Condo World

The Ice Dam Cometh

After the gifts are opened, the food has been cooked and savored, and, the relatives have left, or you've left them, for better or worse it's time to get ready for winter.

Sadly, in Condo World, one of the major concerns of homeowners in condominium associations this time of year is the fear of the slow, steady trickle of water that first appears as a spot that owners try to convince themselves is not a spot, which then blossoms into a trickle, then a hole, then a catastrophe.

Ice dams. Rarely has a phrase been used with such a double meaning.

Normally, when damage comes from the outside into a unit, it is a condominium association's responsibility to repair. But ice dams are different. Ice dams are created from a combination of large amounts of snow followed by steady, freezing weather. Usually when a storm visits us, it is followed by weather above freezing. The warmer weather allows the snow to melt and fall off the roof. When it stays too cold and there's too much snow, not much snow on the roof melts away. So, at the end of the day what's left f the water under the snow resting on the roof re-freezes. Of course, when water freezes it expands and creeps backwards up the roof.

Nowadays most building codes of which I'm aware require ice shield (the thin membrane laid over plywood on the roof onto which shingles are nailed) to be placed at least three feet up from the edge of the roof. It used to be it was only eighteen inches. And in the 80s, when anyone who could spell “developer” became one and buildings were going up so fast that code enforcement officers couldn't keep up with the inspections, some developers, to save money, put up less than eighteen inches. And in a few cases I have known, there was no ice shield at all.

So when the winter weather stays cold, and the roof snow doesn't melt and fall off, the ice keeps backing up. Each day when it warms up the snow melts a little more, but now the ice patch is higher on the roof. Eventually, if the cycle of melting and re-freezing continues, the ice under the snow melts, and if it's higher than the ice shield, it seeps underneath and finds a crack, a crevice, a passageway and drips right into the ceiling or wall.

Unfortunately, unless an association has insurance for ice dams, the damage caused is not the responsibility of the condo association. It's a curious area of the law. Although the water has come from the outside and entered a unit, the courts have ruled the result of ice dams is, essentially, a force of nature for which an association is no more responsible than mosquitoes or ants getting into a unit in the summer.

So what to do? First, make sure your association has good insurance. Near anything can be insured, and so, too, can ice dams be covered by insurance. Most associations I am fortunate to represent now have ice dam coverage. They don't have to, but one of the major purposes of condominium associations is to make life easier for its owners, and coverage for ice dams is surely one way to do that.

The problem is there have been so many ice dams in the past few years that insurance polices have changed. It used to be insurance companies would have one deductible for all ice dam damage caused in several units at one time. Now, however, the most common policy requires a deductible for each unit damaged. If an owner is smart, he or she has their own interior policy which will cover the deductible. If not …

So, it's okay if you like snow. Be happy when it snows. But if you own a condo, hope for warm weather after the snow falls.

Windows (and Doors) of Opportunity

“People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” Rogers Hornsby.

As established by the Condominium Act, Unit doors and windows are a Unit Owner's responsibility. But frequently the Declarant has changed this to give the Association control over the doors and windows. This is a good idea. One of the last things an Association wants is to give control to the Owners over doors. While doing so may sound fine it can leave to problems such as an association where there is a nice mahogany door, next to a hollow core plywood door, next to a metal door. One will be stained, another painted lime green and yet another not treated at all.

The same thing happens with windows.Having a window with panes that have four sections on each of the upper and lower halves of the window(from inserts called mullions), next to eight over eights, next to full pane windows, causes a problem as it just doesn't look nice. Combine that with the lime green door and the place starts to look just not nice enough to spur potential buyers to look elsewhere, causing the values to decrease.

What to do? Even if windows and doors are a Unit Owner's responsibility, Boards have the right and responsibility to control, size, shape, color and quality of materials. Language such as this should be adopted: “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, the Board maintains control over the size shape, quality and color of the doors and windows.”

Then comes the maintenance problem.

If the windows and doors are the responsibility of the Owner, and the Owner is taking care of them well, there can still be problems. For instance, an owner may wish to switch out old windows for energy efficient ones. If the contractor takes the windows out and sees rot in the wood near the window, the contractor has to notify Board of Directors before fixing it. (Leaving it rotting causes another whole set of problems, including the window falling out or not sealing properly and leaking, so it's rare the contractor won't notify the Owner as the contractor does not want to later get in trouble with the Owner for doing such a bad job that the window leaks.)

Otherwise, if the contractor just fixes the wood rot and bills the Owner, the Owner can request reimbursement from the Association. While the Board ultimately has to pay for the wood rot, it can conduct a hearing and fine the owner for work done to the Common Area and/or ask for a reduction in amount to be paid, especially since, volume-wise, an Association can get a better deal if it coordinated the window repair.

Saying this another way, this type of action by the Owner's contractor without communication with the Board deprives the Association of the ability to minimize costs and save money for owners by having work done in bulk as opposed to one window at a time.

Also, who determines the quality of the work? What if, despite best efforts, the contractor does a bad job on replacing the wood rot and it comes apart in the next year. The Association will have a hard time suing the contractor as the contract was not with the Association, but with the Owner. So the Board would have to sue the Owner, and things get worse from there.

What about window glass? The safest thing to do is make glass the responsibility of the Unit Owner. Glass breaks. Most often it is because of something that happened inside the Unit. Having the glass be an Association responsibility to fix may mean the Association will frequently have to fix broken windows. If it can show who caused the problem, it's easy to assess responsibility. But most of the time, it's not, even though more often than not the cause was the Owner or the Owner's guest or child. So the Association can be spending money it really should not have to.

Therefore, the simplest way to handle the situation, except in the very rare case where the documents say the window glass is the responsibility of the Association, is to amend the documents to state, “notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, window glass is the responsibility of the Owner, but the Board maintains control over the style, type and quality of the glass.” This language allows the Board to disallow someone who wishes, for example, to put in stained glass windows.

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” Walt Whitman.

So make the windows look nice, so you can see nice things.