said, and told them to have the testing and mitigation work done and then bill their home insurance company.

In October of 2009, they spent eight days in a hotel while one entire wall of a bedroom and the insulation in the family room wall and attic were replaced. All the furniture and belongings in the two affected rooms had to be moved to other parts of the house and they had to wash all the clothes in the affected rooms.

“Basically we had to gut two rooms. It was like moving twice,” said Ron, an air traffic controller who works in the Federal Aviation Administration facility in Merrimack.

Airsurance did the work and the total cost to get rid of the mold was $17,000, paid for by their home insurance.

Their warranty on the home excluded treatment for mold, but the Shustermans believe the builders, Robert Pace and his cousins, Chris DeRosa and Steven DeRosa. should have taken responsibility, since the mold was caused by water that entered the house because of improper flashing.

Pace and the DeRosas did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Starter Building advertises that it builds affordable single-family homes mostly aimed at first-time home buyers in the $200,000 to $600,000 range.

Starter has also built Patch Hill in Milford, off Route 13 north, Bedford Woods in Bedford, and Majestic Heights in Nashua. The company was once recognized by Builder Magazine as one of the fastest- growing builders in the country.

In a 2004 article in New Hampshire Business Review, Chris DeRosa was quoted as saying he and his partners “have a passion for quality, and we have one way, and that is to do it right, to pay attention to every detail.”

But Debra Shusterman said that in their case, the builders “were never willing to do it right.”

The chimney flashing wasn’t the only problem with the house that they bought for $345,000. The garage door, they said, looks like it was patched together with pieces of building material.

“This has been extremely frustrating for us,” she said. “We need better legislation to protect the consumer. I just want to protect the next person.”

“And I’d like him to say he’s sorry and give us a new garage door.”

Heavy rains in June were a relief for the couple, because it showed their house is now as weather-tight as it should have been from the start.

Kathy Cleveland can be reached at kcleveland@cabinet.com or 673-3100 Ext. 21.