In article . com, Driz says...

I rent a small single floor appartment on the ground floor near my
college. A couple of days ago water started appearing around 11pm in
our bathroom tiled area. I soaked it up with towels and went to bed.
When I woke up the water had spread a little bit into our living room
making the squishy sound when you step on it.

Turns out the hot water heater in the Appt above us was busted and
leaking straight down into my roomates carpeted bedroom closet(where
our heater is as well) and spreading through the wall into our bathroom
area and into the living room carpet.

Well the landlord came and fixed their waterheater and the leaking
water has stopped. Its the weekend and everything is closed, i have
been left to fix the flooding myself, but Im in college and cant afford
to call a profesisonal and I don't know what I should be doing.

I have been soaking up the water with towels, then washing them and
soaking them again.

The carpets are now just damp, but now the musty smell seems to be
everywhere.

Im worried about the smell and the horror stories about mold and
mildew. Should I leave? What kind of company should I contact to test
for mold, or clean? What responsibilites does my landlord have to
helping me with this?

Sorry, Im alone and ignorant in all this, and learning a life lesson.


At this point, the carpet needs to be removed and disposed of. (Earlier, the
carpet would need to be removed and dried.) Your landlord is responsible to
repair *all* the damages of flooding affecting the habitability of your
apartment - not just fix the leak.

Contact a local renter's rights organization or Public Interest Research Group
(PIRG, they're named "xxPIRG" where xx is the two-letter abbreviation for your
state). Try a phone call to the landlord - use that word "habitability" -
that's the legal term for his resonsibility to keep the place one that can be
reasonably lived in.

That's assuming you've had a non-compliant landlord. Have you even notified him
or her (or them) of the continuting problem?

Banty


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