Drip Drama

WATER, WATER EVERYWHERE

It's wet outside today, been raining for hours. Shame it's a bit wet inside too.

A few weeks ago we noticed a stain on the hall carpet. It didn't want to come off. A day or two later and we realised it wasn't muck, it was water. We had a wet patch. And it wasn't down to the cat or the incontinence of our advancing years. And so the story begins.

A plumber came in, we pulled back the carpet, to reveal a squelchy mass of soggy underlay. Pull that back and there, it would seem, was the culprit. At some point in time (and the block was only built in 2003) someone had dug a channel into the concrete flooring. Then refilled it. But they hadn't given the concrete enough time to set, so at the first hint of any water it started to crack and to crumble and to provide a point through which the water could press its way upwards. It had then spread out across the concrete, being sucked up and around into the underlay, to finally emerge under our toes.

Digging out the dodgy filling revealed a pipe, surely the culprit here. But no, it looks sound. the water is coming from elsewhere, running in channels under the solid floor to find an outlet - our poorly mended hallway. And that's when the detective business began.

It's taken four plumber's visits, and about three weeks, to find an answer. Once the obvious had been checked - bath, washing machine, dishwasher, sinks, water tank, radiators, heating system - it just became more confusing. It would have been funny to see the baffled look on the workman's face if it hadn't meant that we still had a wet exposed trench to come to each day. Then came the news that the damp wasn't just inside our property, but outside the door too.

We're on the fifth floor, sharing a common entrance way with five other flats. The discovery indicated that wherever the leak was coming from needn't be within our boundaries - we were just the lucky recipients of the resulting flow. If nobody else had a makeshift channel like we had then they might never know that there was water under their feet.

Eventually the problem appears to have been traced, to a steady drip from next door's boiler. We now await their landlord having the impetus to get that fixed. For the dampness to dry out. For it to be clear enough to lay down new concrete into our little trench. And for that to dry out totally to feel confident that we can lay carpet on top without fear of ruin. The weeks stretch out before us.

That's if this does prove to be the problem. Until their leak is fixed, and a couple of days have then gone by, we won't know for sure. So for now, and for some time to come, we can play at stepping stones. I've cut out rough squares of the old carpet to give us something to walk on without bringing a load of concrete dust into our home (it isn't working...). One becomes used to these things. But the reaction of our guests in a couple of weeks time could be interesting