LEAKS!

[bean]

We have nothing but rain in the forecast for a couple of days.

Our landlord keeps putting off roof repairs. And we're in a very upscale area, the prime retail location in the entire city (it's at the busiest intersection in the entire city).

We have a handful of small leaks. A large one showed up this morning, in the middle of an aisle. After several hours of rain, we heard splashing on an aisle. We walked into it to find what was basically a faucet running from the ceiling, right in the middle of an aisle, with a lot of it landing directly on the lights (a mix of fluorescent and halogen lighting). The pic from my "How not to front" thread? That aisle! And pretty much everything visible in that photo is ruined.

I grabbed some large containers from the deli to catch the water, but a lot of product was ruined. Basically anything in a paper container on that aisle, and the water ran along the overhead beams... so it pretty much drenched about half of the aisle. To make things more interesting, the lights got wet enough to start crackling, making funny smells, then a lot of them went out entirely, while others got REALLY GODDAMN BRIGHT and started buzzing. We have NO idea what breaker panel they're controlled from, nor are there any switches that we know of to shut them off, so they got to keep buzzing, humming, and popping. These lights run on either 277 volt or 480 volt, it's NOT something I want to mess with.

A coworker told me that aisle has leaked since he started working at the store.. in 2004. But never more than a slight drip. This was like someone drilled a small hole in the roof to act as a drain.

Oddly, our usual backroom leaks never started dripping except for 1 of them (right by the docks). There's about a dozen regular leaks, and only that 1 backroom leak plus the leak on that aisle showed up, while it was pouring. Most of them show up even during light rain.

Damn landlord, being too cheap to fix our roof... argh.

[crazylegs]

Ah, leaking roofs at work

Had that at my last job, ended up having two inches of water on the floor (thrghout the store) and closed for three hours cleaning up.

[draggar]

It's better than the leaking roof I had at home for over 3 years because of a lazy / cheap homeowner's association.

[Broomjockey]

Heh. Our roof at theatre 2 leaked enough that some of the sound-dampening ceiling boards fell apart and dumped on the floor, about 3 feet from the railing of a 3 floor drop. That was fun.

[iradney]

Can't you take some sort of legal action, since now you are having to damage out product that otherwise would've been sold, and you have lost X amount of potential profit? Not to mention chances of personal injury due to constantly wet floors, the resulting damp that may occur and any fungus/mold growth?

Also, check the contract for a clause that might say the landlord has to fix faults within X days of it being reported. TTO and I always add a clause like that to all our renting contracts, since we've had it with landlords not fixing stuff. This way, we can sic lawyers on em.

(I AM NOT A LAWYER - I've just had it with lazy landlords)

[IT Grunt]

Ahhh, roof leaks. My co-worker's dealt with those. The section where his office was (thankfully he's in drier quarters now) is known for bad leaks, and every time there was a heavy rain, or even heavy snow that was melting, this leak would rip out one of his ceiling tiles and fill about 6 buckets. They never did fix it.

The same area though, I had to laugh at this one, because it was entirely the maintenance department's fault on this one. The plant used to run its sprinkler system off a 50000 gallon tank in an attic. This tank has long since been retired and the system hooked to the main lines, but all they did was valve off the tank. Meaning that water from the main line was still going to the tank, and all that was stopping it was this valve. Which failed. The tank began to fill to its capacity, until it reached the overflow pipe. This pipe... well. It hung over an office on the floor below, and all they did was saw it off. Gallons and gallons of water came pouring down that pipe, destroyed the ceiling tiles, soaked the carpet through and through, and destroyed all the furniture in the room. If they had at least capped the pipe, it wouldn't have happened. Yay for half-assed jobs. </sarcasm>

[jedifarfy]

My bookstore was built in 2005, and our cafe was supposed to have a door out to a patio (how, now sure, but whatever). Last minute changes thanks to the Evil Bullseye made the contractor change the 2 sets of holes from doors to windows from 2-4 feet from the floor up to the ceiling. Alas, it was a quickly job, and they didn't properly seal the windows. Every October through.... forever, the windows leak. :P

[bean]

Also, check the contract for a clause that might say the landlord has to fix faults within X days of it being reported. TTO and I always add a clause like that to all our renting contracts, since we've had it with landlords not fixing stuff. This way, we can sic lawyers on em.

I'm sure we COULD take legal action. However, being a corporate owned store, things like that move slower than snails going up a cliff.

The building really needs a new roof - we have at least a dozen leaks in the store (not counting other businesses in the building). They seem to pop up at random too - sometimes a former leak just.. stops leaking for awhile. Sometimes a new one pops up. Sometimes one that hasn't leaked in ages decides to drench everything.

I did find it funny that I had a day off.. then showed back up to work yesterday and the bucket + wet floor sign I had set out was STILL there, in the middle of an aisle, even though it hadn't rained in about 24 hours.

[Seshat]

Suggest to management that they tell your insurance company (who'll be covering the loss) that the product damage was due to a leaking roof that was reported to the landlord X time ago.

The insurance company will take care of the necessary legals.