Non-Disclosure issue

[cruisingracie]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Kentucky


My daughter and her fiance bought their first house in late August, 2009. She and I were there for the inspection. While checking the outside of the house, the inspector noted that the outside faucet on the left-front side of the house didn't work and assumed the water was turned off. He did not turn the water on for that faucet and check it. Stupidly, we deferred to him on this matter. Fast forward to November 1. My daughter and I were planting bulbs and hooked up a hose to water the flower garden. They had never used this faucet since they purchased the house. So, the fiance turned on the water supply and my daughter watered the garden. After a while she called us outside to see water leaking from between the foundation and the brick all across the front of the house to the front porch -- about 25 feet or so. We immediately turned the water off and ran down to the laundry room which is under that spot. There was some water on the floor in the area, but we couldn't tell what the walls behind the drywall looked like. We do have a home warranty that covers this problem, but I am really mad and feel that the seller knew of this problem and that's why the water was turned off to that faucet. Also, the inspector should have caught this by turning the water valve on to test the faucet and he didn't do this. Do we have any legal recourse on this matter, or leave it to our home warranty company to battle?

[JETX]

Originally Posted by cruisingracie

Do we have any legal recourse on this matter, or leave it to our home warranty company to battle?

Interesting post... but one HUGE missing element.
What is your claim?? You provide NO information to directly connect the water faucet with anything.

[cruisingracie]

The claim would be Non-Disclosure on the sellers and to have them pay for having the water pipe fixed. Here's an update. The plumber just completed the fix. He said it was a frozen water pipe. And, since the kids have only been in the house since late August and we haven't had a freeze yet, AND, put in the fact that the water supply was turned OFF during the house inspection (yes, the inspector noted this on his report but also said he couldn't find the water valve inside to turn it on -- funny, we found it right away), we can only think that these people knew about the frozen pipe and hadn't had it fixed.

Oh, and the home warranty is useless. It doesn't cover burst frozen pipes OR cover pre-existing conditions.

So, again, to answer your question, the CLAIM would be to have them pay the $200 it cost to have the pipe fixed today and possibly look for water damage behind the drywall where the leak was. We have no idea how much water leaked behind there when it originally broke.

[FarmerJ]

Sad to say you might not ever get anywhere attempting to learn more, if this home had more than one outside faucet its possible a owner may have turned it off decades ago. My dads house has had his front faucet turned off in the basement since the late 1950s, probably due to its source being softened water back when we had private well and he saw no reason to pay for softened water to go on a lawn when the back faucet was set up to be untreated. Yes at this home you wrote about at some time in its history it froze up , if there was more than one owner it just makes it harder to learn when or why and even at that It may be one of them things to just let go of since it would be a uphill battle to try to get payment out of anyone for it. Now that its heating season does the one important thing work . ( furnace) is the roof in decent shape? if everything else is fine as it is then it may be a wiser choice to let it go and next time around to do a better job of learning why something doesnt work when its turned on /tested.

[nextwife]

Agreed, my parents also had an outside spigot they stopped using about 15 years before they sold. At the time, it was behind some shrubs andf hard to get to, but the scraggly large shrubs were removed and replaced with smaller new ones the year she sold without ever using that spigot again. She would have had no clue about whether that spigot was functional or not, she probably didn't even remember it was there.