AIBU to expect the tenants to turn the heating up?

[LadyMaine]

I've owned my 3 bed Victorian house for 7 years. There was a little bit of damp in the downstairs bay window but nothing serious.

I moved for work at end of August this year and rented it out. Within a few weeks the tenants (3 adults & dog) started complaining of damp and mould. When I went to inspect the house was very cold.
They said they are worried about high heating bills. I do understand this but have told them they really need to turn the heating up.

The boiler is in full working order as are the extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom.
I installed new double glazed windows throughout when I bought the house. It also has a damp course installed.

Now they are complaining that there is black mould and that one of the tenants' asthma is getting worse.
What can I do to get them to turn the heating up?

I haven’t made up anything at all.
You don’t seem to understand that the damp within walls like the issue the OP said the surveyor flagged up over 8yrs ago slowly builds up to the point where mould will appear. The fact the OP got away with not seeing mould, doesn’t erase the existence of this damp or the fact it will progress to mould at some point. The mould would have appeared even if the OP had not moved out of the house.

Youre doing the exact same thing the people did who were convinced the MMR jab caused autism. DC gets jab and literally weeks later is diagnosed with autism. The MMR jab is just a coincidence, not the cause.

It’s the same with damp.

It's categorically not the same😂

“here”? Where is “here”? If it’s not the OPs house, then that is irrelevant.
And you should know that “often” doesn’t mean “all” and btw environmental officers blamed Awaab Ishak’s family as well, so they are far from infallible & I’d argue not well qualified to determine specific causes of damp.

Yes it is. Known structural damp issue neglected for almost a decade, mould finally appears. But by your non logic, it must be the new humans living there and not the known damp issue causing mould. Never mind the fact that one of them is an asthmatic and logically would know and be doing every mould mitigation tactic available to them. It’s lazy thinking your part to just go with your bias against tenants.

I installed one of those in one of my houses and it worked well. (The cost, including two fancy extractors in bathroom and kitchen, was around £1400 five years ago). The house had always been prone to mould as Victorian houses tend to be, particularly when tenanted.

As the system requires the air to circulate around the whole house the installers take a bit off the bottom of all internal doors to ensure the air can still circulate when the doors are closed. It was fine until one set of tenants complained about the draught it caused and decided to use draught excluders on the bottom of all internal doors (and not heat, and not open windows, and leave clothes drying inside despite having a tumble dryer and washing line) and, hey presto, there was mould appearing again (although I'm sure not as bad as it would have been without the PIV system). When the next set of tenants moved in (presumably without draught excluders and with heating) there was no more mould, at all.

Not being able to afford the extortionate rises in energy prices is not being problematic, it's a reality. It's this type of attitude towards tenants that is attracting the responses.

However, if you were considering this avenue @LadyMaine you could install a pre payment meter and top up a set amount per month (you can do this online with a smart meter) and then they top up the rest for their usage, that would stop any excessive usage that you'd then need to pay for, while providing enough to keep the house warm enough to prevent the issue. Or you include the gas bill in the rent and top up that amount each month yourself, making sure it's enough to heat the house to the level you want.

But I do think that you need to get the pre existing damp issue fixed first. I am no expert but could more people living there have accelerated an already present issue like the damp bay window?

As I said in a pp, this isn't going to be an isolated issue for tenants and LL's and it's going to need cooperation instead of finger pointing and blame and assuming tenants are just being awkward for the sake of it. Struggling to afford heating bills is hardly isolated to tenants with what's been going on in regards to energy prices and no amount of slagging tenants off is going to change that.

I'd lower the rent in agreement that they will provide x amount of heating and run a dehumidifier that you provide. You can't make them spend money they don't have on living costs but you can make it more affordable for them to do it to maintain your property. You could provide the reduced rent as electricity/gas vouchers so you know that's what it's being spent on. They need to make sure they're drying clothes on clothes horses not on radiators, opening windows and using extractor fans as provided.

An example of mould most definitely not been the Landlord's fault (and I defy anyone to say otherwise) was a home I visited once (my work takes me to many different homes). It was like walking into a tropical rain forest. There was condensation running down all the walls, dripping from the ceiling, and you couldn't even see through the windows for the water. And of course mould was everywhere. The reason was very obvious. There was a vented tumble dryer, venting straight into flat. It seemed he had to do a lot of washing because of his health condition (I didn't pry) and he never opened any windows.

I suppose the Council (Council flat) could have bought him a condensing tumble dryer, or paid to get the venting pipe thing put through a wall, but it still in essence wasn't their fault.

I bet you wouldn't lower the rent to help them pay for heating if it was your property!

Hey why not rent it out for free that will make it affordable

The structural problems of the uk property market are not OPs fault

👀

An example of mould most definitely not been [sic] the Landlord's fault (and I defy anyone to say otherwise) was a home I visited once (my work takes me to many different homes). It was like walking into a tropical rain forest. There was condensation running down all the walls, dripping from the ceiling, and you couldn't even see through the windows for the water. And of course mould was everywhere. The reason was very obvious. There was a vented tumble dryer, venting straight into flat.

I don't think anyone would argue about that example not being the owner's fault. A tumble dryer vented into the flat.

Though quite what that has to do with the OP here and this thread, I'm not sure 🤔

I bet you wouldn't lower the rent to help them pay for heating if it was your property!

My parents wouldn't have rented my grandmother's house out, in good conscience, with a damp problem in the first place.

Yes it is.

😂.

The problems are cultural as well as structural. And the OP and her 'it's the tenants' fault' mindset are 100% part of that culture.

I think that you are being unreasonable as many people don't put their heating on in September.
If the damp is a result of a defect in the property then it is the property owner's responsibility to fix it. We owned a Victorian terrace for 20 years and such problems are common.

Absolutely.

Again, the OP is running a business. She's let out a sub-standard asset with an established problem, picked up by the due diligence process at the time of purchase, then fucked up on her terms and conditions by not having an obligation around ventilation etc. It's put her in breach of health and safety legislation leading to a potential claim and even criminal proceedings. And now wants her tenant to fix it for her? Fuck that.

That's the idea, yes.

There are 2 separate issues

There is a damp by window problem that should have been sorted

The fact that this has turned into a wider damp and mould issue is the fault of the tenant in not ventilating and heating the property correctly

My best guess is that fixing the window problem won't fix the damp and mould problem because homes need ventilation and heating to avoid damp and mould even if they are properly maintained

Exactly.

Remind them you will be claiming their deposit to pay for mould and damp mitigation.

Even a new build will develop mould, if windows aren't opened and heating used. We had it in an overly full understairs cupboard. Noone's fault but our own. We emptied it out, let it air, then made sure we didn't overfill it in future.

In Singapore, cupboards and clothes would mould because of humidity. You had to be really strict about getting things out, leaving cupboard doors open, generally allowing air to move around.

Terrible advice. This would probably lead to the tenants making a claim against the TDP scheme. If they have a paper trail of having raised the issue with the LL and her having done nothing, LL would be fucked.

This is how things escalate into H&S prosecutions: amateur landlord tries to screw tenant but finds out s/he is actually, by her own admission, in offence territory. Open-and-shut case.

@angharadsgoat Oh I'm horrified by the 'been' and I'm a stickler for grammar. Must be a typo. No it has nothing to do with the OP. But some of the responses on here seem to imply that mould can never be the fault of the tenant, yet it most certainly can.

But the structural problems identified as the source of an existing damp problem with her property that she has known about since a surveyors report flagged it over 8yrs ago ARE her fault and problem to fix. She’s done nothing in all this time to fix it, so it’s most probably a lot worse now. Homes are not self-maintaining and self-repairing.

There’s very little evidence the tenants have contributed to the damp and mould. The OP has only said the house felt cold to her on a single short visit and told them to turn the heating up.

Fact is though, in a case of penetrating damp extra warmth will cause mould to spread like wildfire. Its not going to dry out penetrating damp as that keeps on coming. Extra warmth and ventilation only work for damp caused by condensation. And there would have next to none of that when the tenants complained about mould in early October. The ambient air outside wasn’t enough to cause condensation on the inside of windows over night then. Day time temperatures were high enough to have windows cracked open.

The OP should be fixing the window problem ASAP and mitigating the mould that is there as that is the most likely cause.

The op detected a change

From no mould to mould

That occurs when the tenant moved in

Yes she needs to sort the damp but that doesn't mean that the situation has not been made significantly worse by the tenant actions

Over simplification won't help