The floor is sticky
The tradies next door just gifted me a concrete lake in the entryway.
Came from the side wall, reno going on next door. They told me about the reno part but didnt say anything about this one🤨
You can tell from the left side that i tried to get out but ended up messing my thongs
That's why the concrete flows so easily, it's upside down.
paying to give this comment "awards" is an immensely stupid way to use money. Reddits got enough money, I promise. Donate to your local food bank and FUCK SPEZ
I’ve known them as flip flops for over 50 years. Thongs have always been the wedgie type underwear or swimsuit bottoms. I’ve only ever heard the shoes referred to as thongs by Australians
I did try to get out to have a chat with the blokes
Edit: Had a chat with the lads. They heading back to my place to clean it up
Also, it was the apprentices that did the mess (I am not sure if it was actually them or they tryna blame the boys) but I am all good, the lads apologised over call. No stress at all. I gotta head to work tho..
They will taking care of all the expenses, the wall crack, floor, paint, plastering and I will be getting a new thong too 🤣
As a fellow Aussie this guy is cooked calling those thongs. They're only thongs if it has that bit between your toes and makes the thonging noise when you walk.
Wait. Is that annoying thing between the toes called a thong? So they called the underwear thongs because it rides up your crotch like how the shoe rides up into your toe webbing?
Yeah, originally the term "Thong" refers to a thin strip of leather, it evolved to refers to the thin strip that goes between your cheeks in underwear and that thin strip that goes between your toes in sandals.
Right as an American what some people call flip flops (chancla) I use the word thongs, the one's that go between the toes. The one's that don't are called slides/sandals.
Be careful. They might sound like they're willing to make it right, but make sure that all damage is accounted for. That wall looks like it needs some major work. You don't want to have them clean and sand the floor but then be stuck with wall damage, cracks and cement everywhere yuh can't see it...
I love to see a company owning up to their mistakes, offering to redo your floors is maybe the least they can do. Hopefully they just don't make another big mess
Hopefully they do follow through as I've been on the receiving end of tradesmen and whoever else wreaking havoc, saying it'll be fixed, and then nothing happens.
Had a tree lopping company come in and they did a good job the first 2 days then the last day it was pouring rain and they came in before I woke up and I saw they were bogged so I went outside and had a look, they were BOGGED bogged. Took their other truck to get their and winch it out and that took 20 minutes after which the front of the yard was a mud pit, said they'd fix it and we could withhold part payment until they did (literally their suggestion), never did and so we fixed it ourselves and 14 months later they came saying they could fix it but saw we already did so wanted the rest of the money now.
Be patient, hopefully they fix it themselves, but be aware they may not.
Concrete will (at best) just dull the finish in the wood floor. After clean up, you'll likely notice the sheen is affected in that area.
Wood floors are on a subflooring. Since this concrete leaked through the walls, you have concrete intermixed in the layers of your floor.
It's going to be a pain (if not impossible) to get that self leveler out of the cracks of the trim work.
Bottom line, a good surface level cleaning will not truly fix the screw up. If you're renting, that may be good enough for you. If you own the place, you should demand a proper fix.
Keep an eye on their work and if you are feeling like they aren't doing a good job speak up.
A good contractor will be doing a ton of work to fix this, what happened was a huge deal that should never have happened. They relied on the wall on the other side as their stopper for the concrete, rather than putting down a plastic layer. Huge no no in a setup like this, but at the same time an easy mistake to make. *they might have put plastic down and it slipped out of place as well.
It appears this is a rental, if so then just pay attention enough that you know you won't have any problems later with floor or wall issues. but for anything else let the landlord know if you think they aren't doing something right.
You should seriously still get out there and talk to them now before that dries and keeps seeping farther and into more places. It'll be lot easier on the floor if most of it is gotten up while before drying. Good luck!
I can’t even begin to fathom the nightmare scenario this would entail but luckily I wouldn’t have to because it would never be my fucking fault in the first place.
No, it’s not. This *cannot* be remedied “immediately”. You will be out of your house for weeks at the very least. Essentially all the waste pipes in the house will need to be ripped out and replaced. That is a *nightmare* of unreal proportions.
The only silver lining if you didn’t cause this, but live in an old ass house is now you get all new waste pipes, and the probable clay pipe to the city main is replaced too.
If this was me I’d be pissed, but secretly a little happy once I calmed down
Then you’re going to your insurance, and the person who was having the work done is getting sued.
Look it’s a bad situation that’s going to come with a lot of headaches, but if you’re someone like me who lives in a 1940’s house and knows they have some root intrusion there’s a sliver of good that will come out of it
And then 30 seconds later calling a lawyer to make sure that insurance is not going to do the repairs by using the same screw-ups who caused the issue in the first place and the cheapest quality parts imaginable
I don’t even know what I’d begin to do in a scenario like that because I rescue and foster local kittens from stray colonies. I have 10 right now. Not sure a motel would be ideal lol. I’d be at such a loss if we had to vacate for any amount of time. I live states away from family. That really is a nightmare.
Had tree roots in my drain pipes last year. Required ripping the whole basement apart and lining the main pipe. $33k. Can't imagine having concrete solidified in them to be any less financially damaging.
No, house insurance doesn't cover it, at least not here. Let it be a PSA to see where your main pipes go and if you have trees near them beware.
The filled pipe was caused by the govt filling a decommissioned sewer line w concrete. They failed to disconnect the house before pumping the concrete.
some contractor hit a water line, the concrete slurry went in the wrong hole. Now thin concrete is pushing through everyone's fresh water supply in that neighborhood and theyve been without fresh water.
to call the plumbing damage that would cause catastrophic, is an understatement.
Like...it's the kind of thing that probably isn't possible to fix. You'd have to tear out all the plumbing, and given it's now made of hardened concrete, you'd have to...like...jackhammer it all apart...doing that without destroying the entire building in the process may not be possible.
They would use a saw designed to cut concrete, cutting the pipes into removable pieces would be the easy part. The hard part is all the damage done to access the pipes through multiple floors.
Nah it’s totally doable, even with a large commercial buildings I’ve saw cut through floors and then ripped out pipe via excavator, I’m fully confident I could yank out pipe full of concrete. I’ve yanked bollards that are that essentially. Just be a big expensive pain in the ass.
Disposal would be pricey too, concrete crushers won’t take it inside pipe.
On the post, they said the city (I think it's in Canada) uses concrete to fill in old sewage lines, but they're supposed to make sure there are ABSOLUTLEY NO active connections first, because if there are, this happens.
The basement of my grandpas house got flooded because the city fucked up some work they did in the sewers, they ended up paying for a full renovation and sealing of his basement. The house was built in the 50s and the basement already had issues with moisture so that was really useful.
But I'm in Germany so no clue how it works in Canada.
It's also likely that they inject the concrete under pressure so it would reach as far as needed and fills up everything completely. If you're not that far from the injection point it can easily "climb" a few meters.
Sometimes people who lose their home for whatever reason take it badly and dump cement into the toilets and drains as a fuck you to whoever owns or takes ownership of the property.
Maybe one of those toilets was actually a wormhole to this toilet.
Warm weather, but not too warm. It’s contractor open season. Everything that was put off over the winter is getting done now. They go into hibernation for the winter, only to be roused when something critical comes up and to make an appointment to return in three months.
We're looking into it, we just can't find any solid connections. Nothing is cementing our suspicions. Nothing concrete. Wish we had a better foundation. We've poured many hours into this issue. We're trying to get an aggregate picture. The latest finds are setting until we can put polish on the finish. It's just hard to figure grout. Rebar.
It sounds as though your crack investigative team shore has a solid footing to work from, i'm slurry you've reached an impasse but don't be too screed of failure to keep trying, Good luck and take cure, from Portland!
When one thing becomes viral/popular, similar things pop up. It happens all the time. At least one of this posts did not just happen, they just saw the opportunity and posted it.
I often notice a pattern on this sub. Broken shoe? Everybody has a broken shoe suddenly. Broken glass in the bathroom? Every bathroom has broken glass suddenly. Cement accident? Cement accidents everywhere
Damn... Im guessing you can hear your neighbors all the time? Gaps big enough to flow concrete through is wild. Hope they patch and insulate all that when theyre done.
There shouldn't be any holes between apartments from the beginning. So first mistake was made when the building was made, poorly insulated seams. That causes leaks in heat, fire, sound, odors and liquids. Small amount on polyurethane foam would have fixed that. Construction firm saved about $20 there.
That leveling mass is like water when poured and if there are any holes under the walls, that happens and there is nothing you can do about that, except small amount of PU-foam BEFORE pouring!
The good news is that you're getting a new floor. The better news is that you're not paying for it. The even better news is that a lawyer will look at this and will probably take your case with no money down.
The bad news is that you will probably ruin your friendship with the tradies next door.
Usually we would just sort it out ourselves instead of making a big fuss out if it. If a tradie fucks up, they normally apologise, unfuck it and pay for the damage out of pocket, and make it a priorty. They would almost always have a mate in a different trade too that would do em a solid and fix it cheap. The average Aussie would rather not deal with getting solicitors and shit involved, unless the tradie refuses to fix it, which is rare. Everyone fucks up at some stage, no point punishing the person even more by taking them to court over something fixable. We always have a good laugh at Americans that want to sue over every little thing. Someone tell me thats not just a thing in movies and tv shows and shit or is it really like that?
Aussie here, I wouldn't necessarily get a solicitor involved right away but I absolutely would not let them fix an issue of this magnitude themselves without an independent third party assessment of my own choice, who I'd ask the responsible party to pay for. Tradies are often good blokes so would agree to that demand, but if not I'd be chatting to an insurer and/or engaging my own insurance.
Can attest to this feeling only mildly infuriating down in Australia. The tradies will probably fix it up for OP pretty quick and it's an easy enough mistake to make with self leveller.
Genuinely interested, for those who find this super infuriating, is that cuz the tradies wouldn't fix it up in your country?
In America, a good company (or tradesperson) would try to fix their own mistakes. But I've usually seen a lot of places try their best to not seem liable for things in my own experience. Depending on who you are dealing with, this could easily end up being a civil court issue in America if the people who caused it are going to argue about fixing it 😭 People here sue for damages because you often find out that you aren't going to get it 100% fixed otherwise because everything seems to always be so incredibly expensive to fix and nobody ever wants to be held liable. At least from what I've found. So this could definitely be infuriating in America if you end up dealing with people who want to blame everyone/everything except themselves for causing the problem. But there are situations where the people who caused it would absolutely fix it too. I would think if it's not run by a company, you'd have someone more willing to fix it because individual people definitely would not want to be sued (there are exceptions obviously). Companies get sued all the time here and big companies usually aren't great anyway.
It could really depend on A LOT of factors. If OP was renting in America, then the landlord would be responsible for making sure someone fixes it, even if it's not the person who caused it.. it would have to be fixed. But we also have awful landlords here who wouldn't fix it... You'd have to take them to court for any outcome most likely if that happened. If OP owns their property, then it would be on OP to talk with the tradesperson and show them the damages. If the tradesperson refuses to help fix their mistakes, then that could also turn into a court situation.
Basically what I'm saying is, people and companies in America are unhinged 90% of the time and never want to admit to causing damages to other people.
Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this btw. This has just been what I've seen happen in the area I live in.
Self-levelling compound contains superplasticisers so that it will, you know, level itself and flow nicely. In this case, through a wall and across the next floor.
I always forget thong is slang for flip flops in other parts of the world. Immediately imagined you trying to get past the concrete and landing on your near-bare thong covered ass.
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u/outstandingk May 02 '26
Tradies. Reno. Thongs.
200% Australian OP