Rolling DIY & home improvements thread

Well I had thought about this. Fingers crossed I guess. Was maybe going to get a quotation from a local joiner to see what they think would need doing before I involve the insurance company, does that sound like a sensible plan?

Yeah or a kitchen fitter or someone who can sort out the leak too

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We had a leak through the kitchen ceiling 18 months back and the excess is always more for water damage.

We did claim on insurance and they replaced the whole ceiling and painted the walls. The painter was a great guy and even did the glossing when he didn’t have to. But the bloke who did the boxing was not so good. He was booked for half a day, boxed this tiny bit in 20 minutes and then refused to do another section because it wasn’t on his job card. The painter pleaded with him but no dice.

So go for what you can but they will try to do the minimum and then it’s luck of the draw with the contractors.

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How is this panning out?

I’d probably call insurance from the get go but get a second opinion from an independently sourced tradesperson, of possible. And then take it from there.

Water is an absolute bastard.

Our recent hing was hopefully a degree worse than yours is, but I need to periodically offload my trauma, so take from the following what you will…

The leak from the flat above through to our kitchen ceiling took a year from first noticing the damp and notifying insurance to signing of the completed remedial work. And we were out of the property for six months.

Insurance company passed the work into a claims management company, who then delegated to a contractor, who then subbed to a one man band ex-plasterer kitchen fitter.

Most of the reason for it taking so long was the rank incompetence and convoluted nature of the whole chain of command. Was an infuriating set up in terms of maintaining effective communication.

On the upside, it was done somewhat thoroughly insofar as they ripped out half the kitchen, back to bare wall and masonry and took out half a suspended ceiling. The quality of the finished work left something to be desired, but we managed to turn the aforementioned bullshit convoluted subbed chain of command and incompetence to our advantage by getting a bunch of stuff replaced, new, for free, to make up for their failings. All told, the excess was way way way way way less than the value of the work carried out, even accounting for the 50% contribution we were required to pay for the ‘matched items’ i.e. replacement of the undamaged extent of worktop and tiling that required to be stripped out so the finished job all tied up - something to check for when taking a policy out in the first place.

Ideal scenario in ^this case would have been to get insurance bods to do the strip out and dry out, so any nasty unforseens are covered, and then get cash money from the insurance co and get yer own trusted trades in for any reinstallation, so you’re able to project manage them.

We were offered to opportunity to get our own trades in for all o’ ^this, but bottled it cos of the unknown extent of the water damage - there could have, potentially, but been serious structural damage.

In summary: fuck off, fallible plumbing.

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Tried contacting a few tradespeople but not heard from them. Awkward time of year. I had pretty much decided to contact insurance company and get ball rolling anyway, so good to hear that’s what you recommend. Right now cause I’ve shut off supply I have no washing machine, it’d be good if insurance would arrange or sanction something to resolve this in the short term but I’ll see what they say when I phone them. Not sure where in policy it’d mention matched items or where that clause would kick in.

I’ve spent months trying to remember what this website was. Years ago I used to go in it constantly and gaze at houses. Thanks.

Spoke to insurance company today and looks like this is one of the clauses I’ll need to put up with - not too unreasonable. Just need to photograph the damage and then the damage the plumber causes in tracing the leak. So I need to organise a plumber to come fix the leak so that I can use my washing machine in the mean time.

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Happy God damn new year…

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You may have left yourself stranded

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Just put up a shelf, and because I’m wfh I got paid for it!

Boring old Ikea LACK shelf.

This is just the sort basic job that I get bored doing and fuck up, so I’m quite pleased that it’s gone up straightforwardly, is level, no damage, and seems OK. I wouldn’t want to put anything heavy on it, just a load of paperbacks at the moment, because it’s intrinsically a bit wobbly, but for £9 it looks pretty decent, and gets some of my clutter off the table.

On the downside it’s brought home that DIY is a young man’s game. Having to fiddle around taking my glasses off and on, and having to take breathers after working in five screws has given me glimpses of mortality. Not long now before I enter the “get a man in” phase of life I suspect.

I’m going to buy a sander and sand everything in sight

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Are you in a leasehold flat?

We have had a leak in the kitchen, noticed it between Christmas and New Year. You could hear water running down behind our kitchen wall, and leaving a trickle mark from ceiling height down the wall which was visible to us.

I have been speaking to the flat above about it and the management company, who are having someone come to check the guttering. We’ve not identified the cause yet. I had been trying to go through the management company as I think it is coming from outside our flat and I want to avoid being liable for expensive repairs, but should I be speaking to our insurance company as it sounds like you did? I will check the terms of the cover but broadly we have contents and the leaseholder has buildings insurance.

If I get a key and get to move houses :yawning_face: i’ll show you pics of my sanded wood journey

Confused leaseholder with freeholder at the end there

:persevere:

In Scotland, so no leasehold. We have our own buildings insurance. We notified them from day one. Didn’t want them weedling their way out of anything on a "You should have told us earlier" basis.

The frustrating thing for us was that they wouldn’t properly get involved until the source of the leak had been identifed and fixed. And they were no help in achieving that. They’d only do a ‘trace search’ survey thing to the extent of our property or any shared areas. Which we were 99% sure wouldn’t find the source.

We spoke to our upstairs neighbour, which was initially cordial, but after their initial cursory investigation (to their credit - floorboards up, so not totally unhelpful), they’d not sourced anything and basically clammed up on the whole thing.

With little obvious next step, we then resorted to having the insurer’s trace search’investigation carried out to rule out any water coming from any source within our property. Which it obviously did prove. Water goes downwards innit.

But where was it coming from? Upstairs directly? Upstairs diagonally? Through our collective roof, and then sweeping through the wall somehow? We were still 99% said it was upstairs, but needed to work out how to confirm that as being the case. And then compel them to definitively fix the leak so that we could get our insurer back in play in terms of fixing the damage.

Fair to say that we were freaking out a bit at this stage. Hidden leak, with a suspected location in someone else’s property, but how do you prove it?

Despite the ongoing water damage ultimately becoming a bigger and bigger liability for them, the insurance company just repeated the line that it was down to us to source the origin of the leak, but they MUST have known, surely that…

The critical next step here was to get the Council’s Public Health team involved. They were super helpful. And on the basis of the trace search ruling out the leak coming from our property they took things from there to issue an S80 Notice to upstairs under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. After some minor dicking about where upstairs pretended they were going to supply a contractor, but actually didn’t, the Council supplied a contractor to fully investigate (get into walls, etc), and to fix the fault (with the cost charged to upstairs, or their insurer).

With confirmation from the Council that the leak had been found and fixed, the insurer then started the process of getting our kitchen fixed up (on payment of the excess).

How that’s of use and that you can somehow map the process onto your situation.

tl;Dr -
Council Public Health: Legends.
Insurance: Wanks in terms of info and comms, but they got the job done, in the end.
Upstairs people: Cordial, until shit got real.

‘Fun’ gallery recap…

May 2018 (first noticed):

July 2018 (our own intervention hole to view into the suspended ceiling void, which revealed that, yup, the problem was upstairs, despite their denial):

August 2018 (waiting, worrying, in limbo):

September 2018 (worst extent, at the point when the Council had managed to enforce entry, then source and fix the leak upstairs):

January 2019 (moved into temp accomodation, half the kitchen stripped out, drying underway, all covered by our insurer):
2019-01-10

Drying out was completed by the end of Jan. Moved back in, in June 2019.

Thank you. The leasehold/freehold responsibility is confusing me at the moment.

I think the trace and access is what’s needed next, but I don’t know whether it should be me/my insurance/management company/freehold insurance which arranges this. I will have to have a look at the insurance documents I guess and see what’s covered.

You can really hear water running behind the wall for a minute or two at at time, and then nothing for ages. Makes you think it is leaking when someone is running taps in the kitchen of the flat above, but I tried testing that with the flat above on the phone and it failed to identify the source. Our interior wall is close to the drainpipe running down the side of the building, but then the leaking doesn’t seem to coincide with rain either.

Glad it all got sorted for you in the end, the scale and having to move into temporary accommodation is slightly terrifying…

Rented a dehumidifier last weekend to sort out the damp in my bedroom, seems to be sorted now. Going to damp-proof paint the walls, hopefully this weekend and make the flat look less shit and have a massive audit of stuff/sell/chazza shop some of it.

Anyone want a carrier bag full of old Rock Sound CDs? No idea what to do with them.

Like I say, our insurance didn’t want to touch it at this stage. At a guess, if the freeholder holds the buildings insurance policy, then it’d be them that ought to be driving things? In reality in any case, you’ll likely need to push things along. No harm at all in speaking to your Council Public Health team. They’ll likely step in of they can. And if they can’t, they should be able to advise of steps to take toward resolution.

I won’t lie. It was an arse, all told. The moving in/out at the start and end were the worst bits. We were there way longer than was necessary, which was frustrating. But the temp place was nice enough and there’s a certain sense of adventure about being somewhere new for a while.

Good luck.

Sanders are the least fun power tools by a big margin. Unless you really like swapping sandpaper.

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