“It’s very unpleasant,” Mr. Berezin said. “I like to take a shower twice a day, and without hot water, you end up going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, carrying the water from the kitchen to the bathroom.”

Of course, as under Communism, ways are devised to skirt the common misery. Some buildings, including hotels, install boilers, and some people put small water heaters in bathrooms — both are legal. But many cannot afford to do so, or live in dwellings whose plumbing and electricity cannot handle the equipment.

Moscow is not alone in its summertime water woes. St. Petersburg and other Russian cities have similar systems. But it galls some Muscovites that a city of such power and money cannot provide a basic necessity year-round.

“We often think about why the city cannot fix all the pipes,” said Aleksandr Savin, 38, another resident of the building on Sadovaya-Karetnaya Street, who runs a package delivery company. “How come they have to do this every year? And then there are the accidents, so they have to turn off the cold water sometimes, too.”

Moscow officials acknowledge the system’s failings but note that they have been spending hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on replacing pipes, some of which did not function all that well even when they were installed during Stalin’s rule.

Irina Negazina, an official at the city agency that oversees the system, said she hoped that pipe replacements would be complete in as little as five years. At that point, the suspensions, which roll across Moscow as crews move from site to site, should be briefer, she said. They might last only a few days, she said, because only plants should require major repairs.

Still, the feeling of frustration when the faucets run dry is widespread, as was captured by a prominent poet, Tatyana Shcherbina:

They’ve turned off all the hot water, my liquid of love, my stream of words.

I should complain to the people, but a scarf’s been thrown over my mouth.