So last night our downstairs neighbor knocked on our door, and told us that her living room ceiling was dripping on her. After a confusing couple of minutes, The Pit and I discovered that the carpet behind our couch was soaked, and that water was leaking out of the air conditioning vent back there. It's unclear how long this has been going on...at least a day or two, and possibly longer.
Incidents like this make me grateful that we're just renters, because we turned off the AC and called our building manager, hoping that things could get resolved quickly. Lo and behold, an hour or so later an enormously fat and jovial on-call plumber came to our door. This man was in a remarkably good mood for having been roused from his comfortable and air-conditioned home to come to our (by now) hot and sticky one. He sweated profusely, told amusing anecdotes about his bouncer days, fiddled with our air-conditioner for a while, and after eventually pulling out some disgusting gunk, pronouncing it fixed.
So at least we were able to run the AC again, which was nice when by 10 PM, the temperature had only come down to 87° F, and the humidity was at a gross 71%. To deal with the water damage to our carpet, a man came and installed a gigantic fan in the corner of the living room this morning. He sorta pulled out a corner of the carpet, directed the fan vaguely downward, and told me to leave it on for 24 hours.
Although all the wind is causing the carpeting to ripple in amusing ways, I'm actually a bit unhappy at this solution, since the fan generates an enormous amount of noise, and per The Pit's instructions, I was supposed to be calling various companies where I've recently sent resumes. The Pit was quite insistent about this being a necessary step in the job-getting process, but since calling companies gives me panic attacks, I suppose this situation does have its pluses.
I think I will wander downstairs and ask our neighbor if she would like to stop staring at her dripping ceiling, and go to the gym with me. How's that for turning lemons into lemonade?
10 years ago
We had a similar issue with our AC, except it went on for six weeks and no one would come to work on it for days at a time. So far, they've fixed the leak, but to do so they had to cut a huge hole in the ventilation duct. So, the bathroom has AC, but not the rest of the house. I asked again today for a status update, and they said they would get to it, but "had no specific timeframe."
ReplyDeleteFortunately (?) thie unit in the bathroom, so we did not have to deal with wet carpet. But then a couple days ago the laundry room drain backed up, as it does on most days, but this time it was so bad that water seeped into our bedroom closet carpet. So, I am also familiar with the "pull up the carpet and blast it with a fan" technique.
Solidarity, comrade.
Wow, thanks for the commiseration, but your situation sounds way worse. Should I ever have the misfortune to live in LA, remind me not to rent in whatever shithole you're currently living in.
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