This is, or is to become, a steadily growing journal of the damage caused by rainwater in our apartment due to leaks in the roof that the building owner (from Michendi Investments) has, thus far, denied and refused to repair. His story is that it is only one small leak, and that his roofer, at numerous occasions, "will fix it." Unfortunately, with each successive "repair," the damage has worsened.
| June 17, 2004 |
At this point, our ceiling has been leaking for nearly a month. It began in an entirely different part of the ceiling, and has since migrated to take up a large part of the kitchen and the walls surrounding the front door. When first confronted, the building owner told us that it was clean water, it would dry, and it wasn't a problem. We have since seen that the water is actually filthy. Upon second confrontation, we were blown off, told it was just one small leak, and when we requested that the roof be repaired because there were multiple leaks across the top floor, we were told not to talk about things we knew nothing about, and that the rest of the building was not our concern. We have since phoned building inspectors and a few of the tenants have sent applications to the Ontario Rental and Housing Tribunal. Following are some photos we took earlier this morning. We awoke at 6:30 AM to find the kitchen floor swimming, and water flooding in through our light fixture. As of now, 10:45 AM, water continues to flood in, and we are repeatedly emptying buckets of it, from the fixture and other places.
When we awoke this morning, it was to the sound of running water. At first we assumed it was coming from outside, but when we went into the kitchen, we realized it was pouring off of our light fixture. This originally began when the owner was last in the building, and he went onto the roof to have a look at the water himself. He must have stepped in the wrong place, because while he was up there, the light fixture burst with water. This was a couple of weeks ago. Today, it's been running freely all morning. It's amazing we still have a light fixture, because when we first saw it, the glass globe that covers the bulb was nearly full. I later removed the bulb completely. The most worrisome part about the whole ordeal is that the water is in our electrical system. It leaks through this light fixture seen here, as well as over a switch by the front door (photo of that further down), and our fuse panel is around the corner from where the majority of the water is coming in - it's part of the same wall, and the thought of getting water into it is completely unacceptable.
In addition to the light fixture leaking, there is also a steadily flowing leak from the ceiling above our cupboards. It's obviously somewhere they've patched up before, likely from previous water damage. It's obvious that the apartment has leaked before, because several of their half-assed patch jobs are leaking heavily. There are also streaks and spots of rust on one of our other light fixtures, where one can only assume water once dripped down.
out. The area on the kitchen ceiling leaks so heavily that the paint has blistered out from the water pushing on it. It, unfortunately, is not the only place where paint has leaked. Now I for one have never seen paint do anything like this, and to keep it from becoming even worse (if that is at all possible), we have had to pierce the blisters to let the water out. Today we noticed a large amount of new damage as well, which tells us that the roof has continued to worsen. On the wall that goes into the closet was a rather large water blister in the paint, and mere seconds after we took a photo of it, it burst, for lack of a better term.
Luckily there was a towel nearby to catch the water that began spurting out of a hole in the center of it, and I was also lucky to be there with the camera to catch a photo of it. The blister has since migrated down the wall, and we continue to pierce and drain it, though there seems to be no stopping it - it just keeps working its way down through the paint. These particular photos were taken around 8:30 AM. At this moment, at 11:15 AM, it seems to have flattened itself out, and is now gently trickling down the wall into a drenched towel. Unfortunately all of the towels in the apartment and then some are not enough to keep the water from soaking into the carpet, or should I say carpets, as it's just one put down over another. This concerns us as well, as there's plenty of time for mold and mildew to grow before the underlying carpet will have a chance to completely dry. Of course, the owner assured us that "it's clean water, it'll dry," but we've clearly seen otherwise. We've dumped out too many buckets of filthy brown water to feel even the least bit comfortable about the carpets.
As if there wasn't enough going on in the apartment today, we're also seeing extensive (and I use that word only because I can't think of a more grandiose one) damage on the still-unfinished wall that our door opens onto, and it's very obvious now that water has come in here before, because you can actually see the water streaming around patch jobs in the wall and ceiling. In fact, pieces of the ceiling that were once patched are now ground into the carpet, and more are falling off as the day goes on. We've had the guy from the apartment directly below us up here, because the water is running inside this wall down into his living room. From the news I've heard, someone is coming up to have a look at the place on behalf of the building owner, who's apparently on vacation (it figures). If nothing is done about the roof at this point, sparks shall fly. I won't be content until the entire roof has been waterproofed and repaired, and I don't think anyone who's got leaks cares whether he does it by choice or by force.
 <- The kitchen ceiling, initially, before the water worsened and we had to cut through the entire large blister on the right side to relieve the pressure. <- The ceiling above our front door, where flakes of the patch job done on the ceiling have been falling into the bucket with the leaking water. <- The pressure in the large blister in the kitchen ceiling, just before we cut it open.
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Things just got worse. The ceiling over the cupboards collapsed, and water has run all over the place. We had three containers to catch it all, but we've since rigged up a piece of plastic (rather, a cut-up
shopping bag) to direct it all into one bowl. When it started to fall apart, an incredible amount of water poured out from the ceiling where it had been pooling. I can only imagine where it would have started leaking if we hadn't relieved that pressure. I would imagine a large amount of the water running through the whole apartment will ease up now that the ceiling there is open. Desipte all of that, water continues to trickle in through the light fixture. It's eased up a tiny bit, but it's also begun raining again.
Unfortunately the damage has already started to spread across the ceiling above our door, and the entire carpet there is soaked, which is going to make it very difficult for anyone to get in or out of our apartment for the next few days. I imagine we'll have to use the building's shop-vac again to soak up what we can, but even that never pulls all of the water out of the two layers of carpet.