Greg Batista: 0:00

The prevalence of this spalling issue is more prevalent the closer you get to the coastline

Robert Nordlund: 0:04

got it now

Greg Batista: 0:05

it's not to say, it's not to say that in places like, you know, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Montana, that more inland, that this doesn't happen. It just happens at a lesser rate. It's basically what I call it a cancer. So that people will understand when I talk to all these boards across the entire Florida. I tell them, this is like a cancer. You need to take it out once you see the cancer and you don't do anything about it, it's just going to continue to

Jennifer Johnson: 0:28

grow. HOA Insights is brought to you by five companies that care about board members, association, insights and marketplace Association, reserves, community financials, Hoa invest and Kevin Davis, Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 0:45

Welcome back to Hoa insights, common sense for common areas. I'm Robert Nordlund, and I'm here today for episode number 84 with a special guest on the serious subject of preventing another Champlain tower South tragedy. He's an engineer and an author with a book on the topic, which I have right here on my desk, and we first connected back in 2022 it's time to have him on the program and share some of his insights with you. I hope you enjoyed last week's episode number 83 with regular co host and insurance expert Kevin Davis discussing challenging insurance requirements. And if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, you can find them on our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, on your favorite podcast platform, or on our YouTube channel, but better yet, subscribe to the podcast in order to get every episode delivered right to your phone or mobile device. Those of you watching on YouTube can see the custom log I have here HOA insights, the cartoon on the back that I got from our merchandise store, which you can browse through from our HOA insights.org website, or the show notes, you'll find we have specialty items like this and free board member zoom backgrounds. And as a special promotion, go to the merch store, browse through the items, pick a mug that you'd like to have, and if you're the 10th person, to email podcast at reserve study.com with your name, address and mug choice and mentioning episode 84 mug giveaway, I'll ship it to you for free. Well, we enjoy hearing from you, and most episodes are in response to a topic or a question that you've submitted. So we do ask you to stay in contact, letting us know what questions you have or topics that you'd like to hear more about. So leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130, leave a comment on the YouTube video or send us an email at podcast@reservestudy.com but back to today's episode, this topic is on me. Greg Batista, professional engineer. PE is the owner and founder of G Battista engineering and construction, has over three decades of engineering and construction experience. He's a trusted expert in the field with a history of managing projects from design to completion for single family homes and high rise condominiums. One of his clients was Champlain tower South his inspection in 2017 found significant damage, but his report to the association failed to prompt any repair work, and that's the key here. The board had early clues as early as 2017 So we've learned that ignoring such warnings can lead to loss of life. His book, negligence averting disaster at your building. Lessons learned from the Champlain tower South collapse. I've got here on my desk. I've enjoyed reading it. It's available on Amazon. He continues his work inspecting buildings, advocating building safety measures and educating his Florida clients on new inspection requirements and the importance of building maintenance. So Greg, welcome to the program. I expect you're busy inspecting buildings nowadays.

Greg Batista: 4:02

Oh yeah, we're busy. And by the way, thank you for having me on your show.

Robert Nordlund: 4:05

It's a pleasure. I have you on the show because I sense that this whole issue not only is something you're knowledgeable about, but it touched your heart. Tell me why it touched your heart.

Greg Batista: 4:17

Well, I come from a long a family of a lot of, you know, teachers and psychologists and people that just love to, you know, love to help people. And I just have that in my veins, but I gravidated towards the towards the construction and engineering. And basically what we do as as engineers is we guard the public safety we form. First and foremost in our in our line of work, is that we guard for the safety of the people. That's why we design buildings the way we do the bridges and all those structures that we live and work in. So, you know, having gravitated to that, I feel like it's, it's something that, when I go to these homeowners associations, that I take it apart. Myself to act as a teacher of sorts and let people know how important it is to maintain the buildings and how important it is to put priorities in a certain way so that you know at the end of the day that they're safe good.

Robert Nordlund: 5:12

Let's follow up on that how important it is to maintain the buildings. Talk to me about maintenance and preventive maintenance. Well,

Greg Batista: 5:18

I mean, we can be talking about that topic for for days here on on this because, God, I mean, it's something as simple as paint, right? Something as simple and as inexpensive as paint goes a huge way in making your building go from maybe having a longevity of 50 years to maybe 100 years, right? Because the paint on the building is like the skin. If you're looking at your skin, your skin is actually your first line of defense for, you know, keeping germs out and for causing infections. The same thing is paint people, people in some condominiums, they haven't painted their building for 10 years, 15 years, which is, which is, to me, it's just insane. And I know it costs a lot of money, but the pain that is going to cost on a long term basis is just incredible. So So something as simple as paint keeps the water, keeps the chlorides from coming into your building and not only causing, you know, moisture problems in the building, but it keeps these chlorides, which are so prevalent on the coastal regions, especially here in Florida, from getting entrained into the concrete and causing the the damage to this reinforcing steel that's inside. Because once the reinforcing steel inside gets these chlorides, it starts to rust, and it starts to rust, it starts to expand, and that's what causes that structural instability, which was one of the, one of the things that that went wrong over in champlain towers that caused the collapse. Well,

Robert Nordlund: 6:40

I remember, I'm a mechanical engineer, engineer myself, and I remember seeing a group in the Pacific Northwest. And I remember seeing a video of the Narrows Bridge collapse. They called it galloping Gertie, because it moved when the winds blew through. And I remember asking my teacher, well, what was that material made of? I expected it was asphalt, and I was so surprised to learn that it was a concrete driving surface. Because as a person, as a human in this world, you think that concrete is hard, you think the concrete is strong, it's like a rock, and then you realize that no concrete flexes, and it's not good in flexing situations. And not only that, it's porous. Concrete absorbs water, and these are things I'm learning in college. And I think the average the citizen, the average human, the average board member, doesn't appreciate that it's not just the water that gets in, soaks in, and then in cold climates, you have a freeze thaw cycle that's going to pop things off. You're going to get that in warm climates. And so talk to me about what we call spalling. Well, let

Greg Batista: 7:57

me just backtrack a little bit. I mentioned something's just fascinating. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a fascinating story of how things are built and how we are able to learn from tragedies that happen, right? Yeah, this Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and it's a fascinating story. So look it up on Google or YouTube. You'll see it YouTube. Watch the video, you'll see this thing going up and down and just and it was a, it was a 18 mile an hour wind, because it caught natural harmonics in the bridge that it moved.

Robert Nordlund: 8:26

Okay. To our audience, this is two engineers geeking out on something. So we'll get back to condominiums in just a

Greg Batista: 8:33

minute. So it's so it's so fascinating, so, but the thing is that you had a, you had a 19 mile an hour wind, but it, but it started moving the bridge a little bit, a little bit so it the bridge moved so much that it just eventually collapsed. And it goes back to this whole engineering concept with which we're learning in Champlain towers, which these tragedies happen. We have to find out why they happened, and we go about, you know, trying to to fix whatever it was that went wrong. Now we're incorporating, you know, dampening of the harmonics on the bridge. And that doesn't happen anymore, or it's been completely minimized. And going back to what you said about concrete, yes, if you were turned into a really small creature, like the size of an atom, you could literally run through the little nooks and crannies and then go out to the other side. It's like a sponge, if you if you might, if you put it under a microscope. Enough, so you're right. Those are perfect, perfect things that you were, that you were saying. So the original question yes, so where were we? Yeah, where were we? Where were we? We're geeking out,

Robert Nordlund: 9:34

spalling and taking care of your building. You started with painting. Okay,

Greg Batista: 9:37

so, yeah, so let's assume right now that you don't take care of the paint in your building, right? So right now you're leaving a path open, an opening in the cave, so to speak, of where the surface of the concrete, where these chloride molecules that are in the air, I mean chloride, so it's basically salt, right? These, these molecules that are in the air, that are, you know, you you don't see them, but they're there. You can smell it in the in the ocean, right? So, so these molecules that are in the air, they go inside the concrete, and once it gets to the steel, what's going to happen? As anybody knows that you're when you're next to the when you're next to the ocean, you whether you have a car or a steel lawn chair, it's going to rust. So when you get that piece of steel, which is basically maybe, let's say that it's a one inch in diameter piece of steel, once it starts to rust. It can expand up to seven times its original diameter. So just imagine a piece of steel inside the concrete. It expands one time, two times, three times, four times, once it gets to four or five times that concrete is not going to be able to withstand that the pressures that that that steel is is is exercising on it. It just pops. I mean literally, it just pops. And sometimes you go to these buildings and you see, you know, a big piece of chunk of concrete that comes down from the buildings. And, you know, sometimes it hurts people, sometimes it kills people. It falls on cars. And it's, it's, it's not only damaging to the people that are there, where these things are falling down, but obviously it leads eventually, if not treated in a timely manner, it can lead to a collapse, such as what happened in champlain towers.

Robert Nordlund: 11:04

Yeah, well, let me follow up on that. So we're talking about, I want to say, just painting. So when you go to a building and you see a chunk has fallen out, that's not just that the concrete was loose and old. That could be a sign of internal pressures popping it out, and the internal pressures from the steel, the iron based product, that when you see a piece of rebar that is rusting, it's bigger and it's rougher, and that's that internal pressure that's going to be popping the concrete out. That is a indication that it's probably a lot of other places also, is that fair?

Greg Batista: 11:43

That is absolutely correct. Because if you see that happening in one side of the building, obviously you as a normal conclusion, you're going to say it's got to be happening in other sides of the building, because the building built that, you know, at a certain time, and exposure to the water at a certain time. So yes, but on a lot of these buildings that are next to the ocean. You'll see that the closer you get to the ocean, right, the worse it is. And the further away you get from it, you know, the less prevalent it becomes. But nonetheless, it's, it's, it's very prevalent along all these, all these buildings that are along the coast, right?

Robert Nordlund: 12:15

Okay, so you've got the waterfront oceanfront, like Champlain tower South you've got inland, which could be, let's say, the middle of Florida. You've got the middle of the country, which I'm looking at my map here in my office. Could be Nebraska. Could be Oklahoma, Colorado. But those are all different situations with similar, but different problem. And so every building has warm and cold temperature cycles where the building is growing and shrinking and growing and shrinking every 24 hours. In colder climates, you've got the freeze thaw cycles. In, let's say Chicago, you have the wind cycles, where the building is going to sway with the wind. And so I guess I want to be clear to our audience is, this is not a Florida coastline problem. This is an everywhere problem.

Greg Batista: 13:09

Yeah, the prevalence of this spalling issue is more prevalent the closer you get to the coastline. Got it now it's not to say, it's not to say that in places like, you know, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Montana, more inland, that this doesn't happen. It just happens at a lesser rate. It's basically what I call it a cancer. So that people will understand when I talk to all these boards, you know, across the entire Florida, I tell them, this is like a cancer. You need to take it out. Once you see the cancer, and you don't do anything about it's just gonna continue to grow. And this is unlike what you're talking about, which is, like the freeze and thaw cycles, which is basically, you know, you're, if you have something that's undergoing a freeze and thaw cycle, it's not something that's as insidious as as spalling, but it's, you know, it's not something that's going to continue to grow over time, necessarily, right,

Robert Nordlund: 13:57

right? Because that was, that was a weather related event, correct. Okay, all right, I want to introduce a couple more things, and that is, we're talking about painting, and painting, I think of generally as the vertical surfaces, but we're also talking about the balconies and decks, which are horizontal surfaces, talking about planters into which we intentionally put water, which is sometimes crazy to think and then we have roofs, and in my world, I call that the building envelope concept, trying to protect the building envelope. So is that are those primarily the kind of things that you're looking at when you're looking at a building? My

Greg Batista: 14:36

companies, I have a construction company, and I also have an engineering company. That's what we specialize in. We specialize in existing building envelopes. The envelope is basically, you know, basically your skin, like I said before, the analogy was the paint, but it's not just paint. It's the windows, right? It's the doors, it's the sliding glass doors. That's part of the envelope that keeps all the wind and rain and stuff from coming in, right? Yeah, and the caulking around the windows. It's the caulking everything that keeps --, that that that comprises everything, comprises the envelope. And if that integrity of all those components and materials working together somehow compromised, then, yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna have a problem. So other things that might be included as part of the envelope is, like you said, is the roof. So the roof is the envelope you've got the paint. Sometimes you have like waterproofing. Waterproofing is the, typically what you would put on your your your horizontal surfaces, your floors, your decks, your balconies that work in conjunction with the paint that's on the on the vertical surface, and sometimes between the paint and the the waterproofing, you would have a caulking cat bead or something like that. But those are all things that engineers get and get very involved in to make sure that this envelope is working as as a whole. Okay,

Robert Nordlund: 15:51

well, we've introduced a couple of words, a couple of concepts. Number one, concrete is not as permanent or strong or doesn't have as much integrity as we often give it naturally. Number two, we learned about the word like building envelope. Building is an envelope. Envelope is not just something that you put a letter in. Building Envelope, we talked about spalling. Spalling is the cancer, the skin cancer, where a building is saying, I'm having problems,

Greg Batista: 16:23

it's more like, it's more like a bone cancer, because it's inside the skin, because the skin break, it allows, it allows those bad things to get to your bones, and then it causes bone cancer, because once that bone, once the bone gets damaged, you're not going to be able to stand up, and that's where the collapse happens, because it's actually your bones, which is, you know, analogous to the to the concrete that allows you to sit up on your chair, allows you to walk, allows you to, you know, stay standing up.

Robert Nordlund: 16:47

Fantastic. Okay, we've talked about a lot of basics here, and I look forward to speaking a little bit more with Greg about now what to do about this, but it's time to hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we'll be right back with more HOA insights,

Paige Daniels: 17:02

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Robert Nordlund: 17:33

and we're back. Well, Greg, just fascinating foundation that we've laid here, but we want to give our board member audience, some more education, some more teaching points on what do they do about it? Because we're talking about a building, and you and I and the average homeowner has become a board member because they want to take care of the building. They want to take care of the common areas, but how? And Greg tell us who does the kind of inspections, who are the kind of experts that you are? How do board members find them all around the country?

Greg Batista: 18:09

Well, I'll first start off by saying that my heart goes out to all these homeowners association board members, which they have a largely thankless job of dealing with these things. And I talk to these people day in and day out, and 99.9% of these people, they want to do the right thing, right you hear all these horror stories, but it's my, my experience, that everybody wants to do the right thing. And in trying to do the right thing, sometimes they make bad decisions or good decisions. So I think it's, it's, it's incumbent upon those professionals that are in the field to really put some some importance on actually teaching these people and teaching them in terms that they understand. This is one of the reasons why I congratulate you, Robert, because you're doing a tremendous public service here. We've got a

Robert Nordlund: 18:55

good team, but yeah, we want to help board members.

Greg Batista: 18:59

Yes, because, and that's that, to me, that's the key. If you go to my website askgbatista.com you're going to go into a section that has books. I've got free literature, everything from pulling permits how to hire an engineer, how to do you know new windows and doors, or hiring an owner's rep. I've got so many books out there, and they're free and they're written in a very easy to understand type of language. And I get congratulated all the time by these people on the board, because knowing that they want to do the right thing, nobody actually has, like, some resources out there that speaks their language. It doesn't matter whether it's Florida. There are some things that have to do with with Florida and the permitting, but it's, it's really something that is some resources that can be used nationally, if you want to, you know, go and check it out.

Robert Nordlund: 19:43

Okay, so your website again, where they can find that, ask G batista.com got it? Okay? I knew that we're going to have some people who are stopping the recording and going back and trying to find that, so I wanted to give it to them twice. You

Greg Batista: 19:57

got it? You got to wait till the podcast is over, then you can. Having said that, right? You want, you want people to to really understand the issues. And I think that there's a there's a big emphasis that if you don't know, because most of these people on the boards, they're either homemakers or doctors or don't know anything about construction, that they first understand that if you don't know, get help. And there's so many professionals out there. And if you live in Alaska and you see a crack on a building, you don't have to be an engineer to know that a crack, oh, that might be something bad, yeah. So call, call an expert, and call people that are that are local to you, that that understand the weather, understand the building departments, the codes that are their local in those areas. So it's as easy as picking up the phone. Literally, it's just as easy as picking up the phone. And when you get a hold of them, listen to them because they have experience and they've gone through education. But once you do that, I think that that you've taken care of 99% of any issues that may come up. Yeah.

Robert Nordlund: 20:56

Well, that makes me think of your work at Champlain tower south you were there in 2017 they hired you to inspect their planters on the pool deck area.

Greg Batista: 21:07

There was a leak. It was a leak, that was in a planter

Robert Nordlund: 21:10

that was going down through the the the deck there, into the garage. And now that we know those kinds of things are important, you can't let that go unchecked. Yes,

Greg Batista: 21:21

and absolutely, and it's still, it still pains me to to have, you know, actually been there and said, Look, this is, it's, this is not a planter problem. I understand this is a band aid. But you you have to go from a band aid fix, which is the waterproofing, to an actual, you know, surgery to take out this cancer, right? So what I think happened in champlain towers, which is, you know, pre Chaplain towers is so indicative of many other condos, is that they just kick the can down the road. Yeah, and

Robert Nordlund: 21:52

people watching on YouTube can see I'm I'm wringing my hands because the board at Chaplain tower South had opportunities, and we want to give you the encouragement to when you see things that you don't know about, reach out and get help from a professional. Okay? And when they give you wise counsel, take it seriously. They're the expert in their field. Now, Greg, what does a repair look like? What? Well, what does preventive maintenance look like, getting a professional inspection every five years, every 10 years? Does it depend on geography?

Greg Batista: 22:31

It depends on the it depends on the building. So let me you, let me give you two, two different scenarios that are on on, you know, extreme sides of the spectrum. Okay, the last building that I built as a general contractor was the marado Portofino. We finished it up like 20 years ago. I used to work for for a construction company. That's the last high rise that I built. It was 20 years ago, 2020 something. But that building, yes, it needs some maintenance, because your typical, typical maintenance stuff that happens on your typical building. So that building doesn't necessarily need any concrete repair or any inspections on a yearly basis. Right? now, let's go on the opposite side of the spectrum. I also have a client, and I'm not going to name the building, which is 100 year old building right down in South Beach where it is. It's basically falling apart structurally. And these kind of buildings, because they're old, because they're next to the ocean in Miami Beach, you know, those kind of buildings, this concrete repair and the structural inspections, it's got to be part of a maintenance, of some sort of maintenance protocol, and it's got to be baked into, you know, one of the more important things that you need to do in one of these buildings, and I tell my clients that they need to, they need to inspect these buildings on a yearly basis, because you might not see a crack show up on one of these buildings on year one, but you wait a year, you're going to see a crack, you know, because you know the like we were talking about before you have the spalling as the as the rebar starts expanding, the rebar can already be expanding, but you're not going to see it crack just yet. It's about to crack, but it's not cracking. So if you come a year later, eventually, boom, it cracks, and that's where it shows so so you see that there's a stark contrast, and I think that the age of the building has a lot to do with how you know how often you're going to be inspecting the building. But then again, these are the kind of things that your hired expert will be able to guide you through. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 24:25

well, I want to follow up on one real quick word pair that you used and you said"baked into" and as you are working with your building, you have to appreciate and correct me if you feel differently, a building is a living entity, and it's like a person, the older it gets, the more care it needs, and you have to give it that amount of care, and that means more budget. And so when you say, baked into your plans are to have it inspected. You also need to bake into your plans the budget, because owning a. Building is expensive. Owning real estate in this country is expensive, and there's too many board members who I think are leaning on the side of minimizing the homeowner assessments and not giving the building what it needs. Are you? Do you feel the same way?

Greg Batista: 25:14

No, I think that the analogy that you use is fantastic. As a matter of fact, I use it quite often with the homeowners associations, because it's a very accurate depiction, and people can see it right? Because you can say, Look, your skin is like the painting, like we said, the bones, the bones is like the actual concrete, right? You've got your nervous system, because without your nervous system, you can't, you know, see or hear, do things that's like your electrical system. So everything working in tandem. And this whole thing about, like, when you're, when you're a teenager, you think you're infallible. You're not going to go to the doctor. You don't need that stuff. You know, it's Superman and US 50 something, 60 somethings, we know we know better that we need to get our checkups. And we need to know that, that if, if there's something, if there's a blip on that, on that, you know, that x ray or something, you're going to get it checked out, and you're going to pay whatever money it needs to be. So that, that is a very powerful analogy. And I use it all the time. If you read the book Negligence, the book that you showed, I go through that I mentioned it on several occasions, you

Robert Nordlund: 26:19

know, I wonder if that's where I got it, because I'm using it more and more often. So that probably comes straight back to you, Greg. Now another thing so regular inspections, and the inspection frequency is going to be based on where you are in the country, age of the building things like that. But let's get back to this concept of protecting the building envelope. What's that look like? It looks like painting. It looks like sealing, sealing the decks. It looks like taking good care of the roof, making sure that the service people who go up onto the roof, if you have a multi story condominium building, aren't beating up the roof as they're working on the air conditioner and the pool deck, the planters. Talk to me about what it looks like to maintain your building envelope.

Greg Batista: 27:08

Okay, let's go over components, because the building envelope is comprised of components, and each one of these components has to work together, because you can have the best painting, the best waterproofing, the best windows, the best doors, but if you're caulking is bad and substandard, that you're you're done. So everything, like

Robert Nordlund: 27:25

a suit, like a suit of armor,

Greg Batista: 27:28

actually exactly

Robert Nordlund: 27:29

your opponent's going to get you where your your armor is weakest. And that's

Greg Batista: 27:33

exactly right, and that's where the professionals such as myself comes in. And we, we're building envelope specialists. So let's, let's break down on brief bullet points. Each one of these components start, let's start from the top, going down the roof. The roof is, I think, the major, the most important aspect of your of your building envelope, because that's the where the rain hits. That's where it gets pummeled, and lots of damage happens. So basically, a roof. When you buy a roof, you get a warranty. And I always tell my clients, get a roof, get a good warranty. Okay? Because that and a lot of people, they don't, they don't care about that kind of stuff. All they say, oh, you know what, the building, the roof is in bad shape. Let's just put some schmutz over it, and let's roll some stuff on it. No warranty. And I think, I think that's a mistake, but okay, we have one whole episode just dedicated to this, right? Okay, that's so, that's the Yeah, let's

Robert Nordlund: 28:26

talk about the your bullet points, right? So, so

Greg Batista: 28:29

that's the roof. Then you go to that paint. You already talked about the paint. Okay, the other important thing is the windows and doors. Windows and doors, they protect you. You see these windows and doors as, you know, as things that are strong. But no these windows and doors, if you look at them, especially the aluminum ones, they're all put together with rivets and welds and and clocking literally hundreds of pieces that people don't realize that these are important components that need to be looked at. And, you know, some of them are old and, you know, and a lot of people, what they do on these, you know, high rises, they change them out, and they put in good hurricane resistant windows and doors. But windows and doors are extremely important. The other aspect is caulking. Okay, so caulking is basically a waterproofing that goes between either two different materials or at different angles, like vertical and horizontal. That, in of itself is a whole science. There's all those sorts of different types of caulking. There's silicone, elastomeric, there's, you know, acrylic. That's a whole science in of itself. But again, but this all goes back to what I was saying earlier about that each one of these components is a science in of itself. And if you get a good professional to come in and look at each one of these components, and you go a long way to making your building last a very long time. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 29:45

I want to stop you right there, because you don't have to become an expert in let's see if I can remember silicone, elastomeric and acrylic, acrylic. Yeah, I couldn't even retain that for 15 seconds. You as a. Board member. Don't have to memorize that. You don't have to be an expert in it, because there are experts who can say this is best for you in this situation, this other thing is best for you at a building across town. So rely on your experts. Yes, absolutely, absolutely, okay. And then you got more for all your other major components. You've got the ceiling of decks. You have the ceiling of planters. There's so many other things same general principles, but,

Greg Batista: 30:28

I mean, there's another one. I mean, you can include waterproofing, because, you know, waterproofing goes, basically, that's on the horizontal you can, mean, you could put, you know, waterproofing on the wall. But just to keep things simple, you could put water, you what, put waterproofing typically on horizontal surfaces, like, like a planter, right? Or like, like a balcony, right? So you know, if you have water ponding on your balcony, it's not going to seep down into the concrete. You're going to keep that water from going in and paint doesn't necessarily have the the properties to keep water out that's basically ponding where it could not if it's on a wall. So you have to have special kind of painting that's a lot tougher, that can withstand holding water, you know, for a certain amount of time. So again, all those components together, they just create that, that that envelope, and it's so important. And

Robert Nordlund: 31:13

when I was imagining in my brain seeing ponding on a balcony, then of course, we have to think about the draining system. So yes, if there's water that's collecting, it needs to drain down effectively and go away from the building. So that's yet another one of these body systems that you were talking about that needs to work together with everything else.

Greg Batista: 31:34

Absolutely, absolutely fascinating. Well,

Robert Nordlund: 31:37

Greg, we could go on and on and on, and we may have to have you on for another episode in the future. I

Greg Batista: 31:43

would be, I would be happy to Robert, well,

Robert Nordlund: 31:45

that's great. Well, uh, Greg, thank you for taking the time to join us on today's program. Thank you for the work you do to have a heart for board members and to promote building safety and integrity. So any closing thoughts for our board member audience at this time?

Greg Batista: 32:00

Yeah, don't, don't think that you need to know everything. And like Robert said, you know, rely on your on your professionals. They're the people that know and that that's, that's, if there's one takeaway that you get from this, it's, it's

Robert Nordlund: 32:13

for more information, or just that if you have follow up questions, you can reach Greg and his team at G Batista Engineering And Construction at info@askgbatista.com and remember his book, Negligence averting disaster at your building is available on Amazon. We hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion here today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week,

Jennifer Johnson: 32:45

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