Cracked fireplace bringing in ants - renter or owner responsibility?

Factual Questions
1

Basically, here’s the situation. We are currently renting a townhouse from private landlords in a residential area (not a complex). We also own a house in Ohio that we are renting out. We have only lived here since the end of June, and have had no problems with our landlords - they’ve been great. We are also trying to be model tenants, and plan on being here for several years, so we’ve made several small improvements at our cost, but it’s not something we mind doing because we want this place to be like home to us (we’re replacing the fan in our bedroom, created new shelving in the pantry when the old stuff broke - small stuff like that).

Tonight, we discovered that the fireplace (which seems to be made of slate) is cracked in several places, and we discovered a slew of tiny ants coming in those cracks. The cracks have been there since before we moved in, but these are the first ants we’ve seen. We are putting in some ant traps (and being careful, as we have a small child and two cats), and hopefully, that will take care of the ants. If not, we have no problem calling an exterminator at our own cost (that’s actually in our lease, and we understood that to fall on us - we’ve meant to call them for a spider problem, but money is tight). However, the cracked fireplace does leave open the possibility of more ants coming in later, and we’re wondering if that was the cause of our major spider infestation (some of which are black widows - as I’ve found several nesting on our front porch).

I do know that our landlords have a home warranty, so this may fall under the home warranty, but my main question is whether or not the fireplace falls under our responsibility. Since that’s structural, is it our landlord’s responsibility? I don’t want to pay for the pest control (and as of now I am unemployed, but it’s one of the main things on our list when I’m employed again) just to have the pests return because the fireplace structure is cracked.

Since we’re also landlords, we tend to look at things like “Well, would we consider this our responsibility?”, and in this case, we would definitely say yes. But we also feel like we lucked out and got awesome landlords (and so far, we have awesome tenants), so we don’t want to go to them with every little thing (and we have really only called them because the hot water heating was acting up).

So - first of all, is this something that falls under us or under our landlords’ responsibility? And second, is this something we really want to push? If we can find a way to seal the fireplace on our dime, we will, but OTOH, we feel like it’s something where they should be notified because it’s their property, and they can make the decision whether or not to have us do temporary repairs or if they want to take it further.

Thanks!

2

Repairs to the property should be the landlord’s responsibility, unless you’ve been throwing bowling balls at the fireplace and shelves. :slight_smile:

This is especially true if we’re talking about safety issues. If the cracks are deep enough to let ants in from outside, I would get a proper inspection of the fireplace and chimney before you use it.

3

Heh - I don’t trust either me or my husband to start a proper fire in there :smiley: . The fireplace is actually in the part of the family room that’s been designated as our son’s ‘playroom’ (it’s an open floor plan on the first floor, so all of the rooms are pretty open and go right into one another), so we weren’t particularly planning on using it at all, but that’s a good suggestion - thank you.

We have a very respectful and friendly relationship with our landlords, so I’m not really hesitant to bring it up, we just don’t want to throw something on their plate if it’s not a huge issue. It seems as though this could be a bigger issue than we think, though, so I will contact my landlord this week. We have taken care of as many ants as we can, and are going to be vigilant in trying to get rid of them, but it sounds like our landlord needs to know about the fireplace to act accordingly.

Thanks! It’s rather odd to us not to just make the decisions about the house since we’re so used to doing so.

4

Pests and masonry are absolutely the landlords responsibility. In both cases one might say you are obligated to inform them since both can lead to future, more severe issues.

The cracks in the fireplace could be indicative of cracks in the foundation propagating and a cracked fireplace can indicate various hazards, from fire to injury liability. They would be red flags on a home inspection should the owners want to sell in the future.

The insects can also grow from a nuisance to a hazardous infestation without proper control. Ants tend to not be serious but there’s no reason termites or roaches couldn’t enter the same way.

Inform the landlord sooner than later.

5

Good point - putting ourselves in the same shoes, we’d want our tenants to inform us, so we should do the same. I’ll send an email to my landlord tomorrow and let her know that we are taking care of the ants, but they may want to come look at the fireplace and make a decision on that themselves. We had a major spider problem when we moved in, and blamed it on the fact that the house had been standing empty for several months, plus we are in a very heavily wooded area, and spiders are fairly common, but I’m wondering if that’s where they came in, since we found them mostly in the living room and the master bedroom (which is right above the living room).

6

Don’t read too much into the spiders. The vast majority of household spiders are house spiders, meaning they live almost exclusively indoors and couldn’t or wouldn’t survive outdoors. The population probably grew from within while the place was uninhabited and is now getting knocked back down, though a surplus of food (i.e. ants and other invasive pests) certainly helps.

7

Are your landlords aware of the situation? Have you gotten estimates on what it would take to exterminate and repair the fireplace?
In any case if your landlords really are awesome people, I’d have a chat with them, discuss the situation, and then bring up the financial responsibility. They should at least be willing to discuss it. If they’re adamant about not taking responsibility for it, well, then you can consider what your next step is. But since you get along with them they should at least offer to go half in on it.

For what its worth, I think you would be able to force them to pay if you took the issue to court. You didn’t cause the damage, and it’s causing you major problems (ant infestation), and it’s their property, so I would imagine the burden for repairs is on them. I am not a lawyer though, and don’t have any knowledge of renters laws in your state.

Also, taking legal action against your landlords would probably hurt your relationship with them, so you might want to think about how much that’s worth before you take that step.

8

I think the original legal question has already been answered adequately. However, before doing anything about the ants other than the trapping you’re doing already, you’d be wise to find out what kind of ants they are. Catch some and bring them to a local entomologist. Do not, repeat NOT trust what a pest control operator says about insect ID! Very few of them have proper training in anything but how to apply and market treatments. The identity of an ant makes a big difference, first in whether they can cause structural damange, second in whether they can sting, third in where the actual nest might be – some ant species can have their nest, queen and all indoors and others can’t.

Also, before you decide spiders are a problem, you should also have your spiders identified. If you were in the Seattle area the person to do that would be me, but “your mileage may vary” depending on where on the planet you are actually located. As “Omniscient” so wisely pointed out, most spiders found indoors are house spiders and can’t “come in” through fireplace cracks or any other type of opening because they simply don’t live outdoors in the first place. Also, it may take a load off your mind to confirm that the spiders in your house are completely harmless to people, children and cats (assuming that to be the case). You mention black widows, but you may not be aware that there is a common house spider, the false black widow, constantly mistaken for the real thing by the lay public. False black widows are harmless, and even prey on the real ones.

9

This. Get a real bug expert to identify the bugs you have to properly exterminate them. If it’s a type that lives in the wood, etc. you’ll need a more thorough extermination.