This is pretty much the Elephant in the room I’ve been avoiding addressing with regards our experience at Oxley Woods. Not because we don’t want people to know what’s going on, but it’s a bit of an embarrassment for us, and certainly I’d imagine for George Wimpey and Wood Newton, and also because it’s caused so much stress and anxiety going over it isn’t really a pleasant experience at all.
Basically, a week before we finally moved in (July 7th) we discovered that the house had leaks. Not just one leak however, but water marks in several places. There were water marks in at least four locations around the house, above windows, in the middle of a wall, and at the joins between walls and ceilings, as well as below a power socket.
This was, at first, diagnosed to be a window fault, and all windows were (poorly) repaired/treated (see this other entry on the whole window saga).
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the end of it, not by a long shot.
Come August, further rainful, and we were sure more water coming into the house, but when checked the plaster felt dry.
Early September, and more obvious leaking, around the downstairs window and power sockets lead to further investigation, which seemed to indicate the source of the leak to be around the Juliet balcony on the first floor, immediately above the full length window on the ground floor. Thankfully the stains had been painted over before this time (in August the previous water marks were still present, so hard to see if fresh ones came through), but had not, as promised, been stain blocked. This meant that the new water marks were obvious and clearly recent.
As a result of this, we had a large hole cut out in the wall near the sealing, and water testing was carried out with a hose and feeling for where the water came in. This lead to the sides of the Juliet balcony being wrapped/sealed with bitumen tape, and the trespa panels to each side being further backed/insulated with some tyvek sheets.
Unfortunately, this work was not carried out very carefully, and the silver tape that covered the black wooden batons either side of the juliet balcony stood out like a sore thumb, looking like someone had used silver duct tape to seal it with. Obviously we were unhappy about this, and this was, on the 18th September, replaced with black tape, which didn’t look “as new”, but at least gave a much neater finish that you’d have to look for to notice. After this was fitted, and another water test was carried out, we could finally look forward to having our walls refilled and repainted.
Well, the walls were filled and painted, and thankfully the area around the window, ceiling and wall socket did, to us, look good as new. Impressive skimming work for sure! We hoped that this would be the end of it all, but unfortunately, it wasn’t to be…. More on that very soon I’m sure!
Separate from all the above, we also have had a leak with water flowing through an upstairs door handle/lock down the door and onto the floor, and downstairs where a rubber stop had not been fitted to a sliding door, allowing water to pass into the house, creating water stains on our thankfully uncarpeted or decorated floor!
