Carpet damaged by leak

elliesmemory1 · 10 May 2021 at 8:52PM

I live in a rented housing association flat. my own furniture carpets etc. Last year I noticed damp in the hall floor. Reported it to housing !!!!!!. They eventually sent a heating engineer out who was a bit puzzled as to where damp coming from but replaced a suspect pipe, still noticed damp on floor and carpet and seemed worse if anything, eventually housing !!!!!! sent drainage company out to check. They said leak coming from soil pipe in hall which takes waste water from flat above Kitchen waste water thankfully not bathroom. Many weeks go by waiting for a plumber, housing !!!!!! blame covid for wait. Eventually plumber comes makes a big hole in the wall to get to pipe. Find pipe is leaking supposedly fix it it. A few days later I find carpet still damp and pipe is still leaking. Once again wait for plumber to come. Pipe finally fixed. Had to wait for wall to be fixed and plastered. In all its taken six months. The problem is that because water has seeped under my carpet in the hall and also spread in to my living room the carpet and underlay is now mouldy. I am within my rights to ask the housing !!!!!! to pay to replace my carpet? Its not a new carpet but I still have to replace it and had the housing !!!!!! fixed the leak quicker it would not have been so damaged? The leak was in the hall but has seeped in to living room as well. Its now mouldy which is a health hazard. So what I am asking in a nutshell is should housing !!!!!! replace my carpet?

elliesmemory1 · 10 May 2021 at 8:56PM

For some reason the word association is shown as ! dont know why?

deannagone · 10 May 2021 at 8:58PM

If something like that happened to me, I'd use some towels or a shampooer to dry the carpet out. Or remove the carpet until the leak was resolved. I wouldn't be seeking compensation. In my view, you get cheap rents (I do too), and that can mean sometimes repairs aren't as quick nor as thorough as one would wish. Particularly in times of covid. I'd take it as an opportunity to replace an old carpet with new and have a bit of a spruce up of the property.

I realise this may not be a popular view. I wouldn't be looking to force the HA or council to pay to replace the carpet when I had some responsibility for its condition too.

I am currently dealing with an uneven bedroom floor with holes in it and loose planks. I tried to get council to repair it, they sent people round who refused to do it until I had removed all furniture. Couldn't do this as its too heavy (various health conditions). So had to repair floor myself. Which caused a lot of pain and cost some money and I lived without a bedroom flooring for a year. Didn't kill me. That's just how it goes with social housing, more rules and excuses that prevents work being done than a colander contains holes. But you get cheap housing in exchange. I have gotten a gas fitter in when I needed a repair done quickly so I could put in a gas oven. Two days later the council fitter turned up. Its just part of being in social housing. I'd rather pay out occasionally than ever go back to paying twice the rent in private housing (and even worse repairs).

elliesmemory1 · 10 May 2021 at 9:02PM

I should have said that I did soak up the water with towels as much as possible. As its fitted carpet I was unable to remove it. As you will probably now when something is getting wet it does go mouldy which is a health hazard and mould cant be removed by shampoo

Blue_bell_20 · 10 May 2021 at 9:06PM

I’ve never tried it on carpets/soft material yet, but for everything else Astonish is brilliant at removing mould. It contains bleach though. I wonder if it would help? I don’t know how well your carpet handles bleach?

deannagone · 10 May 2021 at 9:09PM

Fitted carpet is fitted, of course it can be removed. You start at a corner and pull it up. Might even show you where the leak is coming from.

elliesmemory1 · 10 May 2021 at 9:10PM

Just to make it clear the underlay is black with mould and smells, its been constantly wet for six months. short of lifting the carpet up which would have been difficult as its fitted I could not stop it getting wet.