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The Home Improvement Thread. Successes and Failures

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I have a heat pump in my unit for both heat and A/C. Turned the A/C on for a bit last night as it was so muggy and I had been away for a couple of days. After I shut it off, I heard water dripping. It was coming out of the pipe under the heat pump. It had happened once before about a year and a half ago and wasn't a big deal. This, though, hasn't stopped since last night. Soaked thru two large towels. I finally put a bucket under it around 10am, it's filled up twice since then.

Called for service, guy just left. He said this isn't an issue with my heat pump (thank God), that there is something below me, either the unit under me or in the parking garage, that is clogged and is backing up water into my heat pump. Called the management company, she is calling the building's person to come here. I'm hoping it's today as I don't want to have to get up every two hours to dump out a fill bucket of water. The unit below has been having issue with her heat pump for a while. It leaks into the pool area. Just pours out of it. This is on the management company to fix. I have a feeling they've been lollygagging around the past year or so but now that it's affecting my unit, they'll probably have to do something. The main contact at the management company likes me. I called and as soon as I said it was me she "Uh oh! What's wrong? You usually email!!" so I'm hoping she is jumping all over this.

Thankfully working from home today (and tomorrow) so I said they can come any time. My question to you is this - the rug on the floor under the heat pump is soaked. If I need to replace and fix the floor and the wall, which is wet and water stained, I should call my insurance company to come in to get an estimate and the management company should pay for that, right?
 
Is this a rental, or a situation where you own the unit but there’s still a management company for maintenance? And how nice is the company?

I had an apartment with a non-usable fireplace. At the time it was built they were legal, but the city had since put in an ordinance that didn’t allow them to be used to multi-unit buildings anymore. But, just because it isn’t used doesn’t mean the maintenance problems don’t go away. After a few particularly bad rain storms we notice some brown staining on the ceiling in the extra bedroom in the little alcove cutout where the chimney ran. Call maintenance, they come out, say they’ll fix it. All they actually do is paint it over. We have a few more torrential downpours and after awhile you can literally see ceiling start to sink. It looks like someone put a large mixing bowl in the ceiling and they plastered around it. Call maintenance, they come out, say they’ll fix it. And they do to their credit this time. They cut out the bad plaster and patch it and paint it and it looks fine. Well, awhile later we get some more rain and the staining starts to come back. Despite all this leaking, to the point the ceiling was caving in, they apparently never went on the roof to check if everything was good and proper with the chimney. By this point we were already packing to move on to the next place, so who knows if they ever got that fixed correctly or if they’re going to be in an endless loop of painting and patching.

Anyway, going back to my original questions. While I lived at that place they got bought by a conglomerate maintenance company and it became the typical nickel and dime operation. There was no way I was going to put a claim on my insurance and try to get them to reimburse. The reason I ask if it’s a rental or you own is because I’m not sure what factors change if you happen to own it, but if it’s just a standard rental I would be putting the onus on them to fix it. Plus, I I’m not sure if this would even be related to your rental policy unless you’re trying to get reimbursed for the rug, since anything structural should still go through the landlord’s insurance. Unless you feel like you’re in immediate danger from mold or legitimate structural damage I would have maintenance look at it first before trying to spending anything out of pocket.
 
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It's a condo. I own the unit. The management company sent their sewer and drain company to look at it. There's a pipe in the closet where the heat pump is and connects to. Guy drilled a hole in it, snaked it, and removed the blockage. The pipe where the blockage was is not part of my responsibility, it's part of the building's drainage. The damage to my unit was caused by this blockage. It's not extensive by any means. I'm happy if they agree to come in and fix using their people. It's a closet. My biggest issue is not having mold set in.
 
It's a condo. I own the unit. The management company sent their sewer and drain company to look at it. There's a pipe in the closet where the heat pump is and connects to. Guy drilled a hole in it, snaked it, and removed the blockage. The pipe where the blockage was is not part of my responsibility, it's part of the building's drainage. The damage to my unit was caused by this blockage. It's not extensive by any means. I'm happy if they agree to come in and fix using their people. It's a closet. My biggest issue is not having mold set in.

I would definitely talk to the management company about it. Frequently in condos the mechanical and plumbing systems that service the entire building are considered common areas, and are the responsibility of the association to repair and maintain. It's also pretty frequent that if those "common" facilities fail and cause damage to an individual unit, it will either be the association's responsibility to repair that unit, or at a minimum they can submit it to their insurance.
 
I would definitely talk to the management company about it. Frequently in condos the mechanical and plumbing systems that service the entire building are considered common areas, and are the responsibility of the association to repair and maintain. It's also pretty frequent that if those "common" facilities fail and cause damage to an individual unit, it will either be the association's responsibility to repair that unit, or at a minimum they can submit it to their insurance.
When I owned my townhome, the association had to fix an issue that was causing water infiltration into my basement, but I had to then fix the crack in the basement floor myself.

Just adding my experience.
 
Thanks all. She got back to me saying she was waiting for the sewer company guy to get back to her. We'll see what happens.
 
Painting project day! When we bought the house, the kitchen came with this dark color scheme, something like an eggplant purple and a darker green, like the deep green of forest grass, but it’s not forest green. I have to put on a darkish gray primer coat and then the paint because we’re going with a lighter, brighter color - Sherwin Williams Rainwash color. But first I’m repairing dings that prior owners ignored. So many dings.
 
This could be a crossover post in here, computer issues, and gear grinding. Got the new HVAC system and along with it came a new thermostat that can be wifi enabled. It comes with a separate gateway that plugs into the router. The gateway has power, recognizes the thermostat, and recognizes that there is an internet network to connect to, but it refuses to actually connect to the network. Per the manual, the light color indicates it's just perpetually trying to retrieve an IP address. I've tried power cycling the modem, the router, and the gateway. I renewed the DHCP leases, and tried assigning the gateway its own IP, but still nothing. Some further investigation yields that this is a somewhat common problem for the gateway, in that it just won't connect to certain routers due to firewalls. Some people have pulled out older or more bare bones routers and gotten it to work, but for the time being I think I'm just stuck with a much updated, but still dumb, thermostat.
 
Why not bitch at whoever installed it? it’s suppose to work, right ? Companies that install stuff and don’t get it working suck.
 
Could you just buy an ecobee? Most utilities have fairly deep discounts on them.

Might end up doing that if I can’t get this one to work. On the plus side it’s not like I lost any features. This one is still programmable without the gateway, which is better than the old one

Why not ***** at whoever installed it? it’s suppose to work, right ? Companies that install stuff and don’t get it working suck.

I’m going to reach out to see if they’ve had issues with other customers, but at the end of the day it sounds like a firmware issue which I don’t really expect the HVAC installers to be experts in or responsible for since there are how many different types of routers out there and countless configurations for each of those. Next step is probably the company that makes the gateway to see if they have any solutions, but based on others with the problem I’m not sure if they’ll provide much help.
 
I'd absolutely go at the installers. Part of any installation is getting it to work, and they didn't.

"I don't care that you're an HVAC guy and not a network admin. I paid for this product and for you to install it. So, install it."
 
Might end up doing that if I can’t get this one to work. On the plus side it’s not like I lost any features. This one is still programmable without the gateway, which is better than the old one



I’m going to reach out to see if they’ve had issues with other customers, but at the end of the day it sounds like a firmware issue which I don’t really expect the HVAC installers to be experts in or responsible for since there are how many different types of routers out there and countless configurations for each of those. Next step is probably the company that makes the gateway to see if they have any solutions, but based on others with the problem I’m not sure if they’ll provide much help.

They sold it to you. You paid for it. If it’s a piece of shit some other company makes one that works. It should be remedied by the company that sold it to you.
 
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