9/9/21. Meeting with Adam (Meredith)
- Adam has worked here since early 2018
- His role is to take care of leaks/problems in the common areas
- He only gets involved with residential water problems when the leak is affecting more than one unit, particularly if an owner isn’t home. He tries to find the source of the leak and shuts it off. The rest is up to the owner working with his/her insurance company
- Overall, he has the most problems with hot water return lines; these are in the common areas.
- A blessing for this building is that each unit has its own water shut off valve.
- He identified several incidents
- Bathroom sink without an overflow drain overflowed. Major
- Bathtub overflowed. Major
- Two incidents with refrigerator ice machine line, both major
- Terrace water spigot kept running because timer failed. Major
- He knew of no problems with bathroom sink and toilet plumbing, washing machine inflow and outflow, the heat pump, kitchen sink plumbing, garbage grinder, dishwasher, instant hot water heater. He thinks there have probably been problems with these fixtures/appliances but that owners have caught them prior to water leaking to another unit.
- He identified one bathroom shower problem not related to plumbing, but to tiling. Grout was missing and water from shower got behind the tile and leaked to unit below
- He said Meriwether is also working on ways to reduce insurance premiums. They were told that increased premiums were more due to global events (wildfires, flooding, etc.) and were unlikely to be affected by changes in leak control in an individual building.
- If we consider a system of sensors, he identified priorities:
- Refrigerator ice machine lines and the washing machine hoses as highest priority because neither of those leaks would normally be seen early enough to be contained.
- Second priority would be bathrooms; he thinks one sensor might be able to catch a leak in any one of the fixtures in a bathroom.
- Third priority under the kitchen sink.
- He noted that replacing sinks without overflow drains would also be helpful.
- He suggested that grout review in all units of this 15-year old building would probably turn up some missing grout.
- He says Dave Waterman does a great job of re-caulking. (Bill and I had Dave re-caulk the granite at the back of the kitchen counter.)
take me back to Water leak damage mitigation subcommittee