The Bathroom Leak

Finally, the bathroom leak has been fixed...  -  Or, at least it is no longer dripping.  The leak began just before or after the midnight hour Saturday morning, 23 November.  Rex, our assigned Maintenance man for this 6 month period, sealed or blocked or fixed the leak from a water pipe in our ceiling and caused it to finally stop spraying water into the ceiling at 4:30 pm on Tuesday, 3 December.  He cleaned up after himself, and left the apartment at 6:30 that evening, having arrived at 9:50 that morning.
   So we had water continuously dripping from the screws holding the metal HVAC access panel in the ceiling dripping on us for 10 + days - for 256 1/2 hours.  We were placing, exchanging, and washing multiple beach, bath, and hand towels every 2.5 hours.  This interrupted our sleep patterns, our eating, cooking, and normal life patterns.  At one point in time, the two screws above the toilet (at shoulder or arm width) were both oozing 75 drips per minute, while the two screws at the other end, over the towel rack had drips falling at 45 and 37 per minute.
   Beatrice noticed Saturday evening, 30 November, that the wall and baseboard at the front corner of the bathtub looked different.  I felt them and they were damp.  By Sunday morning, the baseboard join at the corner was separating, and there was a crack up the plaster of the wall.  I dutifully called in these observations to the Maintenance office.
   Now, when I first called the leak in to Maintenance on Saturday, 23 Nov., I called it in as an Emergency call.  I did so because the last time we had a leak at the same place, it had been summer, and while the leak was being fixed, the two men who did the work explained that it was from the condensation drip pan, and that this happened frequently during the summer, when air conditioners were running constantly.  Since this was winter and the air conditioner had not been in use for 5 weeks, I thought it should be treated as an emergency.
   When I called the Maintenance request number at about 8:30, since I pressed "2" for an emergency, I was connected to the person on call for that day.  He listened to me, said it was not an emergency, but that he'd be down to Boulder after he finished his breakfast and coffee.  He arrived, said he was Tyler, and that he was the manager in charge of plumbing and HVAC things, but he was on call this weekend.  He opened the HVAC door, and was finished in about 5 minutes (for once I didn't watch what the repair person did).  He closed the door and screwed everything closed.  He commented that it was just a drip, and when Bea and I voiced our concerns, he brushed us off.  He said he had fixed the problem and that if there was any more dripping, call it in as a normal work order.  He grossly offended both Bea and I, acting as if he were a King, and we were "ignorant females" - you could read that in his eyes.  We were stupid old women that were upset over nothing.
    Less than 20 minutes  - maybe only 15 - after he left, we suddenly had three screws dripping water at a much greater rate than the first one that Tyler had "fixed."  I immediately called it in to Maintenance as a non-emergency work order.  I called Maintenance to report on the leaks and drips 16 times over 11 days, telling them how many screws in the overhead were dripping, and at how many drips per minute, as well as the splitting of the baseboards and the cracking and plaster peeling wall.
    After Tyler visited on Saturday, our next Maintenance visit was on Wednesday, 27 November, the day before Thanksgiving, just before noon.  (We had the 23-inch snowfall that began Monday afternoon and ended Tuesday afternoon.)  Mickey, the man who arrived that day, opened up the HVAC door and was surprised that the condensation drip pan was dry, but the insulation around the HVAC unit in the ceiling was dripping wet.  He took photos, talked to someone on the phone, and closed up the HVAC door.  He told us that Elevation Mechanical, who had installed the HVAC unit would be contacted, and they would come as soon as they could.
   Around 2 o'clock Friday afternoon, 29 Nov.,  Kevin K, from Elevation Mechanical arrived.  He opened up the unit in the ceiling, checked everything that he could, and turned various water lines on and off.  He, too took photos of the unit and the dripping wet insulation, talking to 3 different people on the phone.  He finally asked us to experiment with the HVAC water lines.  We had to turn off the heat, and shut off the intake and outflow water lines from our water heater, and see if that affected the leaking.  So we did that for 4 hours Friday afternoon and evening.  Besides my usual report to Maintenance Saturday morning, I also called Kevin and reported.  We turned the heat off for 14 hours on Saturday, along with the water supply.Sunday morning, the 1st of December, day 8, I called Maintenance and talked about the drips and the baseboard and wall; I also called Kevin and reported to him.  He stated that since there was no change in the drips and leaking, the problem was not with the HVAC system - it was somewhere, and something, else.
   Because the dripping had become much more frequent, I called the Maintenance line Sunday afternoon, and reported the heavier leaking, the continued splitting of the baseboard, and that Kevin K of Elevation Mechanical had said that the problem was NOT in the HVAC system.
   I called and made my usual report to Maintenance Monday morning.  I was fed up and angry by 11:26 and called again and left a message to please return my call.   Forty minutes later, the Office Manager called and told me that she was trying to make an appointment with us "with a vendor" and she'd call back when she had the appointment set up.  She called me back in another 30 minutes and said the vendor said he couldn't do anything - I asked if it was Elevation Mechanical, and she said yes.  I said that I had explained in a Sunday call that they said it wasn't a problem with their HVAC system, and that the Thistle maintenance people needed to deal with it.  Hadn't she listened to that message and made a note about it?  She did not answer my question and said that they were looking into our problem.
    I called Tuesday morning and made my normal report, detailing the leaks and the baseboard and wall splitting.  Bea got upset and made a call demanding a call back around 9:05.  She never received a return call...  But she stepped out to take the recyclables to the main bin, and saw, first Mickey (who had been here the day before Thanksgiving) and a few minutes later, Rex.  She stopped and spoke with Mickey who told her there had been a Maintenance Department meeting, and that our ceiling leak was the only topic.  Chris, who was the maintenance man assigned here for 18 months, asked which apartment? When told our number, he declared "If Beatrice and Betty are complaining about something, you can be certain it's a REAL concern.  They don't contact us about piddly things."
    Rex had been on vacation starting 23 November, and had just returned to work on 3 December.  He arrived at our apartment at 9:50.  Bea and I shared our tale of woe with him, including what we had done for Kevin to test the possibility of an HVAC leak.  He told us no one had given him that information...  When Rex opened the HVAC door Tuesday morning, almost a gallon of water poured out onto the floor.  We, and he, were glad we had the towels down.  After he had been here for a couple of hours, another man, who I didn't know arrived and started working with him.  They cut two holes in the ceiling and removed the bathroom exhaust fan.  Besides the ceiling that is visible to us tenants, there were two more layers of drywall ceiling separating different layers of pipes and duct-work.  The men couldn't find the leak.  They had thought it was from the upstairs bathtub or toilet, but it wasn't.  They thought they were going to have to cut off the water supply to both apartments for 2 days and cut through the concrete floor in the bathroom above us to  see the water pipes.
   They were about to give up and decide to do that, when I heard Rex exclaim, "Holy fuck, I've found it!"  A water pipe that supplies both our apartment and the one above us, had a saw cut next to a joint.  Rex and John (the other man who joined him), decided that it had been a cut that had almost cut through the pipe, and that since the pipe held up and didn't leak, the construction crew let it go.  However, after 4 1/2 years of differing water pressure and varied temperatures, the weakened area of the pipe opened.  Rex and John were able to feel water spraying out of the pipe. So our water was cut off for 3 hours while it was repaired, and while Rex and John removed wet dry wall, wet insulation, slime and mold from all the areas they could reach.
 
So.....   we have holes in the ceiling and the HVAC ceiling door has to stay open until everything is dry enough for the drywall, insulation, and ceiling to be replaced.  Then it's got to be re-plastered and re-painted. The same goes for the baseboard and wall at the front edge of the bathtub.
  Since we were working to save our rental until for 256+ hours, which equals 31+ 8 days of work, we have asked to have our rent for January reduced by half.  We have also stated that we hope there will be no retribution against us for expressing such a wish.  We had to send the recompense message to our "Community Manager" - who made us stop feeding the birds and squirrels with a bogus report of rodent infestations and complaints from tenants on the ground floor - so we also sent copies to his Senior Community Manager, the Maintenance Office Manager, and the CEO of the apartment complex/low-cost housing company.  Rex and John said they'd put in words backing up our request and saying that our constant vigilance had helped keep damage to a minimum.
  We'll see what happens.