Shared Plumbing Vents - Condo

[Andrew Kolar]

I ran into a situation at a building of 2 story townhouse type condominium units (total of 8 units side by side) where the two center units had no plumbing vent pipe through the roof. I assume that these two units share the plumbing vent with the neighboring condominum unit, but no easy way to verify that, other than I did not seem to have any drainage / flush / flow type issues in either of the bathrooms or the kitchen... Typically it seems like in this area each condo has it's own plumbing vent. The condo's were built in 1990. Has anyone ran into this situation? Is this common anywhere else? Anyone see in problems with this?

[Scott Patterson]

I ran into a situation at a building of 2 story townhouse type condominium units (total of 8 units side by side) where the two center units had no plumbing vent pipe through the roof. I assume that these two units share the plumbing vent with the neighboring condominum unit, but no easy way to verify that, other than I did not seem to have any drainage / flush / flow type issues in either of the bathrooms or the kitchen... Typically it seems like in this area each condo has it's own plumbing vent. The condo's were built in 1990. Has anyone ran into this situation? Is this common anywhere else? Anyone see in problems with this?

Could be that they are sharing. I would then be looking very carefully at the firewalls (if any) between the units.

[Andrew Kolar]

There was no plumbing penetration visible through the sheetrock draft barrier / fire wall between this particular unit and the adjoining one. If they were sharing it did not pass through the wall within the attic area...

[Andrew Kolar]

Nobody else has run into this or has an opinion... hard to believe?? ;)

[Jerry Peck]

If those units are really condo, i.e., the structure is one common owned structure, then that is not uncommon and in fact is quite common.

If they were separate structures as would be with townhouses, that would not be allowed.