tiffer24 said:
Oops.

Residents of a massive downtown condominium complex awoke Saturday morning to news that their building may not have water for several weeks.

In an email sent to tenants of the Aura building early Saturday morning, the building’s management confirmed that a broken water line shut down the water in the 80-storey building near Yonge and Gerrard streets at around 2 a.m.

“Low pressure levels from city side has caused booster pumps to cease,” the email, which was sent to residents at around 4 a.m., said. “These pumps are unique and specially designed for Aura.”

While the email noted that the repair process would take at least seven weeks, management did not provide a timeline for how long residents can expect to be without water.

https://www.cp24.com/news/residents...ay-not-have-water-for-several-weeks-1.4783348
Click to expand...

I am not surprised. I work at the Residences of Maple Leaf Square and I can tell you first hand that Booster Pumps while necessary are very finicky. If you have low water pressure in the building and the pumps keep running eventually they will burn out.

When you shut the water off to an entire condo building you need to turn off the booster pumps otherwise they continuously run and with no water supplied to the pumps they will burn out.

What likely happened was when the water main broke, nobody shut off the pumps and they ended up burning out. They are heavy duty machinery and not something you can get at home depot or lowes. Weeks to replace it seems normal.
 
Richard White said:
I am not surprised. I work at the Residences of Maple Leaf Square and I can tell you first hand that Booster Pumps while necessary are very finicky. If you have low water pressure in the building and the pumps keep running eventually they will burn out.

When you shut the water off to an entire condo building you need to turn off the booster pumps otherwise they continuously run and with no water supplied to the pumps they will burn out.

What likely happened was when the water main broke, nobody shut off the pumps and they ended up burning out. They are heavy duty machinery and not something you can get at home depot or lowes. Weeks to replace it seems normal.
Click to expand...

Interesting info on how these systems work! MLS also has one of the hottest mech rooms I've ever been in ?
 
Dustin William said:
The amount of pressure and water needed in this area will be intense with all of these massive buildings.
Click to expand...
The City water pressure is fairly constant throughout the City. The reason buildings over about 10 floors have booster pumps is to get water at a decent pressure to higher floors. It makes no difference to City if it's one tall Building or 10
 
In what 21st Century world do you install expensive, finicky, essential equipment like booster pumps and NOT put sensors in them that automatically shut down the system if water pressure falls too low?

Holy @#$#

Also...

From that email to condo owners...

“Low pressure levels from city side has caused booster pumps to cease,”

Really? I mean, I guess that's sort of true..........but clearly not the word they were looking for........
 
The management company’s response just screams incompetence.

I’m fortunate to live on the fourth floor of a no-frills building: if the elevators, water, or even power goes, I can survive for a bit.
 
ShonTron said:
The management company’s response just screams incompetence.
Click to expand...

The response given by the building management may or may not have come by them. Most times in situations like this the Board of Directors drafts or approves statements before they are issued.

I find that Boards of Directors are cautious, they do not want to say or do anything to cause panic and rightfully so. What do you think would happen if they said that the pumps failed because the concierge did not call the building superintendent or the building superintendent did not shut off the pumps.

I am not defending them but causing panic or pinning blame will not help anyone.

Given the size of the building though they likely had multiple pumps throughout the building. At RMLS we have multiple booster pumps throughout the building. Some are for the high rise zones and other for the low rise. Essentially, the pumps are not powerful enough to pump water up 56 stories so they have another set of pumps for the higher floors.

What likely happened at Aura is that the water pressure issues fried multiple pumps and for a building as big as Aura that could be upwards of a dozen pumps up to and including a fire pump. As I said before these are not common parts that you can just get off the shelf so replacing all or most of them at once is a lengthy ordeal.

Most buildings do not replace booster pumps for at least 10 years because of the amount of work involved. There are plumbers, pipe fitters, mechanical engineers involved in the process.
 
ShonTron said:
The management company’s response just screams incompetence.

I’m fortunate to live on the fourth floor of a no-frills building: if the elevators, water, or even power goes, I can survive for a bit.
Click to expand...

Remember, right below this condo is that "mall'' that is so empty it makes other quiet malls look better. Doesn't have to do with anything, but I have to wonder if the management is a scamfront considering the situations with the "mall'' below the condo in the past
 
Update (s) on the water issue at Aura via The Star:

www.thestar.com

Aura condo residents in disbelief after being told their water could be out for seven weeks

Thousands of residents of a downtown Toronto condo tower — described as the tallest in the country — reacted angrily Saturday when initially told they would be out of water for at least seven weeks.
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com


Just before 11 a.m., residents received a second email from the management company’s representative, Dona Gamage, saying technicians were on site working on an alternative.

******

Early afternoon.....a third email landed from the management company: “We are placed (sic) to announce that we found an alternative solution to resolve the issue and water will be restored by midnight today.”

*****

Residents received a fourth email at 3:13 p.m. from the management company ......

*****

At at early evening, service not yet restored.

BTW, this article shows another management email with a spelling/tense error; and staff who didn't speak to the Star, didn't answer phones, didn't answer emails and wouldn't speak directly with residents either.

Wow....
 
Northern Light said:
In what 21st Century world do you install expensive, finicky, essential equipment like booster pumps and NOT put sensors in them that automatically shut down the system if water pressure falls too low?
Click to expand...

Why would Canderel give two shits? They know people will buy their product regardless. And given that most people don't know what a booster pump is, you can be assured that nobody researches that before making the purchase.

The Aura tower is a case study in how a large number of storeys does not equal prestige or employing best practices. Everything about Aura is second-rate.
 
Last edited:
Richard White said:
Most buildings do not replace booster pumps for at least 10 years because of the amount of work involved. There are plumbers, pipe fitters, mechanical engineers involved in the process.
Click to expand...
I live in a 40-year old building and we are still using the original booster pumps (we have two - one that runs 100% of the time and a second to act as back-up). Of course, both have been refurbished, once, and we are about to replace the control mechanism but booster pumps are really not complex or rare. They DO need to be maintained and monitored and, from what one can see at Aura, they probably weren't.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top