Our house hates us!!!

We have two places since the second week of January. We had to leave home because it is being repaired after some sewer problems - the house smells to sewage!. Our home has the nickname 'stinky house' and then we have the apartment. The names are important so that the kids don't get confused. When they expect to go home and end-up at the apartment, they get quite disappointed.

This weekend, we were planning to move back to the 'stinky house', which was expected not to stink anymore. After the plumbers made a 2 meter deep, 2 meter wide hole in the garden, cleaned the footing tiles and... I think I should start from the beginning. As being an unofficial plumber, these all makes sense to me, but not to many other people probably.

A basement is, as you know, under the ground. If there is no kind of system, the ground water would get straight into the basement, so it would more likely look like a swimming pool. The footing tiles are pipes full with little holes and the ground water gets into the pipes. The pipes end at the good old sump pit, a little basin in the basement floor. In the pit, you see the sump pump, which is pumping the water to the city sewing system or to ones of those pits you see on the road the rain water disappear.

So, now I go back to the footing tiles. The smell in the house appears to be coming from the sump pit. The footing tiles were full of sewage after years of leakage (when we moved in, we got the sewer fixed, but it was leaking for years before that!) and a part of the tiles was smashed. Although the water in the sump pit was clear, it was just because of the filtering on the way to the pit, the water was smelling. So, the plumbers dug a hole in the garden, replaced the broken piece of the footing tile, cleaned the footing tile pipes with high pressure water and left a big bill to the homeowners. Don't misunderstand me, they got a bottle of wine from us, they were very nice guys.

The cause was helped, but the smell doesn't leave the house just by itself. So we contacted the landlord and asked to get a restoration company. The restoration company arrived with 2 big machines that filters/cleans the air and 2 others that circulate the air in the house. The machines were supposed to be there for 3-4 days. They set it up and left. It was Thursday, January 29. We wanted to be back in the house before the end of the month - the apartment was rented till then - we decided to clean the house on Friday, move back on Saturday and live with the loud machines for 2 days. We were determined. But the house was determined not to have us back....

On Friday, I arrived to the stinky house. It was cold, like very cold. It was actually under zero degrees Celsius. The heating was broken in the night and the machines that filter the air blow cold air, so in one night, the house was freezing! I tried to figure out why the heating was broken. I looked at the book of the heating system. It says: 'check this and check that and then call the plumber'. As much as didn't want it, I had to call the plumber and the guy fixed the machine in 2 minutes. Some kind of security switch had turned itself on. Why? Who knows.... It was 11:30

I still couldn't get the house warm, the machines slowed it down. So I turned everything off and started some cleaning and realized.... the pipes were frozen. On one side of the house, the pipes were totally frozen: one bathroom on the second floor and the watching room at the first floor. Tita, the lady who cleans the house, came after 12:00. With her, we turned water on in the washing room and it started running. Only upstairs bathroom was hopeless. Tita started cleaning the house. Before 1.00 pm, the restoration company arrived. They were going to clean the carpet in the basement because it got a little wet when the plumbers were fixing the sewer smell problem. Five minutes after they arrived, we heard a loud sound, like.... shower. We ran to the family room and water was pouring from the ceiling. What are the chances the water pipes breaks when a restoration company is in your house. Well, they usually arrive after the damage is done.

In the next couple of minutes, between my "oh my goodness"s, we ran downstairs to turn off the main water pipe - yes I knew where it was -, the guys got their equipment from their truck and started to suck the water out of the couch, the carpet and the wooden floor. It all happened so fast, I can't even recall everything. I remember asking at a certain moment if there wasn't a carpet on the floor before and the guy said they already had it in the truck for cleaning. I never saw anyone walking outside with a carpet in the hand but on the other hand, I was in shock. I called P at his work and said that the house was flooding, that there was water all over the place. He hung up before I was done speaking and arrived 15 minutes later. In the short time that the water was pouring from the broken pipe, there was 2 finger high water in the room.

The aftermath: a hole in the ceiling, the water had so much pressure!; a wet couch (sectional) that looks OK to me after two days; wooden floor that was wet for not more than 10 minutes, the guys suck the water with their special machines; a wet carpet that will come back home clean. I thought the walls were all wet but no, just a bit from the outside, the TV that was just half meter from the 'shower' was totally dry. The water went through the wooden floor to the basement, right at the storage space (=no carpet) and in the middle of the room where there was nothing! When we reached the landlord, we had contacted his and our insurance, the restoration company was already setting up the equipment and the broken pipes were fixed. He had our reaction, he laughed! How on earth can one house have so much bad luck? How?

That's how we come to the title of this piece: our house hates us (read 'me')! At the beginning, I was a bit reluctant of the house. Not that it is not beautiful, but it is a bit remote for a city girl. Then there was the raccoon and skunks living under the deck. Boy, I lost some sleep because of that. After that, we found out that the sewer was broken. It got fixed but you see the trouble it caused months after that. Then we had a flood. The basement flooded after heavy rains which the sump pump couldn't handle. Then we had mouse. The guy who came to help said he never saw such a tough mouse problem before, he had to call in his manager. Hopefully the mouse problem is fixed, we will see it. Then the smell and the broken pipe.... Has anyone ever hear one house having so many problems? It just knows I hate it and hates me back. And it is stronger than me, I can only leave! The bigger problem is, I don't only hate it, but I also love it. This house is just a bad relationship. (I remember writing this before). So doctor Phil, what do I do???

(Go back to your apartment doctor Phil says, well we are back, we are renting it for another month.)