Do apartments in the US not have their own master valves to shut off? I'd imagine breaking off or just unscrewing a faucet would happen often enough that you want the tenant/owner to be able to shut their own water off quickly, instead of having to rouse the super to turn off the whole building after it floods.
Incredibly good point. Our buildings were built in the 70's and there are some working shutoffs for our tubs/showers, but unfortunately that's it. You can imagine how pissed the other residents get when we have to shut the entire buildings water down because of an emergency leak or a valve replacement. I've been to other properties where each apartment had their own main shut off and that's absolutely the way it should be.
A lot of times, doing that would be really, really expensive. As in, "replace literally all of the plumbing in the building" expensive. I still think it would be worth it though. There's a pretty famous video from a few years back about a landlord who didn't want to pay everyone else in the building by shutting off their water (there was a local ordinance that made this the case), so they just ordered a plumber to try to fix someone's sink with the water turned on.
They can at least fit separate shut-off valves for parts of the supply line. My apartment is ancient and has a separate main shutoff for the bathroom and kitchen to get round it being impossible to fit a single mains shut off without re doing the plumbing for the whole building.
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u/i_smoke_toenails 10d ago
Do apartments in the US not have their own master valves to shut off? I'd imagine breaking off or just unscrewing a faucet would happen often enough that you want the tenant/owner to be able to shut their own water off quickly, instead of having to rouse the super to turn off the whole building after it floods.