Gandalf_The_Grey
1/16/2006, 12:49 AM
I'd like to start out by saying that when we met the landlord, she seemed to be pretty nice. The house we rented was decent, lots of stores were right around the corner in case you needed something really quick, take out nearby for those busy days; it was convienient. Plus, it came with a washer and dryer, so I did not have to worry about going to the laudry mat to do my laundry. And the rent was pretty fair. It was the first time me and my husband rented a house, so we were pretty excited that we would have more space for our things and a yard for our 2 1/2 year old son to play in. Moving from an apartment into a spacious house meant a lot. Even though the house was on a semi-busy street, we were still happy that we found such a nice place with such a nice landlord! Besides, we thought we would just talk to the landlord and see about putting up a fence. It was a done deal! Since we moved in the middle of winter and it was snowy out, we really did not spend too much time out in the yard. Shortly after we moved in, I noticed that the tub was clogged. I could not get the drain to come off, so I called the landlord to come and fix it seeing how she was in the area most days, and I was trying to take a shower. No problem... it was her husband who came to fix it. Everything was fine, until water started dripping from the kitchen faucet and sprayer shortly after. My landlord thought that putting the sprayer into the sink would stop it from dripping into the cabinet underneath. Boy, was she wrong. Even when the sprayer sat in the sink, it would still leak into the cabinet everytime I ran the water. That lasted for about a month, until someone finally came to install a new faucet and sprayer. It was old and needed to be replaced. But by the time it was fixed, the cabinet floor had been having water drip on it for a month so it started to bow and indent; or more like cave in! My landlord didn't have a care in the world about the water damage underneath the sink. So, time goes on... it's spring now. It has stopped raining for the time being and we're ready to put up our fence. Back in January we agreed on it, but now there was a problem all of the sudden. The landlord made up every excuse in the book to not have the fence put up. Finally, we came to an agreement and we started making a safer place for our son to play. After two days of hard work, time and money, our fence was finally done! My son ran around the yard and he was so happy. I felt I had a piece of mind knowing that my baby wouldn't get run over by a car if he ran near the road. So now it was time to get some toys. My husband and I got him a new wooden swing set with a slide, we built him a sandbox, and we bought a nice new picnic table, too. We started doing some work to spruce up the yard a bit. I planted some flowers and got some garden trinkets. When we were all done, it was beautiful! I even started to make plans for a vegetable garden. I knew the perfect place for it. Well, things started to get ugly when I noticed that the yard in one particular area was constantly wet. At first I thought, "It's just water from the rain and it's in a heavily shaded area, so it's not drying up." Not to mention, there was no odor. I thought nothing of it and my son continued to play in the yard for the next couple of months. See, this house didn't have a regular city sewage system. It had a leech-field. Mind you that a leech-field is supposed to dispose of wastewater safely and avert water from the city sewer system. A leech field is an underground field which spreads water and allows soil to absorb the moisture naturally. Wastewater is defecation and urine from the toilet, water from the tub, dishwasher and washing machine. I got concerned when my neighbor (who was also a tenant of my landlord) and her daughter came over to play with my son and told me that the previous tenants complained about the wet yard and the landlord did nothing about it. I told my husband what the neighbor woman had told me and he mentioned it to a friend of his a couple of days later. His friend was a landscaper, so he knew a thing or two about leech-fields. He cautioned us about the wetness in the yard because the leech-field could be leaking contaminated waste water for some reason. He told me that if I called the health department about it, they would come and test the wet area to see if it were contaminated. I got very worried, just like any normal mother would have done, and called the health department immediately to have them come and test it. I skipped right over telling my landlord about it because of the mere fact that we were ignored and things that need to be fixed got put off until they could no longer be put off anymore. When the health inspector came, she didn't spend more than five minutes in my yard and told me not to let my son play back there anymore. Sure enough, it was contaminated waste water from the leech-field that was causing the yard to be wet. She (the health inspector) told me that not only my son, but our whole family, and freinds that came to the house could have gotten very sick because my son had been playing outside and coming into the house with the contaminated waste water on his shoes. Me and my husband were too. The health inspector advised me to cordon off the play area (our entire yard) until the leech-field was repaired. Boy was I furious. The landlord came over and we had a little talk. She wondered why I hadn't told her of the wetness in the yard first and when my reponse was, "I wanted to have the area tested and find out if it was wastewater" she snapped at me saying "don't get ****y with me!" I was more than ****y... I was ****ed. Repair of the leech-field was underway just a couple of days later. Down went our fence and the whole entire yard was dug up. Upon talking with the repair man, I learned that there were four broken pipes that was causing the problem. I inquired about the length of time it would take for something like that to happen, since we had only lived there for less than a year at the time. The repair man informed me that it would have taken more than a year, more than five years, for something like that to happen. There is no way that four broken pipes in the leech-field could have gone undected for that long. After learning that, I was convinced that the landlord knew of the leaking leech-field and concealed it from our family, and the rest of her tenants in the past. She watched me and my husband install the fence, buy all those nice toys for our son, and watched him play in that nasty waste water contaminated yard. I was sure that we would have to move once our lease was up in a few months, but we did not. We stayed for another year and nothing but more problems followed one after the other during that time. The washer broke and we were left without a washer for over a month. The tub continued to rust and mold. The landlord said she would paint it instead of repairing it. The basement flooded over and over again. On Easter, something was lodged in the dishwasher that kept it from opening and the landlord was more concerned with the fact that the changeable face was bent more that she was with the fact that it would not open?! The dryer malfunctioned shortly after because it was full of lint and would not dry the clothes in normal time. Seeing how it was not my dryer (it came with the house) we did not feel that it was our responsibility to repair it. What if we broke it for good while trying to fix it? However, we did take it apart from the front and spent our whole Saturday morning vacuuming all the lint out of it. Our front door lock would not unlock. I was locked outside of my home for over a half an hour one day while my son cried to get in to use the bathroom. When this happened, I requested that the lock be changed because the lock would not unlock. The landlord simply told me to lock the dead bolt, which we did not have a key for, instead of the door-knob lock. When I told her we did not have a key for it, she told me that we should have one. As a result of neither of us having the dead bolt key, we were forced to continue using the door-knob lock that constantly kept us outside fidgeting with it for god knows how long just to get inside our home. The floors were rotting.That house had simply been neglected for the last 15 years that she rented it out. Just because something is in your lease, that does not make it legal. With that being said, Renter's Beware!
BudSooner
2/13/2006, 10:48 AM
likes
come on people, keep up!
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