A stain appears on your ceiling, or a patch of the wall goes dark, and the immediate instinct is to find a plumber and get it fixed. In a house that is the right instinct. In an apartment it can waste a fortnight.
The reason is simple and physical: water travels before it appears. In a building, the point where you can see it is almost never the point where it got in, and the fault is frequently not inside your apartment at all. Working out whose pipe it is comes before working out how to fix it, and getting that order right is most of the job.
A leak showing in your ceiling has usually come from the apartment above or from a shared line, not from your own plumbing. Notify building management or the strata manager as soon as you see it, because they can act on the whole building in a way you cannot. Responsibility depends on your scheme's strata plan and by-laws, so those documents and your strata manager are the authority, not the plumber and not the neighbour.
- Photograph it, dated, before anything is touched
- Tell building management or the strata manager straight away
- Find out whether anyone above has done recent work
- Do not authorise work on a pipe that may not be yours
- Get the source established before anybody repairs a ceiling
On this page
1. Why the damage appears somewhere other than the fault
Water leaving a pipe inside a building does not fall straight down. It runs along the top of a slab, or along a joist, or down the outside of a service pipe, until it finds a penetration or a low point. Then it appears.
The practical consequence is that the ceiling stain in your living room can be fed by a failure several metres away and one or two floors up. Opening your ceiling at the stain is often opening the wrong ceiling, and once it has been opened, somebody has to pay to close it again.
This is also why a leak in a building is frequently reported by the wrong person. The household with the fault often has no symptom at all, which is not evasiveness, it is just how the water moved.
Worth remembering before the first conversation with a neighbour. Starting from that assumption makes the whole thing far easier to resolve.
2. The rough shape of who owns what
Broadly, plumbing that serves only your apartment and sits inside your lot is yours. Plumbing that serves more than one apartment, or that runs through the structure, is usually common property and the owners corporation's. That is the shape of it, and it is enough to know who to ring first.
It is not enough to settle a dispute, and we want to be honest about that. The boundary between lot and common property is defined by your scheme's registered strata plan and its by-laws, and schemes genuinely differ. Two buildings on the same street can draw that line in different places.
- Usually the lot owner's. The tap, the mixer, the flexible hoses under your sink, the cistern, the fixtures themselves, and the short runs serving them.
- Usually common property. The vertical stacks, the risers, the main supply into the building and lines that serve more than one lot.
- Frequently argued over. Waterproofing membranes in wet areas, branch lines running inside a slab, and anything embedded in structure.
That third group is where most strata plumbing disputes live, and it is exactly the group where the answer comes from the plan rather than from a general rule.
3. What to do in the first hour
- Photograph it with something in frame for scale, and note the time. If it is spreading, photograph it again later the same day.
- Put a container under it and move anything that will be damaged.
- Notify building management or the strata manager. This is the step people skip and it is the one that matters most.
- If you can safely do so, find out whether the apartment above has water running, or has had work done recently.
- Do not open the ceiling yourself, and do not authorise anyone else to, until the source is established.
- Keep every message and every photograph together.
Notifying management early is not bureaucracy. They can contact the apartment above, get access to common areas and isolate a riser, none of which you can do on your own behalf, and all of which stop the water sooner.
Water coming through your ceiling now?
Tell building management, then ring us. We can trace it rather than guess at it.
4. How the source actually gets found
Tracing a leak in a building is a process of elimination done in the right order, and it is worth understanding because it explains why a plumber will not simply cut your ceiling open on arrival.
It starts above the visible damage rather than at it. Is anything running in the apartment above at the times the stain grows? Does it get worse after somebody showers, or continuously regardless? Continuous points at a supply line under pressure. Intermittent, tied to use, points at waste or a wet area.
From there it is meters, moisture readings and, where necessary, a small and deliberate inspection opening in the right place rather than a large one in the obvious place. The difference between those two is a repair bill.
5. Know where your isolation valve is, today
In a house you turn the water off at the meter. In an apartment there is no meter in your kitchen, and the valve that isolates your lot is somewhere specific to your building: in a cupboard, in a riser cabinet, in a common corridor, sometimes in a plant room you cannot reach without help.
Find out where yours is now, while nothing is wrong. It takes five minutes and it is the difference between a burst flexible hose being an inconvenience and being the reason three apartments need new ceilings.
While you are at it, look at the flexible hoses under your own sink and basin. They are the single most common cause of serious water damage in apartments, they are unambiguously the lot owner's responsibility, and replacing an ageing one is a small job with a very large downside avoided.
That is worth raising with building management before you need it, not during. Some buildings will tell you exactly who to call at 2am, and knowing that in advance is worth having.
6. What a plumber can settle, and what we cannot
We can trace where the water is coming from and show you the evidence. We can repair what is yours. We can tell you, physically, whether a line serves one apartment or several, which is usually the question underneath the legal one.
We cannot tell you who is liable under your scheme, interpret your by-laws, or settle a dispute between a lot owner and an owners corporation. Your registered strata plan and your strata manager are the authority on that, and where money is genuinely at stake it is a matter for advice we are not qualified to give.
What we would say is that the technical answer usually resolves the legal one without anybody needing to escalate. Most of these disputes are not really disagreements about responsibility. They are disagreements about facts, and facts are obtainable.
- Water travels before it appears, so the visible damage is rarely above the fault.
- Tell building management or the strata manager first. They can act on the building.
- Broadly: what serves only your lot is yours, what serves several lots is common property.
- Your registered strata plan and by-laws are the authority, and schemes genuinely differ.
- Find your isolation valve today, while nothing is wrong. In an apartment it is not obvious.
- Check the flexible hoses under your sink. They are the commonest cause of serious damage.
Whose pipe is it? FAQs
The leak is in my ceiling. Is it the apartment above?
Frequently, but not always, and it is worth resisting the assumption. Water runs along slabs and services before it drops, so the source can be laterally some distance away or a shared line rather than anybody's apartment. Trace it rather than accuse.
Who pays for the ceiling repair?
That depends on where the fault was and on your scheme's plan and by-laws, which is a question for your strata manager rather than for us. What helps every version of that conversation is establishing the source properly first, with evidence.
Can I just get my own plumber in?
For anything clearly inside your lot, yes. For anything that might be common property, tell management first, because work authorised on a pipe that turns out not to be yours can become an expensive misunderstanding.
The neighbour above says it is not them. What now?
Take them at their word and keep tracing. They may be entirely right, and they very often have no symptom themselves even when the fault is theirs. Evidence resolves this and argument does not.
Where is my water shut-off in an apartment?
It varies by building: a cupboard, a riser cabinet, a common corridor, sometimes a plant room. Find yours before you need it, and if you cannot access it, raise that with management now rather than during an emergency.
What is the most common serious leak in an apartment?
A failed flexible hose under a sink or basin. They are inexpensive to replace, they are the lot owner's responsibility, and a failed one running unattended is one of the most damaging things that happens in a residential building.