I am so happy to have come across this post! I purchased a condo 4 years ago and am now selling it. I live on the 3rd floor (1 bedroom) however the unit below me is considered one unit and is a 2 floor unit (2 bedrooms). My downstairs neighbor and I started off rocky and since then she's been constantly complaining about excessive noise from my unit. Stomping, slamming doors, using appliances etc in the late hours of the night. It's come to the point where she's escalating to the HOA BOD- however i'm also now selling my unit because I purchased a single family home in a new development and in order to save and put myself out of the misery of living with my neighbor will just live elsewhere while waiting for the new house to be built. If I had known what I know now I would not have opted to purchase a condo on the 3rd floor (in a 4 floor building). 1) Living on the 3rd floor I received noise complaints from my neighbor below me while I also had to endure noise from the person above me. (Being the understanding neighbor that I was I never once complained to the person above me since they have children so I opted for earplugs instead). Mind you I live in a one bedroom and so I never purposely tried to create noise but some things are inevitable like having to walk to my bathroom. I refuse to tiptoe in my own house but I assure you i'm not stomping i'm walking regularly! 2) As many people mentioned you cannot pick your neighbors! I'm going to be honest my community is filled with some downright nasty neighbors. If it's not me dealing with my crazy neighbor there's constantly complaints and random letters on our community corkboard. People complaining about how people park, how people throw away trash, how long the water is shut off for construction. People literally use a notice as a form of communication and will write on it and form conversations on that one piece of paper. 3) Your condo might look/seem nice now but you never know what it'll look like 20-30 years from now. Although i've only lived in my place for 4 years I have to say that I was shocked at the lack of care for the building. My boyfriend got stuck in the elevator once for an hour with a cancer patient in our building on a very hot day and there is barely any ventilation in the elevator and no air conditioning! I later learned from a neighbor that our elevator is the wrong type of elevator for our building. Additionally I think the materials used for our building are just downright poor. I can hear the person in the unit above me snoring. I can't tell the person above me to stop snoring, but that's just to show how it could be a mix of bad materials. At least with an apartment you know it's a somewhat temporary situation.. if you hate it you could potentially move elsewhere with not much risk. Honestly before purchasing my single family home I even considered a townhouse as an upgrade to my condo. I figured that sharing sidewalls with individuals is a lot less worse than sharing floors/ceilings which I think are just terrible and usually amplify noise. At the end of the day i'm happy to be moving away from this situation and moving to a place where I can run the dishwasher and use the overnight cycle at night without someone berating me! It came to the point where my neighbor's requests were aggressive and rude and made me feel uncomfortable living in my own condo.

A San Francisco Millennium Tower resident has a news report on this subject. Inspectors cut openings in her outside walls and the unit below and discovered openings due to shoddy construction. Search Google for the video. I live in an upper ranch condo with townhouses next door and a unit below. I have been smelling sewer, garbage,animal odors. For over ten years. Yes, I have reported the issues to the property manager and the HOA with no action on their part. In the last two years , chemicals have been applied in my unit. The chemicals smell like smoke and also a mentholated odor which I suspect.Is a bug pesticide. The menthol and smokey smells are in two rooms, while.The sewer smell is all over my.Unit-2,000 sq. Ft. I suspect the sewer pipes have been opened deliberately. I have contacted the state & local police regarding the smells, hacking and an opening in my attic floor. Yes, some crook connected my ATT wifi wires to the townhouse next door and the unit downstairs. If you have an attic, make sure to inspect it thoroughly for wires and openings.

Grout is NOT waterproof. Even sealed grout isn't waterproof. Regrouting will do nothing to stop water from getting behind a tile installation. What stops that happening is waterproofing. 20 years ago, showers weren't constructed with waterproofing. Many of them set tile straight onto greenboard, which was supposed to be "water resistant" drywall. Water damage from such an install is a common well known syndrome that anyone in the trades is very well familiar with. It's sadly an all too common occurrence. The showers that were constructed that way will pretty much be a mass of mold and mildew behind that almost pristine looking wall from the slow water leaks penetrating through the grout. If a soaking tub was used, the issue is exacerbated and there's usually more than just the mold and mildew behind the wall. There's usually a semi-active small leak to whatever is below. A waterproof tub shower needs a tub with a tile flange. The install is like installing shingles on a roof. One layer physically overlaps the other, and that's what keeps the water out. A properly constructed waterproof shower doesn't even actually need tile on the surface to keep water out of the wall cavities. The overlapping waterproof layers will do that without the tile. Technology has changed a lot in 20 years. Educate yourself thoroughly on modern methods of creating a water tight tub shower. Your band-aids may work for a short time, but if the inspector is correct, you will need to know how to do the renovation properly. And even if your bandaids work for a short enough time to get the home listed for sale, you are still required to inform any future buyers of the water damage issues. They will want to deduct the cost of the project from any offers that you might receive. Buyers also typically inflate in their minds the costs of the project, so keep that in mind.

Everyone pulls the flow restrictors out of shower heads - particularly if you live somewhere where you have a well and a pressure tank instead of a water system. When you have clients complaining that they can't rinse shampoo out of their hair, you try to take care of the problem. There are a couple of brands we stay clear of and don't use - we have found that Moen does not work well in terms of water pressure and Grohe is just all around trashy junk (in our experience). The way most remodel contracts would work is that the contractor and his/her sub (in this case the plumber) would check for issues with the installation. Asking the building management if there are any other issues in the building is a valid question. Wednesday morning is correct - if the water heaters are on-demand units, there are lots of problems documented where the newer reduced units that restrict water flow do not allow enough flow to activate the heating unit in the on-demand water heater. The cartridge should be checked and if it is bad the manufacturer will replace the part, but you may have to pay the plumber to install it. Most remodel contracts say that the GC does not warranty products, a GC warranties his/her work and that of the subs. If the whole valve is bad, then the same applies - the manufacturer will provide a new valve but will not pay for the work to replace it. The GC is not responsible for replacing defective products at his/her expense. A GC may choose to handle it at their cost - but only for the really good clients that have been a joy to work with and that they want to work with again.