As I’ve written about in many posts, there is an ongoing construction project affecting all the apartments in my building. They re-applying some sorta membrane on all our balconies.
Last week I got written notice they were gonna start the next phase of the project for my balcony. This was going to involve restricting access to my balcony and only allowing my patio doors to slide open a maximum of 4″. Since it’s me, I noticed the day there were going to do this coincided with a heat wave, serious enough to for the government to warn people about it. I’ll never have enough of that good luck to win a lottery but if something can happen at the worst time, I’ll be lucky enough to have that happen.
Anyways, on Monday, near the end of the workday, I hear two workers hop onto my balcony from the swing stage. Their day is about to end and the sun is about to shine directly into my apartment, which is the hottest part of the day for me. I open up my patio door and ask them if they are really going to block off my patio doors at the beginning of this heat wave. They say yes because of liability. What liability? One guy mentions kids. I still don’t know what that means.
They then proceed to block off both my patio doors with pieces of wood. And they leave and don’t do anything else. It boggles my mind why they wouldn’t just wait until tomorrow morning to do this. So now, I barely have any ventilation for the whole evening for no reason.
The sun begins to shine directly into my apartment now and temperatures begin to rise. A 4″ gap makes it impossible for me to use my AC because my exhaust hose is too big to fit in the gap. I have fans on but they don’t do much. My apartment reaches a high of 29 degrees Celsius at one point and the air feels stagnant. I open my front door, just to get some air in from the hallway.
As you might imagine, I did not get a lot of sleep that night as the heat made it very uncomfortable. Morning arrives and I see no workers on my balcony. They’ve blocked off my patio doors and nothing is happening out there. Again, it makes no sense why they did that.
Lunchtime rolls around and I decide to head downstairs to get some lunch. In the elevator, I see a sign from strata and the building manager. It states that due to the heat wave, balcony access will no longer be blocked and that we should be patient as it may take a few hours before all apartments can be unblocked.
I was immediately thankful that some sense of sanity was used to come to this decision. On the other hand, how did no one see this coming from a mile away? Environment Canada issued the heat wave warning on the weekend, days before the start of the work week. Did no one think, “it’s going to be hot enough that the government is warning us about potential health concerns, yeah… let’s restrict the amount of ventilation these people have for the entire week and beyond”?
Anyways, I guess I should be thankful they came to their senses in the first place. Sometime in the late afternoon, the same two dudes who blocked off my patio doors the day before went and remove the wooden blocks. I was home when this happened and I poked my head out and thanked them for not trying to kill me again with heat.
I spent most of this evening sitting in my air-conditioned bedroom, thankful that I could use my AC again. I also have been told, they won’t be blocking balcony access anymore but we need to promise we won’t go out there while the work is being done and while the membrane cures and dries. I already promised I wouldn’t go out there several weeks ago and even proposed to the strata manager that my word would be good. That dude wasn’t having any of it, in a rather non-professional manner too. Now we’re just doing what I proposed in the first place. So stupid all around.