Where to call and what to do if cold or hot water is turned off

Modern man is accustomed to the benefits of civilization, in particular to the fact that water comes out of the tap every day. But a situation may arise when there is a tap, but no water. The hot water was turned off. When will it be turned on? And how long can the water be shut off by law?

The basic regulation governing the relationship between management companies providing service and end clients is the Government Decree “On the provision of utility services to owners and users of premises in apartment buildings and residential buildings” dated May 6, 2011. This Regulation establishes the rules for recalculating payments for poor-quality service.

When there may be no water

The first appendix to the said resolution and SNiP 2.04.02-84, SanPin 2.1.4.2496-09 provide for the circumstances of the legal absence of water:

For cold water, the shutdown standards are:

• Up to eight hours per month (total time);
• Up to four hours at a time (in case of an emergency central network emergency).

For hot water:

• Up to eight hours throughout the month (total);
• Up to four hours at a time;
• 24 hours (in case of an emergency on a dead-end branch);
• You can turn off hot water for 2 weeks during routine inspection and repairs. Such work is carried out once a year in the summer.

To drain water:

• Up to eight hours per month;
• Up to four hours at a time (in case of an accident).

How to call the dispatch center at a house address in Moscow?

Expert opinion

Alice

Lawyer, Moscow

Ask a lawyer

There is also a unified dispatch center (EDC) of the city of Moscow - telephone number: +7 (495) 539-53-53

By calling there, a citizen can explain the problem (lack of water or heat in the apartment), then he will be referred to specialists of the required profile.

However, if you need to find out the contacts of the dispatch service at the address of the house, then you need to use the service https://dom.mos.ru.

Having visited the “Moscow House” website, you need to enter your address into the search bar, selecting the “learn about the house” tab.

Next, the monitor will display information about the building, including the management organization (its name is highlighted in blue in the line).

By clicking on it, the user is shown additional information about housing and communal services, including address, reception hours and telephone number.

Should they warn?

In the event of a planned shutdown of hot and cold water, residents of the house should know in advance. Vodokanal employees can block access to water if:

• Arrears of payment for services provided for six months. You can prevent such a disconnection by drawing up an agreement with the water utility on the phased payment of debt. But the debt must be repaid strictly according to schedule, otherwise the organization has the right to stop supplying water. This rule applies exclusively to hot water supply. Blocking access to cold water supply is prohibited by Government Decree No. 307 of May 23, 2006 “On the procedure for providing public services to citizens”;
• Willful connection to an internal pipeline;
• Availability of instructions from government institutions or local authorities;
• Emergency condition of internal water systems due to the fault of the home owner.

If pipes “leak,” the water is urgently turned off throughout the entire “riser” to prevent flooding of other residents of the high-rise building. This is an exceptional situation. If water supply is interrupted for other reasons, residents must learn about the date of disconnection, its period and reasons from the management company thirty days in advance.

A water utility can stop supplying cold water without warning only under two conditions:

• Threat of damage to communications or system breakdown;
• Emergency situation.

What standards are set?

Sanitary regulations oblige to ensure biological and chemical safety, cleanliness and transparency of hot water.

Requirements of sanitary and epidemiological laws for the quality of supplied water

Hot water supplied to residential buildings must meet the criteria of sanitary rules and regulations to ensure its safety:

• do not contain pathogens of dangerous infections;
• include a specified minimum of chlorine compounds;
• exclude skin diseases due to poor quality composition.

The temperature of hot water in the places where it is used should not depend on the design of the water supply system. Hygienic requirements do not allow the use of process water.

In centralized hot water supply systems, it is allowed to use only products that have passed the sanitary and epidemiological examination of institutions accredited for such types of work.

Hot water supply: concept and requirements

The absence of hot water for several hours or a whole day in the summer has long become the norm in new and old high-rise buildings. Many people take for granted the absence of water for more than 14 days or lukewarm water from a hot tap.

According to the standards, hot water supply provides the client with uninterrupted access to hot water supplied through a centralized pipeline, of established quality and in the appropriate volume, all day long

Government Decree No. 354, regulating the activities of public utilities, sets clear requirements for the quality of service:

• Twenty-four hour water supply throughout the year;
• Deviation from temperature norms at night (24.00-5.00) up to five degrees, during the day (5.00-24.00) up to three degrees;
• Supply of water whose quality complies with SanPiN;
• Providing water supply under pressure established by SNIP.

Complaint about low temperature

The standards for hot water temperature within 60-75 degrees were not invented by chance, but correspond to sanitary safety rules. Such water will serve as an additional source of disinfection, preventing the proliferation of pathogenic microflora. However, it is difficult to check this parameter by eye. In such a situation, filing a complaint follows the following algorithm:

1. Hot water is passed through for 5 minutes and collected into any container, into which a household thermometer is then lowered.
2. They contact the housing and communal services control room or the HOA with a request to send a representative to draw up a report.
3. If the representative does not appear within two hours, then the act can be drawn up independently, certified by the signatures of three witnesses.
4. Drawing up a complaint to the service organization with a copy of the report attached.

Every 3 degrees of temperature non-compliance with the standard reduces the fee by 0.1% every hour. If the water temperature is 40 degrees or lower, then you are required to recalculate according to tariffs for cold water.

Who can help

Faced with the fact that the tap produces only a hissing sound, a natural question arises: for how long the water was turned off, who is to blame and where to complain. Supervision over the activities of the management company in accordance with Articles 13 and 20 of the Housing Code and paragraph 124 of Order No. 170 is carried out by state institutions and local authorities within the limits of their powers. Therefore, a complaint about the lack of hot water supply can be submitted to:

• District administration;
• Housing and Communal Services Department;
• Housing Inspectorate;
• Rospotrebnadzor;
• Local prosecutor's office.

Inadequate quality of hot water – grounds for challenge in court

The most effective way to achieve a recalculation of payments or restoration of faulty communications is to go to court.

Claim to a judicial authority

The statement of claim is written according to the rules of Article 131 of the Code of Civil Procedure; it is mandatory to indicate the following data:

• name of the court and its address;
• personal data of the plaintiff, his place of registration, telephone, email. mail;
• name of the defendant, his legal and actual address;
• cost of claims
• legal grounds for filing a claim;
• the essence of the requirements, evidence confirming the violation of the rights of the plaintiff by the defendant;
• claim of the plaintiff against the defendant.

Copies of the following documents are attached to the statement of claim to the court:

• agreements for the provision of housing and communal services;
• act of temperature readings of hot water;
• claim sent to the defendant;
• calculating the amount to be recovered;
• extracts from the State Register of ownership of housing or social tenancy agreements;
• extracts from the house register;
• payment notice for hot water payment.

Important! When filing a claim related to a violation of the rights of a consumer of a service, no state fee is charged.

The claim is sent to the court at the location of the defendant. If the cost of the claim is up to 50 thousand rubles. the statement of claim is considered in the magistrate's court; in case of recovery of a larger amount, the trial takes place in the district court.

Who is responsible for poor quality services?

Before talking about the responsibility of officials, it is worth figuring out whether the water could have been turned off legally (perhaps there was an announcement, but you just didn’t notice it) and for how long.

If, after considering the application, it is determined that the water was turned off illegally or the period of non-provision of services has been exceeded, then you will have to answer:

1. Management company servicing apartment buildings. It is she who is responsible for organizing public services for the high-rise building. If the company refers to debt, then such “evasion” is illegal. The procedure for providing communal services prohibits disconnecting a client who has fulfilled his obligations from the water supply. That is, if two or three apartments do not pay, you cannot turn off the water to the entire high-rise building;
2. If the residents of an apartment building have created a cooperative or an Owners Association, then the governing bodies are responsible for water supply. Utility companies refer to the debt of the HOA as the subscriber with whom the agreement has been drawn up. However, the Resolution of the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation dated 03/07/2007 interprets the HOA as an intermediary, and not an end user. Therefore, the above-mentioned Procedure applies, according to which bona fide clients cannot be disconnected from services;
3. When signing an agreement with a service company directly (Article 164 of the Housing Code), the culprit will be the company with which the agreement was signed.

So, what to do if hot water is turned off illegally:

1. File a complaint;
2. Make a recalculation for unused service;
3. Demand that the culprit pay a fine (penalty) and compensation for losses incurred as a result of providing poor-quality service.

In addition, an administrative penalty may be imposed on the culprit under Article 7.23 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of Russia.

Hotline numbers

Expert opinion

Alice

Lawyer, Moscow

Ask a lawyer

Important! If you can’t get through or the workers are not on time or do their work poorly, we recommend writing a comment about the work of the services. You need to make them work, since you are paying your money for it!

What should an apartment owner do if there is no hot water supply?

Having discovered a discrepancy in the temperature or quality of hot water in an apartment/house, the homeowner has several options for solving the problem:

1. If there is no hot water for a short period of time, you should complain to the management company or resource-providing organization. In addition, complaints about low pressure and long unplanned repair work are also sent there.
2. If hot water is turned off for a long period of time and the management company cannot resolve the problem on its own, a claim is written to the district administration. Alternatively, go to the city hall.
3. In Russia, a structure called Housing Inspectorate successfully operates. Its powers include assessing the condition of life-support systems and the housing stock in general. You can also contact us here if there is no hot water in your apartment or house.
4. Russian consumer supervision is obliged to monitor the level of quality of services received by citizens of the Russian Federation. Therefore, a complaint written to this authority has an effect.
5. Government services website gosuslugi.ru. In the housing and communal services sections, citizens of the Russian Federation registered on the portal have the right to file a petition for poor-quality provision of hot water.
6. The local prosecutor's office or court, of course, is a last resort, but in situations where none of the higher authorities can solve the problem, you should complain here.

A claim to the prosecutor's office is mandatory if, as a result of the actions of the Criminal Code, housing and communal services or RSO, physical damage has been caused to housing or a person has been injured. The court will consider all the collected evidence and decide on the award of compensation to the injured party.

If such situations arise, experts recommend seeking the services of qualified lawyers. Specialists will help you write a complaint correctly and collect a complete package of documents for the court.

Actions when turning off the DHW

If there is no hot water

If instead of hot water there is cold water or the resource is completely turned off, the first place to report it is the management company. When there is no reaction after the appeal, then you need to go further, right up to the courts.

Citizens of the Russian Federation should know that there are situations when Vodokanal, Management Company, RSO or Housing and Communal Services have the right to turn off water:

1. Lack of payment for domestic hot water bills for more than 6 months.
2. The owner/tenant of the property made an illegal connection to the central system of the apartment building.
3. The consumer uses additional equipment, for example, a water pump, as a result of which the general household load on the network exceeds the permissible standards.
4. The body supplying hot water received an order from the executive service. In this case, you need to go to the VSSP and deal with the reasons for such actions.

Hot water is not hot at all or very cold

Low temperature hot water is considered below 60°C, but it should not be above 70°C either. It is permissible to deviate from the norm by 5°C at night and by 3°C during the day. If cold water with a temperature below 40°C regularly flows from a hot tap, then this fact should be recorded and complained to the RSO or the Criminal Code.

In utility bills, the supply of hot water supply of this quality should be charged at the rates of cold water supply.

Acts of recording violations of the lack of hot water supply

Temperature violations are recorded in documents. For this purpose, control measurements are carried out, the data is entered into the report.

You can see an example of a hot water temperature measurement report here.

When carrying out measurements, a commission is convened to monitor the cleanliness of the experiment. As a result, the responsible persons endorse the document.

The fact of inadequate quality or complete absence of such housing and communal services as water supply is recorded in the act.

Note: the evidence base for improper supply of a resource is an extract from the application log of the management company, homeowners' association, housing and communal services.

Rules and samples for writing complaints

The following persons have the right to document a claim regarding the quality and temperature of the supplied water:

• owner;
• official tenant of the property, as in the case of a municipal apartment.

Reasons for writing a petition may include:

1. If the hot water supply and hot water supply have been turned off for a period longer than permitted by law. Without prior notice – at least 10 calendar days.
2. You should complain if cold water comes out of a hot tap.
3. When the pressure in the pipes supplying hot water is low.
4. There are unnatural impurities, dirt, and improper color in the liquid.

A paper stating that there is no heat supply in the house can be written individually or collectively.

Sample complaint about lack of hot water.

The petition states:

• Address of the object;
• applicant details;
• the reason for the appeal is briefly stated;
• lists the requirements to eliminate the current situation;
• a separate sheet contains a list of attached documents by number;
• At the end of the paper they put a date and signature.

There are situations when repair work leads to a long-term decrease in the temperature of the supplied water. In this case, utility bills should come taking this circumstance into account. If the amount is calculated at standard tariffs, as for hot water supply, then you should contact the management company with a request for recalculation.

A sample application for recalculation for hot water is available for download here.

You can file a complaint about the current situation with hot water supply to the housing inspectorate. GZHI is authorized to conduct inspections on such facts.

Template for an application to the State Housing Inspectorate regarding violation of standards for the provision of hot water supply services.

Contacting the prosecutor's office is a last resort.

You can see an example of writing a complaint to the prosecutor at this link.

In addition to the complaint, you will need a package of documents with evidence.

Official written requests should be made in duplicate. The first remains with the supervisory authority, the second with the applicant. When submitting an application, the paper is registered in the journal of incoming documentation with the assignment of a serial number, which is indicated on the citizen form. This is a guarantee that your request will not be ignored.

Recalculation of hot water charges

The owner or tenant of the property has the right to demand a recalculation of hot water bills. If DHW is supplied at a temperature no higher than 40°C, it is considered cold. The tariff for cold water supply is lower, therefore, the requirement for recalculation is justified.

The recalculation procedure is described in Chapter VIII of PP No. 354 dated May 6, 11.

Ideally, changes in the payment amount should be made according to the formula: every hour of quality service minus 0.15% of the standard price.

Recalculations are also being carried out for drainage and sewerage.

But for this, the fact must be documented by the relevant authorities:

• low temperature;
• weak pressure;
• impurities in water.

Draws up an act on the results of the examination, which will be the fundamental document for the accounting department of the management company.

Step-by-step instructions for completing a recalculation

If hot water is unavailable for a long time or is of insufficiently good quality or does not meet current sanitation standards, the accounting department of the management company carries out recalculation measures. This requires examination of the fact of violation of the legislation on hot water supply. The homeowner contacts the water utility and asks for a complaint registration number. This will act as evidence in court proceedings.

Attention

After receiving the registration data number about the complaint, a statement is written to the management company. It is within the authority of this organization that the payment for hot water supply is recalculated. If representatives of the water utility are aware of the events that caused the lack of hot water, they report this by phone. If not, then they have to go to the place to clarify the circumstances. If the fact of lack of hot water is confirmed, tariffs are reduced according to consumption standards. Recalculation is not carried out in the absence of water, which does not imply exceeding the legal time frame.

Who is responsible for the long-term lack of water in general?

If there is no hot water coming from the tap and the reason does not fall under any of the legal grounds, this is definitely a reason to file a complaint. Responsibility for the absence and inadequate quality of resources lies with management companies.

When the hot heating supply is turned off, the first thing you need to do is check the payment of your water utility bills. If the organization supplying hot water supply has not received payments for services provided for more than 180 days, the RSO has the right to unilaterally stop supplying the resource to the apartment. In such a situation, responsibility for disconnection lies entirely with the owner/tenant of the property.

Where should complaints be filed?

The appeal procedure rarely ends with the filing of a single petition. As a rule, restoration of justice involves sequential submission of applications to a number of authorities :

• the head of the HOA, management company, housing department;
• housing inspection;
• Rospotrebnadzor;
• prosecutor's office

When applying to the next authority, the text of the petition will need to set out the history of interaction with previous officials, attaching, if necessary, copies of correspondence.

Possible reasons for shutdown

The duration of the interruption in the supply of hot water or hot water depends on the reasons for such a pause. The grounds for restrictions on consumers in an important natural resource are provided for in Art. 21 Federal Law No. 416 dated December 7, 2011. Water shutdown is possible due to an accident or elimination of its consequences, deterioration in the quality of the supply item, accumulation of resources for extinguishing fires, discharge of prohibited substances into the system and denial of access to the sewer well by authorized representatives. Within one day from the moment of supply interruption, the organization must notify not only subscribers, but also the municipality.

RSO is obliged to notify consumers at least one day before suspending the supply of cold water or hot water upon receipt of an order from the state sanitary and epidemiological supervision body, detection of unauthorized connection to centralized water supply and sewerage systems, excess of wastewater composition standards, emergency condition of networks, connection of new facilities and carrying out scheduled preventive maintenance.

Question:

Can my water supply be turned off if I don't pay my bills for several months?

Answer:

Yes, one of the reasons for limiting the subscriber’s supply of resources is the accumulation of debt over two or more billing periods. If you cannot pay the fee, it is worth contacting the RSO regarding concluding a debt restructuring agreement.

Arbitrage practice

Article No. 7.23 of Law No. 195/FZ (Administrative Code) as amended on May 1, 2020 indicates liability for failure to comply with the standards for providing citizens with quality public services.

The judge has the right to impose a fine on the guilty party in the amount of:

• 500/1000 rubles per individual in office;
• 5000/10000 rub. to the organization.

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. The saying also applies in the opposite direction - if the owner understands the documents and regulations, he will be able to defend his rights. In other cases, when there is no hot water in the apartment, and the RSO and the Criminal Code are inactive, it is better to contact a lawyer.

Watch the video: “How resource supply organizations steal from the provision of hot water supply services.”

Where can I complain about the water utility?

The authority to which the complaint must be filed is determined depending on the reason for the appeal.

1. Management company (MC). This is the first instance where a resident should turn. Appeals are allowed in writing or in the form of a call. After notifying the management company about the presence of problems with the supplied water, a response should be received, in accordance with which actions to resolve the situation begin.
2. City Administration. If the Criminal Code cannot eliminate the deficiency, then the complaint is sent to the city or district administration.
3. Housing inspection. This organization is responsible for maintaining the house in good condition and exercises control over the housing stock.
4. Rospotrebnadzor. The issue with organizations that provide low-quality housing and communal services will be resolved.
5. Government services. Filing a complaint online is only available to those persons who are registered on the government portal. But not all authorities can submit an appeal remotely.
6. Prosecutor's office. An appeal is required only if all previous authorities failed to give the required result.
7. Court. The claim being drawn up must be directed at the organization providing the service.