Problem
A 1970s brick apartment building with 42 balconies showing the full defect set of its era: drummy tiles, water staining on soffits below, cracked slab edges with exposed reinforcement, and balustrade fixings the committee had — rightly — stopped trusting. Two prior patch repairs by other contractors had failed within three years each.
Diagnosis
Representative openings on six balconies across both elevations established the pattern: original bituminous membrane past end of life, screeds holding water against the slab, carbonation-driven corrosion at slab edges (carbonation depth 25–40mm against cover as low as 15mm), and balustrade anchors with significant section loss. Every balcony was individually surveyed, tagged and ranked into three condition classes.
Method
Works staged in six runs by balcony stack, worst class first, keeping closures to under three weeks per stack. Per balcony: strip to slab, break out and reinstate slab-edge concrete with polymer-modified mortar, prime and treat reinforcement, correct falls, apply liquid polyurethane trafficable membrane with full-height upturns, reinstate tiles, and install engineered balustrade anchorage upgrades. Hold-point photography at every buried layer, compiled per balcony.
Outcome
Program completed inside the levy budget with provisional quantities reconciled openly at each stage. The committee’s decision pack — ranked condition report, staged funding options, per-balcony evidence — is the template we now bring to every strata program.