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