Building Health Advice under 1 minute:
We are getting a lot of boards that think since they have a Reserve Study, they don't need an inspection.
In Building Doctor terms, reserve studies are like your BMI. If you are like Ilona Maher, who has always had a high BMI, but is an Olympic athlete and can break me in half—who cares what her BMI is, she is in great shape and a world-class athlete. Reserve Studies are also like your Average Life Expectancy. If you are an American male, statistics say you will live to 78 years old.
So just because you've had a reserve study done and your reserves are ok (good BMI) it doesn't mean you will automatically live to 78. Unfortunately, we all know someone who had a serious health issue like cancer - in building terms that's like a construction defect. You need annual exams, blood pressure checks, and other tests done to make sure you are healthy and to catch any bigger issues sooner, while they’re still small. That's what an inspection does every few years for your building. Seeing your doctor annually or every other year is like a visual inspection. At various milestones, it's time for bigger tests like MRIs, a full panel of blood work, x-rays, mammograms, etc. These are like invasive inspections of your building, the more you will know, the more things you will catch to keep your building healthy and living its expected life, like the reserve study planned for.
If your reserve study is out of date, we can give you some good referrals to reserve study providers.
If you haven't had a Building Doctor look at your building in a while, now is the time. Visual inspections are just a trained eye looking for clues, just like talking to your Doctor. Invasive inspections are when we pull off some siding and look underneath the building's skin at how the building is doing (think MRI or other machine-style health tests).
Here is our guide about the importance of both reserve studies and inspections.
Here are links for both types of inspections if you are interested.
Visual
Small Invasive
Staying healthy is hard, but being sick is harder. Stay in touch with your Building Doctor to make your building's life easy!
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PS – motto of lazy building owners
(See, I kept it under a minute! Unless you checked the links... If you want more building health updates, check out our free monthly webinar where we answer all your questions.)