@JPB,
I actually got nauseous at the news, and that almost never happens.
I do qualify for red cross help (must shut up and start gathering data for that), and I do have insurance, the agency of which I try to avoid best I can, but I'm somehow doubting it applies.
Have to talk with neighbor, our stuff may be related. I doubt insurance paid hers as she was exclaiming about how much they paid.
I'm guessing that the grab for turnoff was for their contractor as it was for me, one I couldn't move when I explored a couple of years ago. The guy today told me that the city doesn't like contractors dealing with those, as there is a proper procedure, and done in a forced way the turn knob (sorry, I don't remember the name) can break. (Yeah, I had a faucet here break - I am used to brass).
But, our point of connection knobs are now the ones that work easily..
which I figure my neighbors paid for boucoup, from old turn off knob breakage. I don't know that at this point.
The city guy I first called warned me, the bill is easily 2000. for water loss. Plus, they don't go after where it's happening.
We have polybutylene pipes here, which I'd never heard of and then learned are famously brittle, thus much wonky stuff in houses, and I guess was settled in the former group lawsuit that was worked out before neighbor and I owned. Well, the contractor I first worked with told me that.
The, ah, older woman who lived here before me with her very overweight son (another story and I'm not meaning to make fun of overweight people but he must have broken the shower drain plastic, missed by the inspector) apparently didn't join the community (??) lawsuit. Those who did got whole new piping, I gather. Likely not polybutylene.
I have my biases - I spent my youth not fond of housing tracts, except some oldie ones. And then started to learn about all sorts of housing planning, with more mind changing, and twenty years past that part, think some places work and some don't. In the middle of that I got interested in italy, godhelpme, and got other ideas, that coincided with the mixed use folks. Theoretically, I was licensed as a planner, urban and regional, as land archs are, but only worked - when I did, huge hours - on plans for a, cough, top builder in the country, back then, and not as the principle in a firm. Moved up. Learned a lot. Also worked on other matters.
When I left on my own, I did designs for people in ordinary neighborhoods, which was my own interest, although did work for one chinese american design firm, where we got along. (It is a pity for a bunch of reasons I've never given a **** about money, and I've seen land archs and other designers get all gooey about the rich - I saw a lot of resentment. Not sure that is true now..)
A lot of rambling, but not to me - I really don't like contractors/developers who basically maraud the buyers, and this company here (I haven't memo'd the name) surely was one. But past that, I blame the city functionaries, some kind of lousy building and safety department.
And then I blame me, for being so anxious to get settled.
