Report on water leaks
Dear owners,
We are contacting you to inform you about the work that the maintenance team is carrying out with the leak problems that we have been suffering for years in the community and that have caused damage to it worth several tens of thousands of dollars. euro.
Although hiring a technician to prepare a report and solve these problems is approved by the board. Its cost right now, does not allow us to carry it out.
We start that the origin of the humidity is due to the lack of waterproofing suffered by certain areas of the community roofs and the poor execution that was carried out on them.
This problem has also been aggravated by the lack of corrective maintenance that in previous years should have been carried out by the old maintenance team.
This means that the origin of this problem derives from several subgroups that we name below and that should not have caused problems if proper maintenance had been carried out, minimizing damage in many cases.
1. EXPANSION JOINTS OR MOVEMENT JOINTS. This method of construction is designed to hold building parts together while safely absorbing expansion and contraction of building materials induced by temperature, vibration, or to allow movement due to ground settlement or seismic activity. Buildings have several expansion joints or movement joints that run through the façade over the roof to the other side of the building. The photos show the cracks in the roof and the state of the expansion or movement joint in the façade that has a torn or damaged membrane in many places.
During the inspection carried out on the roof some time ago by the administration, Board of Directors and maintenance team, we discovered that all the drains were hidden behind the arches. And to complicate this situation, they were buried under a mountain of Chinese and weeds accumulated there over the years.
As a consequence of being in this situation, the water could not be channeled correctly when it rained a lot, so sometimes up to 10 cm of water could remain accumulated on the roof for a long time. Thanks to the work done by the community maintenance team, we have located and cleared all the drains and cleared out weeds. In addition to integrating cleaning and maintenance into the work schedule.
see photos 1 / 6
2. THE GARDENERS of the balconies that are equipped with a waterproof membrane, which have a limited life, which is diminished by lack of maintenance or by planting plants with hard roots that shorten the life of this membrane. Because of this, planters leak from this membrane, which causes water nuisance in the apartment below.
see photo 8
3. SKYLIGHTS: These are located on the fifth floor of the buildings and their joints have not been maintained until now. Which has caused leaks for many years. This maintenance is as simple as replacing their joints. The leaks caused by this lack of maintenance have caused a lot of damage to the walls in common areas and in some cases have also leaked into the apartments.
See photos 9 /13
All the apartments suffer the consequences of the water that falls on their terrace through the terraces of the neighbors above. It is a problem that affects all apartments without exception.
Hiring a professional company is not an option at the moment because the costs are too high and the community does not have enough financial resources for it.
However, this is not to say that we do not address the above issues, we are currently gratefully seeking advice from a number of knowledgeable and experienced owners on the matter.
One of them runs a reputable roofing company and the other is a construction engineer and they make their knowledge and experience available to the community for free.
WORK IN PROGRESS.
The expansion or movement joints of the roof will be waterproofed with a triple coating. The membrane at the joint of the facades will be repaired and supplied with an extra waterproof flexible sealant.
see images 14 / 15
The silicone of the skylights is currently being replaced and it is being covered with a special bituminous tape. It is not clear why this problem has not been solved by the previous maintenance management, since it is a simple and very cheap solution (9 euros per skylight). With this management, the community could have saved a lot of damage and money.
In most of the planters that caused leaks, a new membrane has already been applied, which has solved the problems.
Terrace-to-terrace leaks are not a priority at the moment, since they are external leaks that do not penetrate the apartments.
A cordial greeting,
The Administration and Board of Directors.