Putting Up With the Pipes and Mixing Up the Maisons

PROPER PIPING OR PIPING UP?

(photo courtesy BBC.com)Plumbing is the bane of our existence. Anyone who has ever owned or rented a property in Paris knows this. Hugh Schofield wrote all about it in a recent article in BBC Magazine, but it didn’t take an article in a major publication to know this.

In March while in New York, unbeknownst to me, a leak from my dishwasher connection under the kitchen sink just started all on its own, causing havoc in two apartments below me with no way to shut off the valve while I was away. There was nothing I could have done to prevent it, except that if I had thought to close the valves before leaving for the week. (I can assure you, next time I will!)

The moment I stepped off the plane, my favorite plumber was called to meet me at the apartment, who promptly found the problem and fixed it. Insurance documents were promptly completed for both of my neighbors along with a big apology since I had no damage and they suffered it all.

Two days later, a slow drip started to come from a different pipe, this time in the ‘powder room’ (it would be unAmerican to write “toilet”), so a call to the plumber once again was in order. In this case, it was literally the old lead pipe that was leaking, not from a joint, but from the worn out pipe, instead. All this is par for the course and for no apparent reason other than we are living in old buildings with old plumbing.

A friend who owns an apartment in the 11th district is currently staying in one of my apartments for the sole reason that a leak from either the common area of her building or her neighbor has rendered her own apartment uninhabitable. She is being held hostage while caught in a legal battle between the neighbor and the “copropriété” (homeowners association) who are arguing over whose fault it is and who should repair it and pay for it. This has gone on for almost a year and it’s becoming more expensive by the moment.

The infamous sanibroyeurSchofield says “most leaks in Paris take place in August.” This is something of which I wasn’t aware. He explains why (“…because the city is half empty. The pressure from the mains is the same, but there are far fewer people using taps, and thus relieving that pressure. So the chances of a joint popping are all the higher.”), but he also mentions the French solution to sanitary plumbing when the sewage pipes aren’t present — the “sanibroyeur,” of which I know a great deal about — thanks to the one in my Nice apartment (Le Matisse).

I am suing the seller of the apartment for non-disclosure of what is considered a “hidden defect” and not only was it installed without permission of the copropriété, but the pipes are not to regulation. Fortunately, special pumps were installed and everything done in my power to ensure it functions well…and it does, as long as nothing out of the ordinary is flushed down! In fact, you would never guess it is a sanibroyeur as there is nothing to make you think it’s not ‘the real thing’ — the reason the seller was able to get away with non-disclosure to begin with.

The infamous sanibroyeur in Le Matisse Schofield reports that bad plumbing is partly a result of the suffering economy — that owners don’t have the funds to keep the plumbing up to date in their apartments or their buildings. That could very well be true, but even if the plumbing is perfect, old buildings with wood frames move and with it, the pipes — as what was likely the case with the leak in my kitchen.

If you own a property in France, particularly a property more than 100 years old, it is highly likely that at one time or another you will face a plumbing issue. They are virtually impossible to avoid, so just accept it as the price of property ownership. You can install a bit of preventative medicine, however.

If you are doing renovation work and have hired a contractor who then hires a plumber, the contractor will want to minimize his costs and therefore the plumber may not be of the highest quality. I have also seen cases where the owner, in the interest of cutting costs, makes poor plumbing decisions.

My advice is do neither! Ensure that your contractor is using a licensed plumber of the highest esteem, even if expensive and never cut costs on the plumbing — find another way to save money, because in the end it will cost you a whole lot more!

CLASSY MIX-UP OR MIXING OF THE CLASSES?

Modern social housing in ParisMixed-income housing has struck the expensive and chic neighborhoods of the first and eighth districts — one on rue Saint-Honoré alongside the city’s designer boutiques and presidential palaces, another in an 18th-century building on the rue des Petits-Champs just near the Palais Royal and a third in a new development on rue Diebold in the well-healed eighth arrondissement.

According to France 24, the idea is to “create more affordable homes in the French capital’s wealthier neighborhoods.”  Ian Brossart, deputy to the mayor in charge of housing, a member of the Communist party, told France 24 “It’s to create social diversity. The problem for me is when public housing is concentrated in a single area.”
 
This reminds me of desegregation efforts in the U.S. known as “busing” — “the practice of assigning and transporting students to schools in such a manner as to redress prior racial segregation of schools, or to overcome the effects of residential segregation on local school demographics.” (Wikipedia.org) Busing largely didn’t work and it was called a “well-intentioned failure.”

I’m certain the residents of these districts are not happy as the positive and negative effects of mixed-housing are both studied and debatable. Still, more projects of this kind for Paris are in the works.

Note: the average annual income for the city of Paris in 2012 was €31,030, according to official figures.

A bientôt,

Adrian Leeds

Editor, French Property Insider

Email:  [email protected]

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