2004 Apr
2004 Apr Vol. 24, No. 4
Focus on...Exterior Maintenance
In Brief: From the Court to the Board
In this and in future columns, I will be examining decisions of interest to co-op and condo boards and suggesting what valuable lessons can be learned from these legal decisions. Read More
Beauty in the Bronx
Situated in the far northwest section of the Bronx, Riverdale is bounded on the west by the Hudson River and the north by the Westchester County line but to many it feels like a suburban enclave within the city. Read More
Inside the Department of Buildings
A number of smaller bureaus and special task forces operate under the control and guidance of the DOB. Some have direct contact with residents, while others interact primarily with contractors, tradespersons, and legal professionals. Read More
Keeping the Rain Off Your Head
While it may be a clichƩ, it's entirely true that few things are more important than keeping a solid roof over your head. And like any other aspect of a building's structural composition, your roof has a life span that is dictated by time, wear-and-tear, and environmental conditions. Read More
Obeying the Code
The Byzantine bureaucracy of New York City's government offices can often seem impenetrable; a warren of offices, commissions, departments, and boards designed more to thwart than to help. While the sheer size of New York insures that the municipal governance system will probably never be as simple as that of a smaller city, there are a few encouraging points of light in the maze. One of those, the New York City Department of Buildings, or DOB, has taken steps to streamline its operations, root out corruption, and make its processes more transparent and easier for ordinary citizens to understand. Read More
Considering an ESCO
Whether it's cash in hand or borrowed dollars, your properties are constantly faced with competing demands on scarce resources. These financial pressures can keep you from replacing an old, unreliable, repair-intensive, under-performing chiller or boiler plant. Read More
When is That Old Boiler Shot?
Like many questions, the answer is "it depends."¯ Many people think about a 20- or 30-year-old boiler the same way they think about a 10- or 15-year-old car: "It might need to be replaced soon, so I won't spend much money on it. I'll just wait and see what happens."¯ When a car makes it several more years, people start to think, "If it lasted this long, there is no telling how long I can keep it, so I'm going to take good care of it."¯ The same thing tends to happen with boilers if they make it to 40 or 50. The trick is knowing whether or not the boiler is likely to keep working for years and years. Read More
100-Year Face-Lifts
From the venerable Dakota on the Upper West Side to the small-but-fashionable antique brownstones in the Village, to the formidable New York Public Library, hundreds of buildings in Manhattan and the outer boroughs have been designated historic landmarks. While landmark residential buildings are considered very desirable, even stylish, places to live and visit, they carry with them several unique concerns when it comes to maintenance and restoration projects. Read More
Green Corner: Understanding Lighting
There's nothing worse than bad lighting. Take an otherwise beautiful room and illuminate it with the wrong kind of light - whether too dim, too bright, too hot, too cold, too pale, or too bleak - and the mood, feeling, and livability of the space is ruined. And the worst of the bad-lighting culprits are the cold, bleak, buzzing, latter-generation fluorescents that make you feel like you're trapped in some Soviet-era mental hospital, or the Matrix, or some other world that has forgotten its love for humanity. Read More
