Brown Stains Remain on the Ceiling.

I'm not especially proud of it but I must confess that I do have a whiny Karen character living inside me. You will probably notice her presence if you read though this post.

Last December 26th I was at my daughter's place having Christmas time with her and the grandkids. All very nice until I got a phone call from my condo neighbor. Her upstairs toilet was badly clogged, she had someone coming, but her downstairs ceiling was flooded and leaking and it was as bad if not worse at my place. I headed right home.

Maybe I should have anticipated this since she had the same houseful of family for Thanksgiving and the same thing happened, not quite as bad.

Fortunately Don had gotten it mostly cleaned up by the time I made the trip and the pumper guy was there finishing up. My neighbor saw me coming from the car and rushed out to ask me to pay half the $500 bill.  Welcome home and Merry Christmas! The homeowners' association did pay us back.

That was just before I left for Florida. In January I got an email from the property management person in charge of our condo development.  They were going to fix the plumbing and had an estimate for the work to be done. The Association would pay have the $5000 and my neighbor and I would split the other half. There would be no disruption to my place (according to the email) because all the work would be done on the neighbor's side.

Now this had happened before. Thanksgiving of 2018, a flood of water came out of the dining room lamp. It didn't leave stains like this last time but I did have to put in a new ceiling fixture. Anyway, Don had cut a hole in the ceiling to see where the leak came from and discovered that all the pipes run over my ceiling and then down the main waste water pipe. There is a connection coming from the neighbors that sends their waste over my ceiling. I saw all that with my own eyes so I emailed back asking who made this estimate and how it was made without anyone seeming to know where the pipes were or what the actual underlying problem was. I wasn't going to agree to a plan that had no basis is reality. No response. I called and left a message. No response.

Late in February Don told me that someone had made a hole in Sandy's ceiling only to discover that indeed the pipes were not located there. Then I get another email from Mr. K informing me that they need access to my unit to assess the plumbing. I wrote back saying I was going to remain for a few months but I gave him Don's number and said to make arrangements with him. He never did contact Don, nor did he get back to me.

In the meantime my neighbor is calling me because she wants her ceiling fixed. Well, so do I but it's not making sense to fix a ceiling without first fixing the plumbing. It's happened several times; it's bound to happen again unless it is fixed.

I called and emailed both when I got home in June. No response.  I learned that Mr. K was on national Guard duty. All well and good for him, but wouldn't the professional thing to do -- have the email ping back with that information, indicate an alternate person in the office on the voice mail message?  At least I wrote a YELP review to that effect.

Lo and behold someone from the office did call me then and last week Mr. K called and arranged a meeting for today. He came with a guy from the pumping service who wanted to remove my upstairs toilet in order to put a camera down so he could find the pipes. No! I can tell you exactly where the pipes are. And Don call tell you exactly how the connecting piece is plumbed incorrectly and violates fire codes because it made of PCV and could easily a fire between units.

The fire story will come in another post. 🔥

Mr. K announced he would write up an estimate for what we don't know but he did announce that he was not responsible for bringing the place up to code. He was really huffy about it too.

Funny when I sold my house I had to bring everything that wasn't code in 1969 when it was built up to current codes and certify that at the closing. Maybe condos have different rules although I would have thought they's be stricter because of impact to more people.

Ain't nobody all that happy today.

So brown stains remain on my ceiling. You know it would be gross enough if they came from my own clogged toilet . . . but somebody else's . . . i just don't think that is acceptable.