Boilers fucked and landlord is being an arse AIBU?

[saturdayhelpme]

For the record my DP is so not the confrontational type (he wants the landlord to keep liking us!).

I however, am pissed. Our boiler has been messed up for a while now- we keep having to turn the pressure up to use hot water & it's never consistent. This evening though, the hot water has stopped altogether.

Our neighbour below us had a similar issue recently and the landlord left her for an entire MONTH without hot water, she had to call CAB out as she couldn't afford to pay a private plumber to look at the boiler and the landlord refused to replace it. Apparently the boilers we have are so old that they don't have parts to repair them anymore so I'm assuming the LL must have replaced hers eventually?

Apparently the LL's plumber can get to us on Monday, that means 2 full days at least without any hot water & heating, our flat is freezing anyway as we only have single glazing so we need the heating on regularly to stay warm!

AIBU to be pissed or is this a normal waiting period for repair?

Did you contact the LL when it first started going wrong or just once it went completely?

@slashlover Yes we've been in contact with him since last summer about it (it was pissing out water then) and LL came to see it himself then. Also recently had the maintenance man round a month or so ago to do the gas checks and we asked him to look at it then as the pressure kept dropping.

This is the first time though we've been without any hot water or heating.

@Peanutbutterforever LL isn't sorting anything- they've ignored our text, email & phone calls. We had to call the buildings plumber ourself after getting his number off our downstairs neighbour!

@roses2 Lucky you! It says it'll be 17 here this weekend so that will be nice. It's 14 outside currently.

@NoBaggyPants I know a cold is a virus, I didn't say I have a cold.

I have a sore throat & am cold- general symptoms of being too cold/catching a chill!

"If you were a homeowner organising your own plumber you would have to wait."

Except they're not homeowners.

@saturdayhelpme It's nitpicky but baggypants is right, being cold doesn't make you ill by itself, unless you have hypothermia..

Tell your LL that until the boiler is fixed, you will be boiling pans of water everyday on the stove. This will create significant condensation and potentially impact the infrastructure. You are sorry, but this will be necessary in order to keep warm and clean. (You could also include that you also need a wood fire, but this depends on whether you have a chimney).

It can be

Nonsense. A sore throat has nothing to do with being cold. If you’re coming down with something, that is not connected to being cold.

You can either threaten the landlord that you’ll go to Shelter or give notice. He sounds shit. The minute I knew my tenant’s hot water had gone off, I was round with 3 heaters, an apology and a booked appointment for the gas engineer to replace the boiler.

OP you do need to check about the gas certificate. It’s an absolute legal requirement to have the checks done yearly and the tenant must be given a copy of that certificate. If your boiler is old and unreliable it’s must still pass those checks.

If you don’t have that certification you really have to ask your LL for it and it might even be the leverage you need to get a new boiler.

I’m and LL and stories about tenants getting left for weeks without heat or hot water infuriate me.

@Jaxhog haha good idea! No chimney unfortunately but I could make a fire in the living room with some paper?🤔

@MonkeyToez fair enough, I've always thought if you were cold constantly/too cold you could get ill!

@MatildaTheCat I will get my boyfriend to have a look (he knows more about this stuff than me!) and hopefully we have one- like you said, if not then we'll have more leverage!

Your landlord sounds shit but you aren't half making a drama out of it. You both have alternative places to shower and it is May in a temperate country not december in Siberia! If the landlord is really terrible then consider moving out but I am not sure there is any evidence, in this particular incident, of him being an arse but you are being a bit feeble. This is unlikely to be popular as LL bashing is a favourite sport on MN.

South East?? We put the heating on for an hour when we all felt a bit chilly the other night at around 9pm but really (with our environmentally friendly hats on) we shouldn't have. Otherwise the heating's been off for weeks.

Lol at you catching a cold from that.

OP, I feel you. If you’ve now been three days without hot water (heating aside), and your LL hasn’t updated you about when a plumber might be out to have a look then I think you have a right to be pissed off. If the LL had arranged a day for a plumber to come round and had been in contact then maybe YWBU.

I had a landlady like this once. Our loo broke (the flush), we went a month and a half without being able to flush it without tipping buckets of water down. Wees only. Then the boiler went. Two months without a sign of anything being fixed later, I moved out. I don’t know if she ever fixed either problems. It’s still tenanted so I hope so.
Renting can be such a shitter at times.

@bibbitybobbityyhat Yes south east. Some people feel the cold more than others you know? We also have single glazing (as previously mentioned) & it's freezing at night and in the morning.

@RubyWho Wow that is awful! I'm so sorry you've had a shit LL experience too.

He's honestly awful, very condescending & once confronted me and my dog in the street outside our block of flats ranting that he 'didn't know we had a dog' (he met the dog as a puppy last summer!)

He's really not a very nice man, like I said- he left my downstairs (disabled) neighbour without hot water and heating for a month then he was on holiday for 2 weeks!

@lemonsandlimes123 We are looking to move, it's hard to find somewhere that will take a dog though.

Well obviously, most decent landlords will avoid tenants with pets. Unfortunately having a dog makes you an undesirable tenant and therefore more likely to end up with a shit landlord. It sucks but that's how it goes.

@lemonsandlimes123 I'm aware of that, it's such a sad misconception. I take pride in our home & it's always tidy+ clean, pup is impeccably trained etc.

It's a shame as just because we have a dog, doesn't mean we want to live in a run down property.

(Our current flat actually is very nice bar the landlord, we just want somewhere with a garden ideally)

Yes, I'm one of those cold people! I find a blanket, a jumper or a fan heater essential when my heating isn't working for whatever reason and I'm waiting for the plumber to find time for me in his diary.