James (Lee) Senter CEO, Dryit.ca CEO, Fresh and Clean President, CFCRA
Best Practices
Water Damage Restoration Standards Are Changing There are Implications for Condominiums One of the last things any condominium manager, board member or resident wants to hear is that there is a water damage occurring in their building. Water can move quickly, especially when the force of gravity assists the water to find its way down through the building. The water can find its way down through a building very, very quickly. A simple small leak, left unattended for even a few minutes can affect three or four other units and the common areas. mitigation services. These vendors have limited or no knowledge or training on how to dry a water damaged building. The insurance industry has been getting very tough on condominium corporations. Premiums are skyrocketing. Deductibles have risen to historic highs for buildings, even for buildings with good claim histories. The main reason for higher premiums and deductibles are the large number of recent insurance claims. The cost of the claims are going higher and higher every year. The principal rea-
son the cost of claims are skyrocketing are: over land flooding that evolve into humongous elevator repair invoices and the automatic tear out of wet building materials instead of implementing a process of something called in-place drying. The standard for water damage remediation is a document called the ANSIIICRC s500-2015 Standard for Professional Water Damage Restoration. The latest revision of this standard will be released in March or April 2021. There have been draft copies of the standard reCONDOVOICE SPRING 2021
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ILLUSTRATION BY ANE ARZELUS
Over the past couple of decades, condominium corporations have used preferred vendors for water damage who are on a list of vetted vendors of the property management company or their insurance company or broker. These vendors were often chosen because of pre-existing relationships with managers. Unfortunately, and all too frequently, the vendors performing water damage mitigation services are chosen because of who they know, not what they know. This often results in a building’s cleaning company or general contractor performing
