Community matters! DJ I

Hi Max, I disagree on the paint, I think that you can probably find a good match, but I believe , to keep DJ looking good we should all be using the same code and paint manufacturer for all the colours; yellow , cream and grey. At the moment everyone is finding their own paint match solution, even on the cream it’s a problem as pinta Andalucia has about 20 shades to choose from..... I would suggest that the committee get a representative from pinta Andalucia to come out to DJ to do an exact paint match for all the colours and then provide the codes and exclusive rates for the paints specified. There is a Pinta Andalucia on the street next to SuperCor opposite los Boliches station, so you don’t even need a car if you want to touch up the paintwork on your apartment.. Re the Blocks at DJ1 , the biggest problem is that the lightweight mortar coat isn’t durable enough to deal with the excessive pressure caused by water coming off the roof / external terraces etc.... You can see evidence of this all over the site, where there are bad patches (at the bottom and on some front faces of blocks) which are black/ cracked.  These locations will have to be painted to stop them from getting worse. Although the paint seals the surface it doesn’t stop the building from breathing , so there is no problem with using external type masonry paint. I understand that the committee are looking at the drainage problem and have plans in place for the near future.  

 Hi Andy,

About matching the color we totally agree, but there is a basic point I tried to make:

when the community decides to ´paint´ the outer walls there should be a uniform color.  It´s needed already thanks to the shortcomings of the drainage system (piper too short) and the strange habit from the gardeners to fully spray the -mostly in the shade- areas next to the Bajo levels so soaking the walls. Both cause black trails and rotten walls. The moment there is community wide universal drainage in place and the gardeners are finally corrected we´ll have get the colours similar again.

The open mortar is the original specification which should then be used. That is out of the box a different color as you can´t buy this specific orange I have been told. However if all blocks are indentical this won´t be a large issue. 

Paint  looks and behaves very differently. I have been informed that it would be wise not to put paint on top of the mortar and certainly not on some patches only (individual terrace walls) as it shows different for even a casual observer.

I´m totally not an expert on mortar behaviour but it seems wise to consult one before we go on painting over it. 

There seems to be some major problems / issues at DJ with regards to drainage issues causing damage or nuisance to terraces/people below etc... This problem is mainly due to rainfall , people cleaning their terraces with hoses or buckets of water or condensation frrm aircon... As far as it stands we have several options:

1) To leave things as they are and we will all have to pay either personally or via our community fees for the damage caused to terraces and outer walls due to the high volumes of water caused by the heavy rainfalls in the winter months.

2) We can all come up with our own personal solution. Go down to Leroy Merlin spend some cash to buy some plastic pipes and connectors, borrow some ladders and pass the drainage problem to the person below or on the ground level etc..

3) My proposal would be same as we did for the post boxes in that each community member would pay a one off fee of lets say 100-200 euro to get the problem fixed permanently through the community. This one off payment would create a budget of approx 2000-3000 euro per block which should be sufficient to bring in specialist contractors to drain any outlets which fall directly on to people terraces an also provide a solution to stop the damage to the base of the blocks caused by heavy rainfall.

Does anyone (in addition to Max) have any comments on this ? Also are the posts boxes now in situ does anyone have any pics to post?

Regards Andy 

This message was last edited by otterandy on 09/08/2010.

 I totally agree that it currently is a mess with individuals trying to well by redirecting the water but creating new problems at other balconies etc. Furthermore it looks untidy.  

The committee has declared that aircon´s are no longer allowed to drip on the terrace so it has to be collected in buckets. This means that during August you will have to hire someone to empty your bucket every two hours and use an egg timer during the night.. Thats not the comfort people expected from their expensive installation.  

On last count there were over 20 people violating the rules by redirecting water (other than the existing outlets) so even without aircon the current rule turns decent owners who´s intentions are for 90% well into rule violators. At the moment some of them got a letter from the committee, most of them did not. It´s unclear why this is the case. I have seen all the ´violations´ and the milder ones got a letter it seems while the bigger ´offenders´ did not.

 Regarding the mailboxes. 

The postboxes are there. After installation they were removed again to paint them properly as a protection against rust. Don´t know who´s fault that was, but I would expect that a proper installer would at least have warned us that bare metal wouldn´t survive exposed to sea wind.  Anyway that has now been done and the mailboxes are reassembled. 

Until now I  postponed publishing photos as it´s not yet finished (no roof) and it´s a bit of a spoiler to post it already, but so many owners are over in this period that it doesn´t make sense to wait until it´s completely finished. 

One strange thing: I´m convinced we have 208 apartments in phase I but there are only 206 mail boxes.

Max.

Hi Max,

Post boxes are looking quite good and seem to be in a perfect location, especially for people wanting to dispose of junk mail and envelopes straight in the bins, this should help to keep the site tidy.

I agree with 208 total units in phase one. looking at the post boxes from your picture, I count 9 rows of 8 (72)  and 21 rows of 7 (147) which = 219 posts boxes which is obviously enough, Pic is not that great , have I miscounted or have you been on the "shandy"  this morning :-)

Regards andy   

Just a sample of drainage solutions. Note that almost all with a short (existing) outlet have a lot of cracks in the mortar at the facade of the building and a black ´spray´. In reality this black ´spray´ repeats itself on the lower floors and gets wider and wider. So doing nothing is obviously not sensible, nor pleasing to the eye. 

Like I said this leads me to the unevitable solution: community wide drainage. No private solutions are possible.

(in case you can´t see how long some of these pipes are, look closely at the shadows. Twenty cm is not uncommon and thats not how it looked at completion.)

 and Andy and me are both wrong in counting mail boxes. There are 210+6=216 boxes. As we have 208 apts. I don´t know why we have that ugly almost empty row. Postal requirement say that you need an extra mail box for return mail I believe but that would still fit in the 10x21 layout.

Max.

I see that other than Max and Irene ,despite the many readers on this forum , nobody has bothered to support or react to comments/suggestions with regards to a "proper" solution to standardisation on paint colours for the blocks and the many serious drainage issues. I guess that I am one of the minority that is worried about the long term future of Don Juan.  If we do not do something about it soon we will end up various paint shades everywhere and every colour and type of plumbing method possible, thus making Don Juan phase 1 a mess and devaluing all of our properties.

Regards Andy   

Quite right otterandy.  We (the non contributors) will be the first to whinge when everyone has done their own painting and the blocks look like a patchwork quilt! 

We have another apartment on a different development, the colour being almost identical to DJ.  The block was getting a bit ropey a number of years ago and each individual owner, (with the best of intentions) got the nearest colour they could and did their own bit.  As a result it looked ridiculous. 

After a while it was agreed that the block would be done as one, with each apt owner chipping in and now the block gets painted as one when necessary.  As the whole building deteriorates at the same time, everyone now is motivated at the same time to do something about it.

 Hi SRS, that is of course the only solution and also the responsibility of the community. We need to maintain the buildings as is in our statutes (not the ones we voted for but the real ones as deposited). The outer walls are a community issue and I take this literally: parts of it can be on your balcony but an outside wall is an outside wall.

When we decide to paint all the blocks (front and sides) we should of course also do the back/balcony side. That´s why I have refrained from any painting. My apartment is a corner one with already five to eight shades which would never match the sides of the blocks anyway.

The colour which is declared official is no way near the average colour. The best thing people could do is just leave it as it is, because like SRS says it becomes more obvious when people do their own balcony.

There is anyway a huge confusion about what the ´facade´ of the building is. For me these are all the outer walls AND the outside balcony finishes. That gives us the right to deny aircons on certain spots as they are communal in nature. I noticed however that there is much more than aircons influencing the total look of the building. I see the traditional spanish dishes, huge light fittings, all sorts of piping and ducting (even antenna´s see the ´drainage collage´ below). 

We either don´t bother at all or tackle the problem as a whole. Moving aircons to a specified spot makes no sense to me. Putting them low instead of high is a risk for children, very inconvenient for people with large balconies and doesn´t per se improve aesthetics. One of the first adaptors of that rule happens to have a very low apartment so now all his aircons are visible while they were not.

Rules should be much more flexible and state ´behave like you expect from your neighbour´ and ´try to preserve the existing looks as good as you can´.  Removing an aircon and putting five enormous blue plates in the same spot makes no sense.

(to be clear I´m not talking about illegal things like glazing terraces, putting aircons in communal hallways or at the side of the building, building extensions to your home etc. these are all regulated by law already and should certainly be enforced).

Max.

 Regarding the newly made up rule that people need to collect their own aircon condensation I made some measurements to see if it´s feasible.

My own apartment with only one unit in the living room and very strict behaviour (no open doors to the outside nor to the inside so just the lounge) produces 1,5 - 2 liters of water per hour. A two bed apartment with less wind cooling (remember we are on a corner) under the same controlled conditions but with two units produces 3-3,5 liter per hour. 

Now these figures are very relative. Every person in the room, electric device (large t.v.s!), open doors internally or openings to the balcony will add enormously to these figures. In case you have three or four aircons (some two and three beds) it goes up as well. A typical holiday maker with a bunch of friends or family and children will exceed these figures enormously.  I can´t measure this, but based on theoretical figures this would well go up to 5 liters per hours on a steady basis.

If you need to collect that water for at least  four hours you need a basin from 6 - 20 liters. The space underneath the lowered aircons (the irony) is usually very limited. I (very compliant as I am pùt my one unit very low) have only 10 cm´s effectively. Otherwise the outlet of the aircon won´t function. So I would need a basin of 35x40 and 10 cm high. However the moment we move it, water would spill. 

To be able to carry it to the toilet it can´t exceed 7 cm water height and then it would be quite a challenge to get 13 kilos in a flat basin with just a few cm to spare. You have to be strong and very precise. (throwing it over the balcony would defeat the committee proposed solution :)) So size goes up to 50x40 cm Ah even more challenging task to move it without spilling over your carpet.

In case you have more than average water production and reach the twenty liter as shown above you need a 50x60 basin. Will be hard to find and even more difficult to lift. Not many people are comfortable with 20 moving kilos.

Now do realize this gives you a 4 hour time to go the beach or do something else. Exceed this to a full day, assume that usage of the aircon will be very efficient as nobody is in and the internal doors are open as is common and you need the same basin. 

Night consumption with a three bed apt. will possibly fit when people don´t sleep longer than eigth hours. Otherwise you need a larger basin or an egg timer and aircon duty schedules.

Conclusion: it´s practically impossible and can´t be expected of people. Remember lots of `people find a filled bucket of water (7-10 liters) already a challenge so they would have to do it every two hours. 

Now if the aircons were put higher as most people still have the problem would be more easy to tackle, but the rules will never go together.

 I got several two pm´s asking me what I meant with

´(to be clear I´m not talking about illegal things like glazing terraces, putting aircons in communal hallways or at the side of the building, building extensions to your home etc. these are all regulated by law already and should certainly be enforced).´

Two PM´s mean there are more people wondering so I will answer on the forum. Their question relates to our so called rules which seem to allow for the glazing in of terraces so how can it be illegal. 

The rules have been drafted in a very confusing way and not by a lawyer so that´s why this mistake is there. To have glazing around your balcony you need a permit from the townhall as you´re expanding your apartment which is against the law without a permit. If you get permission that has to go through the notary and be filed with the land registry as you suddenly have a larger apartment and no roofed terrace anymore. This will, by the way,  be extremely difficult to achieve as the master title deed only allows for so much square meters apartment space per m2 terrain.

What our rules should say is: 

If you manage to get this license then the community requires you to do the glazing in a pleasing way, defined in a rule as without frames. With a bit of exxageration it´s like stating that if you commit a murder it should be done without inconveniences to your neighbour and no blood is allowed to drip from your balcony. That murder is anyway not allowed is quite clear to most people. Glazing however is also illegal but we have rules to regulate even illegal things.

Hope this explains it.

Max. 

This has all got a little complex/off topic ... and irrespective of arguments on the rules, I believe that we in DJ phase 1 should be having common paint codes and a community wide solution to the drainage issues, this way when the drainage gets fixed the blocks can be repainted with a colour that matches (as good as we can get) any individual repainted apartments. I have no doubt that there will not be enough cash in the kitty to do this , so I expect that we will have to pay a one off payment (as the post boxes) to get the job done properly and get Don Juan looking nice and well maintained like it should be.

I will be asking the committee to put this on the agenda (if its not already) for the next meeting with the hope that the work will be done in 2011.....

Regards Andy  

As per the community rules I re-positioned my Aircon units near the floor, they also drain into my garden what is the point of collecting the water in a vessel and then pouring it where it would have drained anyway if I left it alone? :-)

On an un-related point, the last half a dozen visitors (myself included) have been unable to use our parking spot in the gargae as the same battered Toyota Corolla is there every time anyone arrives, having tried polite notices I am going to ask my lawyer what action I can take to allow me access to my own property currently denied by this car, has anyone else had this problem (Block 9)

I know someone in our block had the same problem. I know what I would do if it was happening to me. I would bring a clamp over in the suitcase, and stick a note on the car giving your contact number telling them to bring € 100 to have the clamp removed.

I must have been lucky - I once found  car parked in my space. Not knowing anyone in the block at the time, I wrote a note in English and in Spanish, asking for the car to be moved so that the rightful owner can use the space. By the same evening the car was moved and the problem has not recurred on my subsequent visits.

If your space is easy one to get into, there is the temptation for someone to simply park in it but the (offending) car should be moved when the owner (of the space) is in residence - you seem to have an inconsiderate neighbour!

It could be that the person thinks that it is their space or that they are just being rude and inconsiderate . There have been mix ups on parking before. One option would be to ask Irma for a favour and get her to write / email all of the owners in the block confirming their allocated space and the consequences (letting tyres down /  clamping etc..)  of parking in someone else's space.   

Regards Andy

Otterandy, possible but implausible as I have tried leaving a polite note before to no effect and there is a note on the wall pointing out that this space is "mine", to be fair to Irma she has been very prompt and proactive in trying to help and I am grateful, looks like the easiest solutiion is to put a "gate" up in the space. Also given the number of people in the garage who have felt the need to put a notice up in their space pointing out which appartment each belongs to, I am clearly not alone although it is unclear whether it is the same person at fault each time.