24/7 Emergency Leak Response

Shut your suite valve if you have one and it turns. Call the concierge or security so the building can be isolated, and call us on (416) 845-3756. Move what you can out of the water, put down towels, and turn off the electrical breaker for that area if water is anywhere near outlets, lights or panels. Photograph everything before you clean up, because that is what your claim will be built from. Do not force a seized valve and do not go into a ceiling that is holding water.

Yes, and you reach a person who can dispatch rather than a service that takes a message. That distinction is the whole point of an emergency number. Someone who knows the buildings we service can ask what is affected, work out whether this is a suite problem or a riser, and have a crew moving while still talking to you.

For the buildings we hold maintenance contracts with, quickly, because we know where the mechanical rooms and the isolation points are before we arrive. Across the GTA generally, response depends on the hour and on where the crews are, and we will give you a real time on the phone rather than a number designed to end the call. What we will also do is tell you what to isolate in the meantime, which is often worth more than the arrival time.

Report it to the concierge and to property management immediately, because the source is not in your unit and somebody needs access to the suite above. Put buckets down, move furniture, and kill the breaker for any circuit in that ceiling. Do not poke or drain the bulge yourself. When we arrive we trace the source rather than assume it is directly above the stain, because water runs along the underside of a slab and can travel a long way from where it started.

Anything actively releasing water that cannot be stopped by a resident: a burst or split pipe, a failed supply line, a leaking riser, water coming through a ceiling or a wall, a stack or building drain backing up into suites or a garage, a failed water heater, a seized valve during another failure, and no water at all to a suite or a stack. A dripping tap and a running toilet are not emergencies, though a running toilet is worth reporting the same week because of what it does to your water bill.

Turn off your own suite valve if you have one and it moves easily. Leave the building main to building staff or to us. In most towers the main is not a single tap, the order things get closed in matters, and slamming a building main shut on an old system can cause its own damage. If nobody on site knows what to close, that is exactly the call to make to us, because we can talk somebody through it.

Because to stop water leaving a pipe you need a valve upstream of it that closes properly, and in buildings where those valves have seized, the next one that actually holds might be the zone or the building main. That is why a one-suite failure can become a building notice. It is also the strongest argument there is for a valve audit and an annual exercise programme: the difference is one stack for fifteen minutes versus the whole tower for two hours.

Whichever the situation calls for, and we will say which one you are getting. At three in the morning with a building without water, a sound temporary repair that restores service safely and a permanent fix booked for a planned day is often the right answer. What we will not do is present a stopgap as a completed repair and leave it on your building for a year. Whatever we do overnight goes in the report along with what still needs doing.

It depends on what failed and what your declaration says, and property management makes that determination rather than us. Broadly, a failure in the common element piping, the risers or the mechanical plant is a corporation cost, and a failure of something inside the unit, such as a supply line, a fixture or a water heater, is usually the owner's. We document what actually failed and where, which is the fact that decides it, and we invoice suite and common element work separately.

Your unit policy and the corporation's policy interact, and the deductible on a condominium water claim can be substantial. We are not insurance advisers, so take the details to your broker. What we can tell you is what makes claims go smoothly: photographs taken before cleanup, a written record of when the leak was found and when it was isolated, and an invoice that identifies the failed component. Insurers ask how long isolation took, and that answer is decided by the building's valves long before the leak happens.

Four things, in order of how often they would have helped. Know where your suite shut-off is and check once a year that it turns. Replace rubber washing machine hoses and old flexible supply lines with braided stainless ones on a schedule rather than when they fail. Shut your water off when you travel. And report small things: a weeping valve, a toilet that runs, a stain that appears and dries. Most of the floods we attend were visible as something minor first.

We handle the plumbing: isolating it, finding it, repairing it, and closing the wall where our work opened it. Large-scale remediation, dehumidification and restoration of finishes is specialist work and your corporation will usually have a restoration contractor for it. We coordinate with them and hand over a clear account of what failed and what was affected, because the first thing they need to know is whether the water is stopped.

Yes, subject to crew availability. Response is faster in buildings we already service, because we arrive holding the valve chart and knowing where the mechanical rooms and isolation points are. If we are attending your building for the first time during a failure, the isolation is worth reviewing afterwards; the event will generally have demonstrated something about the valves.

Water hammer is the shock of moving water being stopped suddenly, and it is the banging you hear in a wall when a tap or an appliance valve closes. On its own it is not an emergency, but it is not harmless either: the same shock loads joints and fittings, and it is usually a symptom of pressure being set too high. Report it, because it tends to be the thing a building notices in the year before it starts seeing leak repairs.