Owning your own home

It's not my pipes that leaked though so I'm not paying for the damage. But I'm wondering what my costs might extend to. My desk has been damaged. Carpet, the walls, the bath front, it stinks and I'm running a bunch of stuff to sort it all out. Show me the money.

Thanks. I've got a Meaco already.

Yes please!

Would love to get the porridge scraped off the front of my house...

Ditto please! Although I suspect prices will have gone up quite a bit since 2018 as prices for doing anything and everything seem to have done.

I'm not paying for the damage

Quite right - Upstairs needs to pay (or their insurance needs to pay).

A friend caused a leak into flat below - their insurance covered repairs/replacement to ruined furniture and redecoration. I don't think it went as far as personal/work stuff, but they definitely covered stuff to do with the property.

Whack a power monitor on the plug for the dehumidifier and bill them for the electricity it uses, plus the power monitor, or just work it out manually based on power consumption of the unit.

They may have liability on their contents for the work stuff?

Cheers. I've started on an email to the management company (they're the ones paying as it's shared infra) with everything I'm noticing falling apart. :S

Also - if you can get cross ventilation during the day that should be pretty effective, then humidifier in the evening?

Anyone need a first fix nail gun also? Shifting one here: https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/364510/

We've wedged the carpet up and turned underfloor heating on (not that it'll turn on as it's 27C in here with the sun beaming in) and the dehumid is in the bathroom working on the concrete under the bath. Not much airflow here though.

What do your insurers say?

What do the upstairs neighbors say?
Having pondered this a bit I am inclined to agree with @TW and @hoefla that upstairs should pay, but I did some googling (sound the armchair "expert" klaxon) and read that the neighbor would need to be proven negligent to be responsible.

Worth checking what your insurance documents say.

Hope it gets sorted one way or the other.

Get a fan on it. Airflow will be key

Get a proper dehumidifier. The small ones are essentially useless.

Hadn't seen prev messages! Ignore me

I haven't contacted my insurers. I've only contacted the flat management fuckers.

It's not the neighbour, it's shared infra so the management fuckers are paying.

What I'm talking about is how much of this fuckup can I expect to be paid for? ie. my desk is now outside drying out. The bookcase has gone black from damp. The bath has been ripped apart to find the leak, etc. None of this shit would've happened if UK idiots ran drain pipes outside like a sensible country, but since they ran them inside I feel they should pay for everything, including new carpet and whatever it takes to sort that. But I reckon they, like most liable cunts, will try and get out of as much as possible so I want to know what they're definitely liable for.

I was never a fan of this carpet and the fan is in another room for turbo training. Fuck it. The mouldier it gets the more likely they'll have to replace it.

And change the thread title to ‘flat’. Or merge with turbo training.

When similar things have happened me the building’s insurers were quite generous but the contractors they got in to fix things were somewhat incompetent.

Yeah I wasn't a fan (again with that word) of the last bit of work they did so I might try looking for my own builder, painter, etc.

My desk is currently outside and the carpet is pulled up in one corner. It makes quite the difference to your living when you only have one room and the flat was already full to the brim with junk.

I'm thinking about ditching the desk. Maybe I can freeycycle it damaged and then get them to pay for its replacement. It's only £115 Ikea thing.

I've had a survey done on an Edwardian house that recommends about £7-£10k of immediate repairs.

The main ones are repairing parts of the roof (replacing various broken tiles, rather than a new roof); repointing some brickwork; replacing some guttering; new flashings near some guttering.

Is this par for the course? Is it reasonable to price negotiate on these findings?

Is this par for the course?

Yes. Unless its sold as 'in fabulous just renovated condition'. Is the roof original? If not the fact that's damaged might indicate it wasn't done very well.

Is it reasonable to price negotiate on these findings?

Possibly, see above. Depends on your position, how the sale has proceeded so far etc. You could float going halves on the repairs, that's what we did, which went down OK.

It's a massive ball ache to get anyone out to do any work on anything at the moment without throwing vast sums of cash at them, mind. Surveyor's estimates may be unrealistically low.

Thank you.

There is good rapport in the process, but they accepted an offer 10% under asking, so I think further price reduction will be difficult for them.

The roof is original. Probably just been too long an interval since maintenance, so there is a fair bit to do.

The roof is original. Probably just been too long an interval since maintenance, so there is a fair bit to do.

Just like ours. I thought the pitched roof - which is the original - would need total replacement... but apparently not, just needs some new tiles here and there. Depending on how well it was put together 100 years ago, they can be pretty durable. Looks rough as fuck though.

Once you start touching the roof you may as well replace the entire thing. I’d factor in a new roof cost.

Then you just end up with shitty looking concrete tiles...or you stump up for the correct clay tiles and have a humongous bill. You'll have a neat roof though, I guess, which would then be totally at odds with the ramshackle nature of the rest of the frontage, and then you can't stop and....

If it is just a few cracked / dislodged tiles and there is no evidence of leaking or rot, then you can replace the tiles with reclaims and pray to the roof gods for mercy :)