Major house flood. What next?

[ourbathroomflooded]

We had work done on our bathroom one week ago, it was completely refit.

I was sitting in the bath and had been for about 15 minutes yesterday evening when I heard an almighty bang, soon followed by gushing of water. Water was escaping at a ridiculous rate from a pipe within the built-in under sink cupboard. Within minutes the bathroom was flooded in ankle deep water.

We have only owned the house for 3 months and in my sheer panic I had no idea where to find the stop tap. It wasn’t under any of the obvious kitchen cupboards where you would expect it to be. DH knew but he was at work at the time and couldn’t get hold of him. By the time I’d figured it out and turned off water had probably been flowing for 10 minutes.

The kitchen is directly below the bathroom so water was streaming through the ceiling lights and also resulted in the kitchen being ankle deep in water. DH, myself and my parents managed to mop most of it up last night but there are water marks on the ceiling and we’re all concerned about the impact to the kitchen cupboards and if they will swell with water damage. The first metre or so of the carpet adjacent to the kitchen and the landing carpet adjacent to the bathroom are also saturated with water.

The plumber / property solutions company was checkatrade registered and had great reviews but it’s glaringly obvious that this happened because they did not seal two pipes together - pretty crucial mistake. I don’t think it was triggered by the bath and was basically waiting to happen, I suppose fortunate in a way that we were in and awake to deal with it.

We are currently staying with my parents who are helping us to sort it out. What are the next steps now? I’m hoping it will go through the company’s insurance but not sure where we stand as he finished the work last Monday.
We have building and contents insurance of course but not sure when the right time is to contact them or if we should try to get the company to claim and put it right. If we need new carpets and the kitchen being redone, it’s not going to be quick.

I’m 37 weeks pregnant and with high BP so this is the last thing we needed by all accounts. I have no idea of time scales (surely this won’t be quick?) and panicking about living with family temporarily with a newborn, as it’s not what we imagined at all.

Sorry if this is a garbled post. If anyone has any reassurance, similar experience or suggestions I would be really grateful. Even just calm logic which I don’t seem to have right now!

Thank you :)

First step is contact insurance, take pictures, document all damages including kitchen appliances, anything on countertops that got wet. Next stages will be repairing the pipe, drying out, likely replacing ceiling/electrics, mould prevention treatments and obviously finally restoring everything to how it was.

It'll be a long process, hopefully your insurance company is good.

:( I hope they are too. It’s one of the major ones but just shit scared they won’t cover it all.

Anxious about mould given all our baby’s stuff is in there. FFS.

I would call your insurance first thing today. They can send out a loss adjuster to work out the extent of the damage and what needs to be done. They can also claim anything back from the plumber’s insurance if it was down to their fault. Or from the pipe manufacturer if it was a fault in the pipes rather than down to installation.

i am sorry you are going through this OP. It would be very stressful at the best of times, never mind when you are heavily pregnant. Make sure you tell your insurance company you are pregnant and about to give birth!

I had similar happen to me. You need to get on to your insurance asap. And then you need to stay on them. Their job is to give you as little as possible. Your job is to get as much as possible to ensure the work gets covered. Use their tradespeople so they have the hassle of organising work and make sure anything that has even a speck of water damage is claimed for.

it will become a tedious battle. Sorry.

I made the mistake of not moving out when they offered and regretted it. If they are paying ti house you it gives them incentive to get the work completed more quickly. If they offer to rent somewhere, take it. Then you know you will be out of the mess while they sort the house. Don’t tell them you can stay at your parents long term. If it’s unliveable they will find alternative.

Contact your Insurance Company, they may well investigate for you and try and recover monies from plumbing company, but they will visit to see what damage has been done and you will either be offered an amount of money to get the repairs/replacement items done, or they will offer to do the work for you and depending on amount of damage you may have to go into rented accommodation whilst the house dries out and work is carried out. My neighbour was flooded last Xmas when she was on holiday, just one pipe burst in the loft, but it was only found 2 days later by another neighbour. The whole house has been renovated, she only moved in 6 months before, new kitchen, bathroom, doors, windows, floorboards, ceilings, electrics. She was back in July 1st, although the kitchen and windows were only put in last month.

Thank you, we will do just that. I don’t know if there’s a long wait for them to send someone out to assess typically? Hopefully not. This is our first experience of ever having to claim for anything like this and we are only in our 20s so hardly rolling in it with life experience. We are lucky we have somewhere to stay but it is the least ideal thing to possibly happen.

Call your insurance company. They will send round a specialist company with industrial dehumidifiers and they will investigate what needs replacing. In the meantime whole you wait see of you can borrow a vax carpet cleaner or similar to suck up some of the water in the carpets.

In all honesty plumbing joints do fail sometimes. This is not the end of the world op, it will all get sorted out.

Get an industrial dehumidifier if you can. We have been flooded a few times through the weather and people always underestimate how long things will take to dry out. You can buy a moisture detector for under £20 on Amazon, we thought everything was dry until the builder turned up with one of these and upon testing it was still too wet for repairs to be done.

Thank you. Realistically can we expect this to be months?

Thank you for this. Do you know how long it usually takes to send someone? Will be ringing them within the next two hours

I think my fear is that they say, ok two week wait time

What to do with all our baby’s things? It’s nowhere near her room but I’m worried about mould spores. Should we try and bring the things we’ll need over to my parents for now, the pram, bedside crib etc?

Sorry OP, It will definitely be months, possibly longer. I know quite a few people who were flooded last October, and they are only just moving back into their houses.

Second the advice above about calling insurers, they will take over from here.
i had similar, although a good few years ago. We moved out for three months, costs covered, and it took six weeks for the house to dry out with the dehumidifiers in (ensure your insurance covered the electricity for this!). They coordinated all trades.
my advice to you would be to ring them today and get some timescales, and then you can decide if it’s best to get your baby items and set up with your parents for a bit.

Crap. Insurance covers 100k for alternative accommodation but not sure how far that will get us. Possibly somewhere rented but I just don’t even know where to start with it being 37 weeks. There’s talk of them wanting to bring baby before 39 weeks too due to my blood pressure, which I’m sure this whole debacle isn’t helping with

We lost the whole downstairs of our house but everything upstairs was okay. For peace of mind you could move it to your parents house but as long as you are opening windows and have a dehumidifier you should be okay. The aftermath is horrible, especially when expecting a baby. I'd mention to your insurance company you are due soon and maybe you'll be lucky and have someone with a bit of compassion to get things moving, in my experience insurance companies have to be nagged.

They'll send someone quickly. It's in their interests (costs) to sort ASAP as the longer the house is damp, the greater the damage.
Do they not have an emergency claim line that's open out of hours? If not, ring as soon as the main office opens.

I'd expect they'd organise industrial dehumidifiers today so you can start drying out the property. The loss adjuster will attend quickly. After all, almost all insurance claims are off the back of an emergency so they don't book appointments weeks in advance.

Do not let on that you have alternative accommodation with your parents and absolutely mention that you're very heavily pregnant.

Good luck!

Buy or hire a couple of big dehumidifiers today and get them plugged in. Will help with drying out.

Also might be worth appointing a Loss Assessor, the loss adjusters work for the insurance but the Assessor works for you. Really useful in big claims.

I think this will be quicker than when houses get flooded by rivers. This was clean water and its been there hours not weeks. If you can suck up some of the water today then it won't have damaged the plaster etc, you will have to see about the kitchen units. Get a vax or hire a rug doctor and get someone, obviously not you, to get in there and start removing water.

Just some advice on this. Do not do anything that moves the costs and work to you. The insurance company is there to fix this for you. That’s what you pay them for. They need to get and pay for the dehumidifiers. Same with hiring carpet cleaners or moving baby stuff. They need to pay and organise. Get on the phone today and tell them you need to be in rented by Wednesday with them organising and paying for all removal costs. Play the baby card and high blood pressure. This is an emergency for them to get sorted.

this is the time to get your fighting spirit in play. Do not accept less than you need.

you need your husband / partner leading on this from the beginning as you will soon have the best distraction.

This was clean water and its been there hours not weeks. If you can suck up some of the water today then it won't have damaged the plaster etc, you will have to see about the kitchen units. Get a vax or hire a rug doctor and get someone, obviously not you, to get in there and start removing water

Doing stuff like this can hamper your insurance and cause greater pain long term. Get into your insurance asap, keep on them and let them organise everything and foot the associated costs. For the love of all things good, don’t tell them you can stay with your parents. They need to rehouse you as this will likely be longer term and best get your essentials shifted to alternative accommodation they give you so you can go straight back there after baby is born rather than cramming in with your parents.

Is the alternative accommodation usually always a hotel or will they put you in an actual house? Worried about moving out of area too

Similar happened to me when my DC was a baby. Contact insurance, big up the damage and your health.

They will send a loss adjuster who will decide if alternative accommodation is required. Normally only given when home is uninhabitable or health reasons. In my case my DD has recently been seen by a GP for a bad chesty cough, it was deemed that have dehumidifiers and heaters running 247 would be bad for her lungs and the insurance company rented us a house nearby. They tried to get out of it. I had no family near or friends with room for us. Don’t mention that you have family nearby. say your DR and midwife are concerned about your health already.

Loss adjusters will asses damage and come up with a plan, this will start with drying out, getting a dry certificate then “making good” the home, restore back to previous condition. Probs the plaster will need redoing, decorating, flooring replaced, kitchen units are on legs, so might not be damaged but the company insurers use will know better.

Don’t mention the delay in getting water turned off, just say when you realised there was an issue you got out of the bath and located the stop cock and turned it off.

In terms of timing it depends when they can get a loss adjuster out to you, there’s been a storm this weekend, so that might delay things but it’s in their interests to get someone out to you, so hopefully a day, or a few days.

Have you got legal cover anywhere? Insurance or through work? I would get some advice about how to deal with the plumbers, they may be liable and at fault but first contact your insurance, they might counter claim against the plumbing company.

In your shoes I would probs remove your babies kit, if asked say that you have put them in your friends garage.

Also have you got pets? They took that into consideration and only found property that took pets. The insurance also covered removals, including packing for us