SE23 Forum

Has anyone else in the area (specifically HOP / BLythe Hill Fields) suffered any disasters as a result of last night's storm?

We awoke in the middle of the night to find one of our bedrooms and the kitchen directly underneath leaking water through one of the outer walls of the house. Luckily it's fairly localised so far, and after spending much of the night mopping and laying towels around the area, it seems to have dried out a bit.

We don't have a tall enough ladder to see if there's any damage to the actual roof tiles, and don't know if it's a burst pipe, dodgy guttering......

We've both been down with flu, I've had to go to work today, and we're leaving London for 4 days at 5pm this afternoon, so we've been pretty useless, distracted, and I imagine, wholly naive in dealing with what could be a potentially HUGE problem.

Has anyone else had anything similar happen, with any suggestions as to what may be the cause? When we get back on Saturday, what should we do first? Who should we call? Plumber / builder / roofer???
We have no experience of dealing with anything like this as property owners (been lucky, I guess!)

Sorry this is so long....any suggestions would be great (apart from 'Don't leave the house alone for 4 days' lol). Thanks, in advance.

Also, re; my first question, did anyone else suffer any damage to their properties / themselves last night?

The very first thing you should do is call your home insurance company - this is exactly what they are for!

Yep this is what I thought, but Mr. Pippi muttered something about insurance not covering 'acts of god'! Is that even a thing???

Once again, apologies for being so supremely dense when it comes to practical matters.....

I'm pretty sure Mr Pippi is mistaken. Call them ASAP. They can send someone to check the damage, and possibly even do interim repairs. In any case, if the damage is insured, they will most likely want to organise the repairs using their contractors.

Brilliant, am on the phone to them right now.....

Good luck!

Thanks so much, Happy Xmas! Will keep you posted how things work out......

We lost most of our fencing, that's about as dramatic as it got here.
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Got to work this morning in Southwark and a whole apartment block had lost its roof opposite work!
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Hope the insurance put your mind at rest.

I noticed a wall down at the top of manor mount, I think it was number 3. Lots of wall and stuff on the pavement but not quite on the road.

We lost our chimney in the last storm, it fell onto the roof leaving a hole in the living room wall! The insurance will pay out as the cause of any damage is certainly the storm. We lost a few slates this time, which is annoying as the scaffolding has only just come down, but it suppose better to lose the chimney 6 weeks ago rather than on Xmas eve...

Our back garden fence was smashed to bits. I went down to Wickes next morning and the chap there said he'd sold 36 wooden fence sheets already that morning