Obnoxious neighbors..

[HipChick]

How do you deal with obnoxious neighbors? I just got in, and my neighbor is banging down my door like a crazy person...apparently, there is a small leak, that is leaking down to her condo...by the way she is acting, you think she is getting she is getting drowned in a lake or something..
I took a look in my utility closet which has a hot water heater, the drain pan is dry, all the pipes are dry....some kind of A/C unit is there too, and I pulled off one panel that looks like it has some condensation in the bottom...but that it is...now she is threatening to call the police on me...I don't think this anything for a plumber, but for some reason the seems to be leaking in the drain pan...I don't want to pull any more panels off, because wires are sticking out, and there is a big fuse on one of them, and I don't know what I am looking for..

I don't think I am going to get an A/C person tonight, but what the hell else can I do....she is acting like I went and took a hammer and burst up some pipes so it could leak down to her...she is a nasty piece of work... just needed to vent...

[rug]

1. "Scum village"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023650534

[Throd]

2. She may very well be a crazy person, but water damage issues are a big and possibly expensive deal.

[HipChick]

6. That is what house insurance is for..

besides she hit my car almost two months ago, and still hasn't paid for the damage

[Throd]

17. Insurance aside, water leakage can be a nasty business

Forget about your whacko neighbor for a moment.

Even if you don't have to pay a thing, do you want the walls stripped to the studs for a few weeks to correct mildew issues?

Sorry to be an uninvited worry wart, but in the construction business, water seepage liability is something all the contractors are trying to foist upon the other guy.

[HipChick]

18. Your concerns are valid...but my point here, is she is acting like it is intentional

that I did this intentionally...

Like how she backup up into my car, and tore off half my bumper...that she has yet to pay for..

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. She does sound crazy, my dear HipChick...

Is there a landlord you could call?

I would be cautious around water and live wires too...

Good luck...

[HipChick]

5. I own it...

I'm not playing around water and live wire...there's a big fuse...I flipped that off..

[OriginalGeek]

4. let her call the police

they will not be amused and you can show them that you are a calm and reasonable person.

[HipChick]

7. I don't think a gnat would have a good bath

in the amount of water she is complaining about...

[davidpdx]

28. Exactly

With all the reports about crazy 911 calls, I'm sure the police would not be amused. Remember the story about people calling about their cable being out. Crazy crazy stuff.

[bluesbassman]

8. 18" subwoofer and something soothing like Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.

That'll calm her down. Or at least you won't be able to hear her pounding on the door at any rate.

Seriously, I know multi-family dwelling neighbors can be challenging. Hang in there.

[OriginalGeek]

9. I hope some day I get to hear

a real orchestra play that. I don't think I have any equipment that can reproduce what that would be like performed live - and they could get a cannon in there too - I saw AC/DC do it on For Those About To Rock....

[csziggy]

23. I like the Eric Kunzel version

With real cannon, real carillon bells, the Kiev Symphony Chorus, a children’s chorus and the optional brass band in the finale.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080327040609/http://www.telarc.com/gscripts/title.asp?gsku=0541&mscssid=SA9U6068CJG49NK9DE2BSBP489MNFLK0

http://www.amazon.com/Tchaikovsky-Overture-Kunzel-Cincinnati-Multichannel/dp/B00005AVNH/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1378959554&sr=1-1&keywords=Erich+Kunzel+1812

[pipi_k]

29. One of

my favorite pieces...thanks for the link.

Nothing worse than hearing this ruined by fake cannon fire and crappy "bells".

Added CD to my Amazon wish list.

[OriginalGeek]

33. THanks!

I'm gonna look for this on vinyl - description sounds awesome!

[redwitch]

31. I saw it live in Quebec City1975.

Very, very powerful! Complete with cannons, I am sure the city down below felt it was under siege! The performance was at the Citadel on the Plains of Abraham. The Canadian Airforce did a flyover wingtip to wingtip at the start which always freaks me out. One false move and it's all over.

[HipChick]

10. Funny enough....I have 3 sub woofers handy..

It might be the evaporator coil...condensing coil...I have no idea what I am looking for..

[bluesbassman]

13. Was it really hot and the ac on all day?

Coils could've just frozen up and then thawed out over taxing the drainage. See if you can locate where the drain line exits the building. It may be blocked or it could be blocked at the drain pan.

Good luck!

[HipChick]

15. That is what I think..I am trying to find my model on the internet, right now..

there is water in what looks like the drain pan...

I don't run the A/C that much, and as a matter of fact it is starting to cool down...

[NuclearDem]

11. Depends how good they taste with A1.

[HipChick]

12. No Thanks...

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

14. There's almost no day that goes by where there aren't beer cans and fast food wrappers in my yard

and a lot of other things (used condoms, too). The neighbors are all barbarians. Several times I've tried planting grass in the narrow strip between the sidewalk and the street in front of my house but the next day I find deep footprints all over the freshly planted area. I've posted signs like "freshly planted grass" only to find the sign ripped out and lying in the street or stolen. I can never park a car in front of my house, as the neighbors across from me own two houses side by side and have dozens of visitors day and night (who also trample my new grass when they get out of their cars on the passenger side). On trash day, I have to put my trash containers in my driveway because the neighbors seemingly own the curbside in front of my house. A few years ago, my car was stolen from my driveway in broad daylight by joy riders and found a week later in another neighborhood. This week, I heard the sound of bottles clinking together coming from my back yard. It was a neighborhood woman stealing my recyclable cans and bottles from my backyard bin to turn them in for cash. The outer wall on the side of my house which is on a corner lot was covered with graffiti and it took me a day to paint over it. A neighbor who is a policeman and absolutely insane kept bugging me and pressuring me to clean it because he didn't want his teen daughter to be exposed to tagging. A few days later, I had a mechanic and his young son over to my house to look at my old DKW car. The son tossed the wrapper to a stick of gum in the street and the policeman across the street came out of his house to confront the kid and threatened to arrest him unless he picked the wrapper up from the gutter. I picked it up myself. The man is insane and dangerous.

You might think it's a bad neighborhood but it's in a nice area south of Los Angeles not far from the beach. I just think it's some (not all) of the people of today who have little regard for others, no manners, and no upbringing, probably having raised themselves by watching TV while their parents unfortunately both had to work, whether it's your crazy downstairs lady or my barbarians.

[narnian60]

35. I would go absolutely nuts

if I had neighbors like that. Your home should be your sanctuary.

[Shampoobra]

16. If she calls the police, the communications officer who answers will tell her...

...not to tie up emergency lines with non-emergency complaints.

If it's not resolved between the two of you, it becomes a civil matter (between the condo association and the owners and/or landlords involved), not a criminal matter.

[HipChick]

19. The condo association will not get involved...

I will contact my home insurance tomorrow....

[Incitatus]

20. Clogged drain or bad pump.

I'm not an A/C guy but that's what is sounds like. If you can't see anything obvious like a drain pipe you can try to snake out, there's nothing you can do until tomorrow. Sorry about your insane neighbor. Most of us have probably had to deal with at least one before.

[HipChick]

27. I will just call someone in the morning...she sounds as though she wants to get legal with me

or something..

[loli phabay]

21. so glad i cant even see my nearest neighbours house, hate to have people that close to me

[MiddleFingerMom]

22. Late 70's and we were moving out of our 4th-floor apartment. It had been raining hard...

.
.
.
... for days. We were draining our waterbed into our tub and apparently, that
was the proverbial camel's-back straw. A knock on our door and it's the young
maintenance guy who said we had flooded the apartment below us.
.
When he found out that it was almost certainly our fault, he told us not to
worry --- that the people were jerks and he was going to tell them it was the
rain... "act of God"... blah-blah-blah.
.
NICE guy. We invited him to come back upstairs for some beers.
.
.
.

[R B Garr]

24. Goodness, it sounds like you got one of my ex neighbors who blamed me

for a leaky water heater. My unit was directly above her ground unit on the second story of a 3-story building, and she came banging on my door and said I was responsible because I wasn't letting the workers in to fix it. That's when it was obvious she was pretty crazy since that's the first I heard of it. How was I to know something in an outside closet was leaking. I wasn't even home at the time. So I briefly started to rationalize with her by telling her that 1) how the F*kk was I supposed to know about a leak in her apartment, 2) why didn't she call maintenance with her emergency since she nor I fix water heaters 3) if it's such an emergency, maintenance will come in anyway, whether I like it or not (duh). Then I shut the door on her, and I told her why I was shutting the door on her and that I was done trying to make sense with her threats that were too stupid for words.

A day or two later, I saw her boyfriend walking their dog and I asked him if she was on medication because she was blaming me for something I had no knowledge of and ascribing some evil motives to me when she was too stupid to just pick up the phone and report her emergency, all of which made it seem like she had some disorder. He didn't really say much, but he wasn't defending her, either. Sure enough, the maintenance people were in my apartment when I came home the next day. They didn't have to ask my permission for entry for that type of emergency work involving water damage or any other emergency actually.

grammar edits mostly

[mrmpa]

25. Does your Condo have maintenance men on staff? If so.........

call them in the a.m. and let them handle it. That's what I do. Back in May, I found over an inch of water in my furnace room and water on my porch, which the room is adjacent to.

Called maintenance, they found that the person 2 floors above me just had their AC unit serviced. The service person flushed the AC unit and the water poured down the shaft. The water damaged both my AC and furnace units. I now have new units, my insurance company paid for it & went after the culprit. But I'm still waiting for my $500 deductible.

I've never had to talk to the couple 2 floors above, which makes my life easier. I let maintenance find the problem & I deal with it.

For the idiot who's bothering you, tell her to take 2 aspirins and you'll talk to her tomorrow.

[HipChick]

26. she just called me ranting and raving again...it is 1:20am in the morning for FFS

asking me if i did anything...I said I did not...the leak apparently has stopped some hours ago...

I've been sitting surfing on the internet for what could be the reasons..

She started making all these threats again, saying she had witnesses - I hung up on her, and called my home insurance

They said to start with the home owners association, and then go from there...and if this person is being a raving lunatic, they will talk to them..

[Sheldon Cooper]

30. When someone starts bothering me at 1:20 in the morning, that's when I'd call the cops.

That's disturbing the peace, or disorderly conduct, or something.

[redwitch]

32. Ugh. So sorry you have this neighbor.

We used to have some crazy neighbors but they have all moved, yay!

[RebelOne]

34. I know all about obnoxious neighbors.

I had some a couple of years ago. Thank heavens they moved out and they blamed their problems on me. But they were the ones who created the probems. But at least they are gone.

[noamnety]

36. Regardless of the neighbor's social skills

and regardless of her issues dealing with the car accident, I would treat this as a semi-emergency on your end to get fixed.

If you had a leak going into your house, you would want it fixed ASAP, I'm sure. It seems the responsible thing to do, to take all the action you can as soon as you find out about the problem, and pass on to them what you've done to address it, and let them know the schedule for repairs.

I'm sure she's being an ass, and you have my sympathies on that. I have some shitty neighbors too, luckily they figured out early on to just leave us alone so we don't interact anymore. Their first year was filled with stealing our utilities without permission - we had to cut off power to the outdoor outlets and shut off the water to the outside faucets; they were sending their dog into our yard to do its business, it was awful. So I'm not saying be a pushover and accept unending harassment - but it doesn't take much water to ruin an entire ceiling/wall. So I do understand their stress and sense of urgency.