We had torrential rain in our part of Melbourne at the end of last week & it looks like water has been pouring down one internal corner of the house. It has lifted all the paint in that corner & pooled on both sides of the wall.
A few roof tiles above got cracked when someone stole our air conditioner, so I'm guessing there's a leak there somewhere.
Obviously this is something the builder is going to have to fix but:
- 1. How extensive should the repair work be...ie should they be replacing the gib board & ceiling in that part of the house? Should I at least be expecting to see wall panels off (indicating they've looked in the walls for damage)? Or, as long as the gib isn't soggy, is it reasonable for them to just retouch the paint?
- 2. Who is liable if it leaks again? The reason I ask this is we're having wooden floorboards laid in that room after handover & if a similar thing happens, the floor will be ruined (as the boards swell if water gets under them). As it is reasonable to expect them to fix the leak prior to handover, would the builder then be responsible for ruining the floorboards (if it happened) or would we (ie our insurance)?
- 3. Will this effect obtaining a certificate of occupancy?
- 4. Should we be expecting this to set our handover date back by a significant time?
I cannot believe this has happened! But at least it's happened now & not when we moved in & had our floorboards down (I guess there's some advantages to lots of rain just before handover!).