Don’t Assume That The Condo Docs Cover Everything
Raymond Harrison Esq. advises executive board members and property managers about condo docs many times on a daily basis. Association representatives and Ray regularly discuss disputes between unit owners and board members about whether unit owners or the Association should pay to repair or replace hot water heaters that are used by some but not all unit owners. Sometimes these disputes have persisted for years. Sometimes a dispute motivates a unit owner to become a board member with the intention of creating a policy that the Association pays to repair or replace a hot water heater that is used by some but not all unit owners. All of these hard feelings among Association members and neighbors often occur because a condo developer never even mentioned in the condo docs something as important as hot water heaters.
Hot Water Heaters For Some But Not All Units
In some condominiums, there are one or more hot water heaters that serve some but not all of the units in the condominium. These are larger and more complex hot water heaters that are not located within the boundaries of a particular unit but rather in some other location such as a basement area. These large multi-unit hot water heaters are expensive to purchase and require more expensive installations because of all of the hot water pipes that plumbers need to put in place.
Who Pays To Maintain Multi-Unit Hot Water Heaters?
Condo developers are well aware of large multi-unit hot water heaters when constructing condo buildings, but they often create condo docs that don’t mention these hot water heaters at all. Unfortunately, those condo docs often don’t state clearly whether or not the repair or replacement costs for the multi-unit hot water heaters are paid for by the unit owners they serve or by all of the unit owners in the condominium.
Emergency Legal Opinion
When a multi-unit hot water heater is destroyed by fire or flooding, or if it fails and must be promptly replaced, Ray provides written legal opinions to Associations that state clearly who pays for the replacement of the hot water heater. If it’s a covered loss under the Association property insurance, in the event of fire or flooding, the insurance issue is also addressed in the legal opinion. The main legal question is whether the expenses to replace the multi-unit hot water heater are assessed on all unit owners or just on those unit owners served by the multi-unit hot water heater.
Never Too Late For A Declaration Amendment
Ray has advised many Associations that the unit owners can add important provisions to their Declarations that condo developers never created. With a Declaration amendment ballot proposed by the executive board, simple, clear and reasonable language can be added to the Declaration to state that only the unit owners served by multi-unit hot water heaters pay for the maintenance and replacement of them. Ray writes new Declaration language that can be easily understood by unit owners, board members and property managers. He writes new Declaration language that is fair and reasonable for all situations that may arise.
Who Pays To Operate Multi-Unit Hot Water Heaters?
In addition to purchasing and installing large multi-unit hot water heaters, condo developers design electrical metering and wiring, as well as plumbing for cold water in and hot water out to certain units. It would be reasonable for a condo developer to install a separate electric meter for a multi-unit hot water heater so that those unit owners served by the hot water heater, and not all unit owners, pay that electric bill. The same applies for metering of natural gas if that’s the fuel used for hot water heating. It would also be reasonable for sub-metering of hot water supplied to each unit so that unit owners only pay for the hot water they use. Ray has represented many Associations where unit owners don’t benefit from separate metering and sub-metering. In those cases, unit owners who use less hot water subsidize the unit owners who use more hot water.
Addressing Operational Issues
Ray helps executive board members and property managers address operational issues for multi-unit hot water heaters. His goal is always to promote harmony among unit owners in an Association. For this issue, the method to create harmony is to implement a way for unit owners to pay precisely for the hot water only they use, no more and no less. Ray’s experience as a condo Association president for many years provided him with useful insights on this operational issue.
