HELP! Ceiling Leak from the Flat aboves Balcony Doors

EKB2904

Hi all,

I hope someone can help with my scenario.

So where to begin, bought a 2 bed flat with my boyfriend inOctober 2013 along the sea front, beautiful views, amazing size, ticked all theboxes. Not long before we was about to complete say about a week prior,our solicitor called to say there has been a leak in the living room, I thinkit would be best to visit the property. Went to the property took pictures(wasn’t that bad) so we thought to cover ourselves would be best to put aclause in the contract just in case it gets progressively worse the seller willdeal with it.

Well, the leak got progressivelyworse, come December the storm had arrived andhad buckets all round our living room. In the end we cut several holes inthe ceiling to drain the water but as we looked in the ceiling we had noticedthere were newspaper datedback to the 1970’s which was the last storm our town had. After picking away atthe ceiling we also noticed there were random patches of wood to cover up anyvisible signs of a leak. So this musthave been an ongoing situation that we were not informed about.

One day it was sunny outside so decided to get buckets ofwater, go upstairs to the flat above and splash it to the bottom of her balconydoors. Low and behold .. it came gushing through ceiling.

Flat above then got new balcony doors/windows installedcosting a hefty amount, but when they were first installed we still had somedrops of water, so the installers came back round took the base of the doorsoff and had noticed it was wet inside .. so had to double seal that. Since thenit has been FINE! We have had rain and all sorts FINE! Except from yesterday 20/07/2014,in our area we had flash flooding for about half an hour and from that the leakstarted to come through the ceiling again, thank god this time it wasn’t gushingthrough or any droplets but there were visible signs of it.

Both myboyfriend and I have had enough of it all and don’t know what to do! We havejust started to decorate the living room after having to sleep, eat, drink,watch TV in our bedroom for 6 months waiting for the leak to fixed. Laid parquetflooring down which I am worried that if we have rain again the floor will getdamaged, painted all the walls and ceiling to a high standard, had new covingput up.

I am adamantit’s still upstairs newly installed doors/windows since its exactly the samearea where we had the previous leak. Maybe they haven’t put any flashing at thebottom of doors? Who knows I’m not specialised in that so I wouldn’t have aclue.

What canwe do next though?, I have spoken to our management team and they said to uspreviously about getting a surveyor round. Which I think is the only solutionsince there professionals and know what they’re looking for.

Pleasesomeone HELP!

Manythanks,

Liz