Hi All,
I dont mean to cause alarm and fear in all of u with my hse seepage problem. What i describe may sound horrible, but besides the seepage in my 2nd bedroom, the rest of the corners are really not serious. The seepage at those corners didnt seep very far, only the corners. but no matter what, we still need hdb to resolve them, coz after the warranty period, u will have to take care of the problems urself. And if seepage problems not resolved, whether it is serious or not, it will cause the paint in the hse to peel.
The railings at the bottom of the full height windows r meant for safety measure, they r not used to solve the seepage problem, nor it the cause of the seepage problem, i believe. But nowaday u might notice that at the top of the full height windows, there is a grey color shield, not sure whether Blk 108B has it, but Blk 108C living rooms full height windows have it, they added the shields after many residents complain abt the rain water seep thru the windows.
Actually if it is not becoz we did granite for the bedroom, we wouldnt have discovered the seepage problem in the 2nd bedroom. Becoz granite will turn color once it touches water, it's only when the water dried up, then it will change back to normal color. So after we have laid our granites at the 2nd bedroom, a stretch of 3 granites at the edge of the wall were consistenly dark colored. Initially we thought the tiles got problems, but after 2 weeks it still wont go away, we demanded our contractors to hack them and relaid. And during then it kept raining becoz of moonsoon season. Then my contractor suspected that it must be seepage problems, since the wall is being hit by rain water, and there r lines of gaps on the wall which we can see fr our main bedroom. Even though my contractor is a con-man, but his resoning sounds logical, so we asked hdb to come down and take a look. And it took them 3 trips and more than 1 month to solve the problem. we were really relieved when we saw the dark color patches slowly diasppeared (which means the water seepage beneath our granites had dried up). And there is no more additional water adding onto it even though it was still raining season, becoz they sealed up our line of gap.
We r actually quite lucky to have done granites for the whole hse, otherwise, we wont be able to discover the seepage in the 2nd bedroom if we have done homogenous or ceramic tiles. But if we have laminates or parquet, then it will popup.
Actually when i look out fr the main bedrooms, i can see that the floor above me and the floor below, they dont have their gaps sealed up, so i wonder whether is it only the gap at my level retain water and not the rest of the units?? Or the gaps at other units also retain water, but becoz they didnt discover it, so the water just kept underneath their tiles without them knowing??
For this i really dont know, but somehow i feel that it is a stupid design to leave gaps on the wall of the flat, esp when singapore rains the whole yr round.
Actually whether ur hse will have seepage problems, it really take some time to find out. Becoz different period of the yr, the rain hit the hse at different directions. For example, during moonsoon season, the rain was hitting the side of the wall of my 2nd bedroom, so we dont have problems with the living room windows. But when the direction of the rain changed during Mar-Apr this yr, then the design of the windows and the cracks between the windows and the wall at the outer wall (which we cant see) will show the seepage problem in the living rm. So i guess u just have to monitor ur hse closely for the 1st half yr when u shift in, u might or might not have seepage problems, depending on which side ur hse is facing, and whether the direction of the rain is hitting ur hse. Shalene, ur unit and my unit might face diff direction, so what happened to my 2nd bedrm might not happen to u.
Pls dont be over bothered with the seepage problems, if it happened, then call hdb down and solve it quickly. If it doesnt happen to ur hse, then u r very lucky