When it rains, it leaks

[IIOY]

We just had over 24 hours of hard, pounding rain. Last night I noticed a tiny trickle of water from the switch plate for my closet light. The wall on the other side, which is mostly covered up, had a damp bulge along a seam.

H is traveling for work, naturally. I turned off the circuit and lined the wall with chamois cloths because I couldn't stay up all night wiping the trickle away. In the process of using some painters tape, a section of paint ripped right off; the wall was soaked through. ::insert angry face here::

I am assuming this is a roofing issue. H thinks we may have suffered damage in Sandy last year since our roof is only 8 years old. Of course this nonsense happens on the weekend, so I have to keep my fingers crossed that I can reach our handyman today.

Who on here was complaining that there is always something going wrong with a house? Yeah.

[finally]

Ugh! I'm sorry to hear that but yesterday/last night was bad! I woke up to lake front property from all the rain...and we don't live on a lake!

Not sure where you live but I have a good roofer repair guy if you are anywhere near me. I'm in Central NJ.

[IIOY]

Thanks, I appreciate the offer! We are north of Philadelphia and already have a guy we like.

This morning I went outside to clean some debris (a fox made breakfast out of some of our compost food scraps) and I could hear my neighbors' sump pumps pushing out what sounded like a deluge. We also have a small lake at the far end of our yard.

[Deleted]

:-( I hope the damage isn't as bad as you think.

[Deleted]

Man, it seems like you've had a lot of this kind of stuff lately! Or maybe I'm just mis-remembering. Are you still thinking about moving?

[IIOY]

Jun 8, 2013 20:27:18 GMT -5 @juno said:

Man, it seems like you've had a lot of this kind of stuff lately! Or maybe I'm just mis-remembering. Are you still thinking about moving?

We haven't had any actual issues yet until this, but we very likely have moisture issues beneath our exterior that is going to necessitate ripping the entire exterior off and redoing it because of shoddy construction.  I would love to sell the house, take a loss, and walk away from having to deal with it all, but I'm not sure anyone will be willing to buy without dropping the price to something well below what we could stomach taking.  That is one X factor -  do we go through the colossal effort to prep the house for sale knowing there is a fair chance it won't happen?

The other is whether we should sue the builder.  We are trying to gather a group in the neighborhood because that will decrease the legal costs, but there is skittishness about suing because several attorneys have warned us that litigation could be expensive and there is no guarantee that the builder will have the money to fix our houses even if we win.

So yes, we have some big issues at the moment.  It's incredibly stressful and literally keeping me up at night.  Frankly in the grand scheme, a roof leak just doesn't seem like a big deal so long as we have no imminent safety issues.

[Deleted]

Wow, I'm sorry. I wondered if shoddy construction was the reason you were wanting to move, since you said you wanted to stay in the same area.

I do imagine suing would be expensive. I bet it would involve a lot of experts.

I hope the roof thing turns out to be an easy fix.

[IIOY]

Thank you. Like I said, the roof issue seems so minimal by comparison, LOL.

As I said on MM, our situation is a cautionary tale to those who think they are escaping maintenance issues by buying brand new. Sometimes shit happens.

[Deleted]

ITA. Being a semi-informed homeowner, I now have an idea of what quality construction and materials look like. But for the newbie homebuyer, it's such a crap-shoot. We got lucky since we were mostly uninformed newbies when we purchased. There are so many shady builders and awful products out there. I'm not even sure how I would advise a new buyer to proceed, since even inspections can be such a crap-shoot. I look back on 27-year-old me buying a house and it's scary how much I didn't even know I needed to be worried about.

[IIOY]

I keep saying I'm going to write a book someday about the bogus nature of inspections. Just discussing them fills me with such anger, especially the ones required by local governments that cost a small fortune and simply rubber stamp the builder.