Reno Tip: Your Water Connection Should Be Job #1

Posted on May 25, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Well, I think we’re up against our first delay. Our contractor contacted ConEd first thing in the project because he needed electricity for his tools, but he waited a little to figure out the water situation. Turns out that was a mistake.

ConEd won’t put in gas and electric until water has been resolved because too many times the guys doing the water mess up the ConEd connections. We were hoping our existing water connection would be good, but it’s not – we need a new connection. On top of that the mechanical engineer certifying the sprinkler system wants more heads and now we’re over 30 sprinkler heads – so we need a larger than normal connection to the water main (3″ instead of 2″).

Thanks to our highly efficient city government it’s going to be a 2 month wait to get approval for the new water connection. Then probably a week or two to actually get the work done. Then probably another couple weeks for ConEd. Only after the water connection is made can the plumbing be inspected. Insulation can’t be put in until the plumbing is inspected. Sheetrock can’t be put up until the insulation is done. And generally things just go more slowly when the guys are working on a generator instead of a real electrical connection. There’s still work that can be done while we’re waiting on the water and on ConEd, but it’s going to delay things.

So word to the wise renovator is to deal with your water (and sewer) connections first – you’ll save time down the road…

Roof Deck Railings Now NOT OK With FDNY

Posted on May 25, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

A couple days ago we went in for another Post Amendment Approval meeting (we were approved). As the plan examiner was stamping the plans he noticed the railing on our roof deck and told us they were no longer permitted by FDNY. We’re OK (with DOB) because we’re already approved and permits have been pulled and work started. But all new projects with roof deck railings have to get approved by FDNY before DOB will approve the plans.

Here’s a railing from another townhouse, just so you know what I’m talking about…

The problem is that firemen (in full gear) have grabbed hold of those railings and they’ve given way and the firemen have fallen. There are regulations about loads that the railings need to support, but enough railings don’t meet the regulations that FDNY is now banning them completely.

What FDNY wants is a brick parapet wall. Because deck railings have to be higher than regular parapet walls I’m not sure whether they’d be OK with a railing on top of a brick parapet – somehow I suspect those would have all the same issues as full railings. That means FDNY really wants you to have brick parapet walls that are 42″ off your roof (so much for looking at the view when you’re sitting on your roof deck). The plan examiner did mention that he’s seen FDNY give variances for railings, but to get those variances people had to put a gate into the railing.

The supports for our railing will be fasten directly to the roof joists (rafters). But apparently that may not be enough to keep FDNY happy. So now we need to figure out whether we want to get the FDNY variance. DOB isn’t requiring it, but it might become an issue when we go through our C of O inspection. Personally I understand where they’re coming from, but having them change the rules after approval is frustrating.

The Mess In Our Back Yard

Posted on May 17, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

We knew our back yard was a bit of a mess. It was clear that when they were renovating the building adjacent to ours that they had just dumped a bunch of garbage in our back yard. We figured there was about a foot of garbage back there…

On top of that when a friend of ours (who does gardening for a living) saw the garden he said the plants that were going in it were rather insidious – that we should kill them with RoundUp and then put black plastic over the entire garden for a summer to try to kill them.

There’s so little in our place there aren’t many surprises, but it seems like every time there could be a surprise we’ve got one. The back yard isn’t going the way we thought it would… They’ve started removing the garbage – and surprise! There’s concrete under everything…

You can’t quite tell, but the retaining wall on the side has about 2 1/2 cinder blocks in it – so it’s about 20″ high (plus the cap stone). And most of the “debris” is actually mostly dirt and rocks. I still don’t know how we have so many river rocks in the middle of Harlem, but there they are.

Our plans just call for removing the debris. It doesn’t mention anything about removing concrete – so we’ll have to work that out with the contractor since we don’t want a concrete back yard! That said, we don’t have to worry about insidious plants growing in a concrete back yard…

The other question is how do we integrate those huge rocks into our landscape design? I was really thinking of going a different direction… But we’ll figure something out. Dan says we should look at Japanese garden designs.

A Frustating Day @ The Dept. Of Buildings

Posted on May 17, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

The Post Approval Amendment Meeting

Yesterday we went to the Department of Buildings for a Post Approval Amendment (PAA) meeting. PAAs are how you get changes approved after you have approved plans. Long story short – we were denied because a measurement was missing…

We had a few minor items, but the two big things were 1) changing the shape of the bulkhead and 2) taking exhaust pipes up and through the roof rather than exhausting them through the sidewall.

First a thanks to architect Peter Holtzman for warning us that, even though the plan examiner had stamped plans that included exhausts through the sidewall, they were a potential source of (expensive) problems when it came to C of O inspection. You can intake air across a property line, but you can’t exhaust air over a property line. Good catch – everyone (including the plan examiner) had missed that.

The other major change was to change the shape of the bulkhead. We started out with a smaller bulkhead that looked like this…

Elevation of small bulkhead

So one glass door and two windows with a 3′ walkway to the side for easy access to the front part of the roof. In plan view that looked like this…

Plan view of small bulkhead

As the plan examiner was stamping the plans he saw a problem and told us he’d continue stamping but we needed to come back to get it fixed. Even though 3 feet is sufficient inside a building for a hallway, according to zoning regulations that’s a “side yard” and side yards have to be a minimum of 8 feet wide. He said our two options were to reduce the size of the bulkhead and get 8 feet of “side yard” or extend it all the way across the building and have a ladder up and over the bulkhead for firemen.

So the next rendition looked like this…

Elevation showing bulkhead all the way across a townhouse

So we just put in an extra window. In plan it looked like this…

Plan view of wide bulkhead on townhouse

Then one day I was sitting there and realized the ceiling on the top floor was so tall we might not have enough steps between the top floor and the roof deck. (Turns out we were 5 steps short!) So now the plan looks like this…

That means the door has been switched to the other side and there’s an extra run of stairs.

[If you’re really detail oriented you’ll wonder how we’re draining the front roof. There will be a pipe running through the bulkhead wall from the front roof to the back roof. The one error in the plan above is that the cricket needs to change and the pipe location switched to the other wall.]

Getting back to the plan examination.. The examiner said that now that it was going all the way across the building it was no longer a bulkhead – it was “something else” – though he didn’t say what. I suppose it’s now a cathedral ceiling. I believe bulkheads are exempt from building height restrictions but “something else” isn’t. Our architect had dimensioned the height of each floor and the roof but hadn’t dimensioned the height at the top of the bulkhead. The plan examiner said were were limited to 60 feet (off the sidewalk) and so he refused to stamp the plans because the height of the bulkhead off the street wasn’t specified.

The height of 60 feet comes from the fact that buildings in residential areas that are less than 45 feet in width are limited 100 feet or the width of the street, whichever is less. (Buildings taller than that are considered “sliver buildings”). Our street is 60 feet wide, so we’re limited to 60 feet in height.

I did the calculations when I got home and we’re at 60′ 4 1/2″. The plan examiner said he didn’t mind if we went 6″ over, but just to be safe I think we should modify a couple things to get closer to 60 feet.

Trying To Clear Violations

When the PAA meeting was over we decided we’d try to clear some violations. We had gotten two complaints, two violations, and a stop work order back in January. At the time, after a lot of investigation, an expediter had told us we got the violations because we had two Alt-1s open at the same time.

We hunted around to figure out where to ask a question. Then we waited on line for 20 minutes. And we showed our paperwork to the clerk in the construction division who took it and said it would need to be reviewed by the chief and that we should wait. Well, we waited and were then told that the letter only applied to one of the two violations. A day later that violation still hasn’t been cleared… Hopefully it will get cleared.

After some confused and frustrated questions we went down to the deputy boro commissioner’s office to ask questions since it was his letter that we thought was supposed to clear things up. More questions, more confusion and then someone finally explained what was really happening. Our stop work order wasn’t because we had two Alt-1s open at the same time – it was because the engineer who was on the old plans from the previous owner had filed paperwork to get his name off the jobs. Since the jobs were active, that resulted in a stop work order.

All the information was on the paperwork, but you had to know the lingo to understand it. I know I didn’t understand it when I saw it the first 10(+) times I looked at it. And the expediter apparently didn’t understand the lingo either.

We have another PAA appointment on Monday. Hopefully we can clear up everything at that point.

More Incremental Progress

Posted on May 15, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

A number of things are progressing at the building…

They’ve put orange plastic netting in front of the windows so no one can fall out (good idea).

Windows with orange safety netting

Have I mentioned previously that we’re very happy that the wall supporting the cornice is in great shape? Apparently the cornice wall is the reason why a lot of cornices have to be ripped down. If the wall is bad, the cornice has to go. Having a good cornice wall drastically ups the chances of being able to just repair and keep our cornice.

They’re starting to frame the interior walls…

Framing for walls in place

Now that the plumbing is done in the cellar, they’re pouring the concrete floor. Technically pouring the floor is a “repair” since there was an old floor that was in poor condition.

Concrete floor in townhouse cellar

[Like the stick figure graffiti?]

The critical project at the moment is to raise the parapet walls 15″ to comply with current fire code.

Harlem townhouse parapet wall

That’s delaying building the bulkhead (since parts of the bulkhead rest on the parapet) and the delay with the bulkhead is delaying ordering windows (since we have to measure the bulkhead for the window order). And of course the house can’t be properly closed up until the windows are in…

The historic preservation folks aren’t happy about raising the parapet walls since it amounts to altering the structure of the building. But fire code trumps historic preservation, so they just have to accept it.

Speaking of things that can’t get done before other things… The big problem right now is that ConEd won’t re-establish gas and electrical service until after we re-establish water service. Apparently getting the water service reconnected is a huge hassle since we have to go through DEP. The water main subcontractor is trying to find loopholes to make the process faster. We were hoping the current connection would work, but only a tickle of water came out when they opened the valve. And yes, DEP does send you a water bill even when your property has no water service.

Also water related… the architect and the sprinkler engineer are trying to figure out the proper number of sprinkler heads in the building. We’re very close to the limit of 30 heads above which a second connection to the water main is required.

We did have one victory on the bureaucratic front… We finally got the previous owner’s old job for demolition closed out. They should have taken care of it years ago, but they didn’t. Notice the “X Signed Off” in the screenshot below…

Demolition job signed off

That’s one of those things that has to happen before we can get our C of O. But more importantly we were in a race against time on it since the old owner’s engineer had filed papers to get his name off the job. That could have potentially resulted in a(nother) stop work order.

So lots of little stuff is happening…