HOA irrigation pipe floods Castle Pines Village home, causes $80,000 in damage
A family is on the line for over $80,000 after an irrigation pipe belonging to their homeowners association burst and flooded their home.
Their insurance won't cover the damage because it came from an outside source, but the insurance company for the HOA found they weren't liable because there was no proof of negligence. Now the couple is left to pick up the pieces.
"Get up! Our house is flooding," Roseann Martin recalls her husband, Richard Martin, saying. Those were the words she woke up to on July 9.
Richard had just discovered the basement of the couple's Castle Pines Village home was rapidly filling with water, coming from the ground outside.
"It was just so much, it was a river of water," said Richard.
They later learned the community's main irrigation line, which they had no idea was ten feet from their home, had burst, filling their window wells with water, and shattering two windows in a spare bedroom.
"There was a current in that bedroom and the big shards of glass were floating through that bedroom," said Roseann.
The flooding only spread, damaging their entire basement.
Two months later, their home looks like it is torn up, and contractors are constantly working downstairs.
"Sucking the water out of the basement, cutting the carpet out, cutting the drywall out, ripping the pad out," said Richard.
Most of the Martin's belongings on that level were lost, including many antiques, and family keepsakes.
"To know that we can wake up to this kind of devastation without ever thinking something like that can happen is just shocking," said Roseann, "the financial loss is just life changing."
They estimate the total cost of damage and renovations to be nearly $85,000, and their insurance won't cover it.
"They said it was "surface water from an external source,'" said Richard.
The couple says the HOA that owns the busted irrigation pipe, won't help, despite the couple's repeated pleas.
"We would like to see somebody step up and accept responsibility for what happened. It certainly wasn't us," said Richard.
The HOA declined to comment on this story. But the Martin's did show CBS Colorado the denial letter they received from the HOA's insurance company, which says there was no evidence of negligence on the part of the HOA, as the pipe was not past its life span.
Now that the Martins know this pipe is so close to their home, they've redone some landscaping in their backyard and raised their window wells 15 inches, because they're worried the disaster could happen again.