Owning your own home

don’t own a long enough ladder.

Retask the cat ladder

On slugs, I've found a lot of trails might only be a few individuals. Wake up at 4am and go hunting, if you kill two or three of them, that might do it.

Get a house hedgehog

Water ingress - that is the responsibility of the Building Management Company no ?
If water is getting in via the 'retained parts' they should sort it out - building insurance that is part of your service charge.

Who did you get the under floor heating quote from? Where have you moved to? (In case your builders are good and local)

Water ingress - that is the responsibility of the Building Management Company no ?
If water is getting in via the 'retained parts' they should sort it out - building insurance that is part of your service charge.

Yes, that's what I think - they are remarkably useless though. They want me to prove that water is getting in via the "retained parts" I imagine.

Is there a time frame freeholders are meant to come back when asking to buy the freehold? Emailed mine a month ago and nothing?
Hyde Housing are notoriously shit though...

Do you have pics of the water ingress?

Is there a time frame freeholders are meant to come back when asking to buy the freehold? Emailed mine a month ago and nothing?

Depends if you served them something statutory or not I guess.

Do you have pics of the water ingress?

Remind me to reply properly next week..

Moving to Walthamstow.

Who would I ask to do this investigation?

Any builder / surveyor / damp "expert" would be able to tell you.

Given your management co's ability to be shit at everything, it may be worth asking them what type of report, and from whom, they would accept

Spot on the ceiling is quite odd. What's above there?

Issue is likely to be how invasive an "expert" is going to need to be to provide reasonably conclusive answers.

There are a limited number of possible explanations:
Rain getting in
Pipe leaking
Condensation

As it's a first floor flat, I guess we can eliminate ground moisture ingress.

We've had a plumber investigate the flat above, and they reported zero leaks from pipework.

Upstairs also have water coming in around their (newly fitted) window frames.

I think it's water leaking down from the roof, as it gets worse when it rains.

Spot on the ceiling - the room above is that flats kitchen.

Two votes for hedgehog, seems I'm honour bound to get one. Where does the modern homeowner source their hedgehogs these days? I'm out of the loop.

https://www.pets4homes.co.uk/pet-advice/how-to-care-for-an-african-pygmy-hedgehog.html

Disclaimer: I do not endorse pets4homes

£190! I've bought bikes for less! I'm going to have to borrow one from the local woods. Or... buy two and start breeding them for profit.

Is it a flat roof?
Roof, guttering and downpipe inspection, should be relatively straightforward for someone with long enlightenment ladders.

Sounds like something the freeholder should be arranging tbh, but probably quicker for you to get someone in.

It is a flat roof, to which the residents have no access, and is four stories up

Ah, that does complicate things a tad. That's probably higher than most people will attempt with ladders.

So apart from the consent issue; access tower, MEWP or scaffold.

Time to get shitty with the freeholder / management co.

I had this in my old flat, created by weathered (cheap) external rendering, thus making is permeable

It was difficult to diagnose, they spend a while inspecting the flat roof and gutters. It was probably a multitude of problems but they identified this as the main cause for ingress

Time to get shitty with the freeholder / management co.

He's way ahead of you there!

Speaking of which, what came of the whole garage lighting issue?

you'd be saving £ on pet food though...

Yep, we've had this. Water literally dripping though the top of a window due to blown render outside (combined with a clogged gutter chucking water at the wall).

Fixing those two things seems to have sorted it.

Funnily enough the landlord never actually fixed ours, the flat would be come so intolerably hot in the summer which dried it out, so that satisfied them. And we were too cold and depressed in the winter to bother kicking up a fuss.