Crumbling balconies in Beach overhauled
Residents decry timing, expense
Article Courtesy of The Miami Herald

 
Posted on Mon, Jul. 08, 2002
Article Courtesy of The Miami Herald
By NICOLE WHITE

Construction workers in Miami Beach are tearing away rotted balconies and windows on a number of older high-rises to replace them with more durable aluminum rails and frames -- sometimes at a cost of millions to the building owners.

Miami Beach has notified 18 building owners in the past two years that cracked concrete railings and slabs have made their balconies unsafe. Of the 18, nine pulled building permits to begin repairs, while six cases remain open as owners either work through concerns with the city's special master, or continue to face fines. Three are listed as works in progress.

The trouble is timing, says the city's building director Phil Azan. Most of those buildings with unsafe balconies were built more than 30 years ago when some builders, perhaps looking for shortcuts as they tried to meet heavy demands for high-rise condos, mixed beach sand with cement and other aggregates to make concrete.

Azan said they weren't violating the building codes, but it is common knowledge in the building industry that beach sand should never be the aggregate of choice to mix with cement. But because there ''was no quality control, and no chloride tests as we are now required to do, no one checked,'' he said.

 
 OUTSIDE JOB: The balconies at   Presidential Condominiums on Ocean Drive are undergoing repairs as a result of receiving a violation notice from the city.

As a result, those mixtures had almost twice the amount of chloride content that is now recommended by the American Concrete Industry. Simply put, salt does not mix well with steel. It weakens it, rusts its frame. That in turn leads to the cracking and breaking of the concrete -- a process called spalling.

''This problem has been happening a lot, not just on the Beach, as these buildings are exposed to the elements and as they get older, they start to fall apart,'' said Beach building official Richard McConachie.

McConachie said builders often ignored guidelines to frame steel with enough concrete to stave off the effects of erosion.

At the Presidential Condominiums, 401 Ocean Dr., the 238 balconies were falling apart when the city slapped it with a violation notice last year for having an unsafe structure.

Now they're being fixed at a cost that's rising to $2.5 million. And the process is not pleasant for the residents: There is no natural light filtering into the apartments of residents living in the northern half of the Presidential. Sliding doors and windows in living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, and even bathrooms are boarded up with sheet rock, turning once brilliant views of the ocean into views of nothingness.

Dust has settled on sofas, television sets, counter tops. It is, as one resident put it, ``a barbaric existence.''

INCONVENIENCE 

''They're not happy campers here,'' said Beatrice Baxter, president of the condo board at the Presidential. ``This is a very big job, the noise is excruciating, it's a big inconvenience, but we had no choice.''

Residents at the Presidential were each assessed $6,000 to pay the estimated $1.5 million in repair costs. And this week, they received notices that because of cost overruns and other unforeseen expenses, they're likely to be charged an additional $1 million.

''I'll have to wear a bulletproof vest once they get those notices,'' Baxter joked. ``We're not doing cosmetic work. We're doing work that's got to be done.''

Farther north on the Beach, the spalling at the Alden Hotel, 2925 Indian Creek Dr., was so extreme that the city shut down the hotel last August after spending hours relocating guests.

''That was the worst of the worst,'' said Jeri Goodkin, a senior building inspector.

The balconies had deteriorated so badly that railings had fallen away. But the then-owner ignored every notice of violation, Goodkin said. He accrued $204,831 in fines to the city until building officials finally said ''enough was enough,'' Goodkin said. A new owner is now making the repairs.

Last month, the Maison Grande condominium at 6039 Collins Ave. was added to the list of buildings that need to take action. The city declared all 579 balconies at the building unsafe unless a unit owner can produce an engineering report proving otherwise.

The building's condo board has since hired an engineering firm to analyze each balcony. The Maison Grande will remain in violation until the board hires a contractor and pulls a building permit, building officials said.

Resident Jose Ferro says the board dragged its feet in addressing the violations.

''They were nave,'' Ferro said. ``It was no surprise that the balconies needed to be fixed, but everyone knows that they are not all falling down on people's heads. The board was working on the problem.''

The board president has not returned calls from The Herald for comment.

COST A FACTOR 

Condo owners often resist making the repairs because of the cost, building officials and contractors say.

Jerry Guarch, president of Diversified, the company doing the repairs at the Presidential, says he wishes residents would look at the assessment as a one-time fee similar to those single-family home owners face when making repairs like fixing a roof.

Once they buy, ''they don't expect anything more than a maintenance fee, but they need to put [it] in perspective,'' said Guarch. ``Condo owners tend to have the mentality that says if the roof leaks, it's the penthouse problem and it's not.''

Although building officials expect that they'll continue to see more buildings with spalling concrete over time, new building codes and construction standards for coastal structures should reduce the problem, said Mohammed Partovi, chief structural plans examiner for the Beach.

The Florida Building Code, updated in March, requires most railings on exterior balconies to have a minimum coverage of an inch of concrete from the steel frame. For structures in corrosive atmospheres such as coastal areas, steel bars should also be galvanized to make it more difficult for bars to erode. And owners need to schedule regular maintenance for balconies, Guarch said.

Other tips: Avoid carpeting balconies because carpet acts like a sponge, holding water and salts that damage the concrete. Also, apply waterproofing to slabs before tiling balconies.

As for the repairs and often replacement of balconies, ''most residents understand that it has to happen,'' Guarch said. ``You can never make them all happy. The best tool is to educate them and let the great majority appreciate and understand what you're doing.''