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Maintenance Deferred
If something’s broken, you fix it. If it's worn out, you replace it. It sounds like a simple equation, but when it comes to construction in
cash-strapped times, it can be a case of easier said than done.
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New England Condo Expo
Mark your calendars for Thursday, May 7, 2009—that’s the date of New England Condominium’s first annual New England Condo Expo, a one-day trade event featuring over 120 exhibitors from all over the region. Boston’s Seaport World TradeCenter is the setting for a full day of networking, educational seminars, valuable prizes and giveaways, and opportunities to meet with professionals from every corner of the multifamily housing industry. Read More
Getting Smart
Technology is affecting the way we do business, how we go about our daily tasks,
and even how our homes function. Putting existing technology to use in a home
or residential building is the essence of what it means to be an “intelligent” building or home. An “intelligent” building is able to monitor its environmental, mechanical, and lighting (among
other) systems, through a computerized network of electronic devices.
Maintenance, communications, security, and other residential building functions
are now being handled by new systems, whose upgraded operations are helping
building personnel do their jobs more effectively. In many cases, intelligent
homes and buildings provide savings for their owners, by helping them to cut
back on their energy usage.
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Water Woes
New England residents have always thought of fresh
water as an unlimited resource, but that attitude may be on the way out.
With climate change, increased demand from residential development, and
stricter regulation of public water supplies, bans on water use seem to be
expanding beyond the typical—and brief—summer drought
season. Read More
Healthy Building Systems
A building is, in many ways, like a body.If its residents are the soul, then certainly the mechanical systems that keep it running are at its heart. And just as one cares for one’s body by eating right and exercising, so too must management care for those mechanical systems, ensuring they function efficiently and well throughout
their life span.
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Troubled Waters
It sounds like an urban legend, something that supposedly happened to your cousin’s friend’s cousin. A little girl swam to the drain at the bottom of the pool, sat on it, got stuck on it, and drowned. Only this really happened, in a hot tub in McLean, Virginia, in the summer of 2002. Two grown men finally managed to pull her out, breaking the drain in the process, but it was too late to save her. Read More
Clean Sweep
National Public Radio recently ran a story about a piece of advice from the latest edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. The suggestion was about how to stay warm throughout the winter with just one log: chuck it out of an upstairs window, run downstairs and outside to pick it up, and then sprint back upstairs and chuck it out the window again. Repeat until warm. Read More
The Party's Over
The era in which too many condominium boards shrugged
off warnings about inadequate reserve funds or postponed needed maintenance
has come to an unsettling end. Read More
All Hands on Deck!
A building is, in many ways, like a body.If its residents are the soul, then certainly the mechanical systems that keep
it running are at its heart. And just as one cares for one’s body by eating right and exercising, so too must management care for those
mechanical systems, ensuring they function efficiently and well throughout
their life span.
Read More
Staying Dry
The wind howled and rain came down sideways, lasting through the night, and when Jane Aubin [not her real name] got up for work in the morning, she discovered water bubbling under the paint and down the walls on the sides of the window frames in her historic brick townhouse. Read More
