12/16 was windy and I thought it would be a good time to dive into best practices for everyone to think about. The common affects wind can have on an association's common area property are the following:
- Parking lot poles fallen over.
- Trees fallen over or needed to be re-staked.
- Loss of power to a building, creating troubles for tenants/owners.
- Property damage.
- Broken tree limbs needing to be hauled off by landscapers.
- Parking problems in the parking lot due to fallen trees, tree limbs, leaves and wondering tumble weeds.
- Loss of plant ground cover, such as mulch.
Yesterday winds in Orange County were recorded at 65 miles power hour in areas. To hedge off landscape property problems, I recommend the following:
1) Ask landscapers to restate/tighten poles that are holding up young trees.
2) Have your landscaper tour your property and remove fallen trees limbs and/or any extra plant material blown into your parking lots.
3) Trim trees annual. If trees are top heavy, they are more likely to fall over, and have a better chance of excess limbs falling onto cars.
4) Don't plan installing mulch if winds are in the forecast.
Tustin, California reportedly had a power loss to two-hundred and forty-one (241) customers. This creates a variety of phone calls for my firm, including power loss calls from tenants, and Fire Life Safety (FLS) phone calls from building's fire sprinkler monitoring companies. The fire life safety systems have a battery power back-up, but monitoring will only remain for the life of that battery.
Unnecessary property damage can occur if trash enclosure doors aren't locked down. I like to remind janitors, day porters, and owners to lock down doors in advance of the winds.
On a side note, I see so many different circumstances of tree limbs falling and trees falling over that I recommend never parking under a tree during winds. It's just a good precautionary measure to avoid the possibility of having something bad happen.
In property management, wind blows.
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