Hi Everyone,

I own and live in a condo unit. There is a fire suppression system that runs between the walls of each unit. The unit is about 15 years old.

5 years ago, after an extremely cold night, I walked in to find that the water suppression line in the wall had burst. I had water running out on my ceiling fixtures and havoc vents like someone turned a faucet on. The HOA of our property used their insurance to fix the affected units. A company came out 5 years ago, and not knowing much about water remediation or fire suppression systems, I assumed the vendors did a quality job.

Flash forward to today, I come home to a handwritten note on notebook paper to call property management if there is water in my unit. I quickly found out that the same line burst, meaning that the vendors from 5 years ago did not fix the insulation properly. It was not overly cold the evening before (it was barely below freezing compared to two weeks before when the weather was below 0). The story that I was told was there was a vendor working on the fire suppression line. He found the regulator on the system was frozen. He also told me there was no water running in the system, he then did an air pressure test, then ran water through the system for 5 minutes. There was a 3 foot crack in the pipe in the system that caused the water to leak out.

So I have a few questions here. Considering it is a wet system, shouldn’t there have been water in the system at all times? Considering it was so cold a few weeks before, shouldn’t the pipe have frozen and burst then? Could an air pressure test cause a large crack in the pipe? Did the vendor skip any steps or act negligent in any way (if he did an air test and then ran water)?

What questions should I be asking the vendor and property management to get the correct answers?

Also of note, the water reclamation company who is cleaning up my unit this time(a different company from last time), told me that the repair was. It done properly 5 years ago. They told me that they found mold in my ceiling (which has been removed), that clearly happened back then. 5 years ago my unit was hit much harder, should I order (or ask property management) a mold test? Should they cover it considering they did not do a proper job 5 years ago?

I apologize that Imay not have all of the answers, or if this is the wrong forum to ask. I want to get some advice on what to ask the vendor/insurance/property management.

Thanks for all of you help in advance!