Bathroom leaking...thoughts

continualdiamond

Ok short story version.

Upstairs moved in, in Jan, been using kitchen sink & not plumbed in a washing machine.

Result my bathroom tiles pushing themselves off the walls, OH comes home from work, water dripping from bathroom light socket. Took out curtain rail from ceiling, water starts dripping from that hole. Black mould spots around top left of window & can see plaster (had painted)

Outside wall around bathroom window is all damp.

Was going to claim on our insurance, but decided he needs to upstairs, he's caused the damage.

What could I be looking at? Every tile off so plaster in bathroom dries?

What can I do to help, portable heater in bathroom to help dry it out?

Just myself as ground floor flat and him upstairs.

phill99

continualdiamond wrote: »

Was going to claim on our insurance, but decided he needs to upstairs, he's caused the damage.

If its a flat, there is normally one policy for the whole building covering damage to the structure. Therefore you are both insured under the same policy.

If for some reason you have seperate policies, you need to claim from your own policy. Your insurers will then recover the cost from his insurers. He will be liable for any excess that5 yoiy have to pay (in flats this is often £250+).

Wookey

Dehumidifier will work a lot better at removing access dampness rather than placing a heater inside, trying to raise the temp to a point where damp walls will dry out is expensive.

macman

Strikes me that the first thing to do is to speak to your neighbour upstairs and discuss the issue with him. A leak that bad should not be difficult to track down.

continualdiamond

Yea we have spoken to him. OH worked out the problem (mentioned above with upstairs using the sink but no washing machine plumbed in).

Have contacted the landlord etc, but just wanted to know what I should do in the mean time until its fixed.

They're all leasehold flats, so every flat is insured under the same company for buildings insurance.

macman

You mean he's draining the w/m into the sink then? Nothing wrong with that as long as it's not going anywhere but the sink.

continualdiamond

OH said that upstairs had been using the kitchen sink, but has no washing machine installed.

The pipe under the sink was still set up to recieve the waste from the washing machine. Upstairs had been moping up water in his kitchen with a towel.

For some reason our kitchen hasn't become damaged but our bathroom has.

Outside wall around bathroom window is soaked with damp & thus the above problem I mentioned in op.

macman

So what you are telling us (albeit in very small bites) is that there is an open spigot on the sink waste, so that when the sink is drained, waste waster flows out of that onto the floor?
It's a couple of minutes work to simply cap off the unused spigot in order to prevent that happening (a cork would do as a temporary measure), so your neighbour is either very lazy, or a complete idiot.

continualdiamond

Complete idiot...

OH had said he seemed very blarzae (sp) about the whole thing. To have lived in a property for 4 weeks with water going onto his kitchen floor every time he used the sink and didn't think to do something about it other than moping it up with a towl to me = idiot.

He hadn't even thought to inform the letting agency (his rented, mine mortgaged)

macman

Tell him in writing that you hold him responsible for the damage and will be seeking compensation from his insurers. That might encourage him to fix it.