 And welcome to another episode of The Condo Insider, everything you ever wanted to know about condo living. Great program for board members, owners, or people who are just thinking about getting into condominium living. I'm your host, Scott Shirley. And today, I'm very pleased to announce our guest, who is, in my opinion, a celebrity here in Hawaii. His name is Lance Lucan. He's a national building expert. And he's also a best-selling author. He just gave me his book that he actually signed, which means I have to read it now. That's right. But it's a best-seller, even. Mm-hmm. It is? It's called The Curve and Health, Wealth, and Success. And you're even on the cover wearing a suit. That's right. You have to wear a suit for the photo. And by the way, I'm not charging you for the book, but it's $20 for the autograph. I knew I wasn't going to get off that easy. So you're an industry expert in regards to buildings, engineering, building inspections, and things like that. So due to what happened last week, why don't we just attack the elephant in the room and start off our program with the issue of fire safety? We've seen you on the news a few times already in the last week in regards to the Marco Polo fire. Would you like to comment anything on that? Sure. Sure. I'll comment on that. As far as fire safety issues are concerned, the thing to be aware of is smoke detectors, working smoke detectors. Check them every month. Make sure you have a working fire extinguisher. And don't store too many flammable items, which would be excess newspapers, magazines, folders, files, that kind of thing. People don't realize that almost everything in the house is flammable. The Marco Polo unit that caught on fire, all that's left is basically concrete walls and shards of drywall and metal studs that the drywall was on. Everything else burnt. So be aware. And I think even if your building has sprinklers and so forth, it's not a bad idea to have the smoke detectors, the fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and things like that. Although, from my own experience, the battery on a fire smoke alarm only dies at 2.30 in the morning. That's right. So the little beeping noise you hear only happens at 2.30 in the morning. It never does it during normal business hours. Sometimes it happens at 3 AM too, but check it. Yeah, it's always a good idea. And for fire safety, the smoke detector, probably the most inexpensive thing you can do to protect yourself. That's right. It's only $10, $15. And it's very cheap, but replace the battery. Yeah, well, that's always a good idea, especially when you wake up in the middle of the night, pull it down. Next morning, put the new battery in. That's right. So some of the other things that you've been involved in over the number of years, actually, how many years have you been doing this? 37 years now in Hawaii and also on the mainland. Oh, so you've done this on the mainland as well. Because I know you were just recently on the mainland in New York, because I do follow you on Facebook. No, I'm not stalking you. I just notice your photos and stuff. But you were also a guest on a program called Time Square Today Show. Yep, I was. And my subject matter was talking about fixing buildings. Imagine that, fixing buildings. So one of the areas that a lot of people know you from, particularly in the real estate industry, is the issue about corroding railings. That's been a big hot topic for you over the last year or two. Can you explain more about what you've been doing in that area? Sure, I'll be happy to. As far as corroded railings, a lot of times, people don't realize that the railings are corroded because they paint over the caulking. The caulking's cracked, or it doesn't look that bad. And there's two types of railing construction. One is embedded where the pipe is embedded and stuck in the concrete. The other type is a surface mounted. So the embedded ones, typical of Alamoana, they couldn't see the area that was stuck in the concrete. And that was where the corrosion was. So it was caulked and painted over a few times, and nobody really knew what the problem was. So it's pretty typical of that condition throughout Hawaii, as far as shopping centers and even condominium railing. Yeah, I can imagine the condominium railing is you don't notice certain things. And it's when you lean on it, that's when problems happen. That's right. But that's not a very good test to lean on. No, no. Inspection, every six months or one year, that's probably the best thing. Because some of the pictures you have posted on your Facebook page, and I don't know if you have Instagram or anything like that. I just happen to follow you on Facebook. Some of the pictures you post of what you find when you're going out and doing these inspections are very surprising that it's gotten even to that point and nobody has taken care of it yet. Yeah, you're right. I try not to name the building. No, I know you don't name names. Except the shopping centers. I put the name down. Because I want to force the owners to fix their buildings. So we have the issue of corroding railings. And of course, that's indicative of the weather that we have here in Hawaii. And then, of course, the other thing that condominiums in particular are always dealing with is that's the issue of spalling. Right, right. Can you explain to us what actually spalling is? Some people don't understand what that is. In a nutshell, spalling is cracked concrete that's due to reinforcing steel that's in the concrete corroding. And the cause of the corrosion is either salt air, moisture, water, anything of that nature. Mostly due to the surface of the concrete is not painted or it's painted, but the paint's worn so the water just seeps through. Concrete is porous. So water gets in. The reinforcement still corrows and expands. And when it expands, it cracks the concrete. That's spalling. Now, railings could corrode too and it could cause spalling. So there's two issues that come into play with respect to spalling issues now. And high-rise buildings, it's kind of a known situation. You've got high-rise buildings up to 40 feet high, 400 feet high that have spalling conditions. And the danger is if they don't repair it, pieces of concrete fall off the building and land on somebody or a car or damage things. Well, and so especially with Linai's, you have a double issue there. So you have corrosion of the railing and that in itself may also cause the spalling to occur. Because I've known some condominiums where they've had to redo all the railing and on top of that have a bunch of spalling to fix at the same time. Right, so it's like a two-for-one thing. You've got to fix the railing or put new railing in and you've got to also fix the spalling. So one of the other issues is, and you can see it when you're driving around to Honolulu and everything, is floor to ceiling windows. We've got floor to ceiling windows. We've got jealousy windows. We've got all sorts of different types of windows. Is there an issue with windows and condominiums? Yeah, there is. In the older buildings, they were built with jealousy windows and everybody had those. The issue with that is the floor to ceiling location makes it unsafe because if the windows, the glass slats were to come loose and fall down, it could hurt somebody or worse, a child could fall out and there've been instances where children have fallen out through jealousy windows and even other types of windows where it was a little higher, not at the floor, but you put a piece of furniture there and the kid bounces on that and then falls right outside the building. And then another big issue that we've been dealing with in Hawaii is the issue of the cast iron pipe. Most construction manuals will tell you that a cast iron pipe has a 75 to 100 year lifespan. We're discovering that's not the case here in Hawaii. So what can you tell us about these plumbing issues that are coming up with the cast iron? Well, I'm glad you brought that up because you're correct. Developers were told that the cast iron piping material would last 75 to 100 years and now we're like, well, that was a sales pitch. Nice fantasy land dream. We're finding out and historically on buildings that I've inspected that pipes are lasting 35 to 40 years and so basically the lifespan is cut in half and when we do our investigation, we wanna prove to the building owner and condominium unit owners that this piping is bad. So what we do is we do our investigation, we cut out pieces of pipe, we look at it, we run a snake with a video camera through it, we do ultrasound, all kind of things. We don't wanna say, hey, look Scott, you know what, your whole building, we gotta replace your piping. We wanna tell you, you gotta replace your piping and this is the reason why. So on the condo reserve studies, they really need to pay attention to that component and not say, well, it's gonna last 100 years because it's not, right? We go historical data, what's happening with the buildings that have replaced their piping, why did they replace it and kinda get a gauge of the lifespan, which is 30 to 40 years. Yeah, and now the lifespan that we're talking about is that, again, something indicative of the weather system we have here in Hawaii because there are some places in the mainland that they haven't had this problem with their cast iron piping. I think it has to do with that. The other factor is the piping may not be a US made pipe, we've seen pipe made in Mexico, India, Korea and China and those have failed sooner than a US made. So that's something to be aware of. The type of piping and where it came from and how long it's gonna last. The other issue is the pipes inside the building, it's not affected by salt air and all that necessarily except the pipes that are exposed in the parking deck. Yes. People are using their piping and especially in the kitchen they're putting everything down. The worst thing is the grease and it just builds up and when it gets hardened pretty soon that four inch becomes a two inch, one inch to almost nothing, then you have backups. The other issue I wanted to mention was that when cast iron drain pipe fails, that's wastewater, that's sewage water and if it breaks at floor 20 and goes all the way down to floor one, now you got sewage throughout your whole building and drywall, now you can have mold growing and other issues. So it's not just the pipe itself, it's the other issues that the piping could cause due to breakage. It's interesting that just in the last, I would say probably year, year and a half this cast iron issue is really bubbled to the surface and I think you made an extremely good point talking about taking a good hard look at your reserve study. Because a lot of those reserve studies are based on, I used to say it was the contractor's book or I don't know the exact name of it where they could actually go in and look at a component and it would give the lifespan and that lifespan is a national average so every area is gonna be different, particularly Hawaii. Well let's go back to the window situation. The closer you are to the ocean, the more corrosion you're gonna have on those jealousy windows and window frames. It's interesting we've gotta take a different look at some of these reserve studies. Oh definitely, in fact, I wouldn't even use those manuals. There's Marshall and Swift and other brands and there's a multiplier. So you could take like say New York which is a high multiplier and use the same percentage to Hawaii and you get a number that's higher than national average but it doesn't take you to consideration where you live or what area it is or what kind of piping it is or what kind of window it is, how long it's gonna last. In fact, when new products come out just because it was tested in Florida which has similar climate, I don't trust. I said, was it tested in Hawaii? And then I throw a wrench at them and say, if it was tested in Hawaii, okay, how long has it been tested? And then I said, oh has it been tested on the big island? Well no, well the big island is smog that's gonna affect the component. Now what's the effect of smog and fog on that piece of metal and the scratch in your head? Well, we haven't tested that. I said, well, can you? Because I can't specify it if I don't know what it's gonna last. Yeah, and again, everything varies depending on where you are in the country. So our guest again here today is Lance Luke who is a national building expert and we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back we're gonna discuss some more issues on how to help keep your building safe. She said, what are you doing? Research says reading from birth accelerates our baby's brain development. Push! Read aloud 15 minutes. Every child, every parent, every day. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. But I have a story and I don't know where to start. I still have nightmares. I feel overwhelmed. I can't live like this anymore. I'm really not so good. But are you ready to listen? We're all part of your community. We all play a role in keeping our community safe. So protect your every day. If you see something suspicious, say something to local authorities. And welcome back to The Condo Insider, everything you ever wanted to know on Condominium Living and our guest today is a national building expert and I keep forgetting to add that on best-selling author, Lance Luke who's been with us discussing issues on building safety, what you can do to help make your building a safer building. So we just got done chatting about cast iron pipes. And of course the sewage that is caused once those break especially you and I know as a matter of fact that if a pipe's going to break it's going to be on the top floor. It's never just on the ground floor. And never during normal business hours either. So usually sometime in the middle of the night. But other things that we should be aware of too is things like asbestos and even lead paint. So some of these buildings were built when? 60s and 70s, the majority of it when there was a building boom. Yeah, the good old building boom back then. And so say one of the things you have to deal with probably too, even in the inspection process is that you're going to be doing the repair. Of these repairs you have to break into a wall or cut a chunk of wall out. You've planned for this expense of replacing the pipe but now you've punched into the wall and they've discovered asbestos. What happens then? Well, actually we do our testing first before we punch into the wall, right? So we just asked the client, how old is your building? And then when they tell us the age said, okay, well there could be environmental concerns. So we suggest testing certain areas for lead paint and for asbestos. And then to say, well what areas? Popcorn sealing, drywall. It could be usually in the tape, sometimes in the mud, joint compound. If it has nine by nine squares of tile, the tile itself has it and then the mastic would have. And sometimes on the roof too of the building. So we kind of check different things. You got a lot of places to check. A lot of places so we check it and if it's hot, meaning that there is asbestos containing material then we have to formulate this whole plan for remediation removal. So let's say there's piping in a drywall, we got to cut the drywall out. We call the environmental company to cut the drywall out, test it all clear and then the plumber can go in and replace the pipe. So for a condominium in reserves or even in planning on doing some work, there should be a factor in of additional expenses other than just replacing of a pipe or something to that effect. There might be other hidden costs that'll come into the game there. That's right, that's right. I want to mention hidden costs because not only environmental concerns and replacing the piping, if you have building with floor penetration, so you got holes in the floor and the ceiling that the pipes go through, in older buildings they never sealed around it. So that's a fire concern because if a fire is in one unit it could go through the hole and spread smoke or flames. So that's a factor. And then also if it's a fire rated wall we got to make sure that the wall is enclosed properly and all that. So additional costs and then also when you're going up to the roof you have to have a plumbing vent that goes up to the roof. And then also the rain leaders. So there's roof drains and we'd like to replace your rain leaders as well as your cast iron pipe drainage system for wastewater. So two things and additional costs when you go up through the roof you're making a hole through the roof. Now we need a roofer to fix that. You're coring through your parking deck. We need to waterproof the floor on that. So other factors. There's a lot of factors involved for something that you think is just a simple fix. Right, right. So all that has to be taken into consideration and of course you mentioned on the cast iron pipes that we had issues because they were coming inferior quality coming from other countries. What we also had for a few years there are a big issue in regards to drywall coming from China. Have you run into any of those problems? I haven't run into too many problems in Hawaii but I tell people that I don't want to make an issue because my relatives don't get paid. Oh, okay, so moving right along. Here we are. We've been talking about the older buildings. So you've been inspecting one building recently that was built in 1971. Is there a concern about electrical wiring in a building that's built that far back or even let's say back in the late 60s? There's a big concern. One of them could be that each unit main amperage is not rated for newer appliances. So you could have older buildings where you have a 60 or 70 amp main and the norm is 100. So it's already below what it should be especially when they start putting in air conditioning and things like that. So the additional appliances are tapping the load. It wasn't designed to have these types of appliances. In fact, you could even have a hairdryer that would blow the circuit because when the building was designed, the electrical load wasn't made for a hairdryer. Issues like that. And plus the appliances we're getting nowadays. I mean, my wife and I watched one commercial the other day where the refrigerator has internet connection, Wi-Fi, tells you what's in the refrigerator, fills in your shopping list for you and sends it to your iPhone and it's like, do we really need that? Oh, I thought you ordered one already. No, I'm starting to wonder why I'm not running and living in a cabin somewhere up in the woods without any of this stuff. You know, one of the things that I failed to mention when we were talking about water, sewage and water seepage is the issue of mold and Hawaii with our weather being the way it is, that is always an issue in concern. So a lot of times we may not even be aware that it's happening because it's a slow leak behind the wall or something like that. What are your concerns about older buildings in the mold situation? Now older buildings that are built of concrete or block tile, they don't have drywall, there's no concern. But the drywall, once the drywall started being used as a building material, that's subject to mold because especially if it's a double wall because drywall is actually the paper and it's cellulose material and the mold grows on it. They like dark areas, they like air, they like humidity and when it's in a double wall, you can't see it and a lot of people don't know it. It could be a plumbing leak, it could be a roof leak. I've inspected over a hundred houses and condos that had a mold issue and it's no fun because the people have been sick for months and months and months, they go to the doctor, they don't know it, they think it's the fluid, they think it's this, they think it's that and then they call me and said, well, we don't know what's going on but you're the last resort and I says, well, let me come and check. And then I check the walls and this moisture and I say, well, we gotta cut the walls out and see and sure enough, there's mold in there. Well, another issue in regards to that because I've even had it happen myself where you have furniture right up against the wall and you don't know anything's going wrong and in my instance, I just happened to move a buffet away from the wall to clean and notice that there was mold along the molding and sure enough, there was a leak in the pipe on the roof and it came down that wall but I never saw it. Don't know how long it was going on because there was a piece of furniture blocking it. So that's something that can happen quite often and going back to this electricity issue, dear friend of mine was remodeling their home and at the entryway of their house, they had three light switches and there was one switch that they said for the 20-some odd years they lived there, they never knew what that switch was even connected to. They never found anything that turned on or off because of that switch. So in their remodeling, they're gonna open up that entryway, they took the wall down and the wall around where the light switch was was charred black already. Every time they were flipping on a switch, it was sparking against the wall and no clue that this was going on but their house could have burned down at any time because of that. You never know what's going on behind that drywall. And again, with the wiring too, now what is... I just went blank all of a sudden but there is a requirement for like kitchens and bathrooms on their outlets. Right, that's a safety outlet called a ground fault circuit interrupter. That's required for kitchen, bathroom, any water sources near six feet so it could be a lanai, it could be a garage, that kind of thing. Now in older buildings, it wasn't required but we suggest that for safety. The other issue in older buildings is they could have an older circuit breaker panel and there's two brands called FPE, Federal Pacific Electric, Stablock and Zinsco which failed in numerous cases. There was no recall, I think there should have been based on my research but that's a problem where the breaker overheats and it doesn't trip so it doesn't do a good job so naturally a fire could start. Because I remember years back, my dad and I had listed a house for sale and it was one of those that was built in the 20s. 20s or 30s and the fuses were those big round things that you screwed in and the wiring was connected by these, you could see the wiring running through the garage. Knob and tube, yeah, it was, we used to call and open the cabinet where all the wiring was and called it the Frankenstein room and all works. And you know the trick, when the fuse gets loose you get a copper penny and you just stick it in. We're old enough to remember that kind of stuff. But we digress. So we've been discussing issues about building safety in regards to electricity, plumbing. One of the things that I do wanna bring up because it became an issue in one of our associations and it's probably something that should be checked from time to time. You have an interior bathroom, no window. So you're supposed to have a vent of some sort. And a lot of these buildings have one central vent that all the units are connected to that one vent. And we had an incident in one building where the downstairs person was taking his medical marijuana into that bathroom and blowing it up the vent. And everybody on the upper floors were complaining about their bathroom smell like Pacololo. Well, what do you mean? That's what I'm meditating on. Well, yeah, now it helps sell the other units. But what we discovered is the ventilation system on the roof was not running properly, but we would not have known that. Oh, I see. If this hadn't happened. So do you have any advice on those type of systems? Right, I'm glad you brought that up because the building code requires in a bathroom for ventilation and light, either a mechanical ventilation system or a window where you can open it, right? So on a condo building, high-rise building, they have a passive vent system. That means that each exhaust vent in your ceiling doesn't have a separate motor. It goes all the way up and there's a big motor on the roof. Now plenty of building owners, they shut it off to save electricity. But that's illegal. That's a code violation. Even in parking decks where you, parking garages, you drive your car in and you find out that, gee, there's stale air. The fans aren't on. That's illegal too. It's supposed to be on 24-7 because there's carbon monoxide in all that. They gotta take the air out. Well, I'm glad I brought that up. That's something for us to remember too and to make sure that ventilation system on the roof is actually working. Well, my guest today has been Lance Luke. I'm really pleased to have had you here and hopefully we'll have you on again sometime soon. And again, is your book available in the book store? Amazon.com, 1995 or something, but here's a tip. If you go to my website, Hawaiibuildingexpert.com, you can download it free, the whole book, free. I paid for like 2,000 downloads. But I still have to pay for the autograph. Of course. Well, it's been my pleasure entertaining you all again here on The Condo Insider, everything you ever wanted to know about condo living. And please remember to join us next week for more information on what it means to be a condo owner.