Argh!!!

Jeesh... when it rains it pours... and then floods my basement!!!! :yell: For the third time now I have had ruined items and a giant pain in the butt because of water pouring into the basement from who knows where. Each time I call the landlord and get the not his problem attitude... well this time no way! He always asks if I know someone who could come fix it... and I do but I am no longer asking my 65 year old father to come take care of a property that neither of us own!!! :frustrated:

So today I called to get someone to give me an estimate on what could be the cause and how much it'll be to fix and he is calling this quote directly to the landlord. I'm out... not my responsibility, but as usual is my headache!

And to top off my night last night, after I found the water and moved all of the important furniture (one of a kind hand made by my brother coffee table and 60's gold chairs and rocker from my mom), I went to use the ancient hand me down shop vac... started to clean up the water only to slip on the water and trip over the darn thing and badly scrape and bruise my already buggered up right leg(diabetes related skin probs on it)! So after a good swear/cry/swear/cry http://bestsmileys.com/angry1/18.gif fit, I tried the shop vac again only to have it spew water out all over the place... so I put down towels and limped over to scoop the poop which was originally what I went down there for.

I finished the night icing my leg and trying to calm down the cats... who always freak out when it floods down there and I move furniture....

I HATE renting. Especially from out of town slum lords! http://bestsmileys.com/angry1/22.gif

awww im sorry. :( hope nothing (including yourself) floats away.

-ash

kr - I can relate! My basement has flooded several times since we moved in three years ago. There is actually a tenant in the basement, so it's worse luck for them, but I don't like them anyway so I don't feel bad for them...:evil:

Anyway, we had slumlords too, and they sold the house for a ridiculously low sum to a man just starting his own property mgmt co. He was immediately flodded (pardon the pun) with all sort of charges to replace carpet in the basement and put in a sump pump. When they staretd digging to replace the pipes, they discovered that the pipes had been re-routed by the previous slumlords after the last flood to the city's sewage lines - illegal.
So the next time we had a flood, it was peppered with human waste.:eeew:
Now, despite the pump, our basement including the apartment below ours stinks like people poo, and we get wafts of the stench in our place on the main floor every time the furnace kicks on.

That, as well as the cigarette smoke coming from the basement tenant's apartment. He chain smokes inside his house. Which bugs me because I quit smoking two years ago - for nothing, it seems.:yell:

OMG:yuck:... and I can so relate to the smoker in the basement too! At our last house apartment it was a tri-plex, and when we moved in the current landlord was adamant about us all being non-smoking and no smoking in the building period. Well he sold the place to some areshole who didn't give a rip and my asthma got so bad we had to move immediately. We asked the basement loogans many times to smoke at least in their stairwell, but they were jerks about it... so when I left I poured old perfume down the vents and cranked the heat on moving day. :evil: Petty I know... but I was MAD.http://bestsmileys.com/blushing/7.gif

I took pics to document the flooding again like I did the first time it was this bad. I got some up with the shop vac and then put down towels... and today when I downloaded the pics I noticed that I must have had some helpers... :o:lovestruck:

Oh and here is my injury right after I fell and then today... I think it's gonna be quite technicolour! (Please excuse the hairy legs... lol... hubby's on a loooong trip. :rolleyes::laughing:):o

OUCH, your poor leg :cry:

Each time I call the landlord and get the not his problem attitude... well this time no way! He always asks if I know someone who could come fix it... So today I called to get someone to give me an estimate on what could be the cause and how much it'll be to fix and he is calling this quote directly to the landlord. I'm out... not my responsibility, but as usual is my headache!

I HATE renting. Especially from out of town slum lords! http://bestsmileys.com/angry1/22.gif

Yup. Been there. Not with flooding, but with a jerk of a landlord who thought it fine for us to pay high rent for a 2-bathroom, badly kept dump, when only one toilet worked and the plumber left the upstairs one on the side of its' drain-hole, the new one sitting on the landing, and I had no right to be upset! In fact, he said I "had an attitude" because I asked when he proposed to have this issue resolved as we could not use the toilet (duh), barely access the tub/shower, and had to stumble down steep stairs in the middle of the night after avoiding tripping over the new toilet!

Well, we got out of his crappy contract 2 months early and ske-daddled the he:censored: out of there, and the mortgage for a big house with a pool and working toilets is no higher than his rent for that dump! We still to this day sometimes look down the toilet bowl in amazement at it working! His was spewing stuff back up, which is why he changed it ... but the pipes? Nah, it was the toilet that overflowed, not the pipes :loser::headslap:

Sure, it was also in a condo complex where nothing was allowed, so we are really happy to be out of there. Now we can even have people over and they can park in front of the house and not have to walk for 10-15 minutes from someplace they managed to find a spot ...

Ya we were in a condo place just like that before here... I thought this would be a step up... and it is in many ways (more space/ backyard/own driveway)... unfortunately it's also been a step up in the headache department. We too have two toilets... neither of which worked properly when we moved in... we finally got fed up and told him we were going to costco to get a new one and that he could send a check... which he did.

I can't wait to buy! And Sarah do you find the pool a burden? Bills wise? I have always wanted a house with one, but now that we are kinda looking everyone is telling me to stay away from them. :shrug:

Just noticed you can't see the cutey paw prints that well... this one might be better...

I can't wait to buy! And Sarah do you find the pool a burden? Bills wise? I have always wanted a house with one, but now that we are kinda looking everyone is telling me to stay away from them. :shrug:

Actually, we bought this house for two reasons, one each :D
I wanted a KITCHEN after the postage-stamp sized one at the condo (I swear, and RV has bigger kitchen than that), and this house has a large kitchen, open, airy, bright, huge window overlooking ...
Lewis' reason nr one, the inground POOL :D

Work wise, no sweat. We threw in a scoop or two of chlorine powder or pellets or whatever (his job, not mine) in the evening after the last swim, which cleared the water and it wasn't too strong by the time we went in again the next day.

Leaves ... two things, we have a "pool devil" which is a floating devise in plastic, which you hook up to the water-circulating outlet and it has a sock at the mouth (its' own provided sock, and when it breaks, because it does break, we replaced it with knee-highs :thumbs up ) This sock, because of the water passing through it at the surface, catches bugs and leaves, and all we have to do is empty/ change it when it gets full.
Second thing is in the fall, to physically go pick them up with a net, but once a day ... no biggie.

However, I had go on a frog-patrol every morning to rescue little frogs from drowning :eek: and one day (no two) there was also a mouse swimming frantically in there. And a couple of drowned baby black-birds :rip: but on the plus side, it saved a squirrel from the dogs! It jumped in and swam around until it could jump out behind Dani and run off :thumbs up

Bills wise, no problem really. We had to shock the water a couple of times after some heavy rain, that did cost a little bit, and there's the chlorine to keep up but that's not too expensive. Electricity wise, we don't keep the heater on more than 2 which keeps the water at about 25ºC, from July till end of August. In fact, out electric bill payments were reduced after 2 months (we moved in June 1st) because they had based it on the former owners' consumption and we used less.

Pool Boys closed it in November, that was 140,- but worth it rather than risking the liner at several 1000 if we did it wrong, or the heater or other pipes!

We're happy with it, and if we hadn't found a house with a pool, we'd have looked for one with enough space to put one (above ground, cheaper to buy after all). Pool and fire place, large kitchen and minimum 3 bedrooms were the requirements. We got that and then some!

I'm sorry you are going through this. Renting from someone who just doesn't care about their own property is hard. You shouldn't have to deal with that or pay for that.

omg , I hope you can move out of this place , this isn't good for you. Water infiltration , mold ...... you have to get out !

As for the pool , it depends where you live. If there's lots of trees around it , more clean up. If you have fields around , clean up the soil that gets into the pool. My is a pain in the a :censored: , the water from my well stains so the pool is kind of ... stained ! And I have to put lots of chemicals to keep the water "balanced" but when it's +35*C humidex ... I enjoy it. :D

Our lease is up in October this year so we are hoping to look at buying this fall.... we'll see. :fingerscr

Oh and my scrapes look a little less angry today! And I was very careful and managed to shave even... :rolleyes:

I'm on clean up this weekend... have to disinfect and all down there then I'm gonna see about making wood pieces to keep the important furniture off the floor an inch or two.

Your leg looks sore. Poor you.
I hope you can manage to move out of there soon. Gonna have more flooding problems before winter and spring are over I think, loads more water to come I'm afraid.

Cindy

ouch! Krdahmer those are some nasty looking bruises there. I hope you have some epsom salts to put in the bath to soak away the soreness :grouphug:

cute paw prints :lovestruck: left by your little :angel2: helpers :D

is there a lumber yard near by where you can p/u some throw-away wood pieces cheap?

I'm actually kinda lucky there... since this is a rental people tend to leave things over the years... one of which is a whole bunch of scrap wood up in the rafters of the basement ceiling! :cool: So I'm just gonna hunt down there and see what i have for now... I've decided to bring the most important piece of furniture back up here and into the office... the gold rocker my mom used to rock me in when I was a baby. If that got ruined in any way I would be crushed! All the other stuff down there is already on it's way out... the cats went to town on most of it. They thought it became fair game when it got stashed in the basement...:rolleyes:

I may also invest in those plastic leg thingys at walmart today for a couple of the chairs... they need to be higher anyhow and I can't really hide the wood on those.

I'm gonna tackle cleanup later this afternoon... first I get to do my fun errands and get the moola for Buddy for Tuesday.

I'm actually kinda lucky there... since this is a rental people tend to leave things over the years... one of which is a whole bunch of scrap wood up in the rafters of the basement ceiling! :cool: So I'm just gonna hunt down there and see what i have for now... I've decided to bring the most important piece of furniture back up here and into the office... the gold rocker my mom used to rock me in when I was a baby. If that got ruined in any way I would be crushed! All the other stuff down there is already on it's way out... the cats went to town on most of it. They thought it became fair game when it got stashed in the basement...:rolleyes:

I may also invest in those plastic leg thingys at walmart today for a couple of the chairs... they need to be higher anyhow and I can't really hide the wood on those.

I'm gonna tackle cleanup later this afternoon... first I get to do my fun errands and get the moola for Buddy for Tuesday.


We in Ireland are more inclined to get a mortgage & own our properties, it's a big draw on a family, but, there are no laws to protect the lessor, & the lessee is protected all the way, a family here could rent for a year & then (legally) be kicked out (if they stay any longer they have rights). Also, rent is more expensive than paying a mortgage. We have a lot of homeless in this country to explain all of this.