Human waste coming through kitchen sink landlord still wants rent money

vexd_2

Hello hope i havent posted this twice!

I live in shared accomdation where each indivdual is responsible for their own rent and have lived in the property for approx 5 years.

The issue is that since about end of march/start of april whenever you have a shower (located on ground floor of 3 floor terraced house) water would come up thru and over the kitchen sink located on bottom floor.

We let the private landlord know after we tried to sort the problem ourselves with sink unblocker.

This did not work and the problem got progressivly worse, with the landlord first of all saying that it was teh tenants responsibitly to keep the sink pipe clean due to food waste passing down the kitchen sink.
this was not the case.

The problem kept getting worse and the landlord came round and saw the problem but was very slow in addressing the problem, claiming that the blame lay to the next door house and (southern water) which had been declared as having subsidense on not on our property

he tried to rod the drains himself with no luck and at this point now may/june ish, human waste was visabily coming up thru the sink.

The problem has now been fixed, however the kitchen was not industrially cleaned and therefore i belive to be contaminated still.

I have been staying elsewhere in the meantime.

I dont think that we should have to pay any rent from since teh problem started and untill teh kitchen is made safe.

Please help!!!

delain

i don't have much advice... but yuck. Don't blame you for staying elsewhere.
My LL would not do that!

It would cost him about £80 for a new sink, could you ask him to just replace the sink?

princeofpounds

There's plenty of fecal bacteria in a normal sink.

If the problem is fixed with the plumbing, then water will not be coming out from inaccessible areas of the sink to accessible ones, so cleaning the sink a couple of times thoroughly with good products should be enough. And if you want to be really careful, extract the U bend and clean the pipe. Then pour through lots of pipe cleaner.

I can hardly think that environmental health would care too much now to be honest, unless I'm reading your description of the situation wrong.

vexd_2

we are asking for new sink, however i still believe that teh kitchen should be deep cleaned as the spreading of contamination has not been sorted.

Thanks tho!

vexd_2

@ prince of pounds.

My issue is that this contiuned for around 3 months til it was properly sorted, surely the landlord is responsible for decent living conditions?

thank you for your input tho!

princeofpounds

Yes the LL is. Unfortunately it's a bit difficult to press them once the problem is fixed. While it is ongoing you can contact the council's environmental health unit, who can do inspections and issue legal repairing orders. Or you can use the tenant's right to repair, which can be used if LL are not repairing in a reasonable time or manner (google Lee-Parker vs. Izzet 1971 to read up on that). 3 months for such a serious problem is not reasonable, though if it was complex it could take a couple of weeks to diagnose for sure.

You can ask for compensation or goodwill (which is same thing without any legal liability admitted) but unless you want a court case you cannot force it from them.

I did not realise that the problem spread beyond the sink - how bad is it really? Is it visually clean or not?

vexd_2

Visually it is clean, the waste water overflowed from the sinkon to worktops and the floor.

I will say generally the LL is a good and fair person and do not want to take them to court, like you said compo or goodwill would suffice.
i just didnnt think it is fair to pay full rent for given peroid.

thanks again!

Welshwoofs

I'd have thought wanting a deep clean or a replacement sink because of water from a shower coming up through the sink was going a little bit overboard.....what are you guys doing in the shower??

Surely just a good clean round with some bleach should put your bacteria worries aside?

In all honesty I think people in general go a bit overboard about bacteria these days (not their fault as the media tends to give the impression that unless every square inch of the house has been wiped down with anti-bacteria fluids someone will get ill).

Now when I was a kid we had an outside loo, bathed in a tin tub in the kitchen and if something got dropped on the floor it got a quick dust-off before going back on the plate. Oddly I'm one of those people who never pick up the niggling little coughs, colds and assorted viruses that other people seem to regularly get....

vexd_2

@welshwoofs

The problem was due to bad plumbing.

What was i doing in the shower? i was having a shower like any regular person does.

Doozergirl

I'd get busy with the bleach

You're still liable for the rent, so moving out isn't exactly the way to deal with it.

If it was my house I'd have to clean it out, even if it were renting, the nature of having a family and being responsible for them and not able to run away from it, I'd give it a damn good clean myself. Fact is that a sink is never going to be the cleanest place in the world but if you actually leave it and do nothing then you're making it worse for yourself. Bleaching it properly will get it as clean as it is ever going to be.

Volcano

There's 2 issues here:

1) Compensation for your living conditions being badly affected.

2) You want your kitchen cleaned.

As the problem has been fixed, it'll be completely down to how much of a 'good and fair person' your LL is as to whether you'll get any luck with number 1.

As for number 2 (excuse the pun), unless there is actually any visible evidence (i.e. faecal) or lingering smell, then it's extremely unlikely you're going to get any joy for a 'problem' that cannot be seen or smelt, unless you really feel like going to the expense of a full microbiological assessment of your kitchen (though I'm guessing the bottle of bleach will be cheaper).