Hydrophobia and Other Problems

I’m sure you’re familiar with the dance you do entering almost every building after a heavy rain. You either hop, skip and jump around the enormous puddle that has formed or you step directly in it, soak your shoes and the bottom half of your jeans and probably fall on your ass. Regardless of the potentially humorous outcome, you inevitably think “Man, it must really suck to live on the ground floor. I bet all the apartments are totally flooded.” Moment of concern over, you shake the water out of your shoes, grin a little schadenfreude grin and prance up the stairs to your undoubtedly dry non-ground floor apartment. Unless you live in Morocco, where it is possible to completely flood a 4 storey building.

“How the hell do you flood an entire apartment building?” you might ask. Well it’s simple: You don’t follow the basic steps and precautions necessary to build a domicile that is capable of weathering the elements. Shoddy workmanship, cost cutting and complete apathy for personal safety all combined to drown my apartment in over an inch of water (2 in the kitchen) in the space of an hour. It wasn't even that big of a storm. Which brings us to…

Basic building tips from someone who’s not even vaguely qualified to build a house:

• Drains should drain. That is to say, water should be capable of passing through them. They should not be rendered useless by a little rain, removing which is their only purpose in life.
• Drains should be placed in a place where water would actually collect (balcony, shower…etc). It is not helpful to weirdly slant a surface away from a drain, because no matter how much you want it to, water will not flow upwards toward your poorly placed drain, it will collect elsewhere and then seep under windows and doors.  
• Speaking of which, caulk is a wonderful thing (yes, giggle a bit, get it out of your system). It is supposed to be used to seal areas that could come into contact with and have to contain water. It has been around for a very long time and is not expensive. It can, however, prevent expensive aesthetic and structural damage as a result of water leaking and collecting where it shouldn't. USE IT!!!!! This should be a major step in the window/sliding glass door/bathtub/shower installing process. If someone had thought to do that, I wouldn't have spent 2 hours wading through a pond in my own apartment and trying and failing to drain said fucking pond.
• Moving on, floors are supposed to be flat. If they are not flat and it rains and the rain seeps under uncaulked windows and doors, it will collect (initially) in the inconveniently placed valleys formed by uneven floors (which, in my apartment are the kitchen, the middle of my living room and the left side of my dining area). It will then spread to encompass the entire available surface. Seriously, I shouldn't need to have a drain in the middle of my living room.
• If the ceiling is leaking profusely and regularly, that is not just considered annoying, it’s a major structural issue. Fix it before the roof caves in.
• Unrelated to the current issue but still important are washing machines and their placement. Washing machines connect to the wall in 2 places: the water main and a power socket. It is therefore impractical to put these outlets on completely different ends of a balcony and makes it completely impossible to use said washing machine.
• A note on aesthetics: if you spend the time and money on ornately carved doors and cabinets, why wouldn't you shell out a little bit of cash for light fixtures? The holes in the walls with bare bulbs hanging out are starting to get to me.

Thank you for listening. Let me know if you have any other tips about how not to completely fail at safely and effectively erecting a building, or if you have any pond removal tips, because apparently this will be a recurrent issue. I’d also like to point out that unlike the hundred year old buildings in the medina, whose problems put my dysfunctional little apartment to shame, my building is actually relatively new and should not be leaking from every available orifice.

Also, a quick shout out to my bitchy neighbour who seems to think that this and all the world’s problems are my fault: The entire building is flooded because it’s built poorly. I did not use my telekinetic powers to reroute the rain into your apartment. Like everyone else that lives in this building, I was also inconvenienced by the flooding, actually more than you were. Therefore I will not pay for the water damage to your ugly couch. It was not my fault. Get over yourself.