Some words of wisdom please and apologies in advance if this comes across as gibberish.

I’ve just had a new bathroom fitted by a plumber who I’ve used before and was happy with his work. By Saturday most of the work was done and bathroom was usable. On Saturday evening I noticed water on the ceiling in the lounge so checked the bathroom and no sign of leakage. Went into the loft (struggling physically these days) and no sign of anything untoward.

Water continued dripping and more of the ceiling was affected, buckets and towels were placed underneath although the carpet was already damp. I then spent several hours phoning emergency plumbers who promised to call back only once they had my credit card details. Some didn’t even call back. Disturbed sleep due to emptying buckets.

On Sunday morning I phoned various companies again but nobody could come out that day but managed a visit for Monday morning. Emptying buckets continued.

On Monday morning another part of the ceiling was leaking, the walls were dripping and bigger damp patches on the carpet. Emergency plumber came, new fittings removed, floor boards lifted and the source of the leak was identified. A nail had gone through a pipe in the bathroom (accidentally by the plumber) and a seriously massive bill followed due to 4.1/2 hours work plus materials.

I’m worried about whether there will be stains left on my 2 year old cream carpet, ceilings need to dry out and special paint applied then emulsioned, walls (painted 2 years ago) will probably need some paint. Frankly I’m incapable of doing any of this due to flippin’ Lyme disease.

How should I handle this, once I’ve stopped crying obviously.

Thanks for any words of wisdom. 🙂

I’d be phoning the original plumber and going mental

Do you not have home insurance? I know this doesn’t help but they perhaps should have been your first point of call – but call them now anyway and they’ll hopefully help with organisation, remedial work and perhaps pay you back the emergency costs.

Have you spoken to the plumber that did the nailing? Assuming that there’s no disputing liability, his insurance should cover this.

If you wanted to, you could get your insurance onto it pronto instead with a view to them collecting from him.

Either scenarios assume he’s pukka and has professional liability insurance and/or you have buildings insurance.

If he/you have neither, the situation may not be so straightforward….

Contact your house insurer (buildings insurer for the building fabric like plasterboard and decorations, contents insurer for carpet and loose items, obviously life is simpler if they are the same company). They will probably appoint a loss adjuster, but either they or the adjuster will be able to give advice over the phone (or direct you to a website giving advice) about temporary emergency action etc.

Their experts should be able to tell what can be repaired/salvaged vs. what will need to be replaced. Keep any damaged items, like carpet etc., for them to inspect: don’t throw them away until they have been inspected.

Edit to add – leave it to your insurers to pursue your plumber (or rather his own public liability insurer) to get their money back.

Send a copy of the invoice for the work to the original plumber, explaining what has happened, with a bit of luck his insurance will cover it.

If not, inform him of your regretful decision of going to small claims. (assuming its under the upper limit?)

Home insurance and go after original plumber
He has to have insurance to cover his liability by law.

I’ve just had a new bathroom fitted by a plumber who I’ve used before and was happy with his work

Why didn’t you phone the guy that did the work originally? If you couldn’t get him at the weekend then surely he should have come on Monday morning?

Carpet will be stained but will probably clean up okay if done professionally. Difficult to tell really without knowing how much water is involved.

Hope you get it sorted but get onto your home insurance.

Thanks for your replies. In retrospect I probably should have called the plumber but as there was no water to be seen on the bathroom floor I didn’t.

I will call the plumber this evening but am very concerned about whether this carpet dries out and the redecoration. All I want is for my house to be put back to how it was before.

Edit: thanks for more replies. I really want to settle this amicably but would get heavy handed if necessary.

I’d call your original plumber who will no doubt be mortified, currently he is existing in blissful ignorance!. I’m not sure why you never called him first but hey ho. Then once you’re comfortable with that I’d be speaking to your house insurer on the other items you require put-right or see what he says to that.

And when you call him, explain why you didn’t think to call him in the first place otherwise he may think you are trying something on with him.

All I want is for my house to be put back to how it was before.

It will be, even if it means new carpets and some redecoration. Talk to the plumber first, if no joy then speak to your house insurer.

I would work on getting the carpet dry and then have it cleaned. The ceiling and wall painting wont be expensive and it will just need a stain blocker on the ceiling but wait until everything is properly dry before doing the work.

Where in the country are you?

Edit: thanks for more replies. I really want to settle this amicably but would get heavy handed if necessary.

I would advise you to go via your own insurers. This incident is exactly what you have paid for to insure against. You are their customer, and they will be far more prompt and responsive to you, than if you try to deal direct with your plumber’s public liability insurer.

A word of warning – if your plumber says don’t bother going through insurance, he will fix it and pay for things to be replaced or dried, you could have problems later on if you are unhappy with what the plumber proposes, e.g. he wants to replace the carpet with one that is a bit cheaper, or persuade you to accept cleaning a damaged item when something really needs to be replaced instead. It may be difficult to change your mind and then make a claim against your household insurance: the delay will have ‘prejudiced’ their position (harder to establish the validity of the claim if items thrown away and repairs made, and making a recovery from the plumber/his insurer will be more problematic if you have already been negotiating with him direct). Worst case scenario is that your insurers might even turn down such a late claim notification. If you are determined to deal direct with your plumber, I would at the very least suggest you call your insurers and tell them about it: they might be more amenable to accepting a claim later on if (when) your negotiations with the plumber break down.

Just be aware that going through your insurer will mean losing your no claims discount and your policy cost will likely go up at renewal due to having made a claim.

Oh dear sorry to hear about this. I had the same happen last year and was gutted.

The carpet should dry out unstained, just lift it up and put a brick under to ease air flow. Keep windows open. My drenched new carpet did not stain one bit.

Speak with original plumber, in my case he did not want any insurance issues so fixed everything, and the flat downstairs he flooded, at his cost.

In the end everything was fine but the night i spent worrying knocked a year off my life expectancy.

Your plumber should have public liability insurance for this. Don’t use yours why on earth should you? I am self employed accidents happen and that’s why we have insurance.

Also next time you have a leak you can’t source or stop immediately turn off your water at the stop cock so further damage can’t continue whilst you sort it. The ceiling could have come down leaving it like that.

Is this all an elaborate set up?

😉

Just be aware that going through your insurer will mean losing your no claims discount

No claims discount is a feature of motor insurance. I imagine that a small minority of household insurers might advertise a no claims discount, but any discount will be minor (unlike with motor insurance), and you would probably be able to find another insurer that didn’t offer a so called no claims discount whose base price was cheaper anyway, i.e. it’s likely just to be marketing.

your policy cost will likely go up at renewal due to having made a claim.

Without knowing the insurer and their pricing structure/model, it’s impossible to say definitively that this is wrong, but this statement is likely to be completely uninformed bollocks.

As a general rule of thumb, insurers will tend to penalise claims histories that are indicative of a higher risk of further claims. So they are more likely to increase the price at renewal if there have been multiple small claims (especially if they are indicative of carelessness where cover is for ‘accidental damage’) as opposed to a single large claim for a clearly fortuitous event (e.g. fire). The length of time for which you have been insured by that company can also be a factor: two claims in ten years is a better claims experience than two claims (or even a single claim) when you have only been insured with that company for one year.

Lastly, where the damage is the result of someone else’s negligence, as here, and the insurance company makes a recovery, I would be amazed if they then used the incident to justify increasing the premium (and would expect any insurer to back down very quickly if they tried than and were challenged).

Without knowing the insurer and their pricing structure/model, it’s impossible to say definitively that this is wrong, but this statement is likely to be completely uninformed bollocks.

So you don’t know then, neither do I which is why I said ‘likely’ and is certainly something to bear in mind.

If you don’t stop crying you’ll just cause more damp.

(can’t top advice given already 🙂 )

He has to have insurance to cover his liability by law.

Utter and complete horlicks.

if i was your plumber i would be seriously miffed you didn’t call him first just because you didn’t see any water in your bathroom.
while it is his fault you haven’t given him a chance to rectify it, i guess he would have come straight away if you called him and said “there is water coming through my ceiling”

i can understand if i he said “i’m at the other end of the country and cant do anything” then he has to pay whatever it cost to fix but i’m guessing he was sat a few miles away while you paid somebody else (after 48hrs or more of not speaking to him?) to do the work.

My wife works for a building company that repair alot of flood damaged properties.
The first thing you need is a couple of big dehumidifiers to dry the place out, before it makes you ill.

Talk to the plumber. If he doesn’t act quickly, then get on to your house insurance. There is no reason it shouldn’t get fixed fairly promptly.

Your plumber should have public liability insurance for this. Don’t use yours why on earth should you?

For the same reason that it’s best to claim against your own insurance policy when some someone damages your vehicle. Namely you are the customer of your insurer. You have a contract with your insurer and have paid them money. A third party’s insurer owes you nothing, and is much more likely to play hardball in negotiations, e.g. “that’s our offer, if you don’t like it, you’ll have to take us (or more correctly our customer) to court”. A third party’s liability insurer will not be bothered if you are unhappy about their slowness, their delay in replying to emails or returning telephone calls etc.

Moreover, liability insurance is limited to legal liability. If an item is damaged, the liability insurer may well seek to limit any payment by deducting for wear and tear. So if a 10 year old carpet with a likely lifespan of 20 years is damaged, they will probably offer only 50% of the cost of a new carpet. In contrast, household insurance policies are typically ‘new for old’ cover, so the policyholder would expect to get an equivalent brand new replacement carpet.

I am self employed accidents happen and that’s why we have insurance.

You have liability insurance to protect YOU, not your customers.

Aye – original plumber would have come and fixed his mistake but now won’t be happy with a bill from another plumber. Insurance may be the only way to go now.

Best wishes.

I’ve read the beginning and I can see that lots of peeps have come with good advice, Thanks Be To STW (TBTSTW) so I am here to offer a gentle pat on the shoulder, a gin/wine/Fanta/beverage of your choice and to say
“I feel for you, these things piss me off, but I would like to see you feel a bit better, so buck up, shall I top you up?”

Can’t offer any practical advice whatsoever. So, just hugs. Rx

Rachel

I can’t fathom why you didn’t call the original plumber, his mistake yes but he could have fixed it with just a bit of his time, and I imagine he would have come out straight away. Now you want to hit him with a huge bill?

Without knowing the insurer and their pricing structure/model, it’s impossible to say definitively that this is wrong, but this statement is likely to be completely uninformed bollocks.

So you don’t know then, neither do I which is why I said ‘likely’ and is certainly something to bear in mind.[/quote]

I caveated my comments carefully, whereas you made a fairly sweeping unsubstantiated assertion that her premium would be ‘likely’ to increase, which implies a greater than 50% probability, which is not the case. Unless you have worked in the industry, I do know better than you because of my background and experience. So

– No, it isn’t ‘likely’ that her premium would increase as a consequence of making a claim for this incident.

– Yes, it is ‘likely’ that your statement is completely uninformed bollocks.

Insurers

Was it actually the plumbers nail? We had one go through a pipe after some work was done, it as just because everything shifted slightly and was was previously just a nail rubbing on a pipe pressed through it when someone walked down the corridor with a heavy box.

No need to get so personal, TINAS.

I caveated my comments carefully, whereas you made a fairly sweeping unsubstantiated assertion that her premium would be ‘likely’ to increase, which implies a greater than 50% probability, which is not the case. Unless you have worked in the industry, I do know better than you because of my background and experience. So

Get you.

You have liability insurance to protect YOU, not your customers.

Absolute tosh. It’s also for if we cause damage to other peoples property or person during our work. My insurer recently paid out for a customers broken car window with no quibble whatsoever.

lol@slowster.

If I had plumbing work done on a Saturday, and had a sudden leak Saturday evening, I’d call the plumber. Especially if I had an amicable relationship with him.
If I was the plumber, that is also what I’d want to happen.

I simply don’t understand why you woulnd’t do that – sorry.

If I was the original plumber being hit with big bills / litigation threats about something I’d had no opportunity to rectify then I’d be most unhappy.