Have you ever come home from holiday and opened you front door on disaster?

[longearedbat]

Or something unexpected? The only time it happened to me was when my electrics went off while I was away. I was hot and tired, it was early evening and I knew there was a cold tin of lager waiting for me in the fridge. Couldn't wait. However, I opened the front door to the most horrendous smell. I would say the freezer had been off for the nearly 2 weeks I had been away. I spent the rest of the evening disposing of rotten food and the pool of mouldering blood and gunk in the bottom of the freezer.
I always think of that (now very old) episode of 'One foot in the grave', where they come back to find their house had burnt down. I always breathe a sigh of relief when I see ours is still in one piece, and can't relax until we've had a good check round. (That might be just me though being a bit of a worrier).

I am on holiday at the moment . I wish I hadn’t opened this thread

A giant rat which had come up the toilet in the en-suite ( this cant usually happen btw- there should be a valve which obviously hadn’t been installed) and been trapped in a shut bedroom for up to a week. So big I darent let the cat at it so had to go and borrow a bait trap from the gardens to trap and kill it. Felt kind of bad.

We opened the door once to find that the pipe connecting our boiler to the oil tank had fallen off and an entire tank of oil had drained into the house. The ground floor was a silent black pool of shiny, reflective , malodorous liquid. That was a massive clear up and rebuild job that lasted months and involved drilling into the ground to ensure the oil hadn’t got into the water table. It hadn’t thank god.

And all because the landlord was too cheap to pay for a central heating engineer and had cobbled a repair together himself. We never actually moved back in. His insurance paid for a hotel in the short term and we completed on a purchase a few weeks later.

Our cats had a habit of dying when we were away

Some of these are horrific. Houses being cleared out too - I don't think I'd get over the shock, but just to show you nothing changes - in the early 70's I lived at home with my parents in a road of large detatched houses.
One of them had a couple of removal lorries there all one day. Professional liveried trucks, men in brown warehouse coats, the works; I don't need to tell you they were burglars and, like a previous pp, took everything from furniture to flooring to light fittings. The occupiers were on holiday, but as they kept themselves to themselves, no-one knew they were away. Everyone saw these removal men and no-one thought to question it. It does sometimes help to be friendly with your neighbours.

Once we came back from a fortnight in italy to find the french doors at the back of the house had been open the whole time. Fortunately nobody else had realised and everything was fine.

another time we came back from a four night break to find that the cats had massacred at least three rabbits and the whole kitchen was covered in blood and body parts. It was horrendous. The cat sitter had come in, fed the cats and just left the mess. I guess she didn't sign up to clearing away dead animals but I would have at least moved the body parts.

Came home from honeymoon to find out we'd been burgled. It didn't help that the best man had thought it was a good to deck the outside with balloons and just married banners a couple of days before we were due back. It backfired on him too though because he'd been house sitting while we were gone and the burglars had taken his very expensive TV and video player which he'd brought round to keep him entertained.

I have also had the rotting food in the fridge thing as I turned it off MYSELF as we left

I did the EXACT same thing, went round switching things off and pulling plugs just as we were about to leave, came back 2 weeks later to a fridge full of rotten food. It was rank. For some reason the thing I remember 20 years later is pork chops!

Oh @spiderlight your poor wee cat! I don't even have cats but that made me feel a bit teary.

Got a couple myself:

1. returning from Southern California to the UK after a holiday to find a hole in the front window. Went into the house and saw a stone that had passed through three mugs and dented our chest freezer the other side of the room. That was an expensive window as it was a quarter of an inch too close to the ground so needed to be reinforced glass.

2. staying the weekend with my boyfriend’s family. Got a phone call to say the house was damaged in a gas explosion. I’ve still not been able to move back

Not coming back from holiday but my aunty and uncle own a caravan. Every october they have to move everything and lock it all down.
About April they go back to "open it up" one year they had locked it down with half a tin of dog food left in one of the cupboards.
April comes they open the to to there where flies everywhere.
They double check the cupboàrds now too.

I can't believe people claim on their insurance for defrosted food

Twice.

One time we arrived home to the hot tap running after we had been away for 10 nights.

The next 10 night holiday we arrived home to find somebody (‘D’H) had turned the fridge freezer off. Unfortunately he had also accidentally turned the overflow freezer off previously so, right before our hols, I had spent 6 hours cooking casseroles, curry, chilli etc to use the defrosted meat and had portioned it all and frozen it in the fridge freezer. We arrived home to find it had all defrosted and seeped under the flooring so not only did it cost all the wasted food but new flooring too

What is it with turning things off when you go away? Is this a UK thing? I don't know anyone in North America who would do that. My parents used to have lights and TV/radio on a timer when we went away so things would come on at various times of day or evening, to make the house look more lived-in.

I really shouldn't have read this thread when we are going away soon!

We came home in the early hours of the morning after a few days away. The lock on the front door had slipped and we couldn't get the key in. DH had to kick the door open and once we'd got in we pulled our hall table across the door so no one could get in (we hoped). As it was the weekend, we had to call an extortionately priced emergency locksmith the following morning to fix it. The thing is, not one of our neighbours came out, or mentioned the noise of us kicking the door in.

Despite my earlier awful pigeon story - and to make those currently away feel a bit better - there was one time I came back to having the left the iron on for 2 weeks (it didn’t have auto switch off).
Kitchen was a bit warm. Iron was hot and ready to go ! Got away with it. Phew ! Recycled it immediately and only ever buy auto switch off ones now.

Yep massive leak upstairs, ceiling sagging, the works 😫

Same as that.

@Nandocushion

What is it with turning things off when you go away? Is this a UK thing?

Oh yes indeed! Watch this from Michael McIntyre a UK stand up comedian - first 1 minute tells you everything you need to know about the UK going on holiday turning things off mindset!!!

Once came home to an ants nest inside the front door which we disturbed when we opened it. Ants and ants eggs everywhere, no idea how they got in as the door is very well sealed.

@onalongsabbatical
How does one find a house sitter?

@endofthelinefinally this is the website I use to get places - it's all unpaid by the way, I get a nice holiday, the homeowner gets a house/petsitter - there are other sites.

www.housesittersuk.co.uk/

@BlackberryBeret 😂😂so true!
@Horehound why would you not claim? It's included in most contents insurance policies. There can be 100s of pounds of food in a freezer. What's the point in paying for insurance and not using it?

We never turn off our electric.
Just wondering if we ought to.

@Dowser not if you have a full freezer 😉