Few things illustrate the fragility of modern civilization more clearly than plumbing problems. A broken pipe, a backed-up toilet, a flooded bathroom—any one of these can quickly go from annoyance to emergency, and the longer a plumbing pr…
The rarely stated—but all too well understood—Murphy’s Law for Boilers—asserts that if your boiler quits working, it will do so on Christmas or New Year’s Eve, or at 4:45 p.m. on the coldest day of the year. With some planning, though, tha…
From the outside, the structure of a condo or co-op building may appear to be monolithic; just one big piece of brick and steel, punctuated with some glass here and there. That's an oversimplification, however. A multifamily building is pe…
It only makes good business sense that if something goes wrong and needs fixing at a condo or co-op, the board or manager is going to do some due diligence to choose the correct contractor, and this is normally done by gathering bids. Afte…
In terms of wear and tear on buildings, winter is the harshest season of the year. Snow accumulation and ice damming on roofs can be a major headache, pipes freezing and bursting could spell disaster, and just about any accumulation of wat…
New Jersey is trashy. Literally. Every day residents of the Garden State produce hundreds of tons of trash. Whether its’ paper plates, cups, napkins or E-waste such as discarded computers, office electronic equipment, entertainment systems…
Funny thing about human nature—it’s not impulsively "natural" at all. Despite knowing that 1.1 billion people lack clean drinking water and thousands of children die from the diseases in that dirty water, people living in better circumstan…
There’s probably not a condo, co-op, or HOA board that doesn’t worry about money at some point or another, which is why staying on top of the latest money-saving opportunities is vital for any building or community to be successful. One of…
Protection against embezzlement, fraud, theft, computer crime, forgery and more are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to crimes at community associations across the United States. During challenging economic times, crime goes up an…
Say you’re in bed, and you hear what sounds like the shower going. It's late, and you're tired, so you pay it no mind. You wake up at 4 a.m. to get a glass of water and find half the rooms in your apartment flooded— you forgot to turn the …