The Dangers of Ignoring Canopy Repairs
From the initial build to post-construction maintenance, monitoring and ultimately maintaining the health of a building is essential. Building experts have a whole range of smart and highly specialised equipment to look at materials used as well as the overall structural safety of a build.
Canopy repair in Hong Kong is one key area, since there are many buildings developed with canopies within the city-state. During the property development boom some 40-50 years ago, many buildings were quickly built without the same best practice standards expected today. Legislation exists to ensure that property owners are responsible for maintaining the integrity of materials and elements of a building. With canopies being open to the elements, this has become a separate investigative area, with tests, analysis and surveys carried out specifically to assess the stability of these individual constructions.
By identifying problems early, from cracking to lack of reinforcement strength, repairs can be applied at potentially less cost and inconvenience. From a resource perspective, one of the dangers of ignoring necessary canopy repairs is that more destructive or invasive testing may be required to calculate the extent of a problem. Once again, there are cost and time implications with this delay.
Hong Kong building regulations, such as MIBS, provide specific rules on the duties of property owners and the expectations when it comes to building safety and the condition of properties. There have been a great many developments within the main areas of Hong Kong and these are spreading out, too. The good news is that this growth has created a culture of building expertise, with equipment, tools and skills at the ready to assess where canopy issues arise and how to repair them.
Aside from costs and other practical issues, from the point of view of developers, property owners and even building residents, the necessity of canopy repairs is really about ensuring safety. A canopy that lacks stability or structural integrity is a real danger to people passing under it, whether entering or leaving a building or standing under its cover to shelter from the weather. Depending on the position of the building and canopy, passersby could also be harmed by concrete breaking off. There are ethical and moral considerations, as well as legal ramifications, that cannot be ignored when dealing with structural safety issues.
The first step is to find canopy repair experts who can assess any damage.
