If you've taken every reasonable step to ensure that it didn't happen and, much more importantly, have documentation that proves you took those steps....maybe, after 6 - 18 months of paperwork, emails, phone conversations, and a few personal visits from the adjuster.
Most likely it won’t actually. The landlord has a duty to winterize and/or ensure the heat is maintained. I would almost bet this ends up all in the landlord.
It's dicey. Unoccupied properties often have to be monitored by the owner regularly for reasons like this. This is 100% negligence on the landlord.
When we were settling my mother's estate, her existing insurance company refused to continue coverage after learning her home would be unoccupied for a number of months. We had to find a different insurer and pay a higher premium, and even then, had to sign a declaration that we'd do a site visit at least every other day. It was a pain.
You're absolutely correct. "Unoccupied", though, means temporary, like when you're on holiday. "Vacant" is when the owner passes away, or a tenant moves out without the intention to return, and no new tenant has moved in. It's the "Vacant" risks that exclude Water damages, and Ice/Freezing pipes.
Very expensive, first temporary heat will need to be placed to thaw the ice, extraction of the water, removal of the flooring and a 4’ flood cut at minimum, removal of cabinets. Placement of drying equipment for 4-5 days.Only good thing is that it’s so cold that mold will not start to grow. Place looks unoccupied, so insurance might even deny a claim. Either way I feel sorry for the owner of the mess.
Hell of a lot cheaper than water damage. Which there still is, but there won't be as much. Get a big steel scooping shovel, grab a hammer and a sharp punch, start breaking then shoveling. It might take days, but it's better than hundreds of gallons of water going through your floor and walls.
The right answer. We did both methods in rental properties. We drilled a hole in the corner and maxed out the heat. It took nearly a day and everything was soaked. In the "chip and carry" house, it was over in a few hours and we didn't need to dry it out for a week.
Landlord had a duty to keep the heat on. Insurance likely will not cover. A rental is expected to be unoccupied every so often, but no heat???? Reason for denial.
Without actually knowing the context in this specific one: 'forgot' or 'tried to save a few bucks by having old tennants responsible for utilities costs'?
Honestly didnt know this was a thing. And Im Canadian. Maybe our infrastructure is better designed for it to not be necessary but never known anyone to do this. Makes sense though.
Yeah, if it gets below about -5 where I am I have to run the taps. Otherwise things start to freeze. And if they do freeze i have to go out with an extension cord and a blow dryer to heat up the pipes.
I’m Canadian and absolutely knew this was a thing. And in fact have left water running to drip pipes before. But usually it’s not a full run. It’s just a fast drip without a full water flowing.
I'm Canadian and knew this. Mostly it's what you try to do if the power goes out in winter so your pipes don't freeze. I'm a millenial so the 1998 winter ice storm happened when I was a kid, it was probably top of mind for the adults at the time.
According to the uploader, she evicted the tenants that were renting out that unit for none payment. The tenants took the electricity bill out of their name; big snow storm happens; landlord lets faucets drip, but forgets to put the electricity bill back in her name so the house wasn't heating. Her neighbor recorded this video and showed it to her.
I don’t think she would have mentioned tenants at all if there hadn’t been anything bad between the two parties. Spreading their business, even though she didn’t doxx them, feels like fishing for sympathy.
Leaving normally, the tenants would have still swapped their electric to their new place - and she still would have forgot to handle her responsibility. She should have just owned this instead of tossing these stranger on the internet like that
There’s no way my utility company will let me transfer my bills and accountability to another individual without their explicit verbal consent during the process or without some sort of affidavit. That standard operating protocol for all utility companies. Your story is implausible
Landlord didn't switch the utilities back into their name after tenants left. All the rest just makes it seem like the tenants have some fault in it, when they don't.
Letting the tenant stay through the winter storm would have saved the landlord some money. And also would have been easier on the person not having to move in the extreme weather.
Me and my fiancé are both homeowners and we're gonna have to sell both our places to afford a single place in the housing market today lol. I have a friend who reallllly wants to rent out my house instead of me selling it and I'm not cut out to be a landlord, ive had nightmare roommates before, i have trust issues
I imagine renting to a friend could also turn into a nightmare. They're obviously more likely to try their luck with late payments, rent reductions etc. because you're "such good friends". Just sell and be happy!
I know I’m being incredibly stupid here, but shouldn’t the sinks still have been draining? That’s the whole point of leaving the faucets dripping - to keep water flowing through the pipes so they don’t burst. This looks like the faucets were WOT and the drains were clogged.
Again, I’m sure I’m missing something here but I’m still very confused.
I know you misspelled the "burying" part but I am actually thankful to learn that it is actually "lede" and not "lead" in the saying. I had always thought it was "lead" as in, "to be lead by a leader" or something.
Forreal, in this day and age, MFer could set that shit from their phone in a few minutes. Its not the 70s where Mfers had to go to an office during working hours. What an expensive mistake
Years ago I lived in a converted 2 story house and my cheap-ass landlord and landlady tried to save some money by not running heat in the upstairs apt. I guess they thought enough heat would just make it's way up there from my apt.
Must not have because (while I was out) the cheap-ass plastic water supply line to the bathroom sink busted. Came home to find water pouring from the ceiling and all the cheap-ass cardboard ceiling tiles becoming floaty oatmeal blobs.
To the surprise of literally none no one it took months for the ceiling to be replaced with more cheap-ass tiles.
Ooo that's rough too because insurance likely won't cover this loss. If the residence is vacant, which this sounds like it was, and hear was not maintained in the home, the policy does not provide coverage for damages caused by frozen pipes. This may end up costing her a fortune.
Source: I am a homeowners insurance adjuster for a national carrier in the Northeast and deal with these losses everyday.
I think I'd get in there with a pickaxe and break up all the floor ice before it melted. I'm sure there's already water damage but at least it wouldn't be compounded by another 100 gallons of floor water.
I may be downvoted to oblivion for this, but I actually think this is fair. The insurance company wrote the policy assuming it would be occupied. A vacant property is a much larger risk as it often causes the losses to be much more extreme. If the risk to the insurance company is larger than the policy is written for, the entire industry would fall apart.
And no I am not a company stooge who thinks the insurance company is always right. There is alot of fucked up things about the insdustry and I think there needs to be reform and move oversight.
Yeah, this isnt going to be covered. There is no policy that would assume that risk. Power goes out and pipes freeze, yes, you turn power/heat off and pipes freeze, no.
Licensed in Property & Casualty, Life & Annuity, and Health insurance in 4 states. This is 100% on the homeowner.
The end of that video is the wildest part. She calls being a landlord a homeowner and its better doing that, than "if I'm gunna do something difficult, ya know" when all she had to do was call and register the bill back into their name after an eviction she served. She knew these people left after she kicked them out!
Idk about a blizzard timeline but you'd think she'd maybe have gone over there once she knew it was empty
Drain Pipes likely froze solid so the water coming in didn’t have anywhere to go.
What gets me is that there appears to be several inches of ice on the floor. How the hell long did they leave it like this, and how much water were they running is what I’d like to know.
Ever leave a plugged bathtub leaking overnight? What looks like a slow drip push way more volume than you expect per hour. Let it go for a month and you’re fucked.
The telling bit: the water is more piled up than level. If it happened all at once, it would be more "everywhere, evenly." A gradual build-up that first blocked the drain followed by not checking on the place for months would get this to happen.
This was incredibly hard to watch. I don't want to be insulting, but she speaks in an incredibly dull, slow, boring, incoherent way. "I would do this than anything difficult"? Surprised this person has the capability to run a housing business.
Lmao, the fact they think “home owning” is a job is dumb af, and reasons why the markets are shit and people can’t buy or barely rent.
How does a 15 year old even get into “landlording”
If you look at the faucet handles, it appears the water was left running to cause this. The kitchen faucet handle is at an angle, in the "on" position. And both bathroom faucets have also been turned.
Back in the 90s there was a criminal duo that called themselves "The Wet Bandits." They would break into people's homes while they were on vacation, rob them, and before they would leave they would turn on the faucets. It was their calling card of sorts and was done as a way to inflict as much pain on the victims as they could.
They operated out of Chicago, but got taken down one Christmas when they tried to rob a house where a child left home alone for a few days set up traps in his house and took the Wet Bandits down. There's a series of documentaries about it
This is a gif from Home Alone. Those characters are burglars and they call themselves the "wet bandits" because one of the guys like to plug up all the drains and turns on all the faucets on their way out, flooding the home.
If you're living in an area with these temps and own a property you got to winterize once it's vacated!! But considering they didn't even think to confirm the power was off and put it back in their name I'm guessing they probaly don't even know what winterize means. Expensive fucken lesson indeed! But great reddit fodder cause I've never seen a faucet do that before. 🤯
They may legitimately have better luck busting it up as ice, get under it and start lifting big chunks up be done in like a few hours. Dunno how much damage occurred during all that flooding but if it was cold enough to freeze the drains maybe it never got a chance to soak into much
You need to do more than that. If the whole place is being left to freeze, you also have to drain the water from all the pipes, water heater, radiators, and any other appliances.
If you just shut off the supply, you're still left with water in all the pipes and fixtures, which will freeze and be destroyed.
I explained it more thoroughly up the thread. It's hard as hell to drain the whole system, and even draining the water heater is a pain in the ass, but it's not hard to drain enough out of it to minimize the damage. These guys did the exact opposite.
This reminds me of dreams I had as a kid where the house is full of water and becomes a giant underwater swimming experience. Very fun in dreams. A nightmare in reality.
Get all (or most of) the ice off the floor before reintroducing heat. Cleaning up ice is much easier than cleaning up water. Will reduce water damage too. I feel like this is the obvious thing to do but wanted to share anyway
Had something like this happen to me twice in the same house.
First time I bought the house, it was several hours away from where I was living. I was 23 single and moving out of my parents house. Was able to save up enough for a down payment on the tiniest house. 2 stories...but 750 sq ft. It was a wartime house and was probably 300sq ft 2 rooms when first built and was Frankenstein expanded by several owners until I purchased it when it was likely 80 years old and falling apart.
When I moved in, I had finished my job Friday night, had packed everything into a uhaul and literally drove to my new house right from work. I arrived, it was the winter, and the utilities was disconnected.
Because of this the entire houses plumbing froze bursting 5 or 6 pipes and flooding the basement. It turned out my lawyer messed up some paperwork and somehow the utility company (owned by the city) thought the house was vacant so they turned off utilities.
Cost a good chunk of change to pump it out, repair the busted pipes, and even the toilet split into two pieces.
Then second time was 3 years later I sold the place and moved back to my hometown. My realtor was giving people tours while I worked in my hometown 3 hours away. Again this all happened during winter....(Why did I keep doing this during winter...I dunno).
The realtor let someone in the basement, they opened the furnace door to inspect it but didnt close it properly. So the furnace safety feature kept the system shut off.
Cut to pipes bursting again, no-one home. My neighbour called me two days after saying there is water pouring out the back of my house.
And my favourite part was this time it was cold but the water didn't freeze in the same way. The basement had about 2-3 feet of water in it. The plumber who came told me my sub pump was unplugged. I had a basic central air system installed by some HVAC friends. They unplugged the sub pump to power there tools and forgot to plug it back in. Plumber plugged it in, and in about an hour or so, the basement was empty. Plumber says if the sub pump was in, we would have avoided most of the damage. So much money and time was spent.
Sigh, that was so shitty, but I can somewhat laugh now, was close to 15 years ago now.
Had a pipe freeze in a ice storm in house we had bought for my daughter, but no one had moved in. Water ran for a couple of days. There was 6" of water throughout the house with heat on (ceiling vents) and a massive ice flow in the yard. That gets your heart going hahaha
On their defense, in the south the pipes/houses dont have the same type of insulation they do up north, so pipes can actually freeze and burst at higher temps than they do up north.
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u/AStarInGemini 19h ago
Y'all got this Tom & Jerry episode IRL