Rental Suite Woes, Pt. 2

A shower of sparks was the figurative nail in the coffin. I'm definitely going to look into moving out in the fall.

I've never had so many problems in a rental suite before. Let's recap:

- When we first moved in the cleaners had done everything but the windowsills and blinds, which were disgusting and black for the bottom 2 feet. We called the landlord and requested he have them cleaned, which he did. But the cleaners still didn't do the windowsills very well.

- A week after we move in we notice a slight ladybug infestation. It could be worse, so we systematically removed them from the apartment one by one. I later discovered the point of entry was through the windows, where a large gathering of them had decided to camp around the window seals.

- 1 month after moving in the toilet in the suite upstairs sprung a leak and bored a hole through my bathroom ceiling. It took 2 months to finally get somebody in to fix the hole, and then another 2 months for him to come back and finish the job by sanding and painting. But he did a half-assed job and left all the sanded plaster all over the bathroom for me to clean up.

- 3 months after moving in I notice a lot of water forming a puddle behind the toilet. Thinking it's a pipe leak, I called the landlord. His plumber checked it out and said it was all because of the condensation running down the outside of the toilet and dripping off the pipe in the back. Okay, fine, no problem. I notice around this same time that the windowsills are literally filling with water from condensation. I soak up the water using paper towel, and go through 2 rolls doing so. The suggested fix for both was running the bathroom fan all the time. Refusing to run the fan 24/7 for electricity reasons (see next bullet point), I decided to set the humidity control in the hallway. 2 months later the puddle in the bathroom is still a problem and so are the windowsills.

- 4 months after moving in we recieved our first power bill in the amount of $191.00. We called Hydro to find out what's going on. They blamed the electric heating. So we turned the thermostats down by 3-4 degrees in every room. When our power bill came last week it was $213.00. That's almost $20 more than the previous one, after turning down the heat. We called hydro, but again they blamed the electric heating.

- 5 months after moving in the puddle problem in the bathrooom persists, despite the automatic humidity control turning the fans on every few hours. The control is currently set at 65% and is still triggering the fans, which is a sign of far too much humidity. I then decide to clean the windowsills, which are filled with water again. While doing so I discover black mold starting to form around the edges of the window. I also find a large mold growth on the back of the toilet. I contacted the landlord last week, and am still expecting somebody to come look at the windows, which I suspect are the source of at least three of these problems (the electric bill, the condensation, and the mold).

Now on to the newest exciting disaster:

So last night I'm sitting in the living room playing X360 like I often do. Suddenly I hear a very loud electrical buzzing and look up to see a shower of sparks spewing from the ceiling-fan light fixture. I scream and leap across the the room to the switch, turning the lights off to avoid starting an electrical fire. We check the breaker box, but it's not clear which breaker the fan is on. So instead we put tape over the switch as a reminder not to touch the lightswitch under any circumstances.
But the landlord is gone away for the weekend and the building management are MIA as well.

*Sigh*