After being seriously messed about by Wood Newton earlier in the week, and another decent meeting with the George Wimpey site manager on Tuesday another full day of disruption followed yesterday (Wednesday) as more water testing was underway on our eco house.
I could ramble on for ages about how unhappy we are with the attitude of Aiden from Wood Newton, how rude he was to Abi because she actually wanted to be in on their conversations about OUR property (stomping about saying “I can’t work like this”… and worse), and how little time they spent actually spraying the house with water in various locations. For example, ten minutes on one window, so I asked if they thought that was enough to really simulate a decent amount of rainfall “How long do you want us to spray it for then” came the reply from PR guru Aiden.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that only one thing was established, it seems that water is coming in through the reveals and into and through the window frame in the full length window in the living/dining room. This to us seems to be an inherent and rather stupid oversight and design flaw leaving no room for the slightest deviation in manufacture, and also not suitable for weather, because in the words of Aiden when it gets hot and cold it will expand and can open up new gaps.
The rest of the testing focused on the front of the property and not one of the known points of water ingress, some witnessed as recently as Friday last week revealed themselves. This is part of the problem, one day there’s a leak in one location, the next, due perhaps to weather changes or the water Gremlins living inside the walls, the leaks have moved somewhere else. This doesn’t help the Wood Newton and George Wimpey guys finding the various faults and flaws, but it also is no help to us having our home continually pulled apart and tested on.
The only thing that did appear was two NEW water patches on the kitchen ceiling. These are in a location towards the front of the property where we have never before witnessed any water ingress, tide marks, or moisture. Unfortunately these appeared relatively late in the day at 15:30 after about 115 minutes of spraying the windows on the top floor. Weirdly, the moisture metre and finger tests in the holes drilled in our walls revealed NO dampness anywhere near the windows on the second or first floor or anywhere leading the water marks on the ceiling. Water is somehow penetrating the walls and working into the property. But still, nobody knows how.
The plan is that first thing this morning (usually meaning 8:30, but there’s no sign yet of anyone gathering outside, and it’s five to nine) they will begin again with spraying ONLY the first floor of the property with water injected with dye. This will continue as long as feasible to see if the water marks re-appear. If and when they do appear, they will track them back using holes, the moisture metre, a small probing camera etc. to attempt to find the root cause of at least these leaks.
So far it would appear we have faulty windows, inherently faulty windows in several locations, which were fitted using an inherently faulty method (now “fixed” with flash banding using Resistit) in addition to other, unknown faults leading to this further water ingress.
