It's got to be a crack or issue with the drip pan under the patio. I emptied a bucket of water on the patio-- not even enough to cause it to drip off the edge, and I got drips downstairs through the hole. And a fucking major storm is supposed to blow through here tonight.. Going to call serv-pro and see if they can do anything in the interim..
Yeah that was the first thing my Dad said when I showed him the picture. Also Wombat, he (20+ years of roofing experience) said there was no way to tell if the water damage was gradual or sudden, so the adjuster was absolutely blowing smoke up your ass.
Yeah, we met years ago when it was still under builder's warranty due to repeated leaks and threatened legal action. When we engaged an actual lawyer, she basically said that in Texas it's very hard/expensive to prove construction defects in court, and that even if we won most builders in Texas are basically shell companies that just declare bankruptcy if they're found liable. Not sure what our current legal recourse is against him now years later (place was only built in 2008). But yes, every unit leaks from the patio.. It's just been really hard to nail it down because they only (visibly) leak when we have crazy storms, and that's typically 1-2 times a year.
I wasn't even paying enough attention to that part of the picture to notice that. Where the fuck does it lead, to the next floor's patio? Why the fuck would you design a building so it was easier for someone's upstairs or downstairs neighbors to break in to their condo and murder them?
Our deductable is 5k too. Imagine our joy when some dumbass in the building (or more likely someones dumbass kids playing with the paper shredder) kept flushing shredded plastic down the toilet and blocked the drains causing flooding FOUR damn times over a few months. 20k wasted in a 17 unit building. Imagine our joy.
Insurance companies are not a charity. If you want what's yours, you have to fight them. Make sure to go over the text of the coverage very carefully.
Hard. A lot of builders contracts say that once it's been given a certificate of occupancy, they cannot be sued. Whether that contract holds up depends on your lawyer.
They are 3 story attached townhomes, so all 3 levels belong to me. The spiral staircase leads to the flat roof which has a rooftop deck. Technically, the partitions between units on the roof are trivial to climb over, at which point one could climb down a neighbor's spiral staircase and get access to their patio-- so you are correct in a sense. If it wasn't for the stupid staircase, I would just get an awning installed on the patio and be done with this issue..
Yeah, we're looking into that as well. We just need a licensed engineer at this point to formally document something to challenge insurance if need be.
Yeah, this. Ideally you want both. The 2 engineers we had here couldn't spot a problem that the roofer spotted in literally 30 seconds. But the engineers did catch ventilation and other problems that the roofer did not.
