Legal responsabilities concerning water quality inside buildings

Every building is worse as time passes: periodic inspections must be carried out

Everyone understands that a building is not a human being. However, its systems are alive, the proof is because over the years and use they degrade. For this reason, the law obligates to perform for instance: the Technical Inspection of the building (better known as ITE in Spanish), the supervision of the state of everything related with gas or the electrical installation. 

Today our beloved collaborator @domusserveis visit our blog to talk about the water supply network.

Three key questions about water supply:

1. Is it magic that this substance comes out when we turn on the tap?

In developed countries it seems so, but before water is fit for human consumption it goes through three successive stages: collection, purification and distribution.  

2. Who is responsible, and to what extent, for the maintenance of the pipes through which the water that we will consume when we turn on the tap passes?

The infrastructure which allows the water supply correct perform is a whole. However, is divided into public and private parts, with "boundaries" often ignored. In order to comply with law, it is necessary to establish the precise limits of responsibilities.

The water network is made up of urban pipes which create rings that cross entire neighborhoods. Everyone has noticed, however, some covers at the entrance of each building, where it says: "drinking water". Inside is the stopcock that "separates" the private buildings from the public network.

From this tap, to the  meters battery, located in the water chamber of the building, we have a buried pipe of which we do not know the external and internal state, the effects of corrosion and the material with which it was built. This pipe is called the service connection and reaches the battery of meters. From the battery of meters come the private supply pipes that go to each house, made of different materials, which we sometimes see and sometimes not, since they are "boxed" inside the walls or courtyards.

In all the journey, from the manhole in front of the building to the tap at home, things happen and they are our absolute responsibility, both communal and individual.

3. Who is in charge of the quality of this vital liquid? 

To answer rigorously we have to do it from three points of view. 

a) Health:

The responsible for watching over it is The Public Health Agency, in the section we link here gives us background on the need for strict observance of the law, from which we provide a small excerpt:

"The control of water quality at the consumer's tap in Barcelona".

Royal Decree 140/2003 establishes the control of water quality at the consumer's tap as a municipal competence. In the municipality of Barcelona this competence is developed by the Public Health Agency of Barcelona (ASPB in Catalan). Either for its own initiative, or as a result of a request or complaint, ASPB inspectors, duly identified, take water samples at different taps of the citizens of Barcelona. The control parameters are those established in article 20 of RD 140/2003:

- Ammonium

- Coliform bacteria and Escherichia coli (E. coli)

- Free residual chlorine

- Conductivity

- Metals: baking, chromium, nickel, iron and lead.

- Taste, smell, color, turbidity.

- pH

In case you suspect that any of the above problems may affect the quality of the water in your home or you simply want to check its quality, you can request a free analysis to the ASPB. You can find the application form on the Agency's website, which you can access here, or go to the official ASPB Registry ( Lesseps Square 1 Barcelona)".

So the quality of the drinking water is controlled from the point of treatment, up to the entrance of the service connection in the buildings (that is, up to the iron cover in the street, in front of the doors of the building) and therefore, from here the responsibility falls on the Community of Owners and the individuals who lives in it. In this sense, it is crucial to point out that, although it is true that both the Owners' Community and its residents can request the analysis of all the water outlets, the most logical thing is the following:

(a) That the Owners Community, once the owners' meeting approves it, analyze only the water outlets located in common elements, such as, for example, the system for watering the garden.

b) That the residents in the community analyze the privative elements, as for example, the faucets of house.   

b) Responsibility:

According to the exposition of point 1 and the law based on the Royal Decree 140/2003, we have to take care of our installations, to ensure the same quality of the water that has been treated and transported by the Company to our point of supply (that is to say, to the service connection).  

In the first place, we advise you to check your community insurance policy the coverage with the agent and the property manager of the building.

Secondly, we recommend a technical audit of all the pipes, up to each dwelling, along the entire route: the section up to the meters and from the meters to the taps.

It is necessary to make this audit of the pipes detailing:

- The type of material 

- The state of the material

- The risks and durability of the equipment

- The quality of the water (an analysis must be made every 5 years). 

- Possible effects on health

With this technical document issued by a responsible company and a certified technician who is part of the same, we will have the roadmap for possible improvements, investment forecast or at least the knowledge at health level and responsibilities that this may entail.

c) Insurance coverage and eventual repair of claims

It is evident that a claim caused by lack of maintenance, will be susceptible of not having coverage on the part of the Insurances. It should be borne in mind that poor service will cause machinery and taps to age undesirably and have less durability than expected.

Often an illustrative example helps to understand everything much better:

If the pressure of the pipes increases due to a throttling caused by calcifications to their walls, the m/s velocity will be higher and in certain water treatment devices it will cause us a higher fuel or kWh consumption.

Conclusion

The supply companies are the only ones that have the technological and economic capacity to: capture, purify and distribute water. Based on this reality we have sought to empower individual users and owners' communities.

From Domus Serveis and Finques Feliu we fto a fight for a society more informed about their rights.