[Windswept]

Originally Posted by Engine Joe Wow! What a comprehensive list of troubles and travails! Thanks for that write up.

You're very welcome, Joe.

You know, you'd be amazed at the crappy job done in some construction these days. My father bought a place a few years back - new - and it was only after he'd been using the bath/shower for a few weeks that a massive load of water that had been pooling made itself known in a messy and expensive way. Turns out, the plumber never installed the "L" shaped connector pipe between two pipes (one horizontal, one vertical), so all the water was just running out the end of one pipe into the house structure.

Omigosh. That reminds me of a house across the street. After the people had lived there for some time, they started noticing a really horrible, rotten smell coming from somewhere. Nobody could figure out the source. Turned out... similar to your story... all the wastewater from the kitchen had been flowing into the dirt under the house, under the concrete slab, because the wastewater pipe had not been connected. Rotting food particles accumulated down there. Obviously, they had to come jackhammer out the middle of the kitchen floor, clean out the disgusting, slimed, rotting mess down there *shiver*, and hook up the pipes. Wow, I was glad to have my problems rather than theirs.

Oh, one more to add. My outside water line, bringing water into the house from the city's lines, started to leak. Turns out, it was covered by a class action lawsuit because plastic pipe had been installed instead of copper piping.

Then, after the master plumber who came to supervise the repair left, he left behind a worker who installed the new copper piping, but ran the new pipe *over* the close-to-the-surface pipe of the automatic sprinkling system.

Result was that the newly-installed main copper water line to the house was just like two or three inches below the surface of the ground - and easily accessible to damage by anyone doing yard work. *sigh* They had to come back out later and redo that section of pipe.

The bad news is that we don't have any control over this -- though the good news is that we will have dual-paned windows, nonetheless. Our building is a landmarked art deco tower, so anything relating to the exterior or façade has to go through the landmarks commission. So I can't just put in what I want. Fortunately, the developer who's doing the building reno dealt with the commission and (amongst other things) we got our windows! But window box herb gardens and the like may be verboten... (and we'll need sound and dust control in the building -- the area we're moving to is in the middle of a huge economic boom/revitalization, and there are more than a couple of construction projects in the pipeline in the general area)

Sounds like you are going to have a fantastic place there, Joe. Congratulations on embarking on this new and thrilling adventure of home-owning.