Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Privately sponsored renovations to building envelope

[Casey Morrigan (cjmorr]

>>We have been approached by one of our members for permission to make an
adjustment to the building envelope - specifically turning their extant
open-air porch into a sunroom. I would welcome suggestions about the
processes used by other cohousing communities to adjudicate these sorts
of requests.  Everyone is quite clear that the building envelope is
"common", and thus renovations are issues for the group... so at least
that distinction is clear.>>

Our experience during building was that changes to the plans that the group 
handled and became responsible for, were expensive for the group in terms 
of money... and in terms of the contractor, project manager and architect 
losing track of who was doing what, and in terms of managing the resulting 
hot discussions.   Also, we had some owner changes implemented during 
construction, and they are causing some condensation problems in a couple 
of houses...now, whose job is it now to handle any resulting water damage? 
 Questions like this arise every once in a while, and I find them 
bedevilling.  It is so tempting in the development process to try to 
accomodate members "just for this one thing."  But as I am sure many others 
will respond, a very disciplined building process is necessary to bring 
your project in at budget and run a clean development process.

So IMHO it's a good idea to allow people to make their changes at their own 
expense after the project is built, and not to change either the drawings 
or submit change orders after things are well on their way.

Casey Morrigan
Two Acre Wood
Sebastopol, CA










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