Construction Defects - Plumbing Problems
March 4, 2009
When you think of plumbing defects, the first thing that comes to mind is a leaky pipe. But mistakes in the installation of a home’s plumbing system can result in numerous other problems, including:
- High or Low Water Pressure
- Noisy Pipes
- Missing Sewer Cleanouts
- Missing or Improperly Installed Backwater Valve
- Odors from Improperly Installed Sewer Traps
This is not an exhaustive list, but it does indicate that plumbing problems can involve much more than a flooded room.
Let’s review a sampling of plumbing issues so you can appreciate the difference between problems that are serious and those that are mostly annoying.
High or Low Water Pressure
The water entering your home from the street can sometimes reach a very high pressure – high enough to damage your plumbing or blow out weak plumbing joints. Therefore, a pressure regulator is normally installed next to your main shutoff valve. If the pressure regulator is not installed or not properly set, you can end up with annoying low water pressure, or high pressure that eventually causes damage to your plumbing system.
Noisy Pipes
Water and drain pipes can be the source of all kinds of noises. Though not damaging to your home themselves, many noises are at best annoying, and at worst a sign that something more significant may be wrong with your plumbing system.
Banging Noise
The pressure shock from opening and closing a faucet can cause a pipe to move and bang against wood framing or other building components inside walls, floors and ceilings. This banging noise – sometimes called “hammering” or “water hammer” – is prevented by securing the pipe so it can’t move and/or insulating it from adjacent building components. Over time, water hammer can weaken pipe joints or damage pipes.
Some modern homes use a water hammer arrestor to prevent pipes from hammering. It’s like an air-filled shock absorber that soaks up the pressure change. For homes with hammering problems, installing one of these might be the cheap and simple fix.
If your home already has a water hammer arrestor and hammering problems arise, the arrestor may be water logged. To drain the water in the arrestor, turn off the water to your house, open an outdoor faucet on the ground level and open another faucet at a sink. This will let the water drain out of your pipes and hopefully out of the arrestor, too. When you turn the water back on, your pipes will spit and sputter for a while until all the air is cleared from the lines.
Moaning Pipes
A high-pitched screaming or a low-pitch moaning noise sometimes occurs when faucets are on or the toilet is running. There are many causes of a variety of noises in this category, most of which are related to water valves. Because there are so many possibilities, it’s best to have an experienced plumber evaluate the condition if it’s making you crazy.
Rushing Sound
Everyone is probably accustomed to hearing the sound of water running in the pipes in the walls when a faucet is turned on. But families who’ve moved into their first two-story home may be surprised to hear the sound of water running down drain pipes in first floor walls when an upstairs toilet flushes or a bathtub drains. There are no codes or standards that address preventing such noises, although a better architect might locate those pipes inside walls where the noise is less likely to be noticed, and a better builder might think to wrap the drain pipe with insulation to muffle the sound.
Missing Sewer Cleanouts
Just about every homeowner at one time or another has had to have a drain or sewer line unclogged. Usually, a sewer snake is fed into the drain line through a special plumbing connection called a “sewer cleanout.” This connection has a cap that can be unscrewed to open the drain line for access. Sewer cleanouts are required by building code to be installed in specific, convenient locations both inside and outside the home.
Sometimes, however, a required cleanout is overlooked, or it may end up buried inside a wall or beneath the ground. Though a home inspector could identify locations where a cleanout is expected but missing, the homeowner will likely never notice until a plumber points it out when cleaning a clogged drain. The primary effect of the missing cleanout is the plumber is going to take longer and charge more because he has to use a longer snake. But compared to some defects, a missing cleanout is not going to damage anything and is not extremely expensive to fix.
Missing or Improperly Installed Backwater Valve
When toilets or drains in the home are below the level of the first sewer manhole cover in the street upstream from the house, a backwater valve is required on the sewer line. The reasoning is that if a clogged sewer line in the street backs up, it will overflow at the manhole cover in the street upstream from you, If you have a drain in your house that is lower than that manhole cover, then the sewer line will also overflow into your house. This is not a problem you want to discover you have – for obvious reasons.
You can usually tell if you have a backwater valve by looking for the relief vent sticking up in your yard between your house and the sewer connection in the street.
Odors from Improperly Installed Sewer Traps
The U-shaped drain pipe under your sink is an example of a sewer trap. It’s design means it is always filled with water that acts as a blockage to prevent sewer gases from backing up through the drain pipe into your home – a truly wonderful invention!
The sewer trap is so fundamental to plumbing, it’s almost impossible to overlook installing one where it’s needed. But it is possible to install a trap incorrectly.
Washing Machine Drain Pipe
A washing machine can pump water out with a great degree of force – enough force, in fact, to push all the water out of the trap in some circumstances. If all the water is pushed out, then sewer gases can backup into the home. Code requirements specify pipe size, and trap measurements and distance from the top of the standpipe to minimize the potential for a “dry trap.”
Floor Drains
A floor drain almost never receives water (hopefully). Being installed primarily in garages, basements or laundry rooms, its purpose is to provide drainage in case the floor is accidentally flooded. Because it rarely receives water, it soon becomes a dry trap. To solve the problem, another drain line that is more frequently used is tied into the floor drain. As you use your laundry sink, for example, the water going down the sink drain is routed to the floor drain to keep the floor drain’s trap filled with water.
Other Plumbing Problems
As you might guess, the types of construction defects that can occur in plumbing systems are too numerous to describe them all here. The good news is that many of them – including most of those described above – are not particularly damaging and can frequently be corrected without significant problem.
Many potential plumbing errors and defects, however, can lead to water leaks, which can become the most expensive of all to repair – not because the defect itself is expensive to repair, but because of the extensive property damage resulting from the leak. And it’s difficult to say which is worse, a slow leak resulting in toxic mold and wood rot, or a flood resulting from a broken pipe or plumbing connection.
Enforcing Your Legal Rights
If you discover any type of plumbing problem within your home’s warranty period, contact the builder to have the defect repaired. In many of the simple cases, a reputable builder will be happy to do the work and keep a satisfied customer. But if the builder baulks over something that’s not potentially damaging and not horribly expensive to fix, it may not be worth the cost and effort to pursue a legal case against him. You may just have to bite the bullet and pay for the repair yourself.
If you experience extensive damage due to a prolonged leak or a flood, however, you should pursue recovering your damages from the builder. Contact the builder to see what he can offer in the way of repairs and compensation. If you think the builder is not meeting his legal obligations, contact a construction defects attorney right away. In some jurisdictions, the builder’s responsibilities for some types of defects expire just one or two years after completion. If you miss the deadline by even just one day, you’ll be able to recover nothing.
If you need assistance finding an attorney, please contact us using the form on the right.
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