Water damage help (and the crazy (idiot) neighbor)…

Why we have the blowers and dehumdifier - we were told it takes a while for mold to develop so we dry things out quickly, we should not have an issue - still though we are in contact with our insurance co's adjuster.

Never heard about that before insuring with your condo association - although - you get big discounts when you group your home owners and auto together.

They probably should have told us to do that, but the adjuster kept insisting the rain water had seeped inbetween the walls (he found evidence in a bedroom). Mr.Irish thinks that was the rain coming in sideways and leaked through a poorly caulked window. I can't remember if, when they ripped out the insulation, it was soggy or not in walls without a window. Anyway, hope things get back to normal for you soon. Awful time to have to be dealing with all this...the holidays and your move.

well my husband put it in a positive light - at least we will get our ceilings painted - seeing the ceiling in this area is all open through the kitchen and hallways - so the entire ceiling will need to be re-painted as it is continuous (except the bedrooms) - and we have not re-painted the ceiling in this area since we moved in.

The fittings that have been installed in the piping systems must be properly checked and any loophole or extra pressure at any place must be removed so that such instances do not happen again.

Well in situations like this, one must have their fixtures checked from time to time so that any sort of leak can be detected and fixed to avoid such circumstances. Insurance was also a good attempt to cover the repair work. Except this waterproofing must also be done to protect the foundation of house from damaging.

I agree with your statement completely, it all depends upon how much water came.

this happened over two years ago. We now have no one above us as we sold and moved from the crazy idiot neighbor and have a detached single family home.

At first the insurance company said it was an accident not negliance so we were going to have to foot the $500 deductible. Fortunately, the insurance company had eventually agreed she was negligent and we got a nice check from them.

As far as how much water came -- enough that you had to have the ceiling repainted. And had my daughter not been sleeping in the living room, the floor would have likely been damaged and who knows if it would have impacted our furniture as well.

As a maintenance man, I have had to deal with apartments that flooded all weekend, ceilings that caved, etc. Caused by water heaters most often, but closely followed by toilets.

We had a toliet one too (unlucky us) - it was a different neighbor before the crazy idiot one. They were nice neighbors and had a leak or something with their toliet above us coming into our bathroom. It was caught immediately and it was more dripping water rather than a rush of waterfall like flood so very little impact.

That was caught early. I recall people going out of town for the weekend with toilets running over. Luckily, in every case, it was downstairs. But we ended up moving everything the residents owned and replacing carpet, wallboard - Sometimes at three in the morning.

Smoke detectors won't go off because water leaks, so the neighbor is not an idiot and neither her smoke detectors weren't functional. The smoke detectors downstairs went off because water flooded them and acted as a jump cable to connect the device in alarm.

The measure of replacing water heaters every 10 years is not a guarantee that a water heater won't leak for that period of time. A water heater can leak at any time, depending of the proper or improper installation, the quality of the water heater and pipes and similar. Many water heaters have a warranty of three years or less, and only the more expensive have them for 6 years.

About toilets.

A toilet leaks for many different reasons. A bad connection of the supply line, a defective water valve on the wall, a gone wax ring, a loose screw or bolt between the tank and the base, etc.

Some leaks are noticeable, but leaks caused by a gone wax ring can be noticed mostly by the people living downstairs. Sometimes the leak can be seen as water coming from the base of the toilets, but in several cases that is not a symptom.

Then, I don't think that is appropriate to call "an idiot" to every neighbor who by reasons beyond their control have their water tank or toilets leaking water downstairs.

Calling them "idiots" should be appropriate if they themselves caused the leaks trying to change and make repairs without the required knowledge to do it and cause damage to their own house and other people's property.

The neighbor is an idiot for many other reasons than this -- and yes she was found at fault thus why we got the $500 back and it was not ruled an accident or faulty water heater. She simply did not follow the condo policy of replacing your water heater at about 10 years -- the condo was over ten years old and the water heater was never replaced so it was deemed negligance on her part.

Also her water heater was in the attic - her condo had two floors plus the attic so the water had to come rushing down the next level where the bedrooms are and then to her lower level where the living/dining and kitchen are. So yes there are smoke detectors on all floors so if what you say is true then at least one level of her smoke detectors should have gone off as she had two floors of flood before it could even hit ours.

And I never called the other neighbor an idiot for the toliet leak -we simply knocked on his door and he took care of it.

She didn't even know what to do when I rang her door bell - she actually got mad at me for waking her and then I had to explain what she needed to do -- this a woman about 20 years older than me who had previously owned a single family home.

But it was more prior experience living below her that caused the idiot/crazy remark -- this just was the nail in the coffin as they say.

This is such an emergency problem, you should first try to cover up the leak and try to stop the running water. You should have a plumbers combers contact number for this emergency case.

You should fix it ASAP