North Vancouver Condo Inspection
Ted was very knowledgeable, professional, personable. He showed up on time with a wide rand of equipment. He strongly encouraged that I stay with him during the inspection, which took a few hour but was well worth the time. I am a first time condo owner (have owned houses previously) and have learned an incredible amount of detailed information that will help us with planned renovations and future maintenance. I am confident that the slightly higher price up front was well worth the investment. His help answering questions after the inspection has also been invaluable.
- Approximate cost of services:
- $600.00
- Company Response
Hi Stephen,
We ask for strata documents, a strata depreciation report and engineers reports, they did not deliver more than 2 yrs of sketchy strata minutes. A bit of a red flag. When I showed up I saw they had done rain screening to the North and East elevations which historically are the 1st building coordinates to fail as in “Leaky Condo Syndrome ”. The portions of the building that had been Rainscreened appeared to be above average retrofit quality and the remainder of the building had been painted which is often times a negative treatment that merely hides moldy staining but also is part of a face sealed system which if water gets in cannot get back out again as water or vapor. There's probably a good reason why they don't make submarines out of stucco, any cracking from building movement will allow water penetration, water penetration leads to catastrophic failure eventually.
I did not discover any moisture on these original exterior walls from the exterior or interior. I just hope that’s true but if it is not you should have $50-$75,000 socked away, even better, if you can find out what the previous rain screening costs were, add 10% or 15%.
There's nothing wrong with buying a potentially problematic building so long as you are aware of the future possibilities. It was a little scary knowing that the strata appeared to be concealing/withholding vital information about your building. I would recommend in your email program to create a file to store all the correspondents you had with the sales project. Basically if you ask for available information that was later determined to reveal serious problems. Yup, you guessed it, they are liable for concealment which in other words is outright fraud.
Long story short- the current painting strategy might last for 10 to 20 yrs. Face sealed Building Envelope/Building Enclosure will fail eventually just as the North and East elevations failed prior to rain their targeted screening.Happy trails ...
Ted Gilmour