MRC48B posted:

The idea is to make a big enough scene that the management company is obliged to cough up and fix it.

The OP's problem is the complex management is too loving cheap to pay for a service call.

Tiny Lowtax posted:

Don’t call the FD. I work for a large FD and we have no control over these situations, only businesses. All we could do is cut power to whatever is causing the heat, then advise you to call a certified plumber/electrician/HVAC specialist or whatever, or have you contact your landlord.

Senor Tron posted:

So the best case scenario here is a whole heap of rats right?

Computer viking posted:

Jesus, 100C hot ceiling? I'd be worried about something breaking and literally boiling me alive; that's "sleep in a store room at work" bad.

mostlygray posted:

No rats in Bemidji. Too cold. I'm fairly certain that, whatever it was, it had no name. I am certain that it could speak though. It spoke to him a a tongue long since forgotten and told him of his doom. This was where the old Gods live. Drawn from well below the earth.

Tiny Lowtax posted:

Don’t call the FD. I work for a large FD and we have no control over these situations, only businesses. All we could do is cut power to whatever is causing the heat, then advise you to call a certified plumber/electrician/HVAC specialist or whatever, or have you contact your landlord.

mostlygray posted:

No rats in Bemidji. Too cold. I'm fairly certain that, whatever it was, it had no name. I am certain that it could speak though. It spoke to him a a tongue long since forgotten and told him of his doom. This was where the old Gods live. Drawn from well below the earth.

quote:

Sorry for the long story, but I don't know how to tl;dr this and have it still make sense.

I have a historic house, built in the 1830's in the small town of Westerlo NY. My house has a band-aid stone foundation, and as such it has water seep in from rainfall and melting snow. There is a pipe that drains the water from my basement. It goes out the front of my house, crosses a state highway, runs through my neighbors property, and drains into a creek on the backside of his house. Our houses are face to face, about 100' between them, and again the pipe goes from front of my house to back of his.

My previous neighbor had said the drain line smells. So I flush it out if water seems to slow down, and do the best I could to keep that from happening. Code enforcement told me that that is legally/reslistically all I could do.

Fast forward, new guy moves in, and caps the pipe. He claimed that he didn't know what it was for, and that it smelled bad, so he just decided to cap a drain line with running water and hope for the best. I only found out when I found close to 6 inches of water in the basement.

The first time this happened about a month ago, I took the cap off because the water was getting high enough to threaten my water heater and boiler. When I talked to the neighbor later the conversation ended by both of us agreeing to research "mutually agreeable alternatives."

So today my fiance calls and tells me the basement is flooding again and that there is another cap on it. After back and forth between town, city, code enforcement, and with the sherriffs office, (someone), ended up cutting the cap off so the basement could drain. On our final visit from the sherriffs office, I was told that we are trespassed from going over there and removing any cap or doing anything with the pipe, that the neighbor has had the Department of Environmental Control out there, who conveniently says that it tested positive for E-coli, and that I have to sit back and figure something else out while I watch my basement flood.

Really cool and cooperative guy to not even talk to me about it by the way. And if I were to believe it it's also pretty sweet that the states Dept. Of Environmental control found E-coli and didn't tell me anything about it. Thanks guys.

I have spoken with the town, the city, the highway authority, and code enforcement, and every one of those agencies says one of the others is responsible, there is nothing they can do, and that this is a civil matter. I work construction, and have spoken to many coworkers and contractors about possible alternatives to fixing this problem. However, it is winter, there is ice and snow on the ground, and the edge of the creek where the pipe drains is low and steep enough that noone will go near it right now.

I'm in no way negating the severity of potentially having E-coli contamination, but I also have trouble believing it. There is nothing but clean rainwater draining through the pipe., I make sure of it. If that is in fact true, then something absolutely needs to be done about it. The other end is in my effing basement.

Questions:

• What right does this guy have to block a drain line that has been there since before either of us moved in?
  
• What responsibility do I realistically have in moving the pipe, even though it crosses under a state highway and someone else's back yard?
  
• Where the hell do I even start if I need to take this to court? I work construction, I'm told I'm good at it but that doesn't mean I'm smart enough to take the place of a lawyer. To my understanding if you want to sue someone it has to be for a dollar amount, not for the right to let my pipe drain. So theoretically, he could cap it and damage my house all he wants if he pays to fix it, which in itself is madness that doesn't make sense to me either.
  
• Wtf am I supposed to do now? I've reached out to the DEC to try and get a copy of the water test, but now it's late on a Friday and they don't open until Monday. I don't know what else to do beyond that, not even where to start.
  
• If I do need to go to court, and I do need to get a lawyer, can I sue for my lawyers fees? Im a single income family of 7, and I just moved my mother up from Florida out of a bad situation, so I very simply can't see how I'm going to bend myself even further to pull that off. But I have to figure out a way to do it now I guess.
  
• Does anyone have an aspirin to help with this massive headache after banging my head against the wall from all this madness?
  

If you've read this much, thank you. I do think part of me really needed to just vent at this point, but any guidance, information, or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Azza Bamboo posted:

Is it possible to concrete the basement and seal it in?

Nenonen posted:

kid sinister posted:

Did the brain damage happen before or after thinking bitcoin was a good idea?

Youth Decay posted:

Youth Decay posted:

a white void boxmansion now.

Megillah Gorilla posted:

Doesn't having a shower with no screen cause water to go everywhere?

BraveUlysses posted:

i think the real card to play is to call the insurance company for the property owner and tell them what's going on, i bet they would lean really hard on the owner

Youth Decay posted:

Apparently people used to wallpaper their bathroom vanities??

Youth Decay posted:

Another fine example of Mid-Century Mistake design
The kitchen is actually pretty nice in terms of layout but good lord that wallpaper

Youth Decay posted:

The kitchen is actually pretty nice in terms of layout but good lord that wallpaper ceilingpaper

Jaded Burnout posted:

ceilingpaper above the shower, too

Methylethylaldehyde posted:

Having removed ceiling paper before, FUCKKKKKK THAT.

H110Hawk posted:

You gotta get the special tool:

Youth Decay posted:

And of cours there's the wood paneling

Ornamental Dingbat posted:

Is that a water damaged drop ceiling at the very top?

Methylethylaldehyde posted:

Having removed ceiling paper before, FUCKKKKKK THAT.

Ashcans posted:

IIRC a common recommendation is to just hang 1/4" drywall over it and pretend if never happened.

Ask me about trying to remove wallpaper in my house and finding out it was 4+ layers of wallpaper over painted wallpaper, and the end result was to expose a bunch of crumbling plaster I now need to repair. Actually, don't ask, I'm still mad.

Ornamental Dingbat posted:

Is that a water damaged drop ceiling at the very top?