I live in an apartment with 5 people that has hardwood floors in the common areas (living room, kitchen, hallway) and carpent in the bedrooms.
A while ago, one of our roommates returned home and found that his carpet directly inside his door was completely soaked with water. He called us over to take a look, and we all had no idea what the source was. At that time, we just threw a few towels on it, dried it up and thought nothing of it.
Fast forward a few months, and a few spots of water damage to the hardwood floor in the hallway outside of his room began to pop up (the wood began warping). We called the apartment management over to take a look. The maintaince person came over with some sort of moisture sensor and found the the majority of the area completely dry. The manager told us that she would contact the contractor who did the floors to our unit, and see if they can figure out what happened.
The contractor came over and became convinced that the damage was caused by a fish tank (WTF? we've never kept fish in our apartment), and quoted us around $4k (nearly twice our security deposit) to fix the problem. I told him straight up that we've NEVER had a fish tank in any shape or form in our apartment, but I didn't know how I could back up that claim.
We told the management and contractor of the random puddle of water that appeared several months ago in our roommates bedroom and suggested that there might be a leaky pipeline underneath the floor (his room is directly across from a bathroom). The management also suggested that, since we subleased several of our rooms over the summer, that one of them might have spilled something and left it there, they have since moved out. We stated that since the hallway is an area where we travel through a lot, any standing water would've been noticed within hours and cleaned up (myself and one of my original roommates stayed throughout summer). For the type of damage we saw (spanned the entire width of the hallway, and occuring in several spots - with areas of no water damage in between), water would have to be left standing there for days for this type of damage to occur.
The manager seemed opened to our case and said that she will look into other units to see if similar types of damages have occured. We haven't heard back from her since. I don't know how else to prove that we actually genuinely don't know the cause of the water damage instead of covering for a standing puddle of water that was left there for days.
A while ago, one of our roommates returned home and found that his carpet directly inside his door was completely soaked with water. He called us over to take a look, and we all had no idea what the source was. At that time, we just threw a few towels on it, dried it up and thought nothing of it.
Fast forward a few months, and a few spots of water damage to the hardwood floor in the hallway outside of his room began to pop up (the wood began warping). We called the apartment management over to take a look. The maintaince person came over with some sort of moisture sensor and found the the majority of the area completely dry. The manager told us that she would contact the contractor who did the floors to our unit, and see if they can figure out what happened.
The contractor came over and became convinced that the damage was caused by a fish tank (WTF? we've never kept fish in our apartment), and quoted us around $4k (nearly twice our security deposit) to fix the problem. I told him straight up that we've NEVER had a fish tank in any shape or form in our apartment, but I didn't know how I could back up that claim.
We told the management and contractor of the random puddle of water that appeared several months ago in our roommates bedroom and suggested that there might be a leaky pipeline underneath the floor (his room is directly across from a bathroom). The management also suggested that, since we subleased several of our rooms over the summer, that one of them might have spilled something and left it there, they have since moved out. We stated that since the hallway is an area where we travel through a lot, any standing water would've been noticed within hours and cleaned up (myself and one of my original roommates stayed throughout summer). For the type of damage we saw (spanned the entire width of the hallway, and occuring in several spots - with areas of no water damage in between), water would have to be left standing there for days for this type of damage to occur.
The manager seemed opened to our case and said that she will look into other units to see if similar types of damages have occured. We haven't heard back from her since. I don't know how else to prove that we actually genuinely don't know the cause of the water damage instead of covering for a standing puddle of water that was left there for days.
Facebook
Twitter