Fuck the roof’s leaking into the bathroom

[burritofan]

Right, bollocks. It’s pissing down here. DP has just discovered water pouring through the bathroom light. Typical 3-bed Victorian mid-terrace with upstairs bathroom added later taking space out of back bedroom. Pitched roof above with no access to loft space; roof not visible from outside but would highly suspect no lead flashing and general shenanigans given the state of rest of house (fixer upper). Bathroom generally needs fixing anyway, it’s an ancient black mould horror show and starting to leak into room below too.

Is my correct order of play:
• Emergency electrician to isolate bathroom light - today/this weekend
• Roofer/builder ASAP to sort back roof leak - as soon as humanly possible
• Bathroom fitter/builder ASAP to gut/refit (needed doing anyway) - ditto, but don’t fancy my chances given the general coronavirus “let’s all fix our houses whoops there’s no materials cheers Brexit and the canal ship thing” sourcing issues
• Drink lots of gin later. DD is going to have to have baths in the paddling pool for a while

Is there anything I need to think about? We’ve got about £5k cash to cover it all :( (could potentially borrow from family/dip into ISA.)

Any recommendations for trades who are all three out of cheap, good and available (ahahaha) in Forest Hill area gratefully received.

Urgh! Do you have a decent fuse box, can you turn off the power to that part of the house? If so then do that now. If not then yes you need electrician asap. They may tell you to turn off power in the whole house till they get there ( if you can’t just turn off that part).

Then focus on the roof. My guess is that the roofer will tell you the whole rear section needs re roofing, given what you’ve said about condition. If they do then that’s going to eat up a lot of your budget especially in London.

Bathroom refit may have to wait, but it is definitely worth trying to figure out where the leak is coming from into the floor below, and
doing a patch job to stop the leak for now so the joists don’t get damaged (eg may need lots of silicon around the bath or shower).

can you turn off switch for that circuit on the fuse box? Hopefully not all on one circuit?

Roof Rescue cover that area and are awesome- they're the go to on our street a bit further south where all our houses have awful roofs. Mark's not the cheapest, but he's very good and honest.

Isolating the light might not be trivial depending how it's wired up. Is there a fuse box/consumer unit where you can just turn off the circuit for the upstairs lighting?

I'd do that & prioritise getting an emergency roofer in.

Another thing to factor in in your order of play is drying out. You may need to dry out the walls, joists, plaster, etc. before redecorating, which can take a few weeks with industrial dehumidifiers.

Ah, forgot about drying time. (Had that in last flat where it used to rain inside. I know how to pick em!)

Thank you all. Upstairs lights turned off at fuse box (helpfully, that circuit is labelled “lights” and the ground floor lighting is labelled “upstairs lights”, so that’s something to fix…)

Roofer on his way this afternoon, another looking tomorrow. Electricians cued up. Bathroom fund disappearing. Thanks everyone! I’ll update with the roofing outcome once the shock of the cost wears off.

Gosh well done for getting people round so quickly. Best of luck and hope there’s a decent chunk left.

Ps if you do end up re reroofing that section, it’s a good opportunity to add a velux to those back rooms, especially worthwhile if n facing.

@Merqury you would be better starting your own thread rather than adding on to the end of an old thread.