Recently we had a Client reach out to us who experienced a huge flood in her home.

I felt very bad about her being in this particular predicament.

Apparently, her upstairs tenant had been experiencing a slow leak under the sink in her kitchen, but neglected to inform our Client of this.

The tenant had a small container underneath the sink which she allowed to gradually fill up, and then would empty it and put it back under the sink until it filled up again.

The tenant probably was only minorly inconvenienced by the slow drip and didn’t think too much about it.

Had she informed our Client, our Client could have addressed the issue.

Instead, what happened was the problem with the pipe gradually compounded to a larger challenge, even to the point of affecting piping beneath from where that specific pipe ran out of.

The next thing you know, our Client had a waterfall in her kitchen and rear entrance that were located directly beneath the tenant’s kitchen.

Subsequently, there was a tremendous amount of damage to the ceiling and wall areas where the water had come down and situated.

Next thing you know, our Client messaged us to see if we can help and we were over the next day tearing open ceiling and wall areas to allow the plumber to be able to go in and fix things.

Even if a situation like this is covered and put through your homeowner’s insurance, who wants to endure horribleness like this if they do not have to???

Answer to this dilemma?

Fix your leaky pipes!!

Even more importantly, however, would be to coach those around you to let you know if they ever have an issue with things needing to be fixed.

In this situation, it was a leaky pipe, but it obviously could always be something else – a light that does not activate when a light switch is turned on, a piece of rotted wood, etc.

Whether it is a tenant, a family member, or anybody else who may be in the position to let you know of a smaller issue, it is critical that they do so as smaller issues can easily develop into bigger issues over time.

Pipe situations are notorious for this.

Pipe leaks do not fix themselves.

Sometimes we get spoiled as there is evidence of something bad happening in the form of water staining, discoloration in your paint coatings, or something along those lines.

In our Client’s instance, she really would have had to rely on her tenant providing the heads up that she had noticed a pipe leaking.

Because this did not happen, a disastrous mess ensued.

That being said, it is impossible to fix something that you are not aware is broken and it is hypercritical to perhaps check with the other folks in your property once in a while, to make sure that all is ok.

Short of the tenant thinking that she should have reached out to our Client and let her know that she had a problem with her sink leaking, there was nothing our Client could have done to prevent this.

Unfortunately for our Client, not only is she forced to fix the pipes that were the original culprit, but she now has a very expensive mess on her hands that is certainly going to take some time to correct and put back together.