After more than a week of no progress on my balcony repairs, I was awoken this morning by the sound of some dude on my balcony. It wasn’t even 8:30am and I could hear him moving about. All my sliding doors were open because it’s summer and it’s hot as hell. He closed them from the outside for me. I soon would find out why.
He started off using some sorta industrial strength Dremel tool to cut out what looked like the weather stripping seals around my windows. It was loud as hell, like shockingly loud, enough to make me put on some earphones to protect some of my hearing. This lasted for an hour or so.
While this was happening, the air began to get stale in my apartment. For better or worse, doesn’t leak air from anywhere. If all my sliding doors are closed, my apartment can almost be airtight. I have a CO2 monitor in my apartment and it started to rise above 500ppm. This is still acceptable but it just feels gross. In fact, I have some sorta ability to feel stale on my skin. I can’t describe it fully, but my skin starts to feel weird when the air becomes stale.
In response to this, I turned on my bathroom fan, which takes air inside my apartment and vents it to the outside. I also opened my front door and shoved a shoe in the way to keep it open. I could feel cool and fresh air rush into my apartment. Because my front door and bathroom are close together, I began to wonder if the hallway air was just entering my apartment and then being vented right back outside by my bathroom fan. The air felt fresh near the back of my apartment but it still felt a bit stale in my bedroom. The CO2 level stayed near 520ppm in this configuration. In comparison, it’s usually around 430ppm or so when I have proper ventilation.
Once the dude was done ripping up stuff, he did much more quiet work. My blinds were down but it seemed like he was replacing the stuff he cut out earlier. At the time, I guessed it was some sorta sealant. He took off for the day well before 4pm. After making sure no one was left on my balcony, I threw open the sliding doors again and a rush of fresh, delicious air came in. I stuck my head outside and I saw that there were these large strips of freshly applied grey sealant around my windows and other parts of my balcony. I guess he took off since this stuff needed to dry and he couldn’t do anymore for the day.
I have no clue what the next step is but I fear it’s gonna involved ear-shattering work again.