Why condo leaks spread
In a condo building, units share walls, floors and plumbing stacks. A washer hose that bursts on the third floor sends water down through the ceiling of the second floor, into the walls, and sometimes all the way to the garage. One leak can mean three insurance claims and an HOA board trying to sort out who pays.
The common sources are the same as in a house: washer hoses, water heaters, toilet supply lines, dishwasher lines and shower pans. What changes is how many people are involved and how fast the water reaches someone else's home.
What to do in the first hour
- If the water is coming from your unit, shut off the valve at the fixture or the unit's main shutoff.
- If it is coming from above, knock on the upstairs door. If nobody answers, call the building manager or the HOA's emergency line. They can reach the unit or the building's riser valves.
- Turn off power to wet rooms if you can do it safely.
- Photograph the ceiling, walls and floors before anything is moved.
- Call for cleanup. Drying has to start quickly no matter who ends up paying for it.
What a crew does in a condo
The crew dries every affected unit, not just the one where the leak started. They use moisture meters to trace the water through ceilings and shared walls, remove wet materials that cannot be saved, and keep a written record of readings and photos. That record is what the HOA, the association's insurance carrier and each owner's own insurer will use to decide who covers what.
Condo leaks in Edmonds buildings
Downtown Edmonds and the streets around the ferry terminal have a large stock of condo buildings, many from the 1970s through the 1990s, along with newer mixed-use buildings closer to Main Street and Fifth Avenue. Up Highway 99 and around Westgate, there are more garden-style complexes with units stacked two and three high.
In older buildings, original supply lines and water heaters are reaching the end of their life, and washer boxes and toilet supply lines fail more often as they age. Units that sit empty for part of the year are a particular risk. A leak can run for days before a neighbor notices a stain on their ceiling.
Responsibility in a Washington condo depends on the declaration and bylaws, the association's master policy, and each owner's own HO-6 policy. Our condo water damage guide walks through how that usually works. None of that should hold up the drying, though. The longer water sits in a shared wall, the more units it reaches and the bigger the bill gets for everyone.
Crews cover condos and townhomes across the 98020 and 98026 ZIP codes and nearby Woodway, Mukilteo, Shoreline and Mountlake Terrace.