| Personal Rant |
[Jan. 3rd, 2011|07:12 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
Getting more than a little sick of this house now.
Housemate and I currently rent a three-bed house in the ‘bad’ part of town. It’s an ‘unconventional build’, which means, in our case, that it ha no central heating. Like, AT ALL.
Added to that, the Landlord is a complete idiot. He built a utility room onto the side of the house, but instead of doing it properly, he just, sort of, basically, stuck a box made of plywood onto the side of the house. On a bed of concrete, which we can see, because he only partially laminated the floor and didn’t even stick anything between the concrete and the laminate.
When he did that, he supplied it with it’s own mains water supply, and then didn’t insulate the utility room, or the pipes.
We can tell he didn’t insulate it, because he didn’t finish the walls or the ceiling, and there are holes between the plywood wall and the brick wall it’s meant to be attached to. You can see daylight through them. You can feel the breeze through them.
So, Winter hits.
Because there is no central heating, we freeze. Literally. See-our-breath-misting-the-air freeze. INSIDE THE HOUSE.
Housemate and I have spent the last four+ months freezing our asses off.
Then the snow hits.
Because the Landlord is an idiot and didn’t insulate the utility room or the pipes into it, the utility room freezes. Literally. Walk-into-the-utility-and-be-surprised-there’s-no-icicles freeze.
Two weeks ago, the pipes cracked and broke. Housemate got soaked but managed to turn the water off. The Landlord’s handyman who came in to look said he needed a piece to fix it, and didn’t have it, so he’d come back in a week or so with it.
Last week, the pipes froze again and cracked and broke even worse.
We ended up with a lovely new water feature in the utility room. Literally.
The entire fucking utility room was flooded, my boyfriend and myself were drenched head to foot in attempts to turn it off. I ran down to the local handyman’s house down the street, still drenched head-to-foot in freezing cold water.
He comes in and discovers that what has burst, IS THE FUCKING MAINS WATER STOP PIPE. The actual pipe that you use to turn the water off, when there is a flood/burst, IS WHAT BURST.
Our friend the local handyman managed to get it turned off, by using a spanner to turn the taps further than they were physically meant to.
The next day, I manage to get a real Plumber in. He takes one look at it all and basically agrees that the Landlord is a complete idiot and that the entire thing is a botch job that needs replacing. Not fixing. Replacing.
He managed to get it all fixed, and even insulated the pipes, and told me he was going to write a report to the lettings agents about his thoughts on the Landlord’s botched attempt at plumbing.
NOW. I’m trying to do a simple bit of washing up, and the fucking water won’t heat.
To have any hot water in this house, we need to plan ahead. Half an hour before we want it, we need to climb into the cupboard under the stairs and turn the water-heater on. I turned the thing on almost an hour ago, and I am still getting cold water out of the hot tap.
I’m boiling water in the damn kettle to do the washing up. This is ridiculous.
On top of all this? I think the bathroom is making my asthma play up.
The extractor fan hasn’t worked since before we moved into this house. So, despite our leaving the bathroom window open whenever we shower/bathe, the bathroom has acted like a sauna and basically spread damp through every wall, and the ceiling and the floor.
The paint on the ceiling is flaking off like some scabby disease. The wallpaper is coming off the wall in strips, showing damp and mouldy plaster underneath and the floor is always, without fail, fucking freezing.
I swear that room is making the cold I am just getting over worse, as well as playing havoc with my asthma (which was mild before I moved into this house).
Overall, the house is shite. I mentioned the ‘unconventional build’ earlier? That means we have no central heating?
Well, in summer it was fine, the place kept us cool when it was too warm outside. But now in winter? We have been waking up of a morning able to watch our breath mist in our bedrooms. I go to bed every night and climb into a freezing cold bed and shiver myself to sleep, despite the ton of blankets I use as well as my duvet.
The only room in the house that is ever warm, is the livingroom. And then it’s only warm because it has a gas fire. A gas fire that we have to fight with to turn on in the first place. And these days we also have to fight with it to turn it off again at the end of the day.
This place is a fucking death trap. I hate it. I look forward to moving in March. |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
whisperelmwood's journal
amused![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
worried
bouncy
