INSPIRE

MOTIVATION TO KEEP WATER USAGE DOWN

By Lynn Tacker

Summer is here! Summer means fun in the sun and increased water bills to keep that landscaping beautiful or fill those swimming pools. Here in California we also face drought-related water shortages. Many property owners and renters can do their parts to reduce water usage while also keeping the property green, but a key component requires renter cooperation.

Many property owners, whose rental packages or buildings include water usage in the price of rent, may find it challenging to convince renters to conserve water. It’s human nature to be less concerned about how much money is being spent on water consumption when the bill isn’t being paid out of your budget. Thus, many property owners may be challenged to get renter cooperation when it comes time to reduce water usage.

The good news is that overall conservation and sustainability are widely embraced by the Millennials and Gen Z. For example, “Seventy-three percent of Gen Z consumers surveyed were willing to pay more for sustainable products, more than every other generation,” stated an article titled “The environment is Gen Z’s No. 1 concern – and some companies are taking advantage of that” by Katie Johns. “And, despite being the youngest cohort with many still in school, they were willing to spend the most in added costs, with 54% saying they would pay more than a 10% increase in price for a sustainably made product.”

Now take into account that these generations comprise a substantial demographic in the percentage of people who rent. Google shows that 18 percent of Millennials expect to always rent while 22 percent of Gen Z rents. As a result, 40 percent of the rental population fall into these generations. It’s not difficult to convince younger generations whose values already reflect a predisposition toward sustainable options and behaviors to “do the right thing.”

Property owners don’t need to convince these generations to conserve natural resources and water, but they do need to do outreach and communicate these needs to their renters, not just the Millennials and G Zen but all generations. The real question is, what communication tactic can both inform but also motivate water conservation?

One can look to what utility companies do as an example of effective communication. For example, PG&E sends power updates and conservation tips via an e-newsletter to its customers. These updates urge consumers to save power through ideas.

As a property owner, you can send an update or newsletter (if you have more than five renters) via an email system such as Constant Contact or MailChimp. These systems are easyto-use and provide design templates. If you’re not a writer or don’t feel comfortable writing it, hire a freelancer. It costs a little bit of money, but when you compare the rising cost of water and increased usage costs, it’s well worth the investment.

If you have about five to 10 renters, consider an old fashioned letter or reminder. Send it out at the beginning of summer and then perhaps send out another reinforcement toward the end of summer. California’s rainy season doesn’t really get underway until late October to mid-November. So, reinforcing the message will still apply into fall. It’s especially important to remind renters as the fire season “ignites” in August.

You can also hold a cute, little contest. Offer renters a little incentive as the “water-saver” by giving out a prize for the renter who conserves the most water. You can send out little messages about who’s in the lead. These messages will act as both reminder and incentive to keep water usage down. Come up with some prize that reflects your values and makes renters happy.

Bottomline: Water is California gold, so use it wisely.

Lynn Tacker specializes in sustainability.

If you’re watering the lawn, experts say lawns only need about 1 inch of water a week. To determine how long it takes to water the lawn by an inch of water, place a plastic container near the sprinkler and see how much time it takes to get to an inch. However long it requires is how much time you need each week. For example, if it takes 20 minutes, divide that by days and water accordingly. You do not need to water the lawn every day.

By Michelle Gamble

Disasters happen unexpectedly and often without warning. Property owners and renters not prepared end up feeling shocked, unorganized, and even frustrated when they realize they don’t know where to start to recover. A well-organized plan and the right strategies in place won’t necessarily take away the pain of loss, but it will be clear what to do next – and that feeling alone offers comfort in an often bad situation.

“Proper preparation can reduce and mitigate much of the stress and overall damage depending on the type of disaster at hand,” said William Lemmon, agency principal/owner, Broadway Insurances based in Los Angeles.

As you begin your disaster planning, consider the actual plan. All property owners and renters should have a plan in place to guide them through the process. If you’re unfamiliar with actual disaster planning, invest in a prewritten template and fill in the blanks. You can also find books and guides to help you figure out what to do. Your plan should include all kinds of disasters, including things like our current pandemic. Not all disasters destroy property, but some like the pandemic did require shelter-in-place measures.

“Disasters are unpredictable and can strike when you expect them the least,” said Robert Welch, the CEO of Projector1.com. “This is why having a plan in place, for not only your property but even your family, is important.”

Also, while you are naturally concerned about your property, the human element should be number one. Renters make your apartment or home their homes. A home is a place where you’re supposed to feel safe and secure. So, it’s important that property owners keep their renters the number one priority. “Property owners should have a plan in place for both short- and long-term disasters,” said Tom Kelly, chief technology officer at Life Part 2 (lifepart2.com). “This plan should include evacuation routes, contact information for emergency services and contractors, and insurance information.”

Further, one must keep in mind that as human nature exists, renters will often search for someone to blame, and you don’t want to be on the receiving end of these inclinations. You can avoid such blame by being practical, precise, organized, and on top of it. Don’t ever ignore something in favor of the belief, it won’t or can’t happen to you.

“A property owner wants to keep in mind that they are not only protecting this investment but all of your other assets

that can be touched by a lawsuit,” said Cassandra Haavisto, principal at Northwest Select Real Estate Services based in Washington state. “No matter how well-written and executed your emergency plan is, there is always someone trying to find fault and blame. It’s even worse if you do not have an emergency plan at all. It would be wise to show your insurance company a written document of what steps you are taking if an emergency were to strike. It will validate your word when you show them the steps you took, and demonstrate a thoughtful position of care and responsibility that it was considered ahead of time.”

“First, conduct a risk assessment of your property and its contents, including any hazards or potential threats that could affect you or your home,” advised Michael Green, real estate expert and owner of Quick Cash Homebuyers based out of Baltimore, Maryland. “You should also conduct an inventory of your property’s assets and resources. This will help you identify what you’ll need in the event of a disaster, and how to best use those resources.”

Once you’ve completed your risk assessment, time to shop for the right insurance. It’s important to work with insurance companies that specialize in property coverage. “Ask your insurance broker what the insurance company requires for a valid claim and process, you’re doing some basic due diligence to make sure you are following their unique and specific steps eliminating their (and your) risk of exposure,” said Haavisto. “It would be wise to ask questions such as, ‘What are the most common mistakes property owners make when filing a claim?’ or ‘What important mistakes do property owners make when a fire occurs?"

“Understanding how to reduce your risk is a strong move and demonstrates responsibility. In my opinion, documenting that conversation and keeping it in the file is an additional step in your favor should a suit come of any event. Having your side of the case solid, creating and maintaining communication logs with details (results, name, date/time, and showing the frequency of managing the process) should help you monitor it and keep them on target.”

“Second, decide what kind of disaster plan you want to have in place, as well as how long it will take to implement each plan if necessary,” continued Green. “Here is when you get insurance coverage suitable and specific to your needs based on the risk assessment you undertook in the previous step. It’s important to understand the process of how your insurance coverage and payouts will happen. As a property owner, you are required by law to have insurance for both property damage and personal injury that may occur on your property. You should also be sure to have coverage for property damage caused by fire, windstorm, hail, and other natural disasters.”

“In order to prepare your property from the effects of a disaster, the best precaution a homeowner can take is to get the correct insurance,” added Welch. “When you go to insure the property, from then on, ask the right questions before getting any insurance. Ask the agents about the inclusion and the amount you can receive if the property is damaged or affected by natural disasters.”

“The smart thing to do is have business interruption cov-

erage on your insurance,” said Haavisto. “Unless the damage was caused by a renter with renter’s insurance that can stretch to cover it, you’re likely not going to see any rent until the units are renter-occupied. Keep in mind the liability limitations on your required renter’s insurance coverage when setting the policies because a big event will quickly burn through that money.”

Insurance preparation is an important matter, but keep in mind the human element. The number one concern when an actual disaster hits should be the renters. “When disaster strikes, the first thing you need to do is make sure your renters are safe,” said Green. “If they’re not at home when the disaster hits, make sure they know where to go and how to get there,” said Welch. “If disaster strikes while they are on the property, implement the emergency plan you have in place that tells them what to do in case of any kind of emergency. You should have informed your renters about evacuation procedures beforehand. You should also make sure that anyone staying with you has an emergency kit ready and available in case they need it.”

Additionally, use safety measures to assist your renters during a crisis. Your plan should include how to evacuate the property. Property owners should also help by contacting emergency services or arranging for temporary housing. Communicate this information by giving them instructions and information about it.

Have a location, often offsite, where renters can gather in an extreme emergency such as a fire or earthquake,” encouraged Haavisto. “Be prepared with a plan to guide renters knowing that someone on your team will be contacting someone to assist them (be it an organization like the Red Cross or that local church or Salvation Army). Reach out ahead of time to your favorite emergency response organizations and learn their needs from you should you need their assistance. These agencies are not local to your site location many times and can take a few hours to mobilize, so you need to ideally be somewhat prepared to handle the uninjured (not requiring hospital care).”

After the event, be prepared to repair the property as quickly as possible. “When insurance is paying out, you’ll see people come out of the woodwork looking for the opportunity to do a job,” continued Haavisto. “When a tree fell onto a building at one of my properties, a tree company showed up to do the work. They had to be ordered to leave more than once, and they even hung around hoping someone would ask them to step in. They didn’t know I had a tree company already on their way. In the end, we learned that they had a price tag of $20,000 over what my company charged for that job. Those types of people will burn through your insurance limits, too, so be thoughtful about how the work gets completed.”

In reverse, when you have a major disaster such as an earthquake or fire, contractors and maintenance people will be in high demand and hard to find. “Owners can increase their chances of finding available help by putting out a call for help before a disaster strikes,” said Kelly. “They can also make arrangements for contractors and maintenance people to be on standby after a disaster.”

Haavisto shared an emergency event where everything turned out well all because of advanced planning. “We had a tree come down about 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. It crashed on a two-story building nearly coming down to the ground floor unit. We had a smooth process of first responders being timely, restoration team and contractor rapid response, and the management team caring for renters and all channels of communication. The communication led to comfort and reassurance across all channels so that everyone knew what to expect and where to go upon site arrival; helped ensure that all angles were considered even for collaborative response teams; and we saw the human element come out with unaffected neighbors providing breakfast and shelter. It was truly a wonderful sight to see people come together from renters to contractors and ensure that all the people were okay.”

By Kenneth T. Tam and David L. McCormick

Many cities in the Bay Area including San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, as well as others throughout California, have enacted ordinances to address seismic deficiencies in wood-framed apartment buildings with soft stories. These are buildings where the lower levels consist of open spaces (e.g., parking, lobbies, retail spaces) that are considerably weaker than the stories above. In past earthquakes such as the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area and the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, many of these soft-story buildings sustained major damage or collapsed because of the inherent deficiencies.

Because of ordinances in some cities, many soft-story buildings have been retrofitted to greatly improve their expected seismic performance and increase the community’s resiliency if a damaging earthquake occurs. From an owner’s perspective, seismic retrofit projects can be a significant undertaking and a non-trivial investment in money and time. Many factors will determine whether the project is successful. To avoid headaches and to ensure that your effort and money is not poorly spent, the following are some things the owner should consider when beginning a seismic retrofit project.

There are many licensed general contractors and structural engineers (and possibly other consultants) in the marketplace. Choosing the right companies to help with your project will greatly affect the outcome. Some owners would like to one-stop-shop (e.g., design-build contractor), while other owners would like to be more hands-on in the process and select the engineer and contractor separately. These two approaches each come with pros and cons. A company with contractor and engineer on staff may provide a one-stop shop service that helps you navigate the process: designing the retrofit, obtaining permits, construction, etc. Selecting an engineer first (separately from the contractor) allows you to have a set of construction documents (i.e., drawings) to solicit multiple bids from contractors. Since construction costs are usually a larger percentage of the total cost in a retrofit, this may be beneficial.

Not all seismic retrofits are the same, and your desired performance goal may be different. Some owners want to meet the minimum requirements of the ordinance (and possibly minimum construction cost), while some would prefer a better-performing building. Owners should understand that the soft-story ordinances are meant to reduce the significant deficiency at the soft stories and not the entire building. Below is a suggested list of items to discuss with the engineer or the design-build contractor before they begin work:

• Discuss your performance goal. Do you want just to meet the minimum requirements of the ordinance, or do you want more or at least want to consider better performance where it is cost-effective to do so? • Agree on logistics of site access for the engineer to do the evaluation. Generally, the engineer will need to walk through the entire ground floor and portions of the upper floors. The extent that the upper floors need to be visited is partly a function of the analysis approach used. Some jurisdictions, such as the City of Oakland, also require evaluating “non-structural” items such as gas lines, chimneys or masonry partitions to determine if those elements pose a hazard in an earthquake.

• Decide whether to perform localized destructive exploration to identify conditions (such as presence, size, and spacing of anchor bolts in existing walls) during the evaluation and design phase or whether the engineer should make assumptions that are confirmed during construction. • Discuss limitations of the retrofit. Can some of the garage door openings be closed, or is it required that design maintain all openings? Can the garage door openings be made smaller or do they need to remain the same size? • Decide if work can be done in one phase. Will the contractor have full access to the ground floor during construction, or does work have to be phased to maintain some parking during construction? Phased construction will generally be more expensive.

Aside from a structural engineer, there may be a need for other design professionals. • Architect: An architect may be required to address complex waterproofing issues or code compliance to satisfy disability requirements, which are more likely if a building has commercial space below. If there is a desire to add an ADU to the design, an architect will likely be needed. • Geotechnical Engineer: For most sites, the building code allows the structural engineer to assume conservative allowable soil pressures in checking or designing a foundation. However, a geotechnical engineer may be required for the project for sites with apparent poor soils or on a steep hillside. • Others: Some complex projects may require other design professionals such as a mechanical engineer to relocate utilities, or utility locators to locate existing below-ground utilities, etc. However, many times the contractor can remove and replace such utilities.

Having a complete set of existing drawings and records of modifications to the building will be very helpful to the engineer. If you do not have existing drawings, visit the city’s building department to determine they exist in their archives. The engineer can perform this task, but the owner should expect a small fee if it is not included in the engineer’s proposal. An advantage to having the engineer visit the building department is that they can better judge what information will be useful in some cases. If the owner performs this task, he or she needs to make decisions about copying too much or missing valuable information. There is a fee for reproduction of records, so the owner should expect to reimburse the engineer for these fees.

In addition to existing drawings, share any information you have about previous remodels, repairs, or possible deterioration (e.g., roof leaks). A deteriorated or weakened structure will not perform well in a seismic event.

If drawings are not available, the engineer, contractor, or a firm specializing in producing as-built drawings will have to measure the building, which will increase the cost. Even with such measurements, there will be building features that cannot be readily determined and it is likely that a more significant destructive exploration effort will be required, or the owner should budget allowances for redesign during construction (see above).

Many of the buildings involved in these retrofits are older buildings that may not have existing drawings. Some may have drawings but there may have been many renovations that occurred throughout the years. The structural engineer should visit the site to familiarize themselves with the existing construction and building condition rather than rely on the drawings.

Some critical information the engineer requires includes: • Presence of brick foundations • Wall connections to foundations (anchor bolts, etc.) • Wall connections to framing above The engineer needs to pay attention to things that will affect possible retrofits, including: • Is there sufficient room above the garage door openings and associated garage doors for the steel beam in a moment frame? • Do narrow piers between door openings preclude the use of moment frames? • Are there plan setbacks at upper floors that require strengthening of the second-floor diaphragm that could need waterproofing? • Areas that should be avoided include lobbies with ornate finishes, utilities such as gas lines, electrical meters, etc.

Each building has its own unique details and there are no cookie-cutter designs. Different retrofit schemes also can affect future usage. The design team can and should provide conceptual design options for your review before you commit to a final design. Below are some common strengthening methods: • Shear walls (Figure. 1A): Shear walls for wood framing construction typically involves nailing plywood sheets on wood stud walls (either existing or new) and connecting these walls to framing at the top and bottom (if upper floor) and to the foundations at the base.

Figure 1 - Common Types of Retrofit

• Braced frames (Figure 1B): Braced frames consist of beams and columns and diagonal braces. They can be used when loads are large. • Steel Moment Frames (Figure 1C): Moment frames are often used when openings are required, such as around garage doors or large windows. Moment frames consist of at least two columns connected at the top with steel beam(s). • Steel Cantilever Columns (Figure 1D): Similar to moment frames, these are typically used to allow large openings.

Cantilever columns does not require a large steel beam at the top; thus, it is often desirable if headroom is an issue.

Before the start of construction, set up a pre-construction meeting with the contractor and engineer. This meeting can be held by phone or virtually and does not need to be time-consuming. This meeting allows the various parties to set expectations during construction and ensure that the necessary inspections are carried out. Some items to be discussed should include:

• What is the protocol if the contractor needs clarifications to the drawings or would like to substitute a product?

What if there is a change in the cost of construction? • Does the engineer need to review submittals such as concrete mixes, shop drawings, etc.? Review of submittals by the engineer is recommended. • Are there conditions that the engineer assumed during design that need to be confirmed in the field? • At what stages does the engineer need to visit the site to perform structural observations? If the required structural observations are not performed, the engineer may not be able to submit a letter required by most cities at the completion of the project. The contractor must inform the engineer when it is appropriate to perform an obser-

vation. Structural observations are different from city inspections or special inspections (see next bullet) and are important to help ensure the owner gets the quality of construction intended. • The project will likely require a special inspector/testing agency. Items needing special inspections are identified by a special inspection form that most cities require to be completed during the permit process. The engineer should be the one filling out the form.

Despite every effort by the engineer, architect, or contractor, it is common for unknown conditions to be revealed when finishes are opened or foundations are revealed. This is especially the case when original drawings are unavailable. This can be the result of modifications over the years or poor-quality construction. For example, walls may exist without any type of foundation beneath them and this could not be detected during a walkthrough. In such cases, not only will the project potentially be delayed, but additional engineering and construction fees may be required. Owners should anticipate this possibility when budgeting for the retrofit.

Just like any other construction project, seismic retrofit projects can be challenging. Having experienced design professionals, contractor, appropriate planning, and budgeting will go a long way to ensure that the project goes smoothly. Rest assured that when the project is complete, your building will be safer during the next big one.

Dave McCormick, S.E., is a Senior Principal at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Inc. He is a licensed structural engineer in California and has over 40 years of experience in seismic evaluation and retrofit of structures and nonstructural components.

Kenneth T. Tam S.E. is a Senior Project Manager at Simpson Gumpertz and Heger Inc. He is a licensed structural engineer in California and has over 25 years of experience in structural design, evaluation, and seismic retrofit of buildings.