Maintenance Minutes : April 11, 2023

Topic 1: Ground Drains Clean Out

• Our drainage system is self contained- does not connect to city sewer system
• Cleaning method:  We can jump in boxes and clear them out with shovels, hoses, wet vac, sump pumps, etc. 
• When is the last time the connecting drain pipes have been cleared out?  Kay thinks never.  
• How to clean connecting drain pipes??
  • Option 1 : Buy scope for ~$900.  Use it to find blockages (roots, leaves, EQ damage, etc)
    • Bonus: if we get a scope, we could use it to diagnose/locate our own personal sewer blockages
  • Option 2: Get professional bid to do it professionally (scope and clean blockages)
• Cleaning the connecting drain pipes is probably too ambitious for now.  Immediate need is to clear the water/gunk out of the boxes at the very least.
• Vinnie to get blueprints – scan them.  Use them to get estimates on professional cleaning.
• Alex asks: What should the maintenance schedule be? 
  • Answer: Storm drains used to be drained every year.  Scoping has never been done.
• Only place the connecting drains have ever plugged is between Unit 7 and the chicken coop.
• Equipment needed:
  • Wheel barrows
  • 5 gallon buckets
  • sump pump to pump water into city drain
  • wet vac
  • shovels
  • hoses
• Strategy:  Start on outside drains (east lot) and work toward the ducks; that’s where things drain out.

Topic 1a (tangent of Drain Cleaning topic): Flood mitigation

• Dig drainage trench ditch around perimeter of home and make sure it has a path to drain away from home.
• Foundation should be exposed for at least 6” beneath stucco.  If stucco gets immersed in water, the water will absorb up the exterior of the unit.  (This needs to be on maintenance committee's and/or landscaping committee's to do list.) 
• Berm on west side exists to prevent water from coming from canals into property

Topic 2: Maintenance Committee Communication: Google Chat vs. Slack

• Slack seems to be the app of choice for intra-Coho communication.  Management Committee started to try to use it in 2022.  Ben has suggested using it if for the carshare program we're trying to start up. 
• Vinnie uses it for his property maintenance job and says it's very effective. 
• Makes sense to use the same app across all committees at WaCoHo. So we’re going to try Slack and see how it works.

Topic 3: Work Parties

• We have a lot of catch up work to do around the community.  
• Need to determine the priority of each maintenance task based on the thing(s) most likely to cause high $$ damage if not tended to.  Caulking of decks seems like a good candidate for priority 1 given the water damage to Units 2 and 17 (See Topic 5 below).
• Once priorities are determined, all members of maintenance are encouraged to set up work parties to knock this out.  You don't have to be a pro in the given task to organize the event; just be willing get the message out.

Topic 4: Maintenance Tools

• We have a lot of work to do around the community + a very energized Maintenance Committee + Vinnie who has a HUGE amount of subject matter expertise on property maintenance and repair.  What we don't have are the right tools to get all of this done.  Vinnie to compile list of tools that would be most helpful for the tasks at hand. 
• Storage location of tools, once purchased, is another issue we'll need to consider.

Topic 5: Deck repair, Units 1 and 15

• The leak that happened in Units 2 and 17 (under units 1 and 15, respectively) were suspected to be a result of a compromised deck roof membrane.  We called Ron Case Roofing (who installed the roof decks in 2014) to fix the roof membranes since they were still under warranty.  They performed the following services:
  • Inspected the roof membranes to see if/where it was compromised.  They weren't - they were still in good condition.
  • Cleaned out the area between the deck boards and the membrane.  There was not nearly as much biomass (leaves, seeds, etc) as we assumed there would be.  The deck repairman said the deck was "self cleaning as designed".  
  • Caulked every seam around the decks on Unit 1 and 15.  Caulked all seams of metal plates, railings, doorway thresholds.  It was the compromised caulking + poor installation of the door trim in unit 1 (1" x 1" gaping hole between the door trim and the threshold) which caused the water damage to Unit 2's ceiling.   
  • Put a 1/2" spacer between the deck railing and stucco on Unit 1.  It was poor fitting railing on Unit 1's deck that caused the railing to pull away from/out of the stucco over time, ultimately causing the water damage to Unit 2's door trim around the sliding glass door.
  • Unit 15's railing and doorway did not have the same obvious issues reported with Unit 1 but the caulk was old and compromised in many hours so that's all that was done there....lots of caulking.
  • Ron Case Roofing did all of the above for free and called it "Good Will Work" instead of "Warranty Work" since...again...nothing really was wrong with the roof itself.