Facade and Window Refurbishment

Facade and Window Refurbishment – City Apartments with Commercial Shops

2010 – Present

We are the Superintending Engineer in Brisbane for this facade refurbishment project (four separate residential towers, each consist of seven levels constructed above commercial/retail tenancies on the ground floor podium level, serviced by multi level carparks). The project involves major façade repairs and refurbishment and replacement of windows. We were initially engaged to provide technical support during emergency repairs and carry out a full defects inspection which revealed the following issues:

a conspicuous lack of consistent external façade control jointing,
moisture ingress at the heads and sills of windows
poor waterproofing of the window and door frames and their sills
cracking to façade coatings to walls (potential points of water entry).
Discontinuous expansion jointing
Missing and inconsistent control jointing
Spalling and cracking render
Calcite staining from leaks under patio walls ; planter boxes and edges of balconies, and calcite staining from cracks around windows and patio spitters
Cracking and deterioration of major expansion joints
Lack of continuity of expansion joints from roof to building facades
Bridging of major expansion joint to Tower 1 by parapet wall
Under Design of expansion joint – investigation into the adequacy of the expansion joint, i.e. under-sized
Cracks in parapet walls allowing water ingress behind façade coating at top of building
Roof spitters unsealed underneath, allowing water ingress behind façade coating at top of building
Poor detailing of roof/parapet waterproofing upstand leading to cracking
Concrete hoods to robe drops of buildings – waterproof coatings incomplete to tops and sides
Corrosion to steel columns and frames of sunhoods Lack of valleys to sun hood

We prepared a repair specification and took the project to tender. The repair and window replacement works started in January 2013 and we expect the project to be complete in October 2014.