‘Please move us from rotting, damp house’
A Perth couple is pleading with the council to move them to another property after enduring five years of rotting walls and floors caused by severe damp.
The conditions in their one bedroom council flat have become so severe that surfaces have turned black and one floorboard has even crumbled under Vicky Frater’s feet.
Arthur Frater (39), who has lived with wife Vicky at the Newhouse Road property since 2015, told the PA the issues have gradually worsened over the last five years and that their living conditions have even began to affect his health.
He has been left needing to use an oxygen machine as he suffers from sleep apnoea.
The couple have redecorated a number of times to try and resolve the issue and have contacted the council on a number of occasions to remove the damp, but no resolution has been found.
And now the pair feel they are at “the end of the road” with their living situation and want to be moved.
“It was just about late 2016 there was a little bit of dampness at first in the living room,” Arthur told the PA.
“We redecorated it and then it came back again and then we discovered it in the bedroom and we redecorated that, about three times in each one.
“Then there is the bathroom where the whole ceiling is black and the floorboards are rotting and it is all because of this dampness.
“It is every single wall in the living room and in the bathroom it is every wall and the ceiling.
“It is just getting worse and it is beyond a joke now it has got to this.”
Arthur says he has spent over £1000 to redecorate and clean his flat to no avail.
“There is a dehumidifier in each room and we have to empty that every three or four days because it is full of water,” he said.
“We damp-proofed the walls and a joiner has come to work on it but the damp has just come right through again and the wallpaper begins hanging off the wall.
“Underneath the wallpapers you can see the walls are black.
“It makes our clothes and furniture stink of dampness. The windows are open all the time and we have to keep the heating on.
“We have air freshners everywhere as well but the damp is still spreading.
“The council have just said it is condensation and that they would give us £10 back to fix it - but that is not going to fix this.
“I have been signed off from work with stress by the doctor because of what has been going on.”
In one recent incident that startled the couple, a floorboard in the living room crumbled under Vicky’s feet after it had eroded due to a woodworm infestation.
The larva of the insects are known to live and bore holes through wood, which in turn can make it unstable.
The PA approached PKC for comment, but it had not responded when we went to print.