So here's the belated story, already old news...
When I met the previous tenant to pick up the keys to the apartment on the 31st of January, he had in his hand what they call a "constat amiable", which is a standard insurance form for two people to agree upon and sign. This one in particular was for "dégâts des eaux", or water damage. He told me they were starting to see the paint bubble and peel off the bathroom ceiling, and so they were in contact with the tenant above us trying to discover the source of the problem.
Sure enough, when we moved in we noticed this, as well as the paint peeling on the dining room ceiling, which is on the other side of the wall separating the two rooms. (Oddly, they have a window near the ceiling of the bathroom that lets light pass between the two...). See the photo on the Superbowl entry of this blog.
Fast-forward to Friday, Feb. 15th: Our landlord found an Italian plumber and his French assistant to come over and do an assessment of the two apartments. At that time we met our neighbor above us, Giovanni ('G' for short - his landlord's name is Fabio; plenty of Italians around here; turns out G works in the theory division at CERN as well). G gave us his keys - trusting sort - because he was going to be in Italy over the weekend, and the plumbers were coming back on Monday morning before he would be returning.
So on Monday the 18th the French assistant came back and went into the apartment upstairs and started excavating around the floor of the bathroom, near the heating pipes, with a handheld jackhammer. (My adviser says they use poured concrete to make these buildings). It wasn't long before he had a puddle of water in the hole he was making. And very soon after that he discovered the source of the leak. The pipes had rusted through between the two apartments, and until he had broken apart the cement it had kept the leak to a slow trickle - but now it was shooting out uncontrolled into G's apartment. (I've heard that it's a good idea to turn off the water before searching for such a leak...)
At this point I sauntered casually down two floors to the concierge's apartment, which is directly below us, but he wasn't home; his daughter (thank God she at least spoke some English!) called him on the cell phone. It took a few minutes for him to arrive, go down to the basement and turn off the water, and then for the water to drain from the top of the building on down to the location of the leak. In that time the water had flooded G's two bedrooms and hallway, and also over the parquet in the dining room. It also drained through the hole made by the assistant plumber, down our walls, through our floor and into the concierge's apartment. Both the daughter and K were on the respective apartments trying to stanch the flow with towels. It wasn't until the concierge had vacuumed up the water with a special vacuum that the situation stabilized.
After that the assistant plumber finished excavating through our ceiling - chunks of concrete littering our bathroom. "Voici" my first film posted on this blog (took several attempts over the course of days to upload!):
Some pictures post-excavation:
They came back in the afternoon, hacksawed out the offending portion of pipe and replaced it with new piping, and then plastered the hole back up again.
So now we are in the process of filling out "constat amiable's" for our respective insurance companies and getting estimates of what it will cost to fix everything.
In retrospect, G obviously got it worse in his apartment; they'll have to rip the carpeting out. Here's just one picture where you can see the water marks:
K and I had already met one British couple at church who are in construction together - the wife has her picture posted on this blog as one of our babysitters from last December. They came over today to assess the damage in order to generate an estimate ("devis" en français) for the insurance. They'll have to paint the kitchen/dining room ceiling and walls, and plaster and paint the bathroom ceiling and wall.
But since the leak was repaired, this has been mostly a minor nuisance in our every day life. Stay tuned to the next entry for more interesting developments :-)
Take care,
-PKBD
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