Severe water damage in kitchen after radiator power flush

Jack_Bauer

Hi all,

My kitchen nightmare doesn't seem to want to end.

I'm in the process of getting my kitchen floor retiled and my tiler today took up the existing plywood which revealed drenched water logged floorboards, directly underneath the units adjacent to the rear garden facing wall where my external drain is.

It didn't occur to me at first what might have caused this but then I remembered that exactly 1 month today, on the 19th of January, I had a Gas Safe engineer Power Flush my Rads and he spent a good 6 hours doing it, draining the dirty black water directly into my garden drain. I have no idea how but it looks like the water has somehow gotten into the house and waterlogged the hell out of the wood in my kitchen subfloor, making it crumble apart like butter. How could this have happened?!?

I have no idea what to do about this now. Can I claim this with home insurance and will it be covered? I have LV insurance and will be calling them tomorrow but I'm scared as I've never dealt with an insurance claim before. Is this something to claim with on the engineers public liability insurance perhaps? Will I have to repair this all myself. I'm really worried as the damage is directly under my units and I can't see how it can be repaired without the kitchen coming out.

Any words of wisdom/comfort from the people here would be much appreciated.

pmartin86

I'm not an expert by any means, but that level of degradation will take considerably longer than a month to occur, i would bet that you've had a considerably more long-standing leak for that to occur. What does the outside wall look like? Is the DPC in-tact? Any pipes in the area?

Jeepers_Creepers

I'm trying to ID the layers; this is a suspended timber floor made up of timber floorboards, covered in plywood and then tiled?

And your tiler took up all the old tiles, and the plywood - and discovered this damp patch? He cut a part of a floorboard in order to try and find the cause?

Is the floorboard solid enough, or is it rotting? If solid, this is a recentish thing; if rotten, it's been going on for many months or longer.

Anyhoo, the cause? Dunno, but that hasn't been caused by the black sludgy water removed from your system. Why? Because it ain't black and sludgy.

Have you seen the water that comes out of a dirty rad system? It's as black as ink, and just as messy.

Is that brown colour a coating or just wet timber? How did the water come in to your house - is it from under the units but over the remaining tiles?

As far as I can see, there is nothing there to suggest wrongdoing by the plumber. What does sometimes happen, tho' not often, is that cleaning the sludge out of a really badly corroded system can expose weaknesses and pinholes in pipes and fittings - so they leak afterwards. Really rare, tho', and not a 'fault' by the plumber. Are there any pipes under there - going to a tap or radiator?

Will this be covered by your home insurance? Almost certainly 'yes', and that's who to call. They'll send out assessors and plumbers and all sorts (probably - depends on your level of cover), and if they find it's been caused by a tradesperson having made an error, chances are they soon chase them with the bill.

Or, get your own plumber to do some detective work. It shouldn't be too hard to ID where that water has come from - it seems to have come from above, on to the floorboard, and not from below?

Keep_pedalling

Someone has made an attempt at repairs before, this has been going on years for the wood to reach the crumbly stage. It look like it is butted up to concrete which is not going to help.

FreeBear

Keep_pedalling said: this has been going on years for the wood to reach the crumbly stage.

Yup. I would concur. Some of the original floorboard looks to have rotted, so this is a long term problem.

Much as you won't like the suggestion, removing the base units will allow you to track down the source of the problem. Also gives you the opportunity to remove the rest of the tiles, level the floor, and get a decent base for the new tiles. Tiling under where the appliances go will also make life a lot easier should you ever need to pull one out (for replacement/servicing).

Taking the floor up also gives you the chance to put some insulation under the floorboards which will save a bit on heating.

Jeepers_Creepers

I think the joists are above the concrete level, but even so there's hardly a gap. I hope that void is very well ventilated?

With such a small underfloor space, what a strange choice of floor.

JackB, what is the path taken by that water to get there - over the tiles, between the layers, what?

Jeepers_Creepers

(Nice wall colour - may I ask what it is, please?    )

Jack_Bauer

pmartin86 said:

I'm not an expert by any means, but that level of degradation will take considerably longer than a month to occur, i would bet that you've had a considerably more long-standing leak for that to occur. What does the outside wall look like? Is the DPC in-tact? Any pipes in the area?

I think it's likely to have been running for longer than a month too. The problem is, I purchased the house 2 months ago so any long standing issue isn't covered by home insurance. That's why I was hoping it was the PowerFlush that did it.

Regardless, in terms of outside wall, my gully is directly adjacent to where the water is inside the house. My drainage manhole is also nearby. I've booked in a plumbing and drainage expert to take a look this Wednesday. Based on the call I had with him, he suggested this kind of problem is common place in his experience if there are cracks in the concrete around the gully. From what I can see, the gully looks fine but it will be interesting to see what he finds. What I did notice is that the pipes going into the gully don't line up with the gully, the water falls directly on the wall short of the gully. Not sure if this makes a difference or not. Either way, the drainage expert will tell me if that is the likely source of the water. I tell you what, I am praying it is. He's charging £80 an hour for his inspections.

This is what it looks like outside my house...

Jack_Bauer

Jeepers_Creepers said:

I'm trying to ID the layers; this is a suspended timber floor made up of timber floorboards, covered in plywood and then tiled?

And your tiler took up all the old tiles, and the plywood - and discovered this damp patch? He cut a part of a floorboard in order to try and find the cause?

Is the floorboard solid enough, or is it rotting? If solid, this is a recentish thing; if rotten, it's been going on for many months or longer.

Anyhoo, the cause? Dunno, but that hasn't been caused by the black sludgy water removed from your system. Why? Because it ain't black and sludgy.

Have you seen the water that comes out of a dirty rad system? It's as black as ink, and just as messy.

Is that brown colour a coating or just wet timber? How did the water come in to your house - is it from under the units but over the remaining tiles?

As far as I can see, there is nothing there to suggest wrongdoing by the plumber. What does sometimes happen, tho' not often, is that cleaning the sludge out of a really badly corroded system can expose weaknesses and pinholes in pipes and fittings - so they leak afterwards. Really rare, tho', and not a 'fault' by the plumber. Are there any pipes under there - going to a tap or radiator?

Will this be covered by your home insurance? Almost certainly 'yes', and that's who to call. They'll send out assessors and plumbers and all sorts (probably - depends on your level of cover), and if they find it's been caused by a tradesperson having made an error, chances are they soon chase them with the bill.

Or, get your own plumber to do some detective work. It shouldn't be too hard to ID where that water has come from - it seems to have come from above, on to the floorboard, and not from below?

Yes, that is correct. Suspended timber floor, plywood, adhesive, tiles.

New tiler came along to lay new tiles, this time with underfloor heating and he noticed the damp patch in that corner as per my initial post. He cut that small portion out to see what was going on underneath, that is correct.

The water isn't on the existing tiles and as far as I can see, it isn't on the external wall either when looking under the units. It appears to be entirely in the subfloor, in that rear area.

I don't there is is any piping in that direct area. My sink is there, and the washing machine and dishwasher are adjacent to it on the other side. I'll get my plumber to take a look at them but I don't think they're leaking. There isn't any pressure drop in the water supply.

Jack_Bauer

FreeBear said:

Keep_pedalling said: this has been going on years for the wood to reach the crumbly stage.

Yup. I would concur. Some of the original floorboard looks to have rotted, so this is a long term problem.

Much as you won't like the suggestion, removing the base units will allow you to track down the source of the problem. Also gives you the opportunity to remove the rest of the tiles, level the floor, and get a decent base for the new tiles. Tiling under where the appliances go will also make life a lot easier should you ever need to pull one out (for replacement/servicing).

Taking the floor up also gives you the chance to put some insulation under the floorboards which will save a bit on heating.

Thanks for this. I've spoken with a few builders/kitchen fitters today. They've all alluded to it being possible to take out 3 units in the corner but the main obstacles will be supporting the quartz worktop and also ensuring no damage to the units when taking them out. One guy quoted around £250ish to get this done in a best case scenario.

I don't think it is possible/cost effective to take apart the whole kitchen to fix the issue. I'm hoping that the issue is localized to the area in that corner and that I can get away with just removing the 3 units, treating/replacing the wood in that area, getting my tiler to tile the area, and then getting the units put back in place. That's my working assumption right now until my drainage guy does his survey.

Jack_Bauer

Jeepers_Creepers said:

I think the joists are above the concrete level, but even so there's hardly a gap. I hope that void is very well ventilated?

With such a small underfloor space, what a strange choice of floor.

JackB, what is the path taken by that water to get there - over the tiles, between the layers, what?

Path of the water appears to be entirely subsurface, under the wooded kitchen floor and therefore my working theory is that is it leaking into the house from the gully area.