Balconies — Everyone's Home, One at a Time

Repairing a hundred balconies means a hundred conversations about access, furniture, pets, plants, hurricane shutters and how long the door will be unusable. Boards routinely price the construction and not the coordination, and the coordination is where the complaints and the delays come from.

The second coordination problem is the one boards do not anticipate. Residents on a balcony scheduled for next month will ask to be moved to a later phase, and residents whose balconies are already done will ask why theirs took longer than their neighbor's. Publishing the whole schedule at the start, with dates, converts both of those conversations from complaints into information.

Four things, in writing, well before the work reaches them: the date access begins, what has to be cleared and by when, whether the balcony door can be used during the work, and roughly when they get the balcony back. Vagueness on any of those generates a phone call to the management office.

The one most often left out is whether the door is usable. For a resident whose only outdoor space is that balcony, and particularly for anybody with a pet, that single answer determines how disruptive the project feels to them personally.

1. 01Work from the engineer's findings, balcony by balcony.
2. 02Publish a schedule residents can rely on, with real notice.
3. 03Remove deteriorated concrete, treat or replace steel, repair.
4. 04Correct slope and drainage rather than just resurfacing.
5. 05Waterproof and re-install railings to current requirements.
6. 06Walk each completed balcony with the resident.

Fix the drainage. A balcony that ponds water will spall again regardless of how well the concrete repair was executed, and boards frequently pay twice because the first project treated the symptom on a schedule rather than the cause.

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