I know that water in a basement is bad-bad-bad, mostly because it prevents you from properly using the basement. But what about water in a crawlspace? As in, a puddle on the floor of the crawlspace? Is it bad? Must it be fixed? Will it cause problems?
At a bare minimum, it sets you up for a major mold problem. Wet crawlspaces also invite termites, and can cause foundation failure in the long term.
It can also severely piss off the fireman who was directed to get under the house to look for any missed fire, and had to crawl on my hands and knees through 4-6" of standing water to do my job. :mad: :eek: 
A drain tile or sump pump as appropriate should take care of things.
Also, figure out why the water is getting there in the first place, and correct that. Something as easy as making sure the gutters drain away from the house instead of towards it will go a long way towards keeping the water out of there.
Soooo… if I’m buying the house, and the sellers really don’t want to pay for the sump pump, even though THEY were told to get one when THEY bought the house… what? Stand up and make them do it? Cave and do it myself?
Make them install it as an outcome of the property inspection, or demand consideration for it ($$$) at closing time.
Or find another house.
How deep is the puddle? How big? Has it rained recently?
If it’s deep, big, and it hasn’t rained recently, and you can rule out plumbing problems from the inspection, I’d be leery about getting the house.
If it’s shallow, small, and it’s been rainy, and you can rule out a plumbing problem, you can probably have it fixed.
Either way, it’s a pre-existing condition that the owners should either repair to your satisfaction or agree to pay to have repaired. Personally, given that they’ve let the situation fester, I’d arrange for 2 or 3 estimates and ask them to reduce their asking price accordingly. That way you can supervise the repairs and get the work YOU want to have done the way you want it done.
I have asked for money to fix it myself. Grrrrrrr! Allowing water to sit in the crawlspace! Grrrrrrr! Also allowed a roofer to put nails through the shingles. Idiots.
They seem to be a real piece of work. They had also had some of the utilities shut off, because they didn’t like paying to keep them on, and then threw a gigantic hissy fit because they had to pay to have the inspector come out a second time when the utilities were back on.
hmm. is that enough information to make the situation uniquely identifiable? and do the sellers read this message board?
Wow, I’d think you and I were buying the same house if I hadn’t moved into mine 6 days ago!
I think it’s safe to say the sellers can’t identify themselves here, there are plenty of morons in the world.
Sattua these problems sound like the tip of the problem iceberg with this property. I don’t know where you live, but the real estate market shifting across the country, and it is no longer a seller’s market. If you can’t get them to fix these problems, then you should go find something else in your price range, and don’t look back.
I’m prepared to do that, if they reject the request for repair credit. It will be an enormous pain in the ass, and there isn’t much selection in the area (there are a lot of houses, but they fall into three different groups, each group representing a certain problem–suspicious neighborhood, lots of traffic noise, or tiny lots), but there’s no way I’m going to let them get away with this. It isn’t even about the money, it’s about turning the seller into a responsible human being. Not that that makes any sense at all.
The house is quite new, though, so I think that the problems the inspector identified are going to be the end of it, for a few years at least.
That’s it - I’m convinced that Sattua is me, somehow posting from 3 months in the past. I said the exact same thing, right down to the part about making the seller be a responsible human being. I’ll spare you the long story, but it ends with the seller being arrested for breaking and entering the house after the closing in an attempt to steal 2800 pounds of travertine tile.
Really - if they don’t make it right IMMEDIATELY, run. Fast. Down this path lies madness. And apparently chiggers, judging by the bites I got working in the yard yesterday.
Ah! See, you aren’t me. There’s no tile in my house, just ugly curling vinyl and ugly berber carpet.
Actually, I had been intending to replace the vinyl with tile… hmmmm…
Mold, mosquitos, rot, termites, vermin, roaches, etc … are all possible problems with long term standing water under the home. An inspector should be able to pinpoint all those problems, tho, and likely even the cause of the standing water.
Are you in a coastal area or near a river? Is it a water table issue? Or is it a draining of rainwater issue? Perhaps it’s a plumbing problem? Have the inspector determine the answers to these questions and then negotiate accordingly.
If the current owner balks at any recommendations for the sale, then I would be VERY cautious about a contract, wondering what HIDDEN problems they may be concealing.
It does make sense, but it’s not something you can do to anybody else. If someone doesn’t want to be a responsible human being, there’s nothing anyone else can do to change that.
Fixing it yourself or walking away from the house is the best move, IMO. These sound like the kind of people who might go for a cheap, short-term fix for the problem, and leave you having to re-do what they had done.
Yep. Never mind why the water is there, where it came from or how to get rid of it. That’s the owner’s problem, and that is not you. Walk away. Quickly. It’s a buyer’s market out there.
I laugh in the face of your ugly berber carpeting. Pfffff. Does the house have bright orange plaid shag carpet? :eek: Then we can trade horror stories.
One of several rules of water: moisture will always attempt to move from an area of high content to one of low(er) content. In essence, this means that the floor assembly will act as a semi-permeable membrane between the floor and the living space all year long, unless you’re in an area whose climate precludes such. Here in the NE US, that would mean moisture moving into the dwelling during the cooling season, and out of it during the heating season. Either will work to disbond floor finishes such as tile, ceramics, and won’t be kind to other finishes, as well as the floor assembly itself. Although some codes prohibit it, the current wisdom is to eliminate the water problem, mitigate any mold, place a vapor barrier, and dry and seal the crawl space.
So just how else to roofers attach shingles? Velcro? Apparently I have not been keeping up with current events in the roofing industry.
Nails through the wrong part of the shingles, something like that. The inspector understood what he was talking about. It’s a leak hazard, anyway.
We’ve been back and forth with negotiations all day, and I think we have things sorted out. I agreed to move the closing date forward two weeks, he has agreed to give me the money for the repair.
There is a very high water table in that area, which is part of the problem, and there had been heavy rain which is another part of the problem–and he had removed the downspout extensions and never replaced them, which is probably the bulk of the problem (and he told the contractor to tell me that that would solve the problem, and the contractor complied). I didn’t accept the offer to just put on new downspout extensions because the inspection he had done when he bought the house noted the water in the crawlspace, too, and at that time there were extensions present. So putting them back on apparently won’t solve the problem.