By: Nathan Doshier [2002-12-10]

Sewage

reader rant (we're still not a rant site)

Last night, our sewer exploded. Yucky stuff came up through our toilet and bathtub. Ewww. We called the maintenance guy for our apartment building, but he was asleep. It was only like 9:30, but whatever. His wife lady said that she would ask him and she would call us back. She called back and said that there was nothing he could do about it now, and he would send someone out in the morning. Mind you, our bathtub is full of yucky stuff, and isn't draining. Same with the toilet. I went next door to borrow a plunger to see if I could get rid of it for the night, and they're having the same problems. Our neighbors had called the same sleeping guy and were way mad that he didn't seem to think it was a problem right now. I agreed with them.

So I borrowed their plunger and tried it out, but it didn't work. So by now we have 3 or 4 inches of standing sewer water sitting in our bathtub, with various other things floating around in it. Again, ewww. So I call the maintenance guy again. This time, they didn't even answer the phone, so I left a kinda mean, kinda snotty message.

Then I called our landlord. He gave me the number of some rooter place to call, and I called them. They sent someone out within 30 minutes and fixed the problem, at least for now. My wife cleaned our tub up, and we're ok for now.

What makes me mad is that this is the third time this has happened in the last nine months. If it happens all winter, we're moving. End of story. I can't live in a place where the sewer backs up every week or so.

I'm also pretty mad at the maintenance guy. I understand that he's sleeping, and it was kind of late, but it's his job to take care of the tenants. I don't expect him to come out himself, but all he had to do was call the rooter place. That's all I did. What is the guy getting paid for? If my sewer backs up and I can't use my toilet or my shower, that's an emergency to me. It didn't seem like one to him.

Also, the fact that I had to call our landlord at home really irks me. I like the place where we live, and I like my landlord, but if he can't fix the problems that the place is having (in addition, our driveway floods every time it rains.), then we're going to have to move.

Housing Disasters [2002-12-10 04:34:14] Hieronymous Biscuit

I went apt. shopping with a girl once, we got the key from the manager and went to look at the unit. The bath tub was full of sludge, and the girl said that she'd seen that problem before and declined to rent the unit. There are houses in the $500k and up range that are being built with styrofoam insulation that rots out after a couple of years. The black mold plague is another housing pitfall, and a serious health problem. I laugh at the people in Florida who have to worry about sink holes that swallow cars and houses due to erosion of coral and sand. When the kitchen sink won't work, I think of the people in Florida whose house got swallowed by a hundred foot deep hole. Between property tax and maintainance woes, homeowning is no piece o' cake. Sometimes when you are renting a place, you can hold back some of the rent due to problems preventing full enjoyement and use, but you got to get a lawyer to hold the money and set it up so the freaking landlords don't boot you out. Or just scrape up some of the goop, and mail it to the landlord.

apt woe [2002-12-10 07:36:13] posthumous

In my last place, we had beautiful new hardwood floors. After a month or so, we noticed the floor starting to wave upwards in places. Overnight, one of these waves got so big that the floorboards cracked open. Turns out that when they put the drywall in, they somehow busted the pipes in the baseboard heating, so it was leaking under the floor. They did a patch job on the floor, put the boards in too tight, so they buckled again. Then they did another patch job. The whole process took several months. This winter, as we were moving out of this apt from hell, we noticed the floor starting to buckle once again...

structural damage [2002-12-10 11:38:12] staniel

My first apartment, the one where the yellowjackets built a nest in my window air conditioner and invaded my bedroom, had "settled" to the point where there was not a square angle or level surface in the place. My downstairs neighbor compared it to the Grateful Dead acid house, and after I moved out the ceiling/floor collapsed over the kitchen/under my former bedroom.

slumlordsihate [2002-12-10 12:18:52] Darkness

Indeed! I cleaned up my kitchen with a snow shovel, and the hole(s) remained for a month. Also, this happened because they were replacing the roof (poorly) and in the upstairs bathroom and bedroom I could neither change nor pee, as my disrobing/evacuation could be viewed by the roofers working in the open air above the plaster.

Subsequent events have me thinking about giving him the spamlord treatment, but what really burns me is that the lease was designed to shaft the tenant, so he's legally in the clear. I feel sorry for his other tenants.

sewage... [2002-12-10 15:56:50] Nathan Doshier

We've lived in about 5 or 6 different places, and this is the first one we've ever really had this kind of problem in. In our last place, a duplex, we had minor problems, like the front door not closing all the way, but that was it.

Anyways, I was going to talk to our landlord on Monday and tell him how I felt, but I forgot. Oh well. I'm a stupid dork.

Not a dork! [2002-12-11 03:42:31] Hieronymous Biscuit

Most places don't have problems like that, you have a right to expect that there won't be problems like that; and if there are, you should expect that they would be promptly remedied and management should be profusely apologetic!

yeah dammit [2002-12-11 08:20:53] dclinker

My toilet tank mechanism is busted so when I flush I have to open the tank and get all soaked and cold to plug the hole and stop the water running and my kitchen tap leaks all over the place and my radiator panels are not screwed in properly so they are partially open and stuff can get lost in there and the railing on my balcony is rusted and busted and sticking out waiting to stab somebody and my bedroom gets too cold at night and they are tearing off the whole side of the building to "winterize" the outer wall which also happens to be one of the walls of my apartment resulting in incredible noise through most of the day and is the probable cause of the coldness in the bedroom due to cracks in the wall and will probably result in the whole building going to shit and collapsing on top of me, dammit.

Yeah! What he said [2002-12-11 08:40:02] Hieronymous Biscuit

Like dat

[2002-12-13 04:17:33] nameless

Ha !; and to add insult to injury these kinds of places cost about Ł150,000 to buy in central london.
Tony's son Ewan is coming to stay in Bristol to go to university. Bristol generally takes up all the thickies that can't make cambridge or oxford, which means they're several hundred orders of magnitude less intelligent than the amount of money they have multiplyed by ten.
Tony spent 2 mil on a nice place for his son to stay.
Where does Tony get his money from?

[2002-12-13 04:20:34] nameless

Come to think of it where is the place in bristol thats worth 2 mil anyway?
Maybe I can pick it up cheap after Ewans stayed there for several years and trashed the place, I expect I could make a living just by selling the coacine that falls in the cracks between the floor boards.

It'd be just like that film, except it wouldn't be gold it'd be cocaine, and it wouldn't be a casino it would be Ewan's flat.

I was born under a wandering star...

Tony's Money [2002-12-13 06:43:21] Hieronymous Biscuit

Where does Tony get his money? I think that he's a busker in front of the Royal Albert.

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