A question about : Upstairs neighbour keeps flooding my kitchen and she has no insurance
Hi please help me my upstairs neighbour came round the other day after a -9 chilly night and said they have no water upstairs and could I try ours to see if we had any so I did and yes we had water, I said to them you sure you haven't got a frozen pipe and they said I don't know so I said wait until it gets a bot warmer and you might be ok but in the meantime I made them up 8 bottles of water to see them through, about 2 hours passed and all of a sudden my new kitchen was flooded, I knocked on her door and said my kitchen was flooded to which she replied oh I just been heating the pipe up so I said you need to turn your water of at the stopcock as my kitchen was 2cms in water,3 hours later and many vax loads of water she came down and said I'm sorry I said it's ok but we will have to go through insurance to which she told me she had none, after a bit of a heated discussion she said that she would have a plumber round on Monday ( this was a Saturday) so I said ok. Sunday morning I awoke to the sound of running water in my kitchen again knocked her door again and said turn your water of to which she replied I need to do some washing grrrrrrrrr . Monday morning and the plumber arrived and I heard her running me down to the plumber so he packed his things and never came back, I phoned the plumber and said are you coming back he said no it's too messy. I phoned a plumber who came round looked at our property first and said the problem is upstairs but all your pressure has gone so you can't use your washing machine and hot water in the bathroom, he then went upstairs and said to her you have heated the pipe up to which she denied so he said I'm a plumber I know when someone has heated a pipe anyway to cut an already long story short she noww has everything running and we are left with things not and a ruined kitchen to which she now says is not her fault . Please help me I'm at my wits end
Best answers:
- P.s we both own our properties and have a housing association landlord
- You need to contact your own insurance company and let them deal with it. If it is her fault, your insurance company will persue her personally.
You should post this on the main In my home (includes DIY) forum as many more people look on that and don't look at the Flood and Storms section which is really for floods caused by rain, not by accidents. - If she owns her property it will be a condition of her mortgage (assuming she has one) that she has insurance
If she doesn't have insurance she is still liable- let your insurance company deal with it, that's what you pay your insurance for. - Hiya,
I can really sympathise with you as I have had virtually exactly the same happen to us. My neighbour flooded us on 3 separate occasions causing over Ј10k worth of damage (4 rooms over two floors in a split level maisonette), he allowed his bath to overflow (for several hours at a time)on all these occasions and refused to turn off the water. We too own our home but our landlord is a housing association with a mix of tenants and owners. In our maintenance charge we pay for our group buildings insurance which is what we had to claim on (I know its annoying as its not your fault) but that was what we were told to do. Have you checked with them to see if you have a group policy? Next, due to the way it happened ie our neighbour refused to turn the water off the police ended up having to be called out and they said that if it happened again it could be classed as criminal damage which my neighbour didn't seem too keen on and has (fingers crossed I haven't jinxed myself here) not flooded us since.
We did get all of the damage repaired or replaced eventually. If you haven't already, you need to inform the housing association of the situation in writing as they still have a responsibility to deal with any form of anti social behaviour from any of the people living their, tenants or owners as it normally forms part of lease that certain conditions are met. This is all from my own experiences and what has been told to me so I suppose some things may be different for you but its worth checking what I have said out. HTH.
Claire - Thank you everyone for your replies I am devastated as this is the 5th time it's happened and it's draining my finances to be able to move
- 270 reads