Problems with rented house - help please!

mrpop

Hi there,
Firstly, I hope I am posting on the right forum, and apologise if I'm not.

We private rent our house, and are 3 months through a 6 month contract. We have rented for 5yrs different houses, and have never had a landlord like the one at this property. She doesn't like to have anything done to the property AT ALL, and it's starting to aggrivate me.

When we moved in to the property in May there was no mention of not being allowed to use the loft. A month or so ago I called the agent to ask how we access it, as they are really high ceilings and it's not a conventional loft hatch. She got back to me saying the owner had her own stuff up there, and she was denying me access. I was fed up with this, but as we only plan to be here 'til Nov (looking into buying) thought fair enough. So I stored my stuff in the garage...........

Today my DH told me that he's realised the garage roof has a hole in it (just seems to have happened overnight). It's one of those metal garages, and around the edges have always been a tad wet, so we moved our stuff to the middle, and now this has happened. I'm gutted, my Dad died only this month, and this weekend I have to painstakingly go through everything to check that photographs and home video's haven't been damaged.

I know for sure that a wedding dress has gone mouldy.......the case is soaking wet. Books have swollen, cots I have for my future babies are damp, boxes of toys and clothes are damp too....it's really bad.

I phoned the letting agent - and she said to me she'll call the owner to see what she wants doing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Surely this is unfair. We pay our rent on time, and this is the way we're treated. Our Gas certificate passed, but the engineer recommended work was done (fire cleaned, ignition button on boiler mended, and cooker ignition button mended as atm we have to use a match)......landlord said she didn't want the work doing. Electrician passed the property...but said power to the shed needed weather proofing - that's not been done either as (we believe) electrical tests aren't legal like gas ones are.

There is no smoke detector to the electrical mains too - only battery - I thought by law it had to be by electric nowadays - but if I suggest it no doubt it'll be thrown out too.

Obviously I'm going to have to claim on my house insurance for my damaged items........and subsequently now have to pay for my personal family belongings to go into self-store until we move out, as I can't take the risk of things being damaged in a bad garage.

Is there ANYTHING I can do when my Landlord says she doesn't want to do the stuff? The letting agents say `it's her choice, she owns it, we only guide her, and at the end of the day we can't make her` - but heck, if I didn't pay my rent on time then there'd be trouble I'm sure!

Sorry for such a waffled post, I'm really :mad:, feeling quite tender to be forced into doing such a painful task this weekend, and feeling mightily hacked off with a money grabbing tight fisted landlord :rolleyes:

Many thanks for any help

S

UK007BullDog

Sorry to hear of your loss. Hope it does not hurt you too much going through your damaged goods.

I am not an expert in renting issues but some people here are and will soon post some helpful info for you.

clutton_2

i am sorry this is such a difficult emotional time for you. Is it possible you might be getting one or two things a little out of proportion ?

If safety certificates have been issued by both gas and electric engineers, the things they mentioned are not dangerous, otherwise they would not have passed them. CORGI and electric guys SO watch their own backs these days - it may be inconvenient to use a match to light the cooker,but, if it has been passed, then its passed. Have you got the tenants copy of the Landlords Gas Safety Certificate. ?

i am sorry, that you may not like this next bit, but, if i had terribly precious things, like dresses, and baby things, i would not choose to store them in a garage, which is not exactly a damp-proof structure even with no hole in the roof.

your letting agent is right ""The letting agents say `it's her choice, she owns it, we only guide her, and at the end of the day we can't make her"".

i know this does not feel like the answer you wanted, but, sometimes a stranger can see a situation in a different light. i do hope you can get thru this dreadfully upsetting time.

best wishes

seven-day-weekend

I don't think you can insist on any of those things being done; the gas and electrics have passed the test and a garage is never meant to be a storage area for articles that can be damaged by damp. We didn't even include the garage in the rent for our BTL - we wanted to use it ourselves as we don't have a garage at our own house.

dougk_2

mrpop wrote:

Hi there,

There is no smoke detector to the electrical mains too - only battery - I thought by law it had to be by electric nowadays - but if I suggest it no doubt it'll be thrown out too.

S

As far as I know there is no requirement to even fit a smoke detector in a "normal" house only in houses of multiple residents. TBH I am not sure a mains electric smoke detector provides a better system than a battery one in a home environment anyway. A battery one (or more) does the job fine.

I have to agree with clutton - Garages even when fully waterproof are damp and cold places and paper and clothing / material items go mouldy and rot . I have a nice brick built garage and would never store anything valuable or electrical (other than gardening equipment) in it for this reason. Unless a garage is heated you are bound to have problems in the long term with mould and damp.

In terms of the loft is I was renting out my house i would want to provide access to the loft for several reasons - all the pipes and cables run in there and can be easily damaged, it is not boarded out and i always runs the risk of accidents happening when something falls through the ceiling! Again in some cases as with a garage lofts by their nature are not ideal places to store valuables.

clutton_2

""TBH I am not sure a mains electric smoke detector provides a better system than a battery one in a home environment anyway""

i am slowly replacing all my battery operated ones with mains, as tenants sometimes dont replace batteries, and i would rather that they not die, and that my house does not burn down - SO inconvenient !!




joking !

BobProperty

clutton wrote:

""TBH I am not sure a mains electric smoke detector provides a better system than a battery one in a home environment anyway""

i am slowly replacing all my battery operated ones with mains, as tenants sometimes dont replace batteries, and i would rather that they not die, and that my house does not burn down - SO inconvenient !!




joking !

When you do replace the battery ones with mains ones, make sure they are wired into the lighting circuit or another circuit, not on a circuit on their own. You may think why? but I was tipped off by an electrician that where the alarm had it's own circuit, it would trip the MCB and the tenant would ignore it. When it was on the lighting circuit and it tripped the MCB, they reset it or got someone out if it wouldn't reset.

mrpop

Thanks. I guess I have had excellent landlords in the past who actually cared about their tenants, and this time I've stumbled on one who sounds normal.

I'm not over reacting about things; the gas man said he'd have to pass it but felt it was unsafe (the cooker) - and the electrician said he was `concerned` about the electric to the shed as it was done with indoor wiring and it was exposed to the elements.

Regarding putting my stuff in the garage - well, I have nowhere else to put it! It's been stored for the last 12 months in a brick built garage and has been fine, so the damp is definately from this leak.

I'll deal with the other stuff - I really didn't post for criticism but for help, and it feels like that point has been missed.

Never mind!

clutton_2

i am so sorry that you feel criticised, i certainly was not doing that, just offering you my opinion as to the situation. I see that "" I'm going to have to claim on my house insurance for my damaged items........""

i do so hope that you can get these items paid for by your insurers, but, i don't know if they will want to pay out for storage in the garage, if i were you i would see if you can find out first, before making a claim, - if they sy no (insurers will wriggle out of paying if they possibly can) there may be another way of describing how the damage occurred.

best wishes

teb_2

your being over sensitive. you got help and no-one criticised you, just made points from a different view to yours. sorry your having a crap time, i'd be upset over my stuff too if it were me, but your looking at this from an emotional point of view instead of a balanced one. hope theres not been too much damage to your things.

dougk_2

I didn't mean to cricise either - i guess we all learn from things that happen to us. Interms of paperwork, photos etc , there is usually somewhere to store them in the warm (even if its under the bed!) . If you do have to store things like that get ruined if they get damp make sure they are in sealed plastic storage boxes and pref. with newspaper at the top and bottom. The boxes can be picked up for under a fiver and protect your stuff much better than a bin liner!