I have a mystery I am hoping I can get some expert opinions on:

- I own a condo in a small condo building. I am on the first floor. The building is only about 11 years old.  Earlier this week, problems started suddenly: a drop in water pressure, hot water not working, washing machine had water running etc. The tenant checked filters in sinks etc, and noticed massive amounts of sediment. Those are the first two pictures. One fixture with sediment was replaced relatively recently, so this was not a long term build up in the faucet. 

-I informed other unit owners, none of whom reported the same problems. They did inform me that earlier in the same day that this happened, however, a back flow preventer test was performed for the entire building.

-There is a tankless water heater. Several people suggested that this was the culprit since it wasn’t functioning and our clogged valves and malfunctioning washer are downstream of the water heater. Since no other condo unit had issue, and I have read that tankless heaters are prone to build up, this seemed a reasonable assumption. I am going to try to have someone flush the water heater to see if we can avoid needing to buy a new one. 

-But… When we had an appliance repair person came out to fix the washer (a  solenoid controlled intake valve was malfunctioning and wouldn’t close, turns out it was dunked up with sediment) the intake valve that receives cold water was inundated with sediment but not the hot water intake valve. This seems to rule out the hot water heater as the source (otherwise I’d expect the opposite?). Picture of that is attached. 

-The inspection company said that the sediment is likely from construction or some other work that the city did. They said the city should flush the street lines. They said it couldn’t be anything from the back flow test because “backflow preventers only function in one direction, so gravel and debris from the street can flow in but not the other way around.”

-The timing of the back flow test seems too coincidental to me not to be related to our problem. It was the same day. One plumber that came out said it was possible that during the test of the back flow preventer the pressure in the buildings pipes fluctuated and a water hammer type effect could have knocked sediment from the buildings pipes down to our unit on the first floor, but I don’t feel I can really judge this possibility versus what the inspection company is saying (ie that what they did didn’t cause it) and I don’t want to point the finger at them unfairly. 

Can anyone help me out here? 



Plumbing Mystery