WTF is wrong with German houses?

[prosodic]

Our first house here had burst pipes...waterfalls in the walls and coming out of the ceiling...mold. The landlord, of course, didn't give a crap, and always tried to cover up the problem rather than fixing it, painting over the water stains and mold. Hence, why we got fed up and moved out (never mind the fact that mold can be deadly).

This house has a few quirks too. One kitchen sink backs up into the other kitchen sink. The dryer vent is somehow connected to the range-top vent. If the dryer vent gets too full of lint and the dryer is in use, condensation drips out of the range-top vent all over the stove burners (which is happening right now, so Lance needs to clean that today).

As of today, the bathtub is now backing up into the shower. I do not know yet if the shower backs up into the bathtub. I'll have to wait until one of us takes a shower to find out.

At least we're moving out in a few months. And as long as the toilets don't start backing up into the sinks, shower, or bathtub, I suppose I won't worry about it too much. It will no longer be our problem as of the end of December.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Sounds like houses I've lived in here.

The water backing up thing is an issue. Either the closer-in pipe needs to be snaked, or the pipe from the house to the street needs to be at least snaked, if not replaced, which is a huge and expensive repair job. We've had this happen at each of our past two houses, including this one. If the backup is far enough down, the toilet will back up into the tub. That's not so much fun to clean up after.

But if it's just near where the shower and tub drains meet, snaking it out usually does the trick.

The kitchen sinks backing up is fairly typical. Ours does if we drain one fast, for instance if one is full of dishwater and I pull the plug. It follows the course of least resistance, going as fast as it can down, but also going up into the adjoining sink.

[prosodic.livejournal.com]

The weirdest thing, I think, is the dryer vent and range-top vent being connected somehow. The drains don't seem quite as weird. I'll just have to keep my eye on things and we'll have to let the landlord know if it gets any worse.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that just seems wrong. I'm not sure I'd want potential flames and potential lint build-up to be connected like that.

If we had a range hood, it would vent to the roof, and the dryer (which is in the kitchen) vents out the wall. But then, we installed that.

[prosodic.livejournal.com]

Well, I am talking about a house that has a shower stall in the laundry room of all places. We never use it as an actual shower, but Lance hooked up the washing machine to shower, since the washer hook-up only had cold water.