Dear Previous House Owner.

March 8th, 2008 § 14 comments

Dear Pre­vi­ous House Owner,

The least you could have done is told me that any­time it rains, the nicely fin­ished tiled base­ment area, the one hold­ing my com­put­ers and liveli­hood floods. I real­ize, that had I known that the nicely fin­ished base­ment with the tiled floor gets flooded every time it rains because of the half-assed code vio­lat­ing instal­la­tion of the sewage pump in the garage allow­ing water into the house, I would not have bought the house.

In addi­tion to the hid­den plumb­ing issues, the veneer you added to the area (which floods any­time it rains for more than 10 min­utes) to hide the fact there is a flood­ing issue was a nice touch.

I under­stand I have only myself to blame — after all, I should have torn up the floor and pulled apart every­thing to find out the fact it floods (every time it rains) and that the upstairs bath­room has a rot­ted floor, a bum toi­let and issues with the sheet rock (rotted).

I have no recourse against you, the inspec­tor, or any­one. Instead, you, a cou­ple with a small child sad­dled another cou­ple (with a small infant child like yours) with this house.

When I started the pur­chas­ing process, I began it with excite­ment. Now I sit in a house I have lived in for less than a month, but spent most of my money on, with my feet in a stand­ing pool of water as I type this — the gen­tly splish splish of my feet in the ice cold water remind­ing me of how much I wish you were here so you could help me mop, for the fourth fifth sixth time.

Oh, but mop­ping doesn’t help — but you knew that. You knew that the rea­son there were tiled floors in this part of the house is so that there was “no long term dam­age” to the area (which floods every time it rains).

So thank you for not telling us the house floods every time it rains. You’ve helped us build up so much char­ac­ter know­ing never to trust any­one, even if they are another young cou­ple with a small child — just like us.

Unlike you, I’m hon­est and respon­si­ble, and I’m going to fix this mess you’ve left me with, so my wife, daugh­ter and I can live hap­pily here in our first house which floods every time it rains.

I’m quite cross with you right now.

–Jesse

  • http://a.com a

    You may want to check your states home seller dis­clo­sure laws. You may be able to sue.. Check with your realtor.

  • jnoller

    I’ve already sent my real­tor and attor­ney email. I could for­give hid­den plumb­ing issues — but both times it’s rained, it’s flooded the base­ment. Quite annoy­ing. Luck­ily I’m anal about cable man­age­ment so there’s noth­ing elec­tri­cal touch­ing the floor.

  • J

    wow. That is hor­ri­ble. I hope things are made right!

    When­ever my par­ents bought a house they looked over every­thing very care­fully (espe­cially for water dam­age as that is the most com­mon). But my grandpa was a top notch home builder so that helped a lot.

  • mmar­shall

    Is the base­ment half empty or half full?

    Learn to look at the bright side: you have an indoor swim­ming pool!

    MWM

  • http://drbrett.ca Brett

    Damn, really sorry to hear that, Jesse. You are not mak­ing me want to live in a condo that much more.

  • jnoller

    It’s really just buyer beware. I was too trust­ing, and it’s my first time buy­ing. I really blame myself for this predicament.

  • jnoller

    But I already have a pool out­side. The thing inside is more of a lagoon. All I need is the phan­tom of the opera push­ing a boat with a hot chick around under my desk singing songs then I could feel bet­ter about it

  • jerry

    I have seen two cases where flood­ing of this type was caused by improper drainage out­side the house. I used to live in a place that would flood dur­ing heavy rains — a com­bi­na­tion of a leaky eave­strough and the ground sloped towards the house. Dig­ging a trough in the lawn and then fix­ing the eave­strough resolved the issue. My next door neigh­bor also had a prob­lem with flood­ing. When it rained I would watch the water come out the down­spout, through the spout that car­ried it 4 feet from the house, then run right back towards the foun­da­tion because the land­scap­ers were too lazy to push the dirt up under the out­crop­ping where the fire­place was.

    I’m not say­ing this is your prob­lem, just that it’s a really dumb cause that’s easy to check for.

  • jnoller

    Yeah — some of this *is* due to bad drainage: My sum­mer is cut out for me, how­ever there are sev­eral other con­tribut­ing fac­tors to the flood, includ­ing bad con­struc­tion, drainage and other things.

  • C

    Hey Jesse, dig­ging a trough over to your neighbor’s house so that all the water goes their way might help!!! ;)

  • http://www.rare-it.com/blog/ SwitchBL8

    Not sure how this is in your coun­try, but here (in the Nether­lands) you can hold the sell­ers (the pre­vi­ous house own­ers) responsible/accountable for hid­den defects or “fea­tures”. For instance, if you buy a house and after you move in, the hot­wa­ter does not work, you can have the pre­vi­ous own­ers install a new fur­nace (is that’s what it’s called) if they did not tell you that it didn’t work before you actu­ally bought it. Hope there is some law over­there as well. Flood­ing sucks.

  • Jos

    Dood. I’m _soooo_ sorry. We are now in our sec­ond house, and i found both pur­chas­ing expe­ri­ences very very stress­ful. Its the biggest pur­chase you are going to make, and there is no war­rente (other then with a new house), and peo­ple are out to screw you all the time. It sucks to have to look on the rest of human­ity with such a crit­i­cal eye.

    Any­way, my heart (and dry air/mop/towels) go out to you…

  • Bob Rizika

    Jesse,

    Hav­ing pur­chased a house and expe­ri­enced sim­i­lar items I would be happy to relate the most cost effec­tive solu­tions that I used in fix­ing the prob­lem. Just let me know if you want help.

    Bob R.

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  • Author: jesse
  • Comments: 14 Comments
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