I’m curious if there’s a solution for unexpected water service interruptions. In the last 5 months, the water supply to my apartment suddenly ceased without any prior notice twice.
I reached out to the Strata team, assuming the issue might be on their end. Unfortunately, they were unhelpful and rather impolite. They directed me to Sydney Waters, who also proved unhelpful, stating that there was no ongoing work in my suburb (information I already had from their website) and abruptly ending the call without offering a solution.
So now I’m just patiently waiting for them to hopefully take my complaint seriously and restore water.
Regardless of their ‘face’ to you, one would reasonably expect them to advise if they had water shut off for building works.
Does your building have a common room or outside taps to confirm the building has no water? Assuming that is the most logical expectation you might file a formal complaint with Sydney water about their ‘customer service’ .
I presume you checked for both scheduled as well as unscheduled outages?
It is not a very friendly display since one has to navigate
When there is an unscheduled outage there is normally a lapse between the ‘event’ and the ‘report’ in my area, Yarra Valley Water (Melbourne), and I would expect the same around Sydney.
Unless you know this, you will likely go around in circles.
It could be a contractor working on the property, resident in another unit, a local authority or utility (council, NBN, comms, gas, electricity) working in adjacent areas, building owner doing work or Sydney Water. They could be planned or unplanned works. Unplanned works it is unlikely notifications will be given. Even those doing planned works may not provide notification if the outage duration is short.
It could even be someone, such as kids, mucking around causing mischief.
Unless you know who turned the water off, you won’t know who is responsible and hope to get it resolved.
Also, does the main water valve to the property have a lock on the value (or in a locked enclosure) to prevent unauthorised turning off of the water. If it doesn’t, it might be something for the strata title/body corporate to look into.
Hi there, yes, I had checked those out. Their CS mentioned the same, i.e., there’s no work happening around my area. Also managed to get a hold on my neighbours, they didn’t have water too.
After calling Sydney Waters again, I think they might’ve sent someone to check it out, and now we’ve got water. It took about 3 hours. Thanks for all the help. But it’s annoying because we could use some notice/notification.
Is there a possibility Sydney Waters did not send somebody around? If they did calling them back should hopefully find someone in their customer service team who can advise what was found to be the cause.
Note unit blocks with a common service will have a common mains isolation/shutoff valve. Possibly other valves to isolate different levels or groups of appartments. Is it possible another owner or tenant had an issue, called a plumber and the plumber turned water off to meet their needs affecting more than the one apartment? It might be helpful to know if the outage impacted the other businesses or homes in your street, to be more confident of who might be responsible?
