Washing Machines - When do they become Standard Issue?

There's been a bit of coverage about in-apartment amenities as a result of COVID-19.  There was this Washington Post article that talked about one New Yorker who couldn't stand not having a washer/dryer in her apartment anymore.  Another broker linked to this Slate article - the top pullout quote is "A Washer Dryer Is a Social Distancing Dream Machine."

And so they are. Also a major adulting tool.  (I am doxing myself as someone who, faced with going downstairs to my apartment's laundry room, will simply order more underwear online to delay the process another week). 

The WaPo touches the heart of it by quoting the New Yorker saying "“It’s just insulting to come at us and be like, ‘We’re going to charge you an extra thousand dollars a month for this standard appliance that’s been in American households since the 1970s.’ ”

But, it's not so simple.

WARNING: I'm about to get detailed here.

Most apartment buildings in New York City were built before 1945, and most have been continuously occupied since then.  What does that have to do with in-apartment washing machines?  Well, it makes the whole thing a lot more complicated.

That's because apartments share both supply (what comes out of your faucet) and waste (drain) plumbing.  The waste stacks, as they are called, run behind the walls of the apartments from the top floor apartment to the bottom, and down below to where they join the main sewer waste.  When your upstairs neighbor takes a shower or a ... you know... that's how it leaves the building.

Ok, so, now the landlord/co-op owner wants to add an in-apartment laundry.  They need:

• permission to install laundry in unit (co-ops/condos)
• the space inside the apartment
• proximity to the drainage pipes
• the right size waste pipes

And that last item is the sticky wicket. Simply put, adding washing machines from top to bottom will generally overwhelm the existing drain plumbing that was installed 50-80 years ago. The amount of water discharged by washing machines can lead to drains backing up into the sinks and tubs of the unit below. Current building codes provide a complicated cross-table of number of fixtures drained to drainage to pipe-diameter value. 

Since wall space for burying pipes is generally limited, in most cases, the only answer would be to expose the existing kitchen waste pipe from top floor to bottom and replace it with a properly sized pipe (with appropriate vents for soap bubbles). This requires permits, engineering planning, and probably ancillary construction (ie, if you go through a kitchen wall you probably must rip out the cabinets to get to the pipe; if you go through a bathroom wall, the whole wall must be re-tiled).

Plus, all apartments top to bottom need to be worked on at the same time. Why? Old pipes may be too corroded to take a clean cut, meaning connections to newer pipe would rot out and cause leaks inside the walls. In addition, if the pipes need to be sized up, building code mandates that pipes only get bigger as you go down (so that there is never a bottleneck or clog).  So, you can't put a larger pipe above a smaller pipe. 

So, retrofitting for in-apartment laundry is very costly. If a washer is a deal-breaker for you, stick to newer construction buildings that were constructed to have laundry in every apartment.  Unfortunately, that is where the rents are highest.