Thursday, February 17, 2011

What to do with a leaking ceiling in Montreal at 6:30 am

1. If you're not on the top floor, wake up your upstairs neighbor. If you are go to the roof to see if there is a problem.
2. Apologize for waking them up while explaining (in French) that you have a leaking ceiling and that you are pretty sure the source is their apartment.
3. Have them tell you that everything is dry, killing your hopes that they might just left the water running and knowing that eventually someone is going to "destroy" your ceiling, their floor, maybe some walls, and hopefully nothing else.
4. Show them that you actually do have a leak and wait while they call their parents on the phone to see what we should do next. Although we're supposed to be adults, none of us has any idea where to start. We know we should shut the water supply to the apartment, call the insurance company, call a plumber, keep and eye for more drips. But we need some reassurance, and since I'm not from Montreal, or Canada for that matter, I have no clue where to start, and since its not a normal occurance it's even worse.
5. Our neighbors dad tells her to tell me to call my insurance and to call hers. I do and they tell me a technician will call and be over. They tell her, somewhere along these lines: to hang up, it's too early, and that my insurance will contact hers if needed.
6. Pierce a hole on the pocket of water so it can drain. I would recommend to do this earlier, but that was one of the things her dad told us and we didn't think of before. Apparently it helps the water drain and stop accumulating, which is a good thing, if you didn't figure it out by now.
7. After an hour or so, while watching Sportscenter, having breakfast and waiting for that technician, you notice a strange silence in the room, and notice it stopped leaking (told you piercing the pocket of water was a good idea).
8. Tell the neighbor it stopped leaking. Make yourself believe you have solved the enigma narrowing it down to the hot water, since it's the only one we shut off, because we weren't sure which one was their cold water.
9. Reopen the hot water so my neighbor can take a quick shower, and while she does it leaks again. Eureka! It is the hot water.
10. Let her know your discovery.
11. The technician arrives and tells us, they fix everything except the source of the problem, that has to be payed by the Owners Union (Syndicat de Propietaire, or something like that in French). He also says we need to call a plumber to get the source fixed, and that he should come after they do, to later say its better if the plumber fixes the problem first.
12. Go on a plumber searching spree, while the neighbor looks for the insurance info for the building. Get quotes from plumbers, and find out they also charge for the time it takes them to get here, which is weird, cause they could say it took them one hour and screw you over (that is my Mexican skepticism speaking/writing).
13. Remember that since it leaked the last time we haven`t shut off the hot water, and rethink of that Eureka moment you had, and whether it might have all been too easy of a solution. Find out that when she took her shower, other neighbors where taking showers and using water in their apartments at the same time, so we decided to run test. Open and close all showers, faucets, flush toilets, etc., from ALL the occupied apartments in our building, to notice that it not leaking anymore. F***, I was wrong, it's not the hot water.
14. It's been a while since the ceiling stopped leaking, so our neighbor's dad suggested we wait 24 hours to see if it would start leaking and if it does to try and find which apartment was using water and where, so we can better inform the plumber and maybe (this is a very important maybe), have him just break the ceiling, floor and/or wall where the problem is or where it might be.
15. Wait for a leakage to happen.
16. You should also contact the building's insurance (Syndicat the Propietaires) to see if they can send a plumber or if it's you who calls one and get reimbursed. Finding out that you won't get reimbursed after you payed will suck big time.

I think that is it so far. If anything unexpected should come up I will post it. If not, then I will post "la suite" tomorrow, and lets hope tomorrow is the end of this event.