Water Loss Response Plan for Property Managers

What should a water loss plan cover?

A water loss plan should cover eight things, and it should fit on one page. A long binder is fine for reference, but nobody reads it with water running under a door.

1. A shutoff map for every building, with valve locations and any tools needed
2. A contact tree for after-hours calls, with one backup per role
3. Who may approve emergency work, and up to what amount
4. Named vendors for plumbing, electrical and water restoration
5. Unit access rules, including keys and notice to tenants
6. A template message for tenants and owners
7. A list of the records to collect on every loss
8. Insurance contacts and who is authorized to notify them

Review it once a year and after every loss. Each real event shows you which line was wrong.

Who does what in the first hour?

Assign each job to a role, not a person, so the plan survives staff changes. The table below is a starting point to adapt.

The date of loss and the cause should be written down within the first hour, while people remember. Adjusters and owners will ask for both later.

Set spending limits before you need them

A spending limit gets rid of the worst delay in property management: waiting for an owner to answer a phone at night. The EPA says water-damaged areas should be dried within 24 to 48 hours to prevent mold growth, and an approval that takes a weekend uses up that window.

Put these points in each management agreement:

• A dollar limit for emergency work without prior approval
• What counts as an emergency, in plain words
• Who can approve above the limit, and a backup person
• How the owner receives the written estimate and scope

Keep emergency work separate from the repairs that follow. Extraction and drying are urgent. Repairs and finish choices can wait for normal approvals and competing bids.

What should tenants hear, and when?

Tell tenants quickly, tell them what you know and give them one contact. Silence creates more calls than a short, honest notice does.

Your message should cover what happened, what will be turned off and when, who will enter the unit, and how to protect personal belongings. Avoid saying who is at fault or what insurance will pay. Those answers are not yours to give yet.

Florida law adds weight to this in residential rentals. Under F.S. 83.63, a tenant may terminate or vacate an unusable part of the premises when casualty damage substantially impairs enjoyment of it, with rent reduced for that part, unless the tenant's own wrongful or negligent act caused the damage. Run any such question past your attorney, and keep dated notices. Tenants should also take questions on their belongings to their own insurers.

Getting into a unit after hours

Write the access rule into the plan, because the person holding the master key at night should not be deciding it alone. Under F.S. 83.53, a landlord may enter at any time for the protection or preservation of the premises, and may enter in an emergency. Entry for repairs takes at least 24 hours' notice, at a reasonable time between 7:30 a.m. and 8 p.m.

A running leak and a later drying visit can fall on different sides of that line, so ask your attorney how to word it for your leases. Log who entered, when and why. The same section bars using access to harass a tenant, and a clean log answers that question before anyone asks it.

Can tenants stay while the equipment runs?

Decide unit by unit, and say so plainly before the air movers start. They run day and night, they are loud, and the doors have to stay shut for the LGR dehumidifier to work.

We can tell you what the work involves. Whether anyone has to move, and who pays if they do, stays with you, the owner and your attorney.

Which records protect the owner?

Collect the same file on every loss, so nobody has to rebuild it from memory a year later. Florida Statute 627.70132 sets the notice deadline for a claim at one year from the date of loss, and supplemental claims at 18 months. Your policy wording and your adjuster decide the rest.

• Date of loss, cause and time the water stopped
• Photos and video from before any demolition
• Moisture logs, equipment records and the claim documentation file
• Written scopes, itemized estimates and invoices
• All notices sent to tenants and owners

Condos need one more line. Under F.S. 718.111(11), the association's policy and each unit owner's policy have different roles, so see our page on condo and HOA water damage and get the association documents involved early.

Walk the plumbing before it fails

Walk each building once a year and treat the result as part of the plan. In an established community like St. Augustine Shores, aging plumbing makes this especially worthwhile.

• Label each main and riser shutoff, and test that it closes.
• Note the age of water heaters and supply lines by unit.
• Check air handler pans and drain lines before summer.
• Record which units sit below bathrooms or laundry rooms.

The units below wet areas are usually the second call in any loss.

Run a ten-minute drill each spring

Test the page once a year, in the spring, so any fix is done before the National Hurricane Center's June 1 season start. A plan nobody has tried usually fails at a phone number.

1. Pick a building and call the after-hours line from outside the office.
2. Have whoever answers name the valve for one unit, using only the map.
3. Ask them to reach the person who can approve work, then the backup.
4. Time each step, and fix whatever took longest.

Two small habits help between drills. Show each new tenant the unit shutoff at move-in, and mark every valve that feeds a fire sprinkler system so nobody closes one without authorization from whoever maintains that system.

What we would ask you to put in your vendor rules

If we are on your plan, these are the terms we would suggest for any restoration vendor, ours included:

• Written scope before heavy work, plus photos before demolition
• Daily moisture readings shared with the manager
• One named contact for each commercial water damage job
• Containment where a work area meets occupied space
• No talking to tenants about fault or coverage
• No negotiating with insurers. We supply documents and explain our own estimate.

One vendor, or a bench of two?

Name two. A single vendor gives you one phone number and one way of working, and a building that vendor already knows. It also fails you in a regional storm, when every property in the county calls the same crews at once, us included.

The fair trade-off is on price. A pre-approved vendor costs you some competition on the emergency work, since nobody bids a burst pipe at midnight. Keep the competition for the put-back, where the scope is written and there is time to compare estimates.

Get the page written before the next leak

Every line above is a decision you can make for free on a quiet afternoon, or under pressure at night with water running. Write the shutoffs, the roles and the limit on one page, run the drill and keep a copy off-site. For unit-to-unit losses, our guide to who pays when a condo leak reaches the unit below sets out what the statute says.

Calls reach the owner directly, and emergencies are taken at any hour. Non-emergency planning calls work well between 7am and 7pm. Call us to go through your plan, and we can talk through how we would work a loss at your property before you ever have one.