Flooding The Neighbours

When our HDB officer spoke with the upstairs neighbours a week and a half ago, the feedback she got from the wife is that she prefers to wait for the bathroom upgrading via the HDB Home Improvement Programme (HIP).

HIP has been announced for this cluster last August. The voting begins in Q1 2017 and renovations likely to commence only in early 2018. This means it will be another 2 years before the bathroom upgrading is done, assuming the vote is successful. Plus the bathroom upgrades are an add-on, not the essential items.

This makes the suggestion to wait till HIP sound completely ridiculous. Is she crazy? We can't tile the area as the cement is popping up and if we did, it would be a serious safety issue. And what were we supposed to do? Put a bucket there in the middle of the bathroom for 2 years to catch the drips? ...

Furthermore, she didn't believe her bathroom was leaking as it was dry when the HDB officer and plumber visited her unit. Because of that, HDB is flooding them today to test if the leak is truly coming from their place. Good! This lady needs to wake up!

When I arrived at our unit in the morning (I was late and gave them the number lock combination so they could come in), I was surprised to find 5 persons in the place. One of them was the HDB officer, the husband and wife of the upstairs neighbour were here and they brought another couple too. What is this? Were they trying to outnumber me? They must have thought there was no leak and simply dark patches in the ceiling and attempting to convince me. I look at the wife and she looks like those bossy loony office aunty. Yuck!

Anyways, the HDB officer updated me later that they first came into the unit to survey the leak. There was only a droplet on the ceiling and the drip was very slow (about a minute a drop). But after the flooding (above picture of my neighbour's flooded master bathroom), the dripping became quicker at 10-15 seconds a drop. It essentially confirms that they were the culprit. But because the flooding was for a standard 4 hours, we were to come back again at 1.30pm in the afternoon.

I took the time to run some errands like setting up the conservancy charges giro. When I was back at lunch, the dripping is still going on pretty rapidly. The wet parts on the cement has also extended downwards. Haiz I would think this definitely classifies as a major leak.

Thankfully the outcome was rather cordial. I was already dreading having to be firm with the neighbours should they come back with nonsensical suggestions, like waiting for HIP. I couldn't go barking on them since they are after all the upstairs neighbours and makes no sense in destroying any neighbourly relationship.

The HDB officer came back, but this time with only the husband in toll. And they immediately offered that they are going to apply for the Goodwill Repair Program (GRP) for the repairs. Meaning they are going to engage contractors to hack the bathroom, relay the waterproofing and tiles for both bathrooms. We would each need to fork out about $300 for the repairs.

Ok, not the most ideal situation but at least they are now willing to hack. I suppose they are out of options too since it was evident to everyone the ceiling was leaking. So no matter what they were going to have to hack to repair. Now the tough part for us is having to wait for the GRP which will take around one to one and half months. Then another couple of week to schedule the actual repairs.

We need to circle back with Norman to see how we can manage this. Maybe not work on that portion first? Sigh ...