FLOOD & FIRE FUNDRAISER

Short story version by DJ Mones:

In March 2025, Matt Hart and his wife Sandra (Slither3808) went away for a little weekend break. Upon their return, they found their radiator had burst and flooded the entire ground floor. During the cleaning process, black and white mould was found, and it's created a toxic environment to live. Only one week later, still dealing with the flood, the boiler faulted and billowed smoke throughout the upstairs of the house. So now there is dampness, smoke damage and mould. Their story to me was full of tears and sorrow. This is a desperate situation; Matt Hart and Slither can't live anywhere in their home, other than in their bedroom, eating meals on their bed and using some camping chairs for alternate seating. All their furniture downstairs has been ruined absorbing the water from the flood, plus the smell of rotting carpet and mould downstairs, then smoke upstairs, it's a dire affair. Words cannot describe the situation other than to coin a song by MATT HART it's... "Gone To Shit".

Long story version by Matt & Sandra:

They say things come in three's.

PART 1 - FLOOD

On Sunday 2nd March, 2025 we returned home in the evening from a little weekend away (some decompressing after a stressful emergency move some months prior) to discover the radiator in the dining room had burst and the house now "benefited" an indoor water feature. Nope. The entire downstairs, flooded and it's all carpets, so it was squelch galore.

We reacted rapidly, making contact with a heating/plumbing engineer to attend and in the meantime till he arrived, we laid down every towel and sheet we had to start soaking up water. Literally laying them down, lifting up to take outside to ring-out and repeat. We did this for hours, till our arms were falling off.

The engineer arrived a couple hours after the call and they isolated the water and turned the gas off, so the fountain stoped, but meant we had no hot water/heating too. That was just the beginning of the problems which were multiplying. Being in a rented property, associated with Matt's work, the challenges were more complicated than we could have ever imagined. A barrage of red-tape, and though we activated our renters contents insurance, ours and insurance hands were tied till the landlord's appointed contractors/assessment team could attend (which was not swift --- more story, keep reading).

Monday 3rd March - in proactive initiative, we hired a wetvac ourselves, since the landlord wasn't supplying one and for the 24hr hire, we did more wetvac'ing than anyone should ever do.

Tuesday 4th March - landlord provides us a dehumidifier, because "that should dry out the carpets and they'll be fine", errr say what?

Wednesday 5th March - our insurance appointed South London Flood Disaster Care team to come and at least assess damage, to hopefully put pressure on landlord: all carpets/underlay ruined, all furniture ruined :-(. Disaster Care were able to take away all damaged furniture, but the carpets had to stay in situ, due to restrictions with landlord. We knew this was going to instantaneously create a big problem, wet carpets/underlay being left meant it was only a matter of time before...

Still with no hot water/heating, landlord recommended we turn on the immersion water heater --- seems a great idea, but nope, it didn't work either. Being somewhat 'house handy' we took a look at the fused switch, and discovered there wasn't even a fuse in it! Went to the tool box and got a 13amp fuse and inserted it into the switch, to try the immersion heater again. Nope. The only thing it did was trip the RCD on the circuit board. Really? Yep, it's true, the immersion heater element is corroded and needs replacing. How convenient (not), the water cylinder is so old that the element can not just be replaced, an entire new water cylinder is needed too. Add it to the growing list of things wrong and require fixing.

Thursday 6th - Sunday 9th March - countless phone calls, emails, texts etc etc to chase and get the landlord to do something...

PART 2 - FIRE

Sunday 9th March - Mid evening, while sitting downstairs on camping chairs, the only furniture left, we hear the fire alarm upstairs!!!! Seriously, this story goes from bad to worse. We race upstairs to be met with a smoke filled hallway, the cupboard housing the boiler billowing it out thickly through the vents. Hesitantly, we opened the cupboard door and sure enough, hit with heavy smoke. Closed the door, immediately called the fire brigade and waited outside for them. They arrived in minutes and a team went into the house to investigate. Whilst the fire had extinguished itself (thankfully), because of the volume of smoke and that they couldn't identify the source, to safeguard they disconnected the electricity circuit, so limiting in what we could use socket wise now too.

Monday 10th March - exhausted, but finally have a landlord representative reaching out to us... with both a flood and fire, they couldn't really continue to ignore the mountain of problems in this house. The plethora of calls, emails, texts etc the week prior, yielding some kind of result, in that several engineers booked to start remedy works as soon as Tuesday with the boiler and immersion heater --- could it be the hot water and heating will be available again to us??? What a wondrous thing to think a hot shower is within reach....

Our stress levels are out the roof and we're not sleeping well --- rotting carpet downstairs / smoke stink upstairs, the combination is unreal. Sandra suffering a continuous headache and has also now started to develop some throat/breathing irritations --- you guessed it, the MOULD has crept in.

Tuesday 11th March - landlord representative finally attends to assess the carpet, concludes the dehumidifier is doing a good job - what a bloody joke! Not even acknowledging we privately hired a wetvac for 24hrs to suck up the squelch and just because the surface of the carpet may not be so soggy, it doesn't address the wet of the underlay and what is developing beneath it. How they drew any conclusion without even touching the carpet and/or peeling back a corner to inspect what was happening in the dark, is beyond us. The level of incompetence is astounding and extremely distressing and we're beyond rational thought.

A heating engineer does attend today though and works on the boiler, so hot water/heating has been restored!!!

Wednesday 12th March - in the wisdom of the landlord's representative, a carpet cleaning company attends to sanitise the carpets. For real, the ineffectiveness of this --- when they arrive, the full story is told and they investigate to determine if the carpet clean is even worthwhile. Taking photos of the water stains, peeling back the carpet + underlay to expose the black and white MOULD, they conclude a carpet sanitisation isn't going to do anything for the present problem, but carry out the instruction none the less, so they can do "after cleaning" photos too, to illustrate the seriousness and attention needed - they advise the remedy they will put into their report is for uplift, disposal, cement flooring left open to air to dry, address MOULD, then new flooring.

PART 3 - MOULD

Thursday 14th - Friday 20th March - countless more calls, emails, texts and appointments with inspectors, contractors, assessors, but ending with the result that the landlord has agreed (providing we match their type/quality of flooring) that we can utilise our insurance to address replacing the flooring. As this is a shocking +2 weeks on from the initial flood, the MOULD is a huge concern and the extent it has spread, so the flooring specialist will have a bigger job than just take-up/put-down, but it's where we are at and must be done.

Saturday 21st March - South London Flood Disaster Care team, make contact again and arrange to attend on Wednesday 26th March to uplift, dispose and assess course of action for MOULD.

So that's the tale of the house disasters, as it goes for now.

Amongst the finer details, not that there is any good time for a flood, but it happened days before new kitchen cabinets were to be installed --- the carcasses all built and sat on the carpets, awaiting the kitchen fitting crew --- yep, all ruined, so had to re-purchase everything at emergency "built & ready" pricing, rather than the flat-plat pricing we'd originally bought at and invested our time to build. The kitchen refit was at our own expense, since the landlord said the 1970s kitchen was, true quote "fit for purpose". Getting contractor appointments is super tough, so we had to keep the installation date or else we'd be looking at several weeks more without a kitchen too and being double billed by the kitchen fitting crew.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, so the saying goes, but honestly we are so beaten down and our expenses are mounting, adding to the stress of the situation(s).

FLOOD / FIRE / MOULD

The string of bad luck we've had is surely behind us, what else could possibly happen at this house? Sinkhole? Wind takes the roof?

It's not an easy thing to expose yourself as vulnerable and looking for help, but we're mentally spent and feeling pinched with the insurance excess, plus costs outside this which aren't covered - like the huge amount of utilities used running a dehumidifier and 3x small electric heater for +3 weeks 24/7, dry cleaning of smoke damaged things, cleaning supplies, loss of work to be home for appointments, the ice cream that's been needed etc etc.

We're acutely aware that there are problems all over the world, and so we'd be most humbled if you're able to do anything to help in the difficult shoes we are currently walking. Whether that's a financial contribution towards our not covered costs, sharing the news of this GoFundMe and/or the Twitch Raid Train fundraiser - organised by our friend DJ Mones (Mícheál Jones aka @DJMones1 on Twitch) here are the event details:

EVENT HAPPENING FRIDAY and SATURDAY, 11 & 12 APRIL, 2025

️ // FB event ▬▬▬▬▬ https://tinyurl.com/FloodFireFBevent

️ // schedule ▬▬▬▬▬ https://tinyurl.com/raidpalschedule

It's all we can say for now, but we are looking towards brighter days.

Thank you for your time, attention and concern.