Question about unused condo for months

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mxcion
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Question about unused condo for months

Post by mxcion » Sun, 03 May 2020 4:39 pm

My wife and I have been out of the country for several months now. I was initially asked to temporarily transfer to a different office due to coronavirus concerns, but my wife stayed in SG since we weren’t expecting the assignment to be that long. When it got extended, she left to stay visit our home country, where she is now stuck due to the travel restrictions.

When we found out her flight got cancelled and that she would need approval to re-enter the country (I am on a work pass in a non-essential field), we asked our neighbor to enter the condo once a week to run the taps/flush toilets. Apparently he wasn’t aware that one of rooms had an en-suite, so one of the washrooms haven’t been flushed/run in months. He said he only realized this when he was hit by a strong smell last week and investigated. There is mold growing in the toilet bowl and I’m sure the water has dried up in the pipes.

On top of this, the hot water switch has been on the entire time.

He didn’t flush the toilet or run the taps after discovering this as he wasn’t sure what the right course of action would be.

My questions:

1) What can be done to safely clean the toilet (I’m not asking him to do it since it was an honest mistake and he was doing us a huge favor), or should we just call a mould company/plumber?

2) Is there going to be mold growing in the toilet tank? This en-suite is unfortunately the only one in the house that is wall mounted so he couldn’t open it up.

3) Will the hot water tank for that room be damaged from being “on” but unused for such a long period of time? He left the hot water on for the other rooms, but he would run them once a week. I think each room has it’s own tank though, judging by the small square in the ceiling.

Sorry for the long post! We only moved here in December so we didn’t have a lot of time to settle in before the pandemic set in.

Thank you for your time

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martincymru
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Re: Question about unused condo for months

Post by martincymru » Mon, 04 May 2020 9:23 am

I suggest turn off electric and water. Drain system.

"hot water switch has been on the entire time" - no problem if has thermostat, very little extra electric.

"mold growing in the toilet tank?" - pour dettol into the cistern/tank. Mould is not a cause for concern.

"hot water tank for that room be damaged from being “on” but unused for such a long period of time?" - no

To all: when you move into apt/house get to know the infrastructure intimately.

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PNGMK
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Re: Question about unused condo for months

Post by PNGMK » Mon, 04 May 2020 1:46 pm

No serious issues for any of that. It's a good idea to keep water in the toilets though to stop them drying out the S trap and the room ending up smelling like a sewer though.
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