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An 81-year-old woman has been forced to pay £36,000 out of her savings to repair water damage to her new-build home.

Maureen Waterhouse bought a brand-new Charles Church home on Mill View, Caerphilly, for £250,000 in 2013, but said the house is “full of faults”.

Ms Waterhouse has had to have the entire front of her house rebuilt due to water “gushing in” through incorrectly-fitted windows and building up behind the rendering, causing the house’s wooden frame to rot.

The problems began around two to three years after Ms Waterhouse had moved into her home – and after the two-year warranty had expired.

Ms Waterhouse said: “I phoned up about it and I wanted somebody to come out and just check it out. But they didn’t want to know. They just said the two-year warranty is gone and from then on, it’s just been all downhill with problem after problem.

“I was getting so depressed and rundown. I actually lost a stone in weight. It wore me down.”

She added: “I kept putting towels on the windowsill to soak up the rainwater. All of a sudden it stopped coming in and I thought: ‘Oh, it’s okay.’ But it came back again even worse.

“It’s got worse over the months and years. I’ve been here seven years now and I’ve put up with this long enough.”

Since November, builders have been at Ms Waterhouse’s home repairing the damage.

Gareth Thorp, of GTA Builders, has been working on repairing the house and said: “We’ve completely taken down the front part of the house. The windowsills have been put in out of level, so all the water has drained into the main cavity and rotted all the timbers and rotted all the membrane.

“I think this could have been sorted out if the phones had been answered many years ago. At that point it would have been a small job, now it’s more than £30,000 worth of work.”

Ms Waterhouse said she was unable to claim on her building’s insurance as insurers deemed it “poorly built” and insisted responsibility lay with Charles Church.

Daughter Sherald Waterhouse-Trew said her mother has had to spend all her savings, which she had planned to keep in case she needs care in the future.

Ms Waterhouse-Trew said her mother “shouldn’t have to be paying for this”.

She said: “If I went and bought a brand new BMW, and there was a fault with it, and lots of other people had the same fault, BMW would recall that car.

“It doesn’t matter how old it was, they would recall it and put that fault right – and that’s what Charles Church needs to do.

“There’s clearly a big fault. They’ve put the windows in wrong – the windows are tipping back into the house, which is allowing water to get underneath and fill up inside the house.

“And it’s not just this house, there’s a lot of houses. It’s obviously a building issue so they just need to put it right and need to compensate my mother for the money she’s had to pay.”

A number of other houses on the street have also experienced similar problems in recent years.

Residents have called on Persimmon, which owns the Charles Church brand, to examine the houses to look for faults and to reimburse residents who have had to pay to address the problems.

Caerphilly’s Member of Parliament, Wayne David, has written to Persimmon to raise the issue.

A spokesman for Charles Church East Wales said: “We have been in regular contact with our customer and have reassured her and other residents that we will work with the warranty provider to make sure any necessary works are completed.

“A meeting was held [on February 18] with the warranty provider to discuss a resolution and we have promised residents that we will shortly be providing them with an update.”