Category: Maintenance

Big or small, disasters most often strike out of the blue. They catch us unaware, flatfooted and feeling helpless at their impact. This is especially true when these disasters hit us at home or within our shared co-op or condo communities.…

Of all the modern conveniences we take for granted, perhaps none is as profoundly basic—and indispensable—as indoor plumbing. Carrying fresh water into our homes and taking waste water away, the pipes in our buildings are the fine line tha…

The rarely stated—but all too well understood—Murphy’s Law for Boilers—asserts that if your boiler quits working, it will do so on Christmas or New Year’s Eve, or at 4:45 p.m. on the coldest day of the year. With some planning, though, tha…

From the outside, the structure of a condo or co-op building may appear to be monolithic; just one big piece of brick and steel, punctuated with some glass here and there. That's an oversimplification, however. A multifamily building is pe…

It was January 1977 when the Center for Disease Control (CDC) first identified and isolated a previously unknown strain of bacteria found breeding in the cooling tower of a hotel air conditioning system. The bacteria, subsequently named Le…

In terms of wear and tear on buildings, winter is the harshest season of the year. Snow accumulation and ice damming on roofs can be a major headache, pipes freezing and bursting could spell disaster, and just about any accumulation of wat…

Ask people to list the household chores they dislike most, and chances are, doing laundry will consistently rank among the top ten. The need and appreciation for clean clothes gets overshadowed by the hassle of having to constantly wash an…

Chicago is a city known for its harsh weather, but this winter was extremely trying, complete with a 'polar vortex' and more snow and ice than usual. But there is always the promise of springtime and all it entails—blossoming trees, the re…

Walk down any street in Chicago and you’re likely to go under or around one of the ubiquitous steel-and-plywood structures that shade the city’s sidewalks, more often than not festooned with wheat-pasted posters for everything from the hot…

Remember the old jingle, ‘it takes a licking and keeps on ticking’? It was the famous tagline from the Timex watch advertisements. The gist of the ad is that no matter what you threw at it, a Timex watch kept working. If you think ab…