Assessing condition, planning repairs across budget years and deciding what to do now versus later.
Crack sealing over a GTA condo deck runs in the range of five dollars a foot, because it is surface work with no excavation. Repairing the membrane and concrete after the crack has worked through runs in the range of three hundred dollars a foot. Both are order-of-magnitude figures, not quotes.
More detail: read the related project note.
A double elevator pit runs about one and a half times a single, not double, for two reasons. There is no wall between the two cars, so there is less square footage to waterproof than two separate pits would have. And once the crew and equipment are mobilised and access is arranged, the second pit does not repeat that setup cost.
More detail: read the related project note.
A single 20-foot expansion joint span repaired by negative-side injection runs in the range of six to ten thousand dollars in the GTA. Much larger figures quoted for garage joint work usually cover many joints across a large section of the structure, so it is worth asking how many spans a proposal actually includes before comparing two numbers.
More detail: read the related project note.
On expansion joints the gap is almost always excavation. A top-side repair includes removing everything on the deck, stripping the membrane, and restoring the surface — roughly 70 percent of the cost. Negative-side injection works from inside the garage and skips all of it. It is a scope difference, not a quality difference.
More detail: read the related project note.
Yes, over time. Garage slabs bear on ledge beams, and expansion joints frequently run directly above them, so water exiting the joint saturates the top of the beam. Flowing water deteriorates concrete and opens voids that carry more water, and a ledge beam carries the slabs above it.
More detail: read the related project note.
Fixing the joint is far cheaper. A negative-side injection on a 20-foot joint span is about a two-day job. Repairing a saturated, spalling structural beam is a larger scope on a separate budget line and usually involves an engineer, because at that stage it is structural work rather than waterproofing.
More detail: read the related project note.
Because both faces of the joint are exposed, nothing has to be excavated to reach it. Material can be gravity-fed from the top instead of pressure-injected from below, and mechanical joint systems can be installed directly. Access is not the constraint, so the method is chosen on movement and traffic rather than reachability.
More detail: read the related project note.
Yes, and this is one of its advantages for a reserve fund. Each joint is a separate 20-foot span, so a building can address the worst joints this year and others later. A top-side excavation does not stage the same way — the deck is opened once and has to be closed back up.
More detail: read the related project note.
About 70 percent of a top-side repair is not waterproofing at all. It is excavating a wide area, hauling the material away, blasting off the old membrane, then restoring the sod, traffic topping, playground, or asphalt that was on top. Injection skips all of that by working from inside the garage.
More detail: read the related project note.
Insurance may refuse a flooded-elevator claim if the building was warned about the flooding and did nothing. We know of a building that lost a $300,000 claim exactly that way — the insurer found the flooding had been reported repeatedly, ruled it foreseeable rather than sudden, and denied it as negligence. The owners paid it through their maintenance fees.
More detail: read the related project note.
Active water raises the cost of an elevator pit job significantly, because stopping the flow is a whole operation before the actual repair begins. On a group of buildings in the Hamilton area we spent two full days doing nothing but stopping water so the wall repairs could start. That is two days of crew time before any waterproofing was installed.
More detail: read the related project note.
Waterproofing an elevator piston housing costs more than waterproofing the entire rest of the elevator pit. It is the most involved work done in a pit — multiple injected layers to depth, a pressure relief pipe, and a flexible collar detail — and it is priced separately from the standard pit system for that reason.
More detail: read the related project note.
It starts as a nuisance and can become structural. Garage slabs rest on ledge beams, and a joint dripping onto a ledge beam keeps that concrete saturated year-round. Water deteriorates concrete over time, and a ledge beam carries the slabs above it, so long-term saturation is worth taking seriously.
More detail: read the related project note.
On a mid-size condominium pool, refilling can run ten to twenty thousand dollars in water, and the corporation pays it. That figure belongs in the scope conversation rather than turning up later on a utility bill, because it is often a material share of the total repair cost and it is the strongest argument for a partial drain where one is possible.
More detail: read the related project note.
About two square feet across the entire shell is normal on a typical ageing condominium pool, and those areas get chipped out and refilled as routine repair. Widespread delamination is a different finding: on one pool, thirty to forty percent of the surface was hollow because the concrete was never properly vibrated when it was placed.
More detail: read the related project note.
On a suspended condominium pool, count the cracks visible from the mechanical room underneath and multiply by two. Any crack showing on the underside is certainly on the pool side as well, and there will be a few more up top because not every crack passes right through. Where cracking is present, the working allowance is around twenty percent of the surface area.
More detail: read the related project note.
Crystalline waterproofing rarely works out cheaper in an elevator pit once labour is counted. It needs the concrete ground open to its pores rather than to the ordinary profile a membrane bonds to, then kept hydrated for days afterwards. That is a much heavier prep bill, and the elevator is out of service for the whole sequence instead of a single day.
More detail: read the related project note.
The drain edge is the only part of the floor with nothing supporting one side of it. A loaded forklift or vehicle wheel crossing the grating lands on an unsupported lip, and that same lip sits in whatever runs down the channel all day. Concentrated load and constant wetting attack the same twelve inches of concrete, so the edge fails years before the slab around it shows anything.
More detail: read the related project note.
Because it holds what the hose cannot reach. Dirt and water collect in the sharp internal corner and pressure washing pushes material into it about as often as it removes material from it. The corner becomes a contamination trap in a room that is otherwise cleaned properly, which is why coving is standard in food and process areas and increasingly common in garbage rooms.
More detail: read the related project note.
An Order to Comply under Toronto's RentSafeTO programme reduces a building's evaluation score rather than carrying a direct fine. The City's published example: a building at 70 per cent that receives two Property Standards Orders shows 68 per cent, and returns to 70 per cent once it comes into compliance. Separate fees apply to audits, re-evaluations and targeted engagement.
More detail: read the related project note.
Of the 3,587 evaluated Toronto rental buildings we analysed, 1,959 carried at least one category scored 1 — the most serious grade available. That is well over half the rental stock in the city holding a significant recorded violation somewhere on the property, most commonly on the building exterior or in the parking areas.
More detail: read the related project note.
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