Please help - mould damage in rental property our fault??

bananacakes

Please help me I need advice urgently about how to deal with my landlady!

I have lived in a rented property for the past year with my partner and our baby and from the beginning the house has suffered from damp and mould.

On our move in day the landlady said there had previously been a leak in the roof which had been fixed but for some reason the built in wardrobes in the main room still suffered from damp - she said the solution was to always leave the doors to the wardrobe slightly open to allow the air to circulate and she had also placed little crystal containers in there to soak up the moisture and requested that we empty and refill these periodically which we have done consistently.

I was pregnant at the time we moved in and we were sleeping in the main bedroom while the smaller bedroom was practically empty apart from a cot and a few baby things we had collected. About 3 months after we moved in I was sorting the baby's room when I noticed a large patch of mould had developed on the underside of the cot. I was horrified and my partner took it straight outside so that we could take it to the tip. The landlady (who lives next door) noticed the cot outside and put a note through the door to warn us it might get nicked and I promptly went round there to tell her that in actual fact it was going to the tip anyway so any would be thieves would be doing us a favour! I told her about the mould and she was adamant that she had no idea how it had happened as the small bedroom was NOT damp, just the main one. She was a bit intimidating in her assertion and got quite defensive about the mould so I let it go and we purchased a brand new cot.

The house is very cold as it gets very little sunlight so we have spent a fortune heating the place, even in the summer. It's not really a house it used to be a row of old garages that she had converted into a small cottage. We have always topped up her crystals and left the windows on the latch to let air in but during the winter it got extremely cold and the coldest room was the main bedroom. Even with the heating on constantly we could still see our breath and when I put a thermometer in the room the warmest we could get it to without the use of an additional electric heater was 11 degrees Celsius. We could not afford to use the electric heater all the time so about a week before I gave birth we moved into the small room. We left the radiator on in the main bedroom so it would still get some heat and we also had to move our tumble dryer in there too. It was a condenser dryer and blows hot air out during a cycle so that helped to keep the room warm also.

8 months later and we are moving out. While packing our things we pulled the furniture out only to reveal that our sofa bed, 3 separate chest of drawers, the baby's wardrobe and the cot have all been seriously damaged by mould. The damage is widespread throughout the house and has occured in the main bedroom which we weren't even living in and also the small bedroom which all 3 of us were in as well as the kitchen and lounge. I am so upset to think that my baby has been sleeping in a mouldy cot and this is the second one we have had to replace!!

We told the landlady that our furniture had been damaged and she got very nasty and said "well it's not my fault, you brought the furniture into the house". We didn't even mention compensation we were just letting her know the extent of the problems in her house!

How can this possibly be our fault? We are having to pay for an uplift of all the damaged items so they will be gone by 4pm today, this is also the time we are handing the keys back. If we have to take her to small claims court what evidence do we need? I phoned environmental health for advice but they just said they couldn't help as we were moving out. I'm worried that with the furniture gone she will fix the house and it will just be our word against hers? How can we prove that her house caused the mould and not us and what evidence would we need to take to court?

Please advise as we have just spent £275 replacing the furniture and that was pretty much all our savings!

Thanks

Wickedkitten

Sorry to hear but personally, when she said at the very beginning that the place was still damp and keep topping up some crystals, that really should have set off some warning signals. If its a converted garage then I'm guessing that the walls probably weren't insulated which wouldn't have helped. Use your mobile camera if you do have one to take as many pics as you can of not only your furniture, but sldo any areas of mould and especially the inside of the wardrobes in the main room.

Was your tenancy a six month tenancy or were you fixed for a year?

bananacakes

Thanks, it was a six month tenancy that was then fixed for another 6 months and then went onto a rolling month to month at the end as she is selling the house. I know we got a bit of a shock when she said about the wardrobe but we had already parted with the cash and signed the contract when she told us about this and have been looking for somewhere else ever since, it's just been a bit difficult as my partner was studying at the time so couldn't really afford another move

I've taken photos of the damage but will go back and take photos of the damp too, thanks

ceegee

It sounds like an horrendous condensation problem to me. I have experience of this (unfortunately). The underside of the cot is probably a "cold spot" and moisture rising up will condensate on the "undersides" of things. Water vapour will rise through anything, even ceilings and floors.

Plus, I would be suspicious of a converted garage. After all, garages are built to different specifications than dwellings and I wouldn't be too sure that the conversion brought it up to the standard required for a dwelling.

Is there any possibility of you being able to get a building surveyor out in the next couple of hours (on an emegency basis) to inspect and give you a report? Then you would have all the information you need and could get a resolution over time, rather than trying to sort it over the next few hours. He would only be there for less than an hour and the cost would probably be about £60 for a report.

Take lots of photos if you can as well.

I really do feel for you.

bananacakes

Thanks ceegee and sorry you've had experience, it really is a depressing state of affairs!

I'm just so relieved that we have now moved somewhere clean and dry. I'll look into getting a building surveyor out, hopefully that won't be too expensive and ultimately worth it. I'm just petrified of speaking to my landlord at 4pm as I can only imagine how hostile she will be and also a bit worried that she will come storming round if she sees a surveyor...wish me luck!

ceegee

Are you actually out of the place now then? Are you just going back to hand the keys over?

If you are now out of the place, is there the possibility that you could just put this all behind you and have it as a valuable, if expensive, life lesson? This sort of rotten stuff happens to most of us at some time or other (sometimes lots of times!) and sometimes it's best just to learn from it and start afresh, armed with your new knowledge.

If you have actually moved into a new clean and dry home, then I think I would decide to put the experience behind me and just look to the future. Let us know what you decide to do.

xx

dancingfairy

Is her furniture damaged? I'd be inclined to scrape it off, bleach stuff if possible and move out and on.
What exactly are you worried about? walls, carpets, furniture?
Unfortunately there isn't a lot you can do with environmental health as you are moving out and frankly it will be up to the next poor owner/occupier to deal with
df

00ec25

[QUOTE=bananacakes;46521031 she had also placed little crystal containers in there to soak up the moisture .

. . We left the radiator on in the main bedroom so it would still get some heat and we also had to move our tumble dryer in there too.It was a condenser dryer and blows hot air out during a cycle so that helped to keep the room warm also.

8 months later and. The damage is widespread throughout the house and has occured in the main bedroom which we weren't even living in [/QUOTE]

LL - it is possible the conversion from the garage has not been done as well as it could have, hwoever, it would certainly have to meet whatever were the building regulations at the time and this would most certainly have included, (assuming it was a single skin wall not alreay a cavity wall) ensuring that walls had vapour barriers fitted so there is possibly a design fault or (more likely) the property has stillnot dried out properly from the roof leak, the LL should have used a powered dehuimidifier to do this, not some crystals

Tenant
are you seriopusly saying that you do not think there is a connection betwen the fact you are pumping out huge quantities of moisture laden air into the bedroom and the fact the room then developed condensation and mould?????? Even if you kept the bedroom door shut the moisture would still spread throughout the house given how much comes from tuumble drying

[QUOTE=bananacakes;46521031_How_can_this_possibly_be_our_fault?_[/QUOTE]
there are 2 sides to this story, at least some of it very easily is your fault

System

You could threaten to report it to the environmental health officer. She will be scared stiff that the property could be condemned on the spot.

This happened to some friends of ours, letting a cottage to what turned out to be troublemakers. It took them a year of battling with the council to avoid having the house demolished.
Try that one on her!

bananacakes

Yes we are now out of the house, moved out two days ago thank goodness and we're just finishing up packing the last remaining bits and cleaning just now.

We tried to clean the furniture, we took a rug doctor to the sofa bed but when we turned it over we realised that the big wooden panel up inside it was covered in black mould and it's a cheap one piece ikea sofa bed so we were unable to take it apart to clean and didn't want to take the mould with us! The slats on the underside of the cot are untreated wood so no amount of scrubbing was going to get the mould off and I can't bare the thought of my baby sleeping in it again

We were actually able to clean quite a lot of the mould from the chest of drawers and the wardrobe but the untreated wood inside it was also covered and again we were unable to clean these bits plus these items and the cot had also began to swell with the moisture and were cracking The staples on the underside of the sofa bed were even rusty just from sitting on the carpet!! It's that damp.

I really really do not want to take my landlord to court, I avoid confrontation where possible, I hate it and I really wouldn't want something like that hanging over us but we are considering it because the amount of money we've had to spend was basically all we had at the moment and we feel that we have done our best to avoid these problems even if it meant having windows open in the winter and spending literally around £100 a month on gas while we were there to heat the shack!

I think as well part of it is her attitude, if she had at least said "oh I'm sorry your furniture has been damaged" I probably would have been happier that she had at least acknowledged it instead of having a right go at my partner on the phone last night when he was being as nice as can be! We have been very friendly for the past year often helping each other out with various things, taking rubbish to the tip for her, clearing the leaves from her yard, helping out when she hurt her leg etc...I just can't believe how horrible she is now being.

Anyway we have now had a note put through the door saying that the mould is our fault and due to poor ventilation (which is absolute NONSENSE as she herself commented on how we always left the windows open!!!!!) and "placing furniture too close together". In the next sentence she says she would like to remind us how cheap the rent has been - what does that have to do with it? We still have not mentioned in any way shape or form that we would like compensation, we simply said come and see the mould your house is DAMP! She's selling it so surely she's going to have issues when prospective buyers carry out a survey?!

Anyway yes there is also mould on her own furniture, which I am NOT going to attempt to clean! And there has been mould on the walls since we moved in so she can't blame us for that!

I would love to just leave and forget about it and take it as a lesson but I am a bit worried also that she is going to charge us for the damp and mould on her possessions....can she do that? Does anyone know?

Jeffrey_Shaw

If the premises are in England&Wales, their structure is inherently the responsibility of L [landlady].
Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 says so. Here's the relevant bit:

11. Repairing obligations in short leases.

(1) In a lease to which this section applies (as to which, see sections 13 and 14) there is implied a covenant by the lessor:
(a) to keep in repair the structure and exterior of the dwelling-house (including drains, gutters and external pipes)...

So, no- L cannot bill T [tenant] for any damage caused to L's possessions- it's L's own fault, of course.