Hey everybody my name is Alex Rodriguez with Bay Cities Construction I want to talk
to you today about gaining compliance with your soft story building in the
city of Los Angeles and the city of Santa Monica
the city of Los Angeles has passed ordinance 183893 and 184081 these
two ordinances mandate the retrofitting of soft story buildings within the city
of Los Angeles, any soft story structure larger than three units be structurally
retrofitted so that it can withstand an earthquake. Typically a soft story building
is a multi-level structure with ground-level parking and basically the
openings that you need in order to be able to roll the car into the into its
parking structure makes the structure weak I tell you seismic standards. This
is a good example of a soft story building, this building happens to be one
that we're about to start working on in Santa Monica. As you can see the yellow
Camaro is in its parking structure, and there's a column to the left of it. This
is a wood structure, it's a four unit apartment building with a detached front
unit, and the rear section. What you're looking at here, even though there's kind
of like a funky white garage next to it, it's still considered a soft story
structure. The next diagram you see is a typical soft story diagram and it shows
wood columns holding up the front side of the building. The fact that you're
missing that whole front section makes it soft, it makes it structurally weak by
today's standards. So any of these soft story buildings that were built before
January 1st, 1978 are not up to code and will trigger a mandated retrofit in the
city of Los Angeles. If your building is three units or less, you don't have to
comply with the ordinance, but I would double check with the city, you probably
didn't get a notice to comply. If you have three units or more you definitely
have to comply there's definitely some dates posted, depending on what part of
the city you're in, we're gonna put together a heat map of those sections of
the city and we'll put a link below so just be on the lookout for that. The law
was passed November 2015 in the city of Los Angeles. You know the clock is
ticking. I think it's six years total we're about to be two years into law.
Most people have four years left to comply. As you can see from the image on
the screen, this is a computer model of a building that has failed you see that
little red truck on the left, it's crushed under the building weight. So
these soft story structures, many times will give way during a substantially
strong earthquake. This is a large building in the city of Los Angeles
in the middle of a retrofit and you can see that there's these huge I-beams that are
put in place to support the structure, and really, to lock the structure in
place. This type of retrofit is absolutely necessary for a large
building this size. Now you should also consider that you may have to move over
some plumbing fixtures. If you notice in this other image the i-beams are
present on the left side of the screen and then to the right you'll see like a
would on the corner of the building you'll see that there's a steel post and
then just slightly to the right of that there's a big waistline it's that black
pipe with that silver cap on it so often times you may have to incur the cost of
relocating some of these pipes if they're in the way of a retrofit the
next thing I want to talk to you about is what is the process for doing the
retrofit or getting your plans approved okay because that's something that
allowed that people want to know and they want to know what it's gonna cost
you will need a full set of plans this is considered type 5 plans and it's
typically printed on a 2 by 3 foot sheet on here you'll have your site plan and
you'll also have your engineering details this is basically the set of
plans that you need to take to the city to get your project approved in to pull
permits the next part of the the process is once you have the plans done somebody
needs to represent you to see now you could do this yourself but I don't
recommend that it's it's not a good idea you should have somebody that it has
experience dealing with the city of Los Angeles the city of Santa Monica
to represent you, to keep your your plan approval process on
on the right track you will need these plans also to get a quote. Everybody
wants to know how much it's gonna cost right, but you need a set of plans and in
order to be able to make that determination the only way to get a real
hard number on what it's gonna cost us to have the wholesale plans because in
here the engineer tells me exactly what's got to be done okay and every
building is different so don't go by just estimates invest in some plans and
get an actual design done so you can get a real price a quote not an estimate an
actual quote now that we're talking about money you should know the
difference between a quote and an estimate we put together a blog article
that talks about just that it's not only related to a soft story retrofit but to
all kinds of construction processes or construction projects please check out
that blog article it's actually one of our more popular blog articles and I
think you'll find a lot of useful information and understanding the
difference between an estimate and a quote. Number 4 construction planning. You
have to give notice to your tenants you have to plan for the project you should
have a full schedule presented to you so that you can make the proper
arrangements with your tenants and with the folks living at the property okay so
that's something that's super super important many times you're gonna have
to move plumbing and electrical infrastructure it's gonna be in the way
and that's are going to be affected some tenants may have to move out please keep
in mind that this construction work is extremely disruptive it's disruptive
with the noise it's disruptive with the level of services right so you may have
to cut the water off you may have to disconnect the sewer line if it's in the
way from the a lot of these soft story buildings have sewer lines that are
hanging underneath the structure which are above the cards in the parking area
and they have to be moved or they have to be disconnect
while you're doing work in that section so it's really really important that you
work with your contractor to plan out the days and the activities to be
completed on a given day okay so that's super super important don't
procrastinate get your plans done and remember click the link below we have a
ton of blog articles about software retrofitting you may find it interesting
get share comment below I'd like to really know what your thoughts are do
you like the video if you hate this video what do you want to hear what
information do you want regarding soft stored retrofit in Los Angeles and Santa Monica
My name is Alex Rodriguez with Bay Cities Construction reminding you
You Do Not Need a Contractor, You Need a Team of Pros!