Property Management – West Hills – Stories
True Stories of Residential Breakdowns
Maintenance Nightmares
Ask a veteran building manager about his scariest horror story and he may recount a freezing winter night when the heating system went kaput, leaving a 400-unit building ice cold, or the time the sprinklers decided to kick on for no reason and drench freshly remodeled hallways. Some maintenance problems are like lightning, seeming to strike at random. The truth is that city dwellers rely heavily upon various building systems for their physical comfort, and sometimes those systems fail. When they do, residents can be left hot (or cold) and angry, or wet and upset — often as much by the cost of repairs as the event itself.
Even highly dedicated associations sometimes experience maintenance nightmares—unforeseen maintenance problems that derail the everyday life of residents of the community. When these disasters happen, it’s the responsibility of the management, board and staff to get things under control and back on track as quickly as possible.
Maintenance disasters aren’t always unavoidable, though. With preparation, at least some of these problems can be avoided. Much of the planning for a maintenance emergency depends upon a property manager or board member knowing of potential problems. Knowing about the possibility of such problems often is a matter of knowing what areas of the property to be aware of, and also knowing what signs to look for.
Problems Could Be Out of Sight
The latent problem areas of a residential property may be hidden from view and nearly impossible to detect, as they were in the case of a maintenance problem that Tim Balitsos encountered. Balitsos, a property manager for Jersey City-based MEM Property Management, had a water problem with the downspouts and connecting underground pipes at several of his company’s properties along the same street. All of the buildings were having problems with water around their foundations, when it was discovered that there were fractures in the underground pipes connected to the downspouts. The breaks in the pipes resulted in the rainwater being deposited underground, close to the building’s foundation, rather than into the sewer system.
The drainage problem quickly put the buildings on increasingly soggy ground, leading to water in the basements and other problems. Balitsos says the quandary might have been avoided, even though outside circumstances were partly to blame for it.
“If you don’t clear out and check your downspouts, that’s what could happen,” Balitsos says. “It took a while before people realized the damage that the leaks were causing, because [in one building] the water was going into a crawl space, and the sediment from the roof was building up in the pipe.”
When the problem was discovered and analyzed, it turned out that the in-ground pipes for draining the rainwater had been broken by a contractor brought in recently to replace the curbs along the street, Balitsos says. MEM hired contractors to do costly excavation and to replace the in-ground drainpipes—150 feet of them at one building alone. The company also had foundation repair work done on several buildings, but by that time, the seepage situation had to led to a few more problems. Sump pumps had to be installed in the basements of the buildings and mold had begun to creep up from the basements into living and common areas, creating a potentially dangerous environment for residents. So MEM Property Management had to then hire a company to rid the buildings of the mold that flourished as a result of the wet conditions.
Such an expensive hassle might be avoided with some regular maintenance, Balitsos says. “If you do annual maintenance of the gutter system, you can probably avoid that kind of problem,” he says. “Use a gutter-cleaning company, and use a plumber to check the drains and flush them periodically.”
Since the water drainage fiasco, MEM has instituted a formal checklist to steer clear of such a problem in the future. The checklist ensures that each building’s gutters, downspouts and ground drains are inspected and flushed in spring and in fall.
Carnahan Property Management services Woodland Hills,West Hills, Calabasas, Canoga Park, Tarzana, Reseda, Topanga, Encino, Northridge, Van Nuys,North Hills,Chatsworth, Sherman Oaks, Studio City, North Hollywood, West Hollywood, San Fernando Valley, Granada Hills, Mission Hills, Simi Valley, WestLake Village, Agoura,Toluca Lake, Valley Village, Burbank. Call us at (818) 884-1500 and check if we can service your area.
