Stingy landlord?

[Doglover321]

Hi everyone, I’m sharing a flat with my boyfriend and we have huge mold and drainage issues. Mold covers the exterior and interior of the property, and the toilet and shower are both thoroughly blocked. The landlord visited following a hole in the ground floor flat’s ceiling (due to our shower flooding), and has told us a plumber will be visiting today - two days after the event!! He says we will have to pay rather than him. Surely this is something a landlord would usually pay for? He also told us that in the meantime we would have to use the swimming pool showers if we needed to shower. TIA for any thoughts.

Shower leak is landlords responsibility. The rest is you, if true. But how bad is the plumbing that poo has blocked the toilet? Actual poo? Is that what the plumber said? I'd be getting a neutral plumber to have a look instead of trusting what your landlords appointed plumber has said. I'd also find somewhere else to live, it sounds awful with the damp and lack of heating.

P.s. As a tenant, you will never win on here OP, so don't worry about trying to defend why you can't heat the house without the existence of central heating.

Have you only one storage heater to heat the whole flat? That doesn't sound right. Open windows has to go alongside heating the rooms in cold water to avoid damp and mould.
Your landlord should also have shown you an Energy Efficiency Certificate which has to be above a certain level.

Is that your legally qualified opinion?

How do you suppose it's your landlord's problem that your shower drain is blocked? He doesn't use it, does he? When was the last time you cleared out your shower drain of hair and a build up of soap scum that cause blockages? This should be done regularly, as soon as you start to notice it draining slowly.

Are you drying wet washing by draping it around the house? Are you airing the house by opening windows pretty regularly? Do you open the curtains and get rid of condensation on windows every morning? Do you throw greasy fatty stuff down your kitchen sink? Do you flush condoms or tampons down the loo? Do you flush wet wipes or use excessive amounts of very thick loo roll?

Because if you are being lazy and irresponsible about the way you live then you will be causing all these problems. If I'd handed over a perfectly clean and fully functioning home to you and you called me to complain about mould and blockages that were not there when you moved in, I'd not be wanting to pay for it either.

External mould is unusual and may indicate water ingress. Give the council's environmental health department a call.

It's up to you, and anyone else who lived there previously, to regularly clean and remove hair from drains. You can also get special solutions to pour down pipes to dissolve hair. Have you been doing these things.
As for poo blocking the loo, was it just poo or a mix of solids (poo plus wipes etc)? Either way you should also be trying to prevent this.

Is the shower pipework leaking though? Or is the shower just overflowing because the OP has allowed a blockage to build up? Two entirely different things.

You need to heat and ventilate a home in order to keep the mould at bay. So both things.
Re the blockages when our loo was blocked, I went outside lifted the manhole cover and rodded back to the house. If you can see a manhole cover outside try that first in future. Most loos block due to excess loo roll, or tissues, so be careful how much you chuck down. And don't use those loo fresheners as they really do cause problems. Keep the shower drain free from hair, soap etc. It will block if you don't check, what comes off you and the soap will form a very nice blockage if you don't.
Look at it this way, if you own a home these are useful skills to have.

As for poo blocking the loo, was it just poo or a mix of solids (poo plus wipes etc)? Either way you should also be trying to prevent this.

How is OP to try to prevent faeces from blocking the toilet if that's what's causing the blockage? Did you mean to suggest she cannot use her own toilet for its intended purpose and that this would be in some way a reasonable outcome?

@TwigletsAndRadishes well that sup to an independent plumber to find out. Not the op or the landlord.

I lived on a modern 1 bed flat in the 1990s - it had one storage heater in the lounge and that was it! I bought a plug in oil filled radiator for my bedroom, because otherwise it was freezing. Luckily electricity was cheaper in those days.

No, I didn't mean to suggest she didn't use her own toilet because I'm not stupid.

I'm a landlord so can see things from both sides, but if my tenant blocked the shower with hair, knew it was blocked up but did nothing about it and carried on using it to the point it flooded into a downstairs property, I'd be absolutely fuming with them.

Mould is a serious health issue. If your landlord is this awful you need to report him and move out.

I've lived in a house like that before in the early 2000s, it had one big storage heater in the open plan living/dining/kitchen. The only heating we had elsewhere was an electric bar heater above the bath upstairs. It was less than ten years old and part of a modern development in a Scottish city and had clearly been built that way. It also had a problem with damp.

OP - if you are not heating your home it will be contributing to the damp problem. I'd ask your landlord for a dehumidifier and some oil filled radiators which are less expensive to run than other forms of electric heating. If he's not prepared to buy them either consider buying them yourselves or move out. Living in a damp environment

Pour Mr Muscle drain unblocker down the sinks and bath/shower drain and once cleared use a cheapo sieve type things that cover the plughole for the shower. Is he aggrieved if you continued to use the shower knowing it was leaking downstairs?

Never put anything solid apart from poo and loo roll down the loo. Those loo wipes advertised as flushable/biodegradable really are NOT! We had to have the drain guy out recently and he went on a massive rant about them - he finds them (and tampons, sanitary products, disposable nappies) are responsible for majority of blockages he has to unbung. £120 to find that out! 😭

I agree with this. My parents' old house was mouldy. Mostly through a dodgy non-existent damp proof course on the house but the lack of decent heating didn't help either (they also had storage heaters). It was noticeable that the rooms with better heating (storage heater AND log burner) had less mould.

As a quick test, you can buy a cheap thermo hygrometer that tells you the humidity of your home. The aim is that it should be around 40%.

Given the levels of mould OP says, I bet theirs is at least 70%. The lack of heating will contribute to this, but if there's mould on the outside too there is probably a problem with water penetration to the walls too. That is definitely the landlord's responsibility, if so.

We use a dehumidifier to dry our washing and it will take the room from 70% with washing in it, down to 40% throughout the day. It dries the washing quicker, gives me water I can use to water my plants with AND heats up the room it's in at the same time.

They're not cheap to buy, but pretty cheap to run, but it will save your clothing and furniture from any further mould.

If once you've done everything you can to keep the property aired and heated you're still getting mould and the landlord isn't doing anything, contact Environmental Health.

Agree with PPs about the hair. That's on you. However, the loo might not be entirely on you.

We had a loo that kept on blocking, despite being careful about how much paper we used, and not flushing anything else down it. In the end I called a drain inspection company to put cameras down the pipes to see what could be causing it - nothing.
It turned out the flush had been set to "eco" mode, and so the cistern was only half-filling, which just wasn't putting enough water down to flush the poo away. Cost me £200 to find out it was a simple DIY job to fix (but I got the plumber to fix it, as I'd paid him so much to be there - felt more like I got my money's worth!)

The storage heater is your answer mate, move.
Just move as soon as you can. My old house was riddled with mould. This was back in 2015 I'd spend in excess of £70 a week trying to heat that horrible house, yet mould was everywhere. I moved to somewhere with radiators. Never seen a bit of mould in this house and we've been here since.

Could you get a dehumidifier to make things more pleasant for you
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ometa-Pure-12L-Dehumidifier-Condensation/dp/B09JWSP39T/ref=asc_df_B09JWSP39T?mcid=0b5b72c6c3b03a49832fd8df5a71092d&tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=697327308845&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=8444808178191884334&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9046364&hvtargid=pla-1644124665543&gad_source=1&th=1

Then of course you should pay! Keeping bathroom pipes clear of day to day blockages is absolutely the tenant responsibility

How long have you lived in this flat OP?
The mould is a landlord issue and regulations are being tightened in this area.
Blockages are a grey area, but assuming you have lived there a while, it is not unreasonable to expect the tenant to pay.

In terms of the heating issues were you given a copy of the property EPC before you rented it? The minimum rating for a rental property is E You can search for an epc here https://www.gov.uk/find-energy-certificate]
If there is no EPC or it's worse than E, you need to complain to your local council.

If the toilet was blocked what did you do to resolve?

This isn’t true, I’m a landlord and I’m not stingy. Our tenant blocked the sink by putting fat down it, we called out a plumber to fix the issue and paid for it all.

We did tell them if they were this careless next time then they would be paying.

We also had a damp issue, which cost £2k to fix, we paid for it all, it’s our property so why should the tenant pay.

I do expect them to take care of the house but not pay for repairs, that’s just not on xx

there is no way to prevent mold buildup with one storage heater for an entire flat. Mold is a health risk and your landlord needs to fix this. Whilst you should clean the shower trap for hair (that's on you), unless you are using wodges of loo roll, toilets should be a able to flush down poo. Is there an odd bend in the pipe? The plumber should really have looked into that.