Check fine print before buying plumbing fixtures

Out of Victoria and Calgary come these reports of regulatory woes endured by homeowners, one of them putative . . .

That plumbing fixture sitting on your local retailer's shelf might come with nice packaging, an attractive finish and sleek styling, but does it come with a stamp of approval from the Canadian Standards Association?

It might not, but B.C. retailers can still sell it and plumbers or handy homeowners can install it, but don't expect your local building inspector to approve it.

That's because the province requires plumbing fittings and fixtures to comply with CSA standards, but do not monitor or control their sales.

Debbie Hellbach didn't know that. She expected to have a new bathroom, laundry area and living space at the end of her four-month $60,000 basement renovation. Then she got a City of Victoria notice telling her that her new sinks and faucets did not pass inspection.

"I never expected this," says Hellbach as she looks over her new stainless steel one-piece counter and sink in her laundry space.

The fixtures work, but did not pass inspection because they failed to display Canadian quality and safety standards imprints or markings, as set by CSA or one of about seven other certification bodies such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL), American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO).

Hellbach isn't alone. Brian Husband, the City of Victoria building inspector who issued her the failure notice, says that somewhere between five and 10 per cent of all plumbing inspections fail for the same reason.

Ralph Suppa, president of the Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating, says the sale of plumbing parts is not regulated. That leaves it to the consumers to double-check fixtures before they purchase them. Suppa points to the global marketplace as one source of the problem.

"A lot of offshore products are coming into Canada, and there are some that may be blemishing this industry. We're trying to work with regulatory agencies to help stop the sale of non-approved plumbing products, but there's not enough people to go around to do these jobs," says Suppa.

A second, albeit much smaller problem, is the sale of counterfeit parts, or foreign-made products stamped with certification that, in fact, have never been examined by a certifying agency. Husband says this problem is rare. When CSA publishes a standard, its enforcement is voluntary, says Anthony Toderian, senior media relations officer at CSA's Toronto office.

"It's up to the provinces to decide how to apply those standards," says Toderian. "In some jurisdictions, the code would be slightly different."

And from Cowtown . . .

Two feet. Two lousy feet.

That's all that's keeping Trish Hennan and her family from moving into their dream home.

The night before Trish, her fiance, Grant Stewart, and their two young children were to take possession of the new home this summer, they got a call from the developer.

The company, Cardel Homes, told them the home had been built 60 centimetres too close to the neighbour's property.

Not all items sold by B.C. retailers have the CSA stamp, which means a building inspector won't approve it
CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, October 06, 2007

The result? They couldn't move into the spacious, $462,000, three-bedroom home they'd spent months waiting for.

"We thought it was a joke," Hennan, 30, said. "It has to be a joke."

"It was going to be a nice house," she added, rhyming off its specially chosen features, from the heated bathroom floors to the built-in central vacuum.

To move it two feet, the house would have to be lifted up and set in the backyard, the foundation destroyed and then rebuilt in the right spot.

"Our survey company made a major mistake," admitted builder Don Stouffer, regional president of Cardel Homes. He said the mistake was a first for Cardel Homes, but not an uncommon one.

Because of a booming construction industry in Calgary, the earliest a company would be available to move the house is January.

Cardel Homes asked the city for "relaxation" -- permission to leave the house where it is -- but were told that wasn't likely.

So the family's in limbo. Since July, Cardel has been putting them up in another property it bought, about four blocks away.