WHEN YOU HAVE A COLD WATER LEAK - FIRST STEPS:

1. Check to see if turning off the water at the wall valve stops the leak. If it does, you don’t need to do anything else until the repair needs to be done.

2. If turning off the wall valve doesn’t work, or if the leak is in a tub or shower, you will need to contact the resident in the ground floor unit of your unit stack (all units vertically aligned in a building is called a “stack”) and ask them to turn off the stack water shut off valve. (See below for location information.)

3. If you are the ground floor unit resident, look for the stack water shut off valve.

4. If the stack water has to be shut off, at some point please let the residents in your stack know the water is shut off and provide information regarding how long the water will be off.

5. When the repairs are done and the stack water valve is turned back on, let the residents know because they will have to turn on their cold water faucets to bleed air out of their pipes.

HOT WATER HEATER TANKS HAVE DIFFERENT VALVES. Please familiarize yourself with the location of all the valves to your hot water heater. There will be at least two valves: a cold water intake valve near the wall, and a hot water pressure release and overflow valve near the hot water heater tank.

MORE INFORMATION:

Each sink and toilet, and the clothes washer and dishwasher have shutoff valves at the wall to control cold and hot water leaks at those locations. Some minor repairs can be done by just shutting off those individual valves.

When more substantial work is needed, like replacing hoses, replacing the hot water heater or toilets, or fixing or replacing broken lines, leaking faucets, shower heads and tub spouts, water needs to be shut off at the cold water intake for the stack of units (all units that are vertically aligned in a building).

Water shutoff valves for the unit stacks are usually in the ground floor units, in the most forward bathroom (usually called a guest bathroom since it’s not an en suite) in the 9 and 13 unit buildings. The valves are under the sink. There will usually be 3 valves - 2 shut off the guest bathroom sink only (hot and cold water). The other shuts off the water supply to the stack of units.

In 4 unit buildings, the stack shut off valve is usually in the laundry room of the bottom units.

For a chart showing the location of the shut off valves and which units are affected, click here.

If you need to shut off the water to your unit for plumbing work on a non-emergency basis, please let everyone in your vertical stack of units know about it. Please try to keep the shutoff time to a minimum. When in doubt about whether shutting off all water to your unit is needed, call in a professional or contact Tom Gish.

Emergencies are different. If shutting off the individual valves doesn’t stop the water flow, go see your ground floor neighbor and shut the stack water off first, then let others in your unit stack know.

Building water shutoff is different, and is outside the building in a ground vault. There are labels. Only professionals should ever need to access the building water shutoff unless there is a major water emergency.

The fire suppression system is totally separate from the building water supply, so turning off water to some or all units in a building does not disable the fire sprinklers.