The Unit Below Flooded During Our Repair

Why this matters

Water in a multifamily building does not stay where it starts. It finds the pipe chase, the gap around a drain, the light fixture box, and it arrives in someone else's home, where the occupant had nothing to do with your job and is now standing under a dripping ceiling. In the first fifteen minutes you can keep this to a wet ceiling and a drying bill, or let it become a collapsed ceiling, an electrical fire risk and a dispute with three insurers. The order of what you do decides which. This case runs in that order: stop the water, protect the people and the unit below, make the calls, and only then work out what failed.

The case

A plumber is replacing a corroded section of the 1/2 in cold branch under the kitchen sink in unit 8F of a ten-story condominium, an approved job with management's work order. The unit's branch shutoff is an old multi-turn gate valve in the hall closet. He closes it, notes that the handle turned a lot, opens the kitchen faucet, sees the flow drop, and cuts the pipe.

Water comes out of the cut at full pressure. He tries to push a push-fit cap onto the copper; the first attempt fails because the cut end has a burr, and water runs full bore under the sink while he deburrs and reseats it. The cap holds about four minutes after the cut. In that time the cabinet floods, water crosses the kitchen floor, and it drains through an unsealed gap around the riser chase into unit 7F below.

First: stop the water

Everything else waits until no more water is entering the building fabric. The options, in the order of how fast they work:

• A cap or plug on the open line. Fastest if it seats. A push-fit cap seats on clean, deburred copper or PEX; on a burred or out-of-round end it blows off. Keep a deburring tool in the same pocket as the cap.
• The next valve upstream. If the unit valve failed, the next valve is usually the riser isolation valve in the basement, which the building engineer operates and which takes water from every unit on the riser. Call the engineer the second you know the unit valve has failed, even while you are still trying the cap; if the cap holds, the engineer stands down.
• A hand or a rag on the pipe end. Slows it, does not stop it, and occupies the one person who should be doing something else. Only while someone else is getting the cap or the engineer.

In this case the cap held. The plumber left the unit valve closed, put a second cap on the other side of the cut in case anything was draining back, and confirmed with the faucet open that nothing was flowing. Then he went downstairs.

Second: protect the unit below, and the person in it

Water coming through a ceiling into an occupied unit carries three hazards, and they come before the carpet.

Electricity. In 7F, water was dripping from the kitchen ceiling light fixture. The plumber told the occupant, a woman in her eighties, not to touch any switch, outlet or appliance in the kitchen. The unit's panel was in a dry hallway; he stood on a dry floor, opened it, and switched off the breakers labeled for the kitchen lights and kitchen receptacles. Had the panel been in the wet area, or had water been near it, the rule would have been do not approach, call the building engineer to cut power at the floor or meter level, and keep everyone out of the wet room. A fixture that has had water through it stays off until an electrician has dried it out and checked it.

The ceiling. Drywall that holds water sags into a bag and can drop all at once, along with the water it holds. The bulge in 7F's kitchen ceiling was about 18 in across. With the lights in that ceiling de-energized, the plumber set a bucket under the lowest point, stood to one side rather than under it, and punched a small hole at the low point with a screwdriver to let the water out in a controlled stream. Never stand under a bag of water to drain it, and never drain one until the fixtures in that ceiling are off.

The occupant. She was moved to her living room, away from the wet floor, which is the most common injury in a flooded unit and the one nobody plans for. The plumber asked whether anyone else was home, whether she had medical equipment plugged in anywhere near the water, and whether she wanted a family member called.

Then the contents: furniture moved off wet flooring, plastic over the cabinets, wet items into the dry room, and photos of everything before it moved.

Third: the calls, in this order

Management, immediately, because 7F is not your customer and you need their authority for what happens next, and because other units may be affected. Say what happened, where the water went, what you have done, and what you need.

TECH:    This is Dan from the plumbing company in 8F.
         We had a water release under the 8F kitchen
         sink about ten minutes ago. It's stopped. It
         came through into 7F's kitchen ceiling.
MANAGER: Is anyone hurt?
TECH:    No. 7F's occupant is home and in her living
         room. I've turned off the 7F kitchen lights
         and outlets at her panel and drained the
         ceiling into a bucket. I'd like the engineer
         to check 6F and the chase.
MANAGER: Okay. Who's paying for this?
TECH:    I'm reporting it to my office and our
         insurance now. I'll send you photos and my
         notes within the hour.

Notice what the tech does not say. He does not say "it's our fault", "we'll pay for everything" or "it was a bad valve, not us." He reports facts. Who is responsible is a question for the insurers, and a promise made in a hallway can complicate the claim your own insurer is about to handle. This is not legal advice; your agent and, if it comes to it, your attorney decide what to say beyond the facts.

Your own office and your insurer, the same day. A general liability policy typically requires prompt notice of an occurrence that may lead to a claim, and late notice is a reason insurers give for disputing coverage. Read the notice condition in your own policy before you need it, and report even if the damage looks small.

Drying. Clean water from a supply line is the least contaminated category of water damage under the industry's restoration standard (IICRC S500), but it degrades the longer it sits in building materials. EPA guidance is to dry water-damaged materials within 24 to 48 hours to prevent mold growth. Offer management the name of a water mitigation company; management or the unit owners authorize it, because it is their property.

How far did it go?

Water in a concrete-floored building travels farther than it looks. It runs along the slab under flooring, follows pipe sleeves down more than one floor, and soaks the bottom of walls on the far side of a room from where it entered. Before anyone calls the area contained:

• Check the floor below the floor below. Once management had sent the engineer up, he went to 6F, under 7F's kitchen, with the occupant's permission arranged by management. The ceiling was dry and a moisture meter on the drywall under the chase read the same as a dry wall elsewhere in the unit. Had it read wet, the same electrical and ceiling steps would have repeated there.
• Map the wet area in 8F and 7F with a meter, not your hand. Drywall can feel dry on the face and be wet behind the paint. Readings at the base of every wall near the release, written on a floor sketch with the time, are what the mitigation company and the insurers will ask for.
• Check the units beside 7F and 8F that share the chase. Water follows the chase, not the unit lines.

If the unit below is empty and locked, you do not force entry. Management or the engineer has keys and the authority to use them; call them, and while you wait, keep removing standing water above so less of it goes down. Write down the time you asked for access and the time it arrived.

Then: what actually failed

With the water stopped, the unit below protected and everyone told, the plumber turned to the question everyone would ask: why did the valve not hold?

What the record said. His own notes: closed the hall gate valve, "turned a lot", faucet flow dropped, cut. Two details in that line were the whole story, and he had walked past both.

The turn count. A 1/2 in gate valve closes in a handful of turns. He went back and counted on an identical valve in the next closet, which closed solidly in five and a half turns. His valve had turned more than nine and was still turning when he stopped. A gate valve that keeps turning past its normal count has usually lost its wedge: the stem rotates, the wedge sits where it was.

The faucet test. The flow dropped when he opened the faucet because the loose wedge had slid partway down and was restricting the pipe, not closing it. He watched the faucet for perhaps five seconds. A valve that has truly closed takes the downstream flow to nothing within a minute or two as the branch drains, and keeps it there; five seconds of reduced flow proves only that something in the line moved.

The part. With management's approval and the riser off, the engineer and plumber removed the gate valve. The wedge had separated from the stem, whose threaded end had thinned and broken. The plumber bagged and tagged the valve and kept it, because the insurer will want it, and a part thrown in the truck's scrap bin is evidence that no longer exists.

What the shop changed

The cause was a failed valve. The flood was caused by cutting without proof the water was off, and that is the part the shop controls. Three changes went into its procedures:

• Prove isolation before any cut. After closing a shutoff, open the lowest downstream fixture fully and watch it for two minutes; flow must go to nothing and stay there. On old multi-turn valves, count the turns to close and compare with what the valve size should take.
• Cap ready before the cut. A cap, a deburring tool and a towel are within reach before the cutter touches the pipe, and a second person knows where the next valve upstream is and how to reach the engineer.
• Seal the chase. Water reached 7F through an unsealed gap around the riser. The shop now notes unsealed penetrations under sinks on multifamily jobs and recommends sealing them to management in writing; the gap is a common element and the building's to fix.

Had the unit valve been sound and the riser itself passing, the trace would point at a different valve and a different owner, which is why the part is kept and the record written before anyone draws a conclusion.

References

• IICRC S500, Standard for Professional Water Damage Restoration
• EPA, Mold Remediation in Schools and Commercial Buildings (drying within 24 to 48 hours)
• Your general liability policy's notice-of-occurrence conditions
• See related: Shared Risers, Shutoffs and the Neighbor You Flood
• See related: Condo and Multifamily Work: Whose Property Is It?