Common Apartment Community Plumbing and Mechanical Issues
Whether you operate a portfolio of garden style communities in the suburbs or a high-rise tower downtown, when your properties have pipe problems, things can become tense very quickly. From maintenance cost overruns to tenant complaints and turnover, failing plumbing and mechanical infrastructure can wreak havoc on your community.
Leaks
A top issue of concern for apartment owners, domestic water leaks can have a huge impact on your community.
- Leaks require immediate and unplanned water shut-offs to repair.
- They can be expensive to remediate, especially if there is extensive drywall and flooring damage.
- Leaks can cause significant damage to tenant belongings.
- They can ultimately drive reduced occupancy if your community develops a reputation for having repeated or continuous problems.
Slow drains, odors and hazardous contamination
When your drain pipes fail, the results can be seriously problematic.
- Resident frustrations with slow drains and back-ups can lead to resident retention problems.
- DWV leaks behind walls can create a serious health situation with toxic waste and odors entering the units and festering behind the walls.
- Backups that flood units can be difficult to remediate given the contaminated water, requiring extensive demolition and re-construction to ensure removal of all toxically affected surfaces.
No Heat or A/C
While resident frustration is certainly a factor, many local laws require functional climate control. If your community goes without heat in the winter or A/C in the summer, you could be subject to significant fines and possibly risk being condemned by local officials if you can’t get the systems working quickly.
Unplanned Water Shutoffs
Residents can usually work around a planned shut off. But when a system fails unexpectedly and must be shut off without warning to stop a leak and perform repairs, tempers can flare very quickly. This is especially true during peak demand like in the morning when residents are getting ready for work, or in the evening when they are trying to make dinner.
Mold
A potentially hidden risk, mold can be hugely problematic due to the health risks it poses and the challenges with its detection when it festers behind walls. Whether it’s a pinhole leak slowly soaking the drywall from behind or a slow drip in your aging drain system, it can take weeks or months for signs of mold to appear, and when they finally do, you often find it spread catastrophically behind the walls and requires extensive work to remediate including relocating residents.
