Heritage Club

Ah the dog days of summer are upon us and the HOA Board faces some difficult decisions about maintaining the community amenities that are so important to us all. For summertime is the peak use period of our swimming pool, club house, common areas and tennis facility. Increased use results in increased wear and tear which requires maintenance and repair, some of which is unanticipated, most of it hidden from the casual observer. Leaks in the swimming pool are becoming a chronic problem, circulation pumps need replacement. Prioritizing these maintenance decisions is driven by budget constraints and while that is not necessarily a bad thing, it would be more cost effective to plan for periodic equipment replacement before an emergency situation develops forcing a quick and inevitably expensive fix.

We now have a record of repairs, large and small covering about a dozen years of use that forms a history upon which we could create a projected maintenance plan to include routine, preventive maintenance to maximize efficient useful equipment life as well as equipment replacement at the projected end of useful equipment life. The same exercise could be performed on other neighborhood systems, such as irrigation sprinklers. The advantage to this approach is that systems that are properly maintained last longer and operate more efficiently than those that are not. The down side is that a periodic maintenance plan is more costly on an annual basis than a “fix it when it breaks” and do the minimum to get it back in service. Even though a longer range view, say 5 years would see a lower average cost than before, it just makes sense that well maintained equipment lowers the cost of operation.

To create such a plan would require a small team of resident volunteers to conduct a survey of the various systems and equipment to create a baseline inventory and condition assessment. A desktop audit of past repair and replacement costs would then be conducted and some estimate made of the remaining useful life of the equipment. Chronic problems would also become obvious; repeated pipe leaks in the same location for example and a long term solution could be developed. A meaningful annual budget could be developed, one that was data based and not just last years actual cost, adjusted for inflation.

In a community as large as ours, there must be a few people experienced and willing to make this planning exercise work. If you are one of the few, how about stepping up and volunteering a few hours of your time? Your community will be a better place to live as a result of your efforts.

September 2010