I have…. THE FEAR.

[brigid]

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

I am currently in the grips of THE FEAR once more. And no, this isn’t a Hunter S. Thompson thing.

The last place we lived in had A Problem in the bathroom. Namely, the toilet upstairs leaked and ruined the ceiling in the bathroom we were looking at. Nesko and I pointed out the damage and the building manager assured us that it had been fixed. I assumed he meant the leak and pointed out the water damage to the ceiling and walls and what looked a bit like mold. It took a bit of pointing to get him to see what I was talking about, and then he blithely assured us that it would be fixed before we moved in, and that in fact the entire apartment would be repainted.

It wasn’t, it wasn’t, and it hadn’t been.

By which I mean, the apartment wasn’t repainted, the water damaged/moldy patches weren’t fixed, and the toilet upstairs still leaked.

The toilet upstairs was directly above the toilet downstairs. Which meant that every time I used the toilet, I had to worry about somebody else’s toilet water leaking on me. Nesko only had to worry about it when he pooped because, being a guy, he can pee standing up. The only place I can pee standing up is the shower, and I was not about to start clambering in there every time Nature played her golden horn, calling me to service.

I soon started living in Anxious Fear. That water was cold! And disgusting! And carried rotting bits of ceiling! And was fucking TOILET WATER I mean SERIOUSLY.

We complained about it multiple times, switched building managers, complained to the new guy who even came out and looked at it and said that yeah it was a serious problem… and it never got fixed. I’d given birth (by which I mean had my child surgically removed from my body, no man of woman born) in that time, and if you haven’t gone through the whole child birth thing, your plumbing doesn’t work very reliably just afterward. And I was in serious pain and in NO MOOD to deal with leaky toilet ceiling shenanigans. We wound up moving out a month early, using our security deposit as last month’s rent, something we’ve never done before. The situation was just intolerable.

So we moved into a very charming 2-flat in a neighborhood we used to live in some ten years ago, managed (and owned) by my in-laws. Which meant, among other things, that we’ve been able to paint this place and oh my GOSH it feels so much like home already and we’re nowhere close to done yet. But when we moved in, half the ceiling in the bathroom was missing.

You see, there’d been a toilet leak, and nobody (upstairs tenants or downstairs) had mentioned it until part of the ceiling came crashing down. Nesko and his dad had fixed the upstairs toilet, it wasn’t leaking any more, but the ceiling in the bathroom was ten kinds of spooky. As part of our moving in, my dad ripped the whole ceiling out, which possibly wasn’t the best choice of jobs for a guy with asthma. A short while later, my father in law installed green board, but it still hasn’t been taped up or plastered, the first step to getting our bathroom finished (we want to paint, possibly replace the bathroom cabinet, and put up some shelves and towel bars).

It turns out it’s kind of a good thing nobody has finished the bathroom ceiling yet, because I was using the toilet the other day when water started cascading down upon me.

Once again, we’re living with a leaky toilet over head, shunting cold filthwater down upon whoever’s on the toilet.

And, once again, I have The Fear about using the potty. I really don’t need this extra shot of anxiety when faced with nothing more nerve wracking than pooping.

(My father in law already came by to check the situation out once, and is aware now that it wasn’t just a one-off thing but ongoing so he’s going to investigate further. I have every confidence that this will be resolved soon, but in the mean time, I might start making special bathroom trips to Somewhere Else. Or not. I do have a toddler with me all the time.)

Comments

[sara]

When he was down in L.A. a couple of weeks ago with the kids, C. fixed the problem with the water coming out of the kitchen light fixture (!!!!!) in my MIL's house by replacing the toilet. Turned out the person who'd installed the toilet hadn't actually hooked up the toilet outflow to the sewer pipe, they'd just stacked two wax rings on each other (!!@$%!**!!!) (and they'd lived with this for TEN YEARS rather than calling a plumber. This is SO not C's and my philosophy of home repair! Sewer water in the electrical system for a decade, IDEK.)

If y'all can do a ceiling fan, a toilet shouldn't be hard -- when we moved into this house, it'd been vacant for a year, and all three toilets failed within the first week. We'd never pulled a toilet before, but by the end of that week, we were really good at it! *GRIN* No, really, it's very manageable with a lot of old towels, a sense of humor, and one of those DIY manuals from the public library.

[brigid]

I'm pretty sure that they did replace, the toilet, though! And they know how to replace toilets! It's a mystery!

My FIL came over and hung out in OUR bathroom while one of his sons flushed the toilet over and over usptairs and nothing happened. The thought WAS that it was a one-time occurrence and their toilet over flowed. But THAT much water shouldn't leak through their floor into the sub floor into our ceiling, is my thought. And then it happened again!

Apparently they don't use a shower curtain liner and their bathroom is really wet, which is why we've recently noticed water damage on our ceiling around the heating vent. The upstairs bathroom was gutted and redone less than a year ago because it was a wreck with water damage... it wasn't clear if it was caused by humidity, splashing, what. Nesko and his family credited it to basic humidity... too many people taking showers with the bathroom not getting a chance to dry out between uses... but it's looking like they don't use a shower curtain properly and water gets everywhere.

But the toilets are on the other end of the room from the shower/tub so if water from the shower/tub is spilling down near the window, that is a LOT of spilled water and a very big problem. I mean, it's a problem anyway, but if they are spilling that much water apparently routinely...

I've been smelling mildew in our bathroom for awhile now and I'm worried, now, that it's between the ceiling and upstairs floor. I'm allergic to mildew and mold (and can't afford refills on my asthma inhaler) so this is a very big concern for me, but my BIG thing at the moment is I am just plain tired of water falling on me while I use the toilet. It's extremely disheartening.

[sara]

Weird. Yeah, if it's a failed wax ring, that's usually pretty obvious if you've ever seen one before.

That's the sort of situation where I'd think about buying my tenant a glass shower door. And maybe rewiring the light switch in the upstairs bathroom so the fan comes on every time they turn on the light. *GRIN*

I have mold allergies, too, and I think you're quite right to be concerned about it. Water in the subfloor can get expensive.

[brigid]

THERE. ARE. NO. EXHAUST. FANS.

We need one. We can't keep the door open because we have a busy toddler. I try to keep it open-- and the window open-- while he's napping, but it's closed so often (and usually right after a steamy hot shower) that we DO have a mildew problem, especially as our tub wall tile is not sealed (ugh. just ugh. don't even ask.).

Installing exhaust fans will entail drilling through 3 layers of brick (exterior wall) which Nesko is hesitant to do. He CAN do it. He has the tools to do it (although we might need a new bit). He's done it before. But it's a lot of work and something something I forget why he doesn't want to do it. But oh man. I think I'm going to start pushing for that again, because I'm worried how funked up the bathroom is going to get over the winter. It wasn't that bad last winter because Niko wasn't fully mobile yet, and we mostly kept him contained in the living room, but now he has full run of the house excepting the bathroom and office, and he gets into EVERYTHING.

I like the idea of a fan being linked to the light switch. I'm going to suggest that to him because if they already had to gut the upstairs bathroom once (although honestly it would have needed it anyway, just after the people upstairs moved out At Some Point before the next tenants moved in) and it's all wet up there again, an exhaust fan could help curb the issue.

[sara]

*nods* That's what I'd do. And I'd do it ASAP because it's going to be really shitty to try to do it in January. Though the upstairs -- can't you vent that through the attic?

Our last apartment, they did that in all the apartments. For us, it was kind of a nuisance because we'd run the fan longer than we'd run the light, but people who don't ever think to run the fan (which...if they can't manage a shower curtain, they aren't going to turn on the fan) need a setup which enforces appropriate behavior.

[brigid]

There is no attic. It's a brick 2-flat from the 1930s with a flat roof.