The last few days have been rather busy ones for Sue and I.
It all started when water started to drip through the ceiling of the bathroom on the first floor of our house. As there is a shower immediately above where the water was dripping through, I assumed that the outlet pipe from the shower was leaking and telephoned our insurance company. (We have a policy that covers us for leaking pipes.) Within a couple of hours the emergency plumber arrived, examined the shower, and announced that the problem wasn’t a leaking outlet pipe. He then tapped the tiles inside the shower and announced that they had ‘blown’, and that water was getting behind them and running down the wall behind the tiles, and this was causing the dripping.
Luckily my one of my next-door neighbours is a builder, and he arranged for his site manager (Yuri) to come and look at what needed to be done. Yuri duly arrived on Thursday morning, looked at the tiles, and announced that he would have to remove most of them to cure the problem. He returned that afternoon, and by the time he left he had removed and cleaned up the tiles so that they could be reused and cut away the satuarated (and somewhat mouldy) plasterboard that was behind them.
He returned on Friday morning, replaced the plasterboard, fitted some sort of waterproof membrane, re-tiled the shower and – after a suitable interval – grouted the tiles. He also sealed the area around the shower tray with silicone and then fitted a plastic seal over that to ensure that the sealant should not deteriorate too quickly.
We now have a working shower again … and no drips coming through the bathroom ceiling!
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Well that was nice and quick. You've got a useful contact there Bob!
ReplyDeleteNundanket,
DeleteThe shower is in our loft extension … which was designed by Yuri and built by my next-door neighbour! I suppose that this gives them an incentive to fix it as quickly as possible.
All the best,
Bob
Nice bit of ‘after sales service’, there, Bob 👍👍👍
DeleteMartin S.,
DeleteIt was. I’m very luck to have two excellent next-door neighbours.
All the best,
Bob
You really lucked out there. It's nice that your neighbor was able to arrange quick and efficient repairs.
ReplyDeleteI mentioned we moved from New Jersey to California a couple weeks ago but we have been living without our stuff for the while. Today is the big day, the movers are arriving with our belongings but we had a bit of a scare last night. The power went out and that's a common occurrence up here in the mountains. We got lucky and the power returned at about 1030pm.
If only all emergencies could be so simple and short lived.
Mr. Pavone,
DeleteWe were very lucky, both with the service we received and the speed at which the work was done.
It’s great to read that your belongings have finally been delivered. I hope that you’ll be unpacked soon and can begin to enjoy life in your new home.
Will you be buying an emergency generator and/or acquiring solar panels or a similar green energy source? It might make sense if the power outages are frequent.
All the best,
Bob
We are renting, so the landlord has provided us with generators for the water system and the house. We just need to stock some gasoline and water, just in case.
DeleteMr. Pavone,
DeleteI’d forgotten that a lot more people in the US rent their homes rather than buy them … although that trend seems to be more normal now in the UK. When my wife and I bought our house in 1985, it cost £60,000 ($77,000). It was recently valued at £750,000 ($956,000) … which is far more than we could afford to buy nowadays.
It sounds as if your landlord has their head screwed on right. If there are common power outages, it makes sense to provide the necessary generators.
All the best,
Bob
Bob,
ReplyDeleteWe had something similar happen in our kitchen years ago; the damp appearing in the ceiling was traced to a hairline crack in the plastic bath in the bathroom immediately above it which had probably been slowly leaking for years, as the bath normally served only as a shower tray, rather than being filled with water. Replacing that bath with a steel one necessitated complete retiling and refitting of the bathroom. We took care to install a steel bath in our new home to avoid any repetition of that particular problem.
Best wishes,
Arthur
Arthur1815 (Arthur),
DeleteFunnily enough, we had a leak from our bathroom some years ago which we only noticed when water began to drip off the kitchen light fitting! The emergency plumber duly arrived and discovered that one of the plastic legs supporting the bath had broken in half, and its share of the weight was being borne by the outlet pipe … which eventually developed a crack. It took about three hours to fix (including replacing the plastic legs with metal ones) and we’ve had no problem since.
All the best,
Bob
Well done on your neighbours helping you out Bob!
ReplyDeleteSteve J.,
DeleteHe and his family are great neighbours. During the COVID lockdown they regularly checked if we were all right and if we needed anything … as did our other next-door neighbours.
All the best,
Bob