In-Suite Plumbing Repairs, Booked Around Residents

Your declaration is the document that decides it, but the usual division follows the pipe. The fixtures, taps, toilets, their supply lines, the traps and the branch drain inside your unit are typically the owner's. The vertical risers and stacks, the building drain, the mechanical plant and the valves on the common element piping are the corporation's. The grey area is the shut-off valve where your branch leaves the riser, which is why the first question on any repair is where exactly the failure sits. We document that and bill accordingly.

In most Toronto condominiums it is not inside the unit. Suite isolation usually sits on the branch where it leaves the riser, which means behind an access panel in a hallway, a closet or a bathroom soffit, and in some buildings there is no suite-level valve at all and the smallest isolation is the whole stack. Ask property management where yours is and whether there is a panel. Find out before you need it, and try it once a year to be sure it turns.

Somebody has to provide access but it does not have to be you. Most residents either attend, arrange for management to use a key, or have a family member or neighbour present. What does not work is nobody being available, because the suite gets rebooked and on stack-wide work one inaccessible unit can hold up an entire column.

Written notice in advance with the date and a time window, issued through property management. For work on common elements inside a unit, the Condominium Act sets out notice requirements and the corporation follows them. For an owner's own repair, we simply book a window that suits you. Either way the window is meant to be something you can plan around rather than a whole day of waiting.

Yes, and in every suite regardless of how small the job is. Protection runs from the suite entrance to the work area and over surfaces around it, and the area is cleaned before we leave. We ask you to clear the immediate work area and move anything fragile or valuable out of the room, and to secure pets somewhere else for the duration.

Tell us the same day and we deal with it directly rather than sending you into a claims process. That is the whole reason we walk each suite with the resident or management before leaving: it is much easier to resolve something identified on the day than something reported three weeks later. Documented walk-throughs protect residents and us equally.

For a fixture repair, minutes, because we close the fixture shut-off and nothing else. For a branch repair, an hour or two for your unit. For work that needs the stack isolated, part of a working day for every suite on that column, with notice in advance. We always look for the smallest isolation available, and where a valve is missing or seized a freeze kit will often let us work on a live line instead of draining anything.

Report it to property management immediately and let it be traced properly, because the source is very often not where the stain is. Water escapes, runs along the underside of the slab, and appears wherever it finds a penetration, which may be several metres and sometimes several suites away from the failure. We trace it with a moisture meter and a thermal camera before anyone opens a ceiling, and then it is clear whose side of the line the cause is on.

Both work. For repairs on your own side of the line, such as your fixtures, cartridges, supply lines and traps, you can book us directly. Anything touching common element piping, risers, stacks or building valves goes through the corporation, because that is their asset and their decision. If you call us and it turns out to be the corporation's, we will tell you rather than doing it and arguing about it afterwards.

Yes, and for the buildings we hold contracts with this is the efficient way to do it. Management collects resident requests, we work through a floor or a stack at a time, and one attendance covers a dozen suites instead of a dozen separate callouts. Buildings doing shut-off replacements, supply line upgrades or fixture programmes almost always do it this way.

Yes, and it is worth planning rather than waiting for it to fail. Many Toronto suites have a rented tank, in which case the rental provider owns it and there are contract terms involved, so tell us what you have and we will say plainly whether it is ours to touch. Where it is an owned tank we replace it, fit new isolation and a proper drain connection, and deal with the logistics of getting it in and out of an occupied high-rise.

Often, yes, and it is one of the most worthwhile upgrades in an older building. Whether it is practical depends on how your branch leaves the riser and whether there is usable access, so it needs looking at rather than quoting blind. Where the branch is reachable, suite isolation with an access panel means every future repair in your unit stops needing the whole stack taken off.

Five things, and they take ten minutes. Turn your suite shut-off and make sure it moves. Look under every sink for damp, corrosion or a hardening supply line. Check behind the toilet for the same, and make sure the fixture does not rock. Look at your washing machine hoses and replace them if they are rubber rather than braided. Do a dye test on each toilet tank for a silent leak. Almost every in-suite flood we attend was one of those five, visible months earlier.

If you have a working suite shut-off, yes, and it is close to free. The majority of catastrophic in-suite floods start at a supply line, a toilet fill valve or a washing machine hose, and all of those are harmless without pressure behind them. Test the valve while you are home with time to deal with it, not on the morning of a flight, and if it does not turn easily have it replaced first.

Constantly, and it is worth being clear about the coordination. Notice goes to the unit, and the practical issue is usually that an owner is arranging work in a suite they do not live in. We deal with whoever is nominated as the contact, tenant or owner or management, and we report back to the person paying for the work so an off-site owner knows exactly what happened in their unit.