The residents at The Claridge were frustrated by the continual back-ups and leaks coming from their cast iron drain, waste, and vent piping system. As a 50+ year-old community, their cast iron pipes had simply reached the end of their useful life (which was surprisingly long for an oceanfront community exposed to salty sea air). The Claridge hired SageWater to address the entire system which included replacing the vertical drain and vent stacks, and the lateral drain and vent piping that came from each fixture in each kitchen and bathroom stack. Working vertically through the building, we employed our Turnkey Pipe Replacement solution. Our staff performed all the demolition, plumbing, drywall, carpentry and paint work required to return each unit back to its pre-construction finished condition. We’re on schedule to complete the project in December 2023.
TRANSCRIPT
The building is 50 years old. That means there’s 50-year-old plumbing in the building. A lot of pipes cracked. If you touch them, they would just break in your hands. Nobody really knew where to start, except for George.
The proximity to the ocean is what caused these pipes to deteriorate in the first place. We were experiencing failures. We’re talking about waste pipe plumbing failures approximately every two weeks.
People recognize things like paint jobs or elevators have to keep working, or concrete has to be restored. But nobody really thinks about what’s going on in the walls.
We have 198 units in this particular building, and trying to keep everybody happy is, of course, very, very difficult. We have a total actually of 29 riser groups. We had a lot of hallway work, but we also had a lot of interior bathroom ceiling work. So we had to go into bedrooms. I got to tell you, it scared me. I didn’t think this was going to happen at all.
I’ve worked with these residents for 14 years, and the temperament, as I said, wasn’t high, on getting all this work done. But it quickly changed.
We did talk to a lot of current and previous SageWater clients, and the feedback we got was universally good. The challenges that you might think. You have the right team and the right crew. A lot of them kind of have a way of disintegrating. And you could tell right away. Right away. Even in the setup, all the little logistical things that they thought about, because they’ve done it before.
After the first week or two, we said, is that all there is? That was it. That whole stack, that whole one of the 29, is done already in two weeks and everything’s put back. It’s a miracle.
The crew here were fantastic. I mean, they did all the inspections that they had to do. They listened to residents. It made my job so much easier. SageWater did what they said they were going to do. Clean, neat, careful.
And part of what they’ve done is great communication. Doing the work is, of course, number one, but I think close second is communicating.
I work with a ton of contractors in residents’ units, and I can’t think of a one that is better in their performance, their ability to get along with people, than SageWater.
I think it has really improved the life of our residents, and we have been told by the residents that it has.
As a board member, you don’t need to be the expert on this job. Get the best people, get the pros to do it. And I’m just glad we picked the right people.