A pipe burst: what to do, where to call if a pipeline breaks in an apartment

Emergency phone

It is important to know where to call when there is a water leak. The purpose of the phone call is to notify the emergency repair team that an accident has occurred as soon as possible. Such units are organized in all housing management companies and city utilities. An accident occurs at any time of the day or night, which is why the numbers available for contact are divided into 24-hour telephone numbers and telephone numbers that operate only during working hours - for the bulk of workers.

To answer the question of where to call if a pipe has burst in your apartment, it is important to have an idea of which organizations are involved in emergency response. The call will certainly be answered and appropriate measures :

ZhES - housing maintenance service will help if a water pipe or heating rupture occurs during working hours on a weekday. The telephone number is on the door of each entrance.
The emergency service of the water utility accepts requests for an urgent call to a brigade during a water main break on weekends and holidays around the clock. There is a hotline for this.
Dispatch service of the management organization for the property of the house - the scope of its service includes all pipes and heating radiators in the apartments of the controlled building. On weekends and holidays, office managers do not work and their telephone numbers are unavailable.
The city emergency service will also send specialists upon call to eliminate the flooding of the entrance and basement - the signal will be documented and will become evidence in court, if necessary.
The service organization works under an agreement with the management company and has its own dispatch service. If even minor leaks are detected on the riser in the bathroom or on the radiator, the homeowner must contact the agency so that a major accident does not occur.

Where to go if your apartment is flooded

There is an official website for Moscow residents: Apartment building management portal. For residents of the Moscow region - Public services portal - houses in the Moscow region. On these sites you can identify the housing organization servicing your home by address. The organization's page provides contact information, including emergency dispatch phone numbers. If you have problems finding phone numbers, call us, we will help you find where you need to call!

In addition, you can find out the details of your housing organization in a single payment document (EPD, zhirovka), which is used to make monthly payments for housing and communal services.

Regardless of who flooded your apartment (neighbors, management company, DEZ or HOA), the first thing you need to do is contact the emergency service dispatcher to eliminate the accident.

Before emergency services arrive, it makes sense to take actions aimed at reducing damage:

de-energize the apartment (turn off the circuit breakers in the electrical panel),
identify the apartment from which the flood is occurring and help eliminate the leak,
help collect water from neighbors above (less will leak to you),
cover furniture and equipment with film,
arrange mini dams between rooms,
place containers under running water,
invite witnesses, make photo and video recordings.

Emergency service task:

determine the cause of the flood,
eliminate the leak (close the cold water or hot water riser, turn off the heating, remove the blockage in the sewer riser, etc.),
make repairs.

Advice: there are situations when the culprits immediately begin to promise to compensate for the damage, ask not to call the emergency service, not to call the management company.
Be sure to take official steps, otherwise you won’t prove anything later when the culprit changes his mind about compensating for the damage. Get reliable Bay witnesses. Order your examination today. Our experts will come for an inspection on the day of the flood and will take photos and videos of the damage. In the future, you will be able to rely on their testimony in case of doubts of the court. Experts are better than neighbor witnesses who may not appear in court for various reasons (being busy, not wanting to get involved in conflicts). Free travel of an expert to court to defend his expertise is an additional guarantee of the quality of services.

You may also be interested in the following pages:

Flood Action Plan
Neighbors who are not at home are flooding
Drawing up an act on the bay of the apartment
The apartment was flooded, who is to blame?
How to negotiate with the culprit of the gulf?
Is it necessary to call the culprit of the flood by telegram?
Valuation report or expert opinion?
Bay claim for damages
Recovery of damage from apartment flooding through court
How to get money from a court decision?
What to do if you flood your neighbors' apartment
What to do if the apartment is flooded due to the fault of the management company?
What to do if your apartment is flooded due to the fault of your neighbors?

Sequence of actions

Sometimes in an extreme situation a person gets lost: if a heating pipe in an apartment bursts, what should you do first? You need to send an SOS distress signal, and not try to plug the hole. It’s good when several people are present and responsibilities can be distributed. One contacts the emergency service, the other tries to localize the leak, and the third will notify the neighbors at this time. If you had to deal with the problem yourself, then the order of measures taken is as follows:

see the location of the breakthrough if there is an accident in your own apartment, or note that the upstairs neighbor is drowning;
call the emergency service and provide your address, identify the problem, find out the time of arrival of the team;
notify neighbors, and, if there is a valve on the riser in the basement, try to close it or reduce the leak with available materials and tools;
Having stopped the flooding, collect water indoors, record the situation through photography and video - this will help when going to court for reimbursement of the costs of restoring damaged property.

A situation where the owner is at fault

Who to call if a pipe bursts? Let’s say the owner has carried out unauthorized reorganization of the premises, which resulted in a leak: moving the battery or changing the number of sections in it, improper installation, changing the heating radiator to another device. A moderately experienced home owner does not always seek to coordinate a modified housing project with the relevant authorities.

Popular bimetallic heating devices look more attractive than cast-iron radiators, but if you want to “modernize” your apartment, it is important to compare their characteristics with the batteries installed initially. After moving the heating device, replacing it or increasing the heating area, a test run of the system should be carried out.

To summarize the above: if the apartment owner decides to make changes to the heating system, he must be aware of the consequences and possible liability.

Emergency measures in the event of an accident

There is no reason to remain idle while waiting for the emergency crew to arrive. If you are unable to shut off the riser, you can try to stop the water yourself :

Apply a clamp with a rubber base: a bicycle tube, a tourniquet, or a glove are suitable for this. Cover the fistula with elastic material, wrap it with thick cloth and secure it with a knot.
You can limit leakage by using a clamp with the same base, but making it from tin, fastening it with screws or screws.

When working with hot water, use gloves to prevent burns. It is necessary to place containers under the jets that could not be contained - they will reduce the damage caused.

Who is responsible?

An even more unpleasant situation arises if the battery or riser bursts and you flood your neighbors. Most likely, you will have to expect a visit from angry neighbors who will blame those who live above them for what happened.
Does the fault for the flood really lie with the residents of the apartment where the battery or riser burst? Let's look into this issue.

The housing company is required to maintain the plumbing and heating lines in good condition. Their area of responsibility includes not only those communications that are located in the basement or attic, but also pipelines passing between apartments. The management company is obliged to regularly carry out major repairs.

In summer, the heating system is checked. Cold water is supplied under high pressure; residents are asked to be at home at this moment. If residents discover drops or a stream under the radiator, they should notify the UK plumbers, who will fix the problem.

Responsibility lies with the HOA or management company if:

the breakthrough occurred as a result of improper work by the plumber from the service company;
the pipes in the apartment building are dilapidated, major repairs have not been carried out for a long time;
The cause of the malfunction was pressure differences in the pipes.

It is not recommended to carry out plumbing work yourself . If a breakthrough occurs after this, the blame will lie entirely with the owner of the apartment.

The owner of the apartment is to blame for the flooding if he:

independently replaced the battery or pipes without the consent of the HOA or management company;
independently installed or removed water meters;
handled plumbing equipment carelessly;
caused mechanical damage to elements of the sewer or heating system.

If the guilt of the apartment tenant is proven, he will have to not only make repairs in his apartment, but also financially provide for the repair work of the affected neighbors.

The culprit of the pipe burst

If a pipe bursts in an apartment, who is to blame cannot be answered right away; we need to figure it out. Upon completion of the flood liquidation, the emergency team that arrived upon the call draws up a report, which indicates the specific location of the leak: an apartment or a common building riser, and the considerations of the commission members about the cause of the leak. It is possible to determine the culprit of the accident only taking into account all the circumstances of the rupture. Here are some situations :

The owner of the emergency apartment flooded the neighbor from below - the Civil Code indicates the guilt of the residents of the upper room. But this is ambiguous, since the cause could be a low-quality radiator purchased in a store and certified by a sales receipt. The pipe may turn out to have a manufacturing defect, which will always be proven by an independent examination. Installation is also sometimes carried out with errors, and then the relevant company or individual is held liable.
The accident occurred in a municipal apartment - the maintenance of heating and sewage systems is the responsibility of the management company or housing office, on whose balance sheet the house is located. If a rusty pipe is destroyed, it means that the housing office did not carry out routine or repair work in good faith and must carry out restoration in both apartments: above and below, at its own expense. It’s another matter if the tenant of the emergency room independently replaced the cast-iron batteries with aluminum ones, then he will be guilty. A similar situation will occur if the tenant prevented utility workers from conducting preventive inspections.
The heating riser is a common house system and is under the supervision of the housing office. In this case, the blame will definitely fall on the operating company.

System breakdown in a private home

If there is a sewerage break in a private house, what should its owner do? The answer is simple - do repairs and eliminate the consequences. Only homeowners are responsible for the condition of sewerage in the private sector. If an autonomous system is assembled on the site, all repair work falls entirely on the shoulders of the residents of the house. If there is a tie-in to a public highway, then some assistance from Vodokanal employees is possible. Perhaps the cause of the accident lies in a common pipe. For example, there was a clog that caused the drains to fill and burst the pipe. However, you should not count on reimbursement of expenses or free elimination of consequences by VK employees. It is necessary to take into account that blockages occur due to illiterate operation of networks, which will be proven in court.

For private home owners, repairing and eliminating the consequences of an accident are not significant problems. Firstly, the number of drains is relatively small. In addition, there is always the opportunity to temporarily stop using the sewer system, without having to run around to negotiate with neighbors. Any repair of pipelines and connections can be carried out without restrictions. This makes restoring the system state a less hassle-free procedure. Even treating a basement after flooding with sewerage is not such a complicated and time-consuming operation, since the area of the room and the volume of wastewater are relatively small.

Reasons for de-energizing DHW and cold water supply

Most often, the consumer does not know that the water supply is planned to be cut off. Moscow is a big city and cases often occur when the supply of hot water and cold water is carried out unscheduled. This may be due to an accident or emergency repair. In any case, the citizen suffers first and often does not know who to call in Moscow if there is no water.

There are emergency reasons that do not require warning. However, even for such cases, specific periods of time are prescribed during which utility companies must correct the situation. Utilities are required to comply with water shutoff standards and report in advance about an unscheduled interruption in the supply of the resource.

No housing office or management company has the right to schedule shutdowns for the autumn, spring or winter periods. This is why there is summer, when people go on vacation and stopping the supply of hot water will not cause serious inconvenience.

To find out the reason why there is no hot water, in Moscow in 2021 you need to call the emergency line at the number: 8-800-700-40-70. The cool center operators will indicate the reasons for the lack of water supply.

The following situations are common:

accident;
carrying out major repairs;
pipe cleaning;
connecting new facilities;
problems with housing and communal services.

Note: utility companies are required to notify users 10 days before the start of work. The only exceptions are emergency situations.

Watch the video: “Where to complain if the water in the house is turned off outside of the plan.”