I'll cut to the chase. Over the summer, the flooring in my new condo was flooded. The condo I purchased at the end of March came with an engineered wood flooring that was only 2 years old.
By August what I thought was a "feature" of the flooring, was actually something going wrong. It was definitively discovered when I had to hire an electrician to fix a GFI outlet that wasn't working. Turns out it was working exactly as it was supposed to. The floor outlets in the GFI's line were FULL of water. The water was shorting out the outlets. The GFI saved the place from completing shorting out and who knows what else.
From that discovery it was weeks of various contractors trying to figure out what and where the water was coming from.
Minneapolis and Minnesota for that matter had a very hot and humid summer. A top 10 for heat. I won't bore you with the 5 or 6 visits by 4 different companies, the trying to convince the building managers to take it seriously, and the final determination that there was a blockage in the building condensation line below my unit.
My unit is the bottom of a 27 story building. The HVAC condensation lines all converge and take a 90 degree turn to travel across the lobby below me. Somewhere between my and the final outlet, a clog was backing up everyone's condensation into my unit.
My wood flooring absorbed all that water over the summer when we had these hot, humid days and everyone's air conditioning was running above me.
I had a mold test done. The results came back as non-toxic everyday mold. When the damaged floor was removed, they did not find mold. Thank goodness. They also disinfected the floor and ran a high-powered dehumidifier.
The building is paying for the investigation and remediation including removing the damaged flooring and all the wet underlayment.
State Farm, my insurance, has denied my claim for the replacement flooring. The claim adjuster is saying it is seepage over time and therefore not covered. It is certainly not seepage. The time element is the time it took to figure out what was going on. If anyone knows a lawyer that handles insurance or condo coverage, please get in touch. I am serious.
I could not wait for the insurance to get resolved and proceeded to get new flooring. I hated the bare concrete and it was very cold to walk on.
The following photos are in reverse chronological order. I would rather remember the outcome (except the insurance part) than what I have dealt with all summer and fall.
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| The new flooring and furniture back in with Maggie supervising. |
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| Cleaning the new flooring before bringing back all the furniture. |
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| The new flooring. It is not this golden. The color matches the cabinets more. The flooring is oak and the cabinets are maple. |
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| The new flooring going in. Those radiators along the window wall were very tricky. |
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| After the existing flooring was removed, an industrial dehumidifier was used (that large stainless steel thing near the cabinets). It was loud. |
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| The previous flooring was all removed from the main room. The wet is the disinfectant that was applied and allowed to dry. |
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| So many different companies and people came through trying to figure out the issue. |
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| For mine and Maggie's safety, the main room was sealed off during the remediation. |
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| The previous flooring and the corner where the flooding came from. |
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| I recorded this inch of water in the electrical outlet. This occurred in less than 24 hours on our last hot and humid day in late September. |
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| The water collected in two of the floor outlets causing the GFI to stay tripped. |
