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When speaking about allowing washers/dryers in units is a complicated topic.
1) Does your building have suds zone? given what you said about the age of your building, I doubt it.
2) Since your building does not have a suds zone, I assume you also do not have a vent stack for the draining of the washing machine.
3) If you do allow Washer/dryers, who is supervising the work? to make sure that a legitimate plumber is doing the work as per the requirements that the buildings architect put together. Yes, your building should have guidelines that your house architect put together. And your architect would have to approve all requests.
Keep in mind that I have seen many things go wrong such as allowing washer/dryers to be installed without the proper prerequisites to prevent unwanted situations. I have seen custom kitchen cabinets get completely ruined due to suds coming up into the sink from the drain line. All because there is no suds zone/vent stack for the washing machines. Seek professional consultation before you open up a can of worm and then you will have a lot of unhappy residents.
We have the same issue coming up in our building. People in upstairs units have caused floods into their downstairs neighbors apartments because of a tear in the hose or the machine was filled to capacity and somehow overflowed and they didn't realize it.
Then we had some shareholders who figured if they were in a downstairs unit, it was okay because no one was beneath them if their machine overflowed. One such Shareholder had a major flood because of her washing machine and was upset that her homeowners insurance denied her claim because they ruled the damage to be due to her negligence in having the washing machine in the apartment.
That is something for Shareholders to think about regarding putting them in the apartments.
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We have a small 12 unit building in which 2 SH have bought portable washers that attach to their sink faucet. We have no rules in place for such appliances--at present there is no problem but if we all get the one, can we be setting ourselves up for waste line back ups and other problems? Who would we consult--there is no building architect.
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