Category: Maintenance

Eventually, most co-op owners will get bored with their surroundings and want to spruce up their apartment. Sometimes this will involve a full remodeling or redesign of the unit, while other times it simply means adding a new coat of p…

As residential buildings and the business of managing them have become more sophisticated, the term “super”—as in superintendent—has come to mean “super-qualified.” The days of the building handyman armed with little other than a ring of…

It’s hard—if not impossible—to plan a budget for your building and stick to it if maintenance problems and structural crises are constantly taking you by surprise and depleting your community’s bank account. Capital budgets are the long…

Not for nothing is New York City often called “the concrete jungle.” Thousands of square miles of pavement of all descriptions cover the city, from newly-poured (and quickly graffiti'ed) cement sidewalks to cobblestones left over from t…

Edgar Dworsky is the treasurer of a small condo complex in Somerville, Massachusetts that was built back in 1987. He loves where he lives except for one rather large problem. Water leaks have plagued the complex since it was built. Dur…

Even cavemen knew that fire was dangerous—and they lived in flame-proof caves. But here in the 21st century, people blithely build roaring fires right in the middle of their furnished, wood-filled, carpeted, upholstered and bookcase-jam…

Energy efficiency and green improvements to existing buildings have often received less public attention and political play than “sexier” green initiatives such as renewable energy generation with solar panels and windmills or LEED-cert…

With the economy struggling and thousands of unemployed Americans looking high and low for work, you might wonder why anyone should care about something like dryer lint. Fair enough—but here’s why: According to the U.S. Fire A…

Concrete is the most prevalent building material in existence today, though most people probably don’t notice how widely used the material is until it begins to break up in front of their homes, or falls off of their buildings, roads an…

Time was, when you had a big construction or renovation job, you hired a general contractor, and if the job was big enough, that contractor hired subcontractors. But in recent decades, a new player has entered into the process…