Water damage is our number one problem and our biggest liability, both as an individual homeowner and as a member of our Association. Having the right plumber for our building is just as important as having the right doctor for your specific medical ailments.
Bert Meli Plumbing has been our building plumber for over 13 years and during that time he and his crew has rode to our rescue more times than I can remember. Whether it was in the middle of the night
or on a weekend, Bert and his crew always quickly responded to our call for help, and in the process, they has saved us thousands of dollars by quickly and efficiently fixing the problem and limiting our water damage. But even more significant is the fact that he and his crew have the expertise to identify potential problem areas in our building and recommend cost-effective solutions before a water disaster can occur.
Perhaps their most significant contribution came on a Saturday in February 2003, when the City of Redondo Beach issued an Evacuation Order for our building because the sewer line under the Esplanade in front of our building collapsed. The next day, (Sunday) as the board was preparing to announce to the residents that they would have to move out of the building immediately, Bert Meli called and ask if he could bring his crew out because he had devised a plan to temporarily reroute our internal building
plumbing system that might negate the need to evacuate the building. Eight hours later, with the addition of 20-30 feet of 3 1/2 inch PVC , two holding tanks and two immersion pumps, he demonstrated to the City that his temporary system would handle the building sewage. The City then rescinded the Evacuation Order. It took almost 2 weeks for the sewer line to be repaired. Without Bert’s initiative
and the professionalism of his crew, we were all on our way to being homeless for two weeks.
The unfortunate part of Bert’s contribution to our HOA is that very few people outside of the board members are aware of all he does for us. He not only immediately reacts to our disasters but is proactive
in preventing water damage in our building.
The year prior to the sewer collapse, Bert noticed that there were no pop-up valves installed on our sewer lines. These valves relieve the pressure in the event of a malfunction and sewage starts to flow into our building. The board approved his recommendation and the valves were installed. Because they were installed when the sewer line collapsed, raw sewage did not back up into any of our units on the Esplanade side of the street thus avoiding turning a very bad situation into an expensive and disastrous
situation for several of our homeowners.
A more recent example of his initiative that resulted in a big cost saving for the HOA is his recommendation that filters be installed on our backflow valves. Bert was concerned that our valves had to be repaired and/or rebuilt most every year due to excessive wear on some of the parts. He reasoned that this was because of the abrasiveness of very tiny particles contained in the city’s drinking water that flowed through these valves. The board approved his proposal and since the filters have been installed there has been no visual damage or wear to the critical parts of the valves. We have already recouped the cost of the filters because the valves required no additional work in 2011 in order to pass the city mandated tests.
It is not happenstance that Bert has been our building plumber for 13 years. Having lived in the building for 33 years and been a board member for almost 15 years, I've worked with a lot of plumbers to fix a wide variety of building plumbing problems. Before Bert, we had at least four or five plumbers that were designated our “building plumber”. They didn't last for a variety of reasons, none of which had anything to do with the cost of their service. We have had plumbers that were more expensive than Bert and also
less expensive than Bert. Bert is not the cheapest plumber out there but, in my opinion, he is clearly the best, the most reliable, knowledgeable and conscientious of any of the other plumbers I have ever worked with.
Our building is a plumber’s nightmare. The way the pipes are connected defies logic. The city is supposed to have the plumbing plans as well as the electrical plans for this building. They have neither. I have spent countless hours going through all their microfiche files and I can attest they do not have them. I contacted the architect many years ago and he no longer has them. Without plans there is a fairly steep learning curve associated with understanding our building’s interconnections. The reason that each unit does not have its own water shutoff valve is that there is not a single cold water pipe and a single hot water pipe going into each unit. Units share some common cold and hot water pipes but they are not universally the same throughout the building. The downstairs lavatory and upstairs kitchen pipes might be connected between two units and the adjacent two units might have common pipes connecting upstairs bathroom and downstairs lavatory. One building plumber installed a shutoff valve in one unit, which when activated, turned off the cold water in the unit above him. The point here is, while it's not rocket science, it's damn complicated and not every plumber has the ability and the fortitude to work problems in our building.
Homeowners are, of course, free to use whoever they want as their plumber to do work in their unit. I can only tell you based on my experience that you can find cheaper plumbers than Bert, but you can't find any better plumbers. Even our federal government has finally come to realize that cheaper isn't always better. In a lot of cases, cheaper at the start, costs a lot more at the end when you haven’t picked the right contractor.