Take 10 buckets & jars of different sizes, fill them up random amounts & then begin dropping water in them from a height. Don’t let yourself get lazy now; you must have at least one "plonk" per second. Once you have achieved this, you will have successfully recreated the atmosphere in our flat at the moment. Thanks to living in a flat that the communal boiler resides above, we now have not only the sound, but the physical dampness to contend with.
About 2 weeks ago cracks began to appear in our ceiling. A day later water started coming through the cracks. A few days later it turned orange & now there is a new & exciting wet spot on the carpet each time we come home. We've told the council - they explained that there is a long process of getting scaffolding affected, organising tradesmen etc that we'll have to wait for. We then contacted the rental agents - who informed us that it's entirely the council’s responsibility. We have now called them, maybe 10 times, to tell them it is getting worse. Frequently we're told, "We’ll call you back". So far it hasn't happened.
Last night I called the emergency council number. I was told "This isn't an emergency. Water isn't an emergency. And besides, we don’t look after the boilers". The typical British customer service advisor said all of this as though I'd just presented her with a nappy full of poo. Even after I mentioned that the last tenant had to leave because boiling water started pouring from the ceiling, she still said this was not an emergency. By the end of this "conversation" I would have gladly dunked her in boiling water (& thrown all of her belongings in for good luck) while asking her whether she considered herself to be in any sort of "emergency" type situation now. Fucking hell. I doubt if they'd consider molten lava dripping from the ceiling onto a room full of small doe eyed babies an emergency. Somehow I think the heartless English customer service wenches would still find it in themselves to not give a shit.
Anyway - this morning Kynan climbed out the window (yes, don’t ask me how we're ever going to be in a position to discipline children) & climbed the scaffolding up to the roof. There he discovered that there are two pumps connected to the boiler & that one of them is pumping water straight out onto our roof. I'd call the customer service people, but as we all know by now, water is very clearly NOT an emergency.
So at least we can tell there isn't a huge amount of water up there, just a steady puddle dripping through, and the water is tepid, so no boiling babies this time.
The most infuriating thing is that they could have WALKED UP THE STAIRS to the boiler room a week & a half ago & we wouldn't have been having these issues. Arrghhhhhh. We'll wait to see what happens this week.
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