084 | Preventing Another Champlain Tower DISASTER at Your HOA! - HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Greg Batista (00:00):
The prevalence of this

(00:01):
spalling issue ismore prevalent the
closer you get to the coastline

Robert Nordlund (00:04):
got it now

it's not to say, it's not
to say that in places like, youknow, Oklahoma,
Nebraska, Montana,that more inland,
that this doesn'thappen. It just
happens at a lesserrate. It's basically
what I call it a cancer. So thatpeople will understand when I
talk to all theseboards across the
entire Florida. Itell them, this is
like a cancer. Youneed to take it out
once you see thecancer and you don't
do anything aboutit, it's just going

(00:26):
to continue to

Jennifer Johnson (00:28):
grow.
HOA Insights isbrought to you by
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media in the show notes.

Welcome back to Hoa insights, common
sense for commonareas. I'm Robert
Nordlund, and I'm here today forepisode number 84
with a special gueston the serious subject of
preventing anotherChamplain tower
South tragedy. He'san engineer and an
author with a bookon the topic, which
I have right here onmy desk, and we
first connected backin 2022 it's time to
have him on theprogram and share

(01:06):
some of his insightswith you. I hope you
enjoyed last week'sepisode number 83
with regular co hostand insurance expert Kevin Davis
discussing challenging insurancerequirements. And if
you missed thatepisode or any other
prior episode, youcan find them on our
podcast website, Hoainsights.org, on your favorite

(01:27):
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(01:49):
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(02:13):
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I'll ship it to youfor free. Well, we
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(02:34):
voicemail at 805-203-3130, leavea comment on the
YouTube video orsend us an email at
podcast@reservestudy.combut back to today's
episode, this topicis on me. Greg Batista,
professional engineer. PE is theowner and founder of G Battista

(02:55):
engineering andconstruction, has
over three decadesof engineering and construction
experience. He's atrusted expert in
the field with ahistory of managing
projects from designto completion for
single family homesand high rise
condominiums. One ofhis clients was Champlain tower
South his inspectionin 2017 found

(03:17):
significant damage,but his report to
the associationfailed to prompt any
repair work, andthat's the key here.
The board had earlyclues as early as 2017 So we've
learned that ignoring suchwarnings can lead to
loss of life. Hisbook, negligence
averting disaster atyour building.

(03:38):
Lessons learned fromthe Champlain tower
South collapse. I'vegot here on my desk.
I've enjoyed readingit. It's available on Amazon. He
continues his work inspectingbuildings, advocating building
safety measures andeducating his Florida clients on
new inspectionrequirements and the
importance of buildingmaintenance. So
Greg, welcome to theprogram. I expect you're busy

(04:00):
inspecting buildings nowadays.

Oh yeah, we're busy.
And by the way,thank you for having
me on your show.

It's a pleasure. I have
you on the showbecause I sense that
this whole issue notonly is something
you're knowledgeableabout, but it
touched your heart.
Tell me why ittouched your heart.

Well, I come from a long a
family of a lot of,you know, teachers
and psychologistsand people that just
love to, you know,love to help people.
And I just have thatin my veins, but I
gravidated towardsthe towards the construction and
engineering. Andbasically what we do
as as engineers iswe guard the public
safety we form.

(04:38):
First and foremostin our in our line
of work, is that weguard for the safety
of the people.
That's why we designbuildings the way we
do the bridges andall those structures
that we live andwork in. So, you know, having
gravitated to that,I feel like it's,
it's something that,when I go to these homeowners
associations, that Itake it apart.

(04:59):
Myself to act as ateacher of sorts and
let people know howimportant it is to maintain the
buildings and howimportant it is to
put priorities in acertain way so that
you know at the endof the day that
they're safe good.

Let's follow up on that
how important it isto maintain the
buildings. Talk tome about maintenance
and preventivemaintenance. Well,

I mean, we can be talking about that
topic for for dayshere on on this because, God, I
mean, it's somethingas simple as paint,
right? Something assimple and as
inexpensive as paintgoes a huge way in
making your buildinggo from maybe having
a longevity of 50years to maybe 100 years, right?

(05:39):
Because the paint onthe building is like
the skin. If you'relooking at your
skin, your skin isactually your first
line of defense for,you know, keeping
germs out and forcausing infections.
The same thing ispaint people, people in some
condominiums, theyhaven't painted
their building for10 years, 15 years,
which is, which is,to me, it's just
insane. And I knowit costs a lot of

(06:00):
money, but the painthat is going to
cost on a long termbasis is just incredible. So So
something as simpleas paint keeps the
water, keeps the chlorides fromcoming into your
building and notonly causing, you know, moisture
problems in the building, but itkeeps these chlorides, which are
so prevalent on thecoastal regions,
especially here in Florida, fromgetting entrained

(06:22):
into the concreteand causing the the
damage to this reinforcing steelthat's inside.
Because once thereinforcing steel
inside gets thesechlorides, it starts
to rust, and itstarts to rust, it
starts to expand,and that's what causes that
structural instability, whichwas one of the, one
of the things thatthat went wrong over
in champlain towersthat caused the collapse. Well,

I remember, I'm a
mechanical engineer,engineer myself, and
I remember seeing agroup in the Pacific
Northwest. And Iremember seeing a
video of the NarrowsBridge collapse.
They called it galloping Gertie,because it moved
when the winds blewthrough. And I
remember asking myteacher, well, what
was that materialmade of? I expected

(07:01):
it was asphalt, andI was so surprised
to learn that it wasa concrete driving
surface. Because asa person, as a human
in this world, youthink that concrete
is hard, you thinkthe concrete is
strong, it's like arock, and then you
realize that noconcrete flexes, and
it's not good inflexing situations.

(07:22):
And not only that, it's porous.
Concrete absorbswater, and these are
things I'm learningin college. And I
think the averagethe citizen, the
average human, the average boardmember, doesn't
appreciate that it'snot just the water

(07:42):
that gets in, soaksin, and then in cold
climates, you have afreeze thaw cycle
that's going to popthings off. You're
going to get that inwarm climates. And
so talk to me about what we callspalling. Well, let

me just backtrack a little bit. I
mentioned something's justfascinating. The Tacoma Narrows
Bridge is a fascinating story ofhow things are built
and how we are ableto learn from tragedies that
happen, right? Yeah,this Tacoma Narrows
Bridge, and it's afascinating story.
So look it up onGoogle or YouTube.
You'll see it YouTube. Watch thevideo, you'll see
this thing going upand down and just

(08:18):
and it was a, it wasa 18 mile an hour
wind, because it caught naturalharmonics in the bridge that it
moved.

Okay.
To our audience, this is twoengineers geeking
out on something. Sowe'll get back to
condominiums in just a

minute.
So it's so it's sofascinating, so, but
the thing is thatyou had a, you had a
19 mile an hourwind, but it, but it
started moving thebridge a little bit,
a little bit so itthe bridge moved so
much that it just eventuallycollapsed. And it
goes back to thiswhole engineering
concept with whichwe're learning in
Champlain towers, which thesetragedies happen. We
have to find out whythey happened, and
we go about, youknow, trying to to

(08:56):
fix whatever it wasthat went wrong. Now
we're incorporating,you know, dampening
of the harmonics onthe bridge. And that
doesn't happen anymore, or it'sbeen completely
minimized. And goingback to what you
said about concrete,yes, if you were
turned into a reallysmall creature, like
the size of an atom,you could literally
run through the little nooks andcrannies and then go

(09:17):
out to the otherside. It's like a
sponge, if you ifyou might, if you put it under a
microscope. Enough,so you're right.
Those are perfect,perfect things that
you were, that youwere saying. So the
original questionyes, so where were
we? Yeah, where werewe? Where were we?
We're geeking out,

spalling and taking care of
your building. You started withpainting. Okay,

so, yeah, so let's assume right now
that you don't takecare of the paint in
your building,right? So right now
you're leaving a path open, anopening in the cave,
so to speak, ofwhere the surface of
the concrete, wherethese chloride
molecules that arein the air, I mean
chloride, so it'sbasically salt,
right? These, thesemolecules that are
in the air, thatare, you know, you
you don't see them,but they're there.

(09:57):
You can smell it inthe in the ocean,
right? So, so thesemolecules that are
in the air, they goinside the concrete,
and once it gets tothe steel, what's
going to happen? Asanybody knows that
you're when you'renext to the when
you're next to theocean, you whether
you have a car or asteel lawn chair,
it's going to rust.
So when you get thatpiece of steel,
which is basicallymaybe, let's say
that it's a one inchin diameter piece of
steel, once itstarts to rust. It

(10:19):
can expand up to seven times itsoriginal diameter.
So just imagine a piece of steelinside the concrete.
It expands one time,two times, three
times, four times,once it gets to four
or five times thatconcrete is not
going to be able towithstand that the
pressures that thatthat steel is is is
exercising on it. Itjust pops. I mean
literally, it justpops. And sometimes

(10:41):
you go to thesebuildings and you
see, you know, a bigpiece of chunk of
concrete that comesdown from the
buildings. And, youknow, sometimes it hurts people,
sometimes it killspeople. It falls on
cars. And it's,it's, it's not only
damaging to the people that arethere, where these
things are fallingdown, but obviously
it leads eventually,if not treated in a
timely manner, it can lead to acollapse, such as

(11:03):
what happened inchamplain towers.

Yeah, well, let me follow
up on that. So we'retalking about, I
want to say, justpainting. So when
you go to a buildingand you see a chunk
has fallen out,that's not just that
the concrete wasloose and old. That
could be a sign ofinternal pressures
popping it out, and the internalpressures from the
steel, the ironbased product, that

(11:27):
when you see a pieceof rebar that is
rusting, it's biggerand it's rougher,
and that's thatinternal pressure
that's going to bepopping the concrete
out. That is aindication that it's
probably a lot ofother places also, is that fair?

That is absolutely correct. Because if you see that
happening in one side of thebuilding, obviously
you as a normalconclusion, you're
going to say it'sgot to be happening
in other sides of the building,because the building
built that, youknow, at a certain
time, and exposureto the water at a
certain time. Soyes, but on a lot of
these buildings thatare next to the
ocean. You'll seethat the closer you

(12:03):
get to the ocean,right, the worse it
is. And the furtheraway you get from
it, you know, theless prevalent it becomes. But
nonetheless, it's,it's, it's very
prevalent along allthese, all these
buildings that arealong the coast, right?

Okay, so you've got the waterfront
oceanfront, like Champlain towerSouth you've got
inland, which couldbe, let's say, the
middle of Florida.
You've got the middle of thecountry, which I'm
looking at my maphere in my office.
Could be Nebraska.
Could be Oklahoma,Colorado. But those

(12:36):
are all differentsituations with similar, but
different problem.
And so every building has warmand cold temperature
cycles where thebuilding is growing
and shrinking and growing andshrinking every 24
hours. In colderclimates, you've got
the freeze thawcycles. In, let's
say Chicago, you have the windcycles, where the

(13:00):
building is going tosway with the wind.
And so I guess Iwant to be clear to
our audience is, this is not aFlorida coastline
problem. This is aneverywhere problem.

Yeah, the prevalence of
this spalling issueis more prevalent
the closer you getto the coastline.
Got it now it's notto say, it's not to
say that in placeslike, you know,
Oklahoma, Nebraska,Montana, more inland, that this
doesn't happen. Itjust happens at a
lesser rate. It'sbasically what I
call it a cancer. Sothat people will
understand when Italk to all these
boards, you know,across the entire

(13:31):
Florida, I tellthem, this is like a
cancer. You need totake it out. Once
you see the cancer,and you don't do
anything about it'sjust gonna continue
to grow. And this isunlike what you're
talking about, whichis, like the freeze
and thaw cycles,which is basically,
you know, you're, ifyou have something
that's undergoing afreeze and thaw cycle, it's not
something that's asinsidious as as

(13:51):
spalling, but it's,you know, it's not
something that'sgoing to continue to
grow over time,necessarily, right,

right?
Because that was,that was a weather
related event,correct. Okay, all
right, I want tointroduce a couple
more things, and that is, we'retalking about painting, and
painting, I think ofgenerally as the
vertical surfaces,but we're also talking about the
balconies and decks,which are horizontal
surfaces, talkingabout planters into which we

(14:18):
intentionally putwater, which is
sometimes crazy tothink and then we
have roofs, and inmy world, I call
that the buildingenvelope concept,
trying to protect the buildingenvelope. So is that
are those primarilythe kind of things
that you're lookingat when you're looking at a
building? My

companies, I have a construction
company, and I alsohave an engineering
company. That's whatwe specialize in. We
specialize in existing buildingenvelopes. The envelope is
basically, you know,basically your skin,
like I said before,the analogy was the
paint, but it's notjust paint. It's the
windows, right? It'sthe doors, it's the
sliding glass doors.

(14:56):
That's part of theenvelope that keeps
all the wind andrain and stuff from
coming in, right?
Yeah, and thecaulking around the
windows. It's thecaulking everything
that keeps --, thatthat that comprises everything,
comprises the envelope. And ifthat integrity of
all those componentsand materials working together
somehow compromised,then, yeah, you're
gonna, you're gonnahave a problem. So
other things thatmight be included as
part of the envelopeis, like you said,

(15:18):
is the roof. So theroof is the envelope
you've got thepaint. Sometimes you have like
waterproofing.
Waterproofing isthe, typically what
you would put on your your yourhorizontal surfaces,
your floors, your decks, yourbalconies that work
in conjunction withthe paint that's on
the on the vertical surface, andsometimes between
the paint and thethe waterproofing,

(15:40):
you would have acaulking cat bead or
something like that.
But those are all things thatengineers get and
get very involved into make sure that
this envelope is working as as awhole. Okay,

well, we've introduced a
couple of words, acouple of concepts.
Number one, concreteis not as permanent
or strong or doesn'thave as much integrity as we
often give it naturally. Numbertwo, we learned
about the word likebuilding envelope.

(16:11):
Building is anenvelope. Envelope is not just
something that youput a letter in.
Building Envelope,we talked about
spalling. Spallingis the cancer, the
skin cancer, where abuilding is saying,
I'm having problems,

it's more like, it's more
like a bone cancer,because it's inside
the skin, becausethe skin break, it
allows, it allowsthose bad things to
get to your bones,and then it causes
bone cancer, becauseonce that bone, once
the bone getsdamaged, you're not
going to be able tostand up, and that's
where the collapsehappens, because
it's actually yourbones, which is, you
know, analogous tothe to the concrete
that allows you tosit up on your

(16:44):
chair, allows you towalk, allows you to,
you know, stay standing up.

Fantastic.
Okay, we've talkedabout a lot of
basics here, and Ilook forward to
speaking a littlebit more with Greg
about now what to doabout this, but it's
time to hear fromone of our generous
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and we're back. Well, Greg, just
fascinating foundation thatwe've laid here, but
we want to give our board memberaudience, some more
education, some moreteaching points on
what do they doabout it? Because
we're talking abouta building, and you
and I and the average homeownerhas become a board

(17:54):
member because theywant to take care of
the building. Theywant to take care of
the common areas,but how? And Greg
tell us who does thekind of inspections,
who are the kind ofexperts that you
are? How do boardmembers find them all around the
country?

Well, I'll first start off
by saying that myheart goes out to
all these homeownersassociation board
members, which theyhave a largely thankless job of
dealing with thesethings. And I talk
to these people dayin and day out, and
99.9% of thesepeople, they want to
do the right thing,right you hear all these horror

(18:29):
stories, but it'smy, my experience,
that everybody wantsto do the right
thing. And in tryingto do the right thing, sometimes
they make bad decisions or gooddecisions. So I
think it's, it's,it's incumbent upon
those professionalsthat are in the
field to really putsome some importance
on actually teachingthese people and
teaching them in terms that theyunderstand. This is
one of the reasonswhy I congratulate

(18:51):
you, Robert, becauseyou're doing a tremendous public
service here. We've got a

good team, but yeah, we
want to help board members.

Yes, because, and that's
that, to me, that'sthe key. If you go to my website
askgbatista.comyou're going to go
into a section thathas books. I've got
free literature, everything frompulling permits how
to hire an engineer,how to do you know
new windows anddoors, or hiring an
owner's rep. I'vegot so many books out there, and
they're free andthey're written in a
very easy to understand type oflanguage. And I get

(19:24):
congratulated allthe time by these
people on the board,because knowing that
they want to do theright thing, nobody
actually has, like,some resources out
there that speakstheir language. It
doesn't matter whether it'sFlorida. There are
some things thathave to do with with
Florida and the permitting, butit's, it's really
something that issome resources that can be used
nationally, if youwant to, you know,
go and check it out.

Okay, so your website
again, where theycan find that, ask G
batista.com got it?
Okay? I knew thatwe're going to have
some people who are stopping therecording and going
back and trying tofind that, so I
wanted to give it tothem twice. You

got it? You got to wait
till the podcast isover, then you can.
Having said that,right? You want, you
want people to toreally understand
the issues. And Ithink that there's a
there's a bigemphasis that if you
don't know, becausemost of these people
on the boards, they're eitherhomemakers or doctors or don't
know anything aboutconstruction, that they first
understand that ifyou don't know, get

(20:17):
help. And there's somany professionals
out there. And ifyou live in Alaska
and you see a crackon a building, you
don't have to be anengineer to know
that a crack, oh, that might besomething bad, yeah.
So call, call anexpert, and call
people that are thatare local to you,
that that understandthe weather, understand the
building departments, thecodes that are their

(20:39):
local in those areas. So it's aseasy as picking up the phone.
Literally, it's justas easy as picking
up the phone. Andwhen you get a hold
of them, listen tothem because they
have experience andthey've gone through
education. But onceyou do that, I think
that that you'vetaken care of 99% of
any issues that maycome up. Yeah.

Well, that makes me think
of your work at Champlain towersouth you were there
in 2017 they hiredyou to inspect their
planters on the pool deck area.

There was a leak. It was a
leak, that was in a planter

that was going down
through the the thedeck there, into the
garage. And now thatwe know those kinds
of things areimportant, you can't let that go
unchecked. Yes,

and absolutely, and it's
still, it stillpains me to to have,
you know, actuallybeen there and said,
Look, this is, it's,this is not a planter problem. I
understand this is aband aid. But you
you have to go froma band aid fix, which is the
waterproofing, to anactual, you know,
surgery to take outthis cancer, right?

(21:42):
So what I think happened inchamplain towers,
which is, you know,pre Chaplain towers
is so indicative ofmany other condos,
is that they justkick the can down
the road. Yeah, and

people watching on YouTube
can see I'm I'mwringing my hands
because the board atChaplain tower South
had opportunities,and we want to give you the
encouragement towhen you see things
that you don't knowabout, reach out and
get help from aprofessional. Okay?
And when they giveyou wise counsel,

(22:13):
take it seriously.
They're the expertin their field. Now,
Greg, what does arepair look like?
What? Well, what does preventivemaintenance look like, getting a
professional inspection everyfive years, every 10
years? Does itdepend on geography?

It depends on the it depends on the
building. So let meyou, let me give you
two, two differentscenarios that are
on on, you know,extreme sides of the
spectrum. Okay, thelast building that I
built as a generalcontractor was the
marado Portofino. Wefinished it up like
20 years ago. I usedto work for for a construction
company. That's thelast high rise that
I built. It was 20years ago, 2020

(22:52):
something. But thatbuilding, yes, it needs some
maintenance, becauseyour typical,
typical maintenancestuff that happens
on your typicalbuilding. So that
building doesn'tnecessarily need any
concrete repair orany inspections on a
yearly basis. Right?
now, let's go on theopposite side of the
spectrum. I alsohave a client, and
I'm not going toname the building,
which is 100 yearold building right

(23:14):
down in South Beachwhere it is. It's
basically fallingapart structurally.
And these kind ofbuildings, because
they're old, becausethey're next to the
ocean in Miami Beach, you know,those kind of buildings, this
concrete repair andthe structural inspections, it's
got to be part of amaintenance, of some
sort of maintenanceprotocol, and it's
got to be bakedinto, you know, one of the more

(23:37):
important thingsthat you need to do
in one of these buildings, and Itell my clients that
they need to, theyneed to inspect
these buildings on ayearly basis, because you might
not see a crack showup on one of these
buildings on yearone, but you wait a
year, you're goingto see a crack, you
know, because youknow the like we
were talking aboutbefore you have the

(23:57):
spalling as the asthe rebar starts
expanding, the rebarcan already be expanding, but
you're not going tosee it crack just
yet. It's about tocrack, but it's not
cracking. So if youcome a year later,
eventually, boom, itcracks, and that's
where it shows so soyou see that there's
a stark contrast,and I think that the
age of the buildinghas a lot to do with
how you know howoften you're going

(24:18):
to be inspecting thebuilding. But then
again, these are thekind of things that
your hired expertwill be able to
guide you through.
Yeah,

well, I want to follow up
on one real quickword pair that you
used and you said"baked into" and as
you are working withyour building, you
have to appreciateand correct me if you feel
differently, abuilding is a living
entity, and it'slike a person, the
older it gets, themore care it needs,
and you have to giveit that amount of

(24:46):
care, and that meansmore budget. And so
when you say, bakedinto your plans are to have it
inspected. You alsoneed to bake into your plans the
budget, becauseowning a. Building
is expensive. Owningreal estate in this country is
expensive, and there's too manyboard members who I
think are leaning on the side ofminimizing the homeowner

(25:09):
assessments and notgiving the building
what it needs. Areyou? Do you feel the same way?

No, I think that the
analogy that you useis fantastic. As a
matter of fact, Iuse it quite often
with the homeownersassociations,
because it's a veryaccurate depiction,
and people can seeit right? Because
you can say, Look,your skin is like
the painting, likewe said, the bones,
the bones is likethe actual concrete,

(25:36):
right? You've gotyour nervous system,
because without yournervous system, you
can't, you know, seeor hear, do things
that's like yourelectrical system.
So everything working in tandem.
And this whole thingabout, like, when
you're, when you'rea teenager, you think you're
infallible. You'renot going to go to
the doctor. You don't need thatstuff. You know,
it's Superman and US50 something, 60
somethings, we knowwe know better that

(25:57):
we need to get ourcheckups. And we
need to know that,that if, if there's
something, if there's a blip onthat, on that, you
know, that x ray orsomething, you're
going to get it checked out, andyou're going to pay
whatever money itneeds to be. So
that, that is a verypowerful analogy.
And I use it all thetime. If you read
the book Negligence,the book that you
showed, I go throughthat I mentioned it on several

(26:18):
occasions, you

know, I wonder if that's
where I got it,because I'm using it
more and more often.
So that probablycomes straight back
to you, Greg. Nowanother thing so
regular inspections,and the inspection
frequency is goingto be based on where
you are in thecountry, age of the
building things likethat. But let's get
back to this conceptof protecting the

(26:40):
building envelope.
What's that looklike? It looks like
painting. It looks like sealing,sealing the decks.
It looks like takinggood care of the
roof, making surethat the service
people who go uponto the roof, if
you have a multistory condominium
building, aren'tbeating up the roof
as they're working on the airconditioner and the

(27:01):
pool deck, theplanters. Talk to me
about what it lookslike to maintain your building
envelope.

Okay, let's go over
components, because the buildingenvelope is comprised of
components, and eachone of these components has to
work together,because you can have
the best painting, the bestwaterproofing, the
best windows, thebest doors, but if
you're caulking isbad and substandard,
that you're you'redone. So everything, like

a suit, like a suit of armor,

actually exactly

your opponent's going to
get you where your your armor isweakest. And that's

exactly right, and that's where the
professionals suchas myself comes in.
And we, we're building envelopespecialists. So
let's, let's breakdown on brief bullet
points. Each one ofthese components
start, let's startfrom the top, going
down the roof. Theroof is, I think,
the major, the mostimportant aspect of your of your
building envelope,because that's the

(27:54):
where the rain hits.
That's where it getspummeled, and lots
of damage happens.
So basically, aroof. When you buy a
roof, you get a warranty. And Ialways tell my
clients, get a roof,get a good warranty.
Okay? Because thatand a lot of people,
they don't, theydon't care about
that kind of stuff.
All they say, oh,you know what, the
building, the roofis in bad shape.
Let's just put someschmutz over it, and

(28:14):
let's roll some stuff on it. Nowarranty. And I think, I think
that's a mistake,but okay, we have
one whole episodejust dedicated to
this, right? Okay,that's so, that's
the Yeah, let's

talk about the your bullet points,
right? So, so

that's the roof. Then you
go to that paint.
You already talkedabout the paint.
Okay, the otherimportant thing is
the windows anddoors. Windows and
doors, they protectyou. You see these
windows and doorsas, you know, as things that are
strong. But no thesewindows and doors,
if you look at them,especially the aluminum ones,
they're all puttogether with rivets
and welds and andclocking literally
hundreds of piecesthat people don't

(28:51):
realize that these are importantcomponents that need
to be looked at.
And, you know, someof them are old and,
you know, and a lotof people, what they
do on these, youknow, high rises,
they change themout, and they put in
good hurricane resistant windowsand doors. But windows and doors
are extremelyimportant. The other
aspect is caulking.
Okay, so caulking is basically awaterproofing that

(29:14):
goes between eithertwo different materials or at
different angles,like vertical and
horizontal. That, inof itself is a whole
science. There's allthose sorts of
different types ofcaulking. There's silicone,
elastomeric, there's, you know,acrylic. That's a
whole science in ofitself. But again,
but this all goesback to what I was
saying earlier aboutthat each one of

(29:34):
these components isa science in of
itself. And if you get a goodprofessional to come
in and look at each one of thesecomponents, and you
go a long way tomaking your building
last a very long time. Yeah,

I want to stop you
right there, becauseyou don't have to
become an expert inlet's see if I can
remember silicone,elastomeric and
acrylic, acrylic.
Yeah, I couldn'teven retain that for
15 seconds. You asa. Board member.
Don't have to memorize that. Youdon't have to be an
expert in it, because there areexperts who can say
this is best for youin this situation,

(30:06):
this other thing isbest for you at a
building across town. So rely onyour experts. Yes, absolutely,
absolutely, okay.
And then you gotmore for all your other major
components. You'vegot the ceiling of
decks. You have theceiling of planters.
There's so manyother things same
general principles, but,

I mean, there's another one. I mean,
you can include waterproofing,because, you know,
waterproofing goes,basically, that's on
the horizontal youcan, mean, you could
put, you know,waterproofing on the
wall. But just tokeep things simple,
you could put water,you what, put waterproofing
typically onhorizontal surfaces,
like, like a planter, right? Orlike, like a balcony, right? So
you know, if youhave water ponding
on your balcony,it's not going to
seep down into theconcrete. You're

(30:49):
going to keep thatwater from going in
and paint doesn'tnecessarily have the
the properties to keep water outthat's basically
ponding where itcould not if it's on
a wall. So you haveto have special kind
of painting that's alot tougher, that can withstand
holding water, youknow, for a certain
amount of time. Soagain, all those
components together,they just create that, that that

(31:11):
envelope, and it'sso important. And

when I was imagining in
my brain seeing ponding on abalcony, then of
course, we have tothink about the
draining system. Soyes, if there's water that's
collecting, it needsto drain down effectively and go
away from thebuilding. So that's
yet another one ofthese body systems that you were
talking about that needs to worktogether with everything else.

Absolutely, absolutely fascinating. Well,

Greg, we could go on and
on and on, and wemay have to have you
on for another episode in thefuture. I

would be, I would be happy
to Robert, well,

that's great. Well, uh,
Greg, thank you fortaking the time to
join us on today'sprogram. Thank you
for the work you doto have a heart for
board members and topromote building safety and
integrity. So anyclosing thoughts for
our board memberaudience at this time?

Yeah, don't, don't think
that you need toknow everything. And
like Robert said,you know, rely on your on your
professionals.
They're the peoplethat know and that
that's, that's, ifthere's one takeaway
that you get fromthis, it's, it's

for more information, or just that
if you have followup questions, you
can reach Greg and his team at GBatista Engineering
And Construction atinfo@askgbatista.com
and remember hisbook, Negligence
averting disaster atyour building is
available on Amazon.
We hope you learnedsome HOA insights

(32:33):
from our discussionhere today that helps you bring
common sense to yourcommon areas. We look forward to
having you join usfor another great
episode next week,

Jennifer Johnson (32:45):
You've been listening to
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(33:07):
or leave us a voicemail at805-203-3130. If you
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(33:27):
the hosts and guests, with thegoal of providing
general educationabout the community, association
industry. You wantto consult licensed
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084 | Preventing Another Champlain Tower DISASTER at Your HOA!

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}084 | Preventing Another Champlain Tower DISASTER at Your HOA!