Siding Project: Cladding a 36-Building Condo on the Water
Aug. 20, 2014 — New products can be scary if you or your professionals have never used them before. A new product requires more attention to make sure a job gets done correctly. "It's a learning process, not just for us, but for the product developers," says Michael Popeck, senior project manager with the Falcon Group. And so the 36-building, 445-unit Port Imperial Condominium, in West New York, N.J., is about to be the guinea pig for Royal Building Products' Celect, a cellular-PVC interlocking siding that has never before been used on a project this size.
The End of Vinyl
While the product has been available for a few years, Popeck notes, "They're still facing new scenarios and this is a benchmark product on a number of fronts. It's kind of a learning curve."
The condo certainly needed help: The 14-year-old complex had been covered in brick and traditional vinyl siding and both had deteriorated badly."The property is right on the water overlooking Manhattan, so there were problems," says Popeck, the engineer for the project. "We basically have to tear everything down and start from scratch."The five-member board was intrigued by what it heard about Celect. "The salespeople for this particular product had been trying to break into the market, and putting out sales pitches to engineering firms that deal with large communities," says board president Linda Kobetitsch. "We could have chosen vinyl siding or cement, but we chose this product."
"Celection" Process
Because of the novelty of the product, Celect helped out in the early stages of installation. "We put the project out to bid to five different contractors, and none of them had worked with this material before," Kobetitsch says. "We chose National Contractors, and they took a one-day seminar on how to install the product. Then installation experts from Celect came to oversee the work for the first week and answer any questions.
"The scale and variety of buildings in the condo association should make for a fruitful testing ground as work continues. Explains Popeck, "It's not just 36 buildings of the same type, but multiple different building types and styles. The contractors and us — as far as we're concerned as designers and managers — keep coming to different scenarios and scratching our heads for a little while. You'll work with 10 buildings of one style and eight of another, so it's a process."
Siding work started in June, and Popeck estimates that the work is a little bit over a third done. The project is expected to be complete in December, at a cost of $4.2 million, paid from funds sourced by transition litigation.
Project Start Date: June 2014
Estimated End Date: December 2014
PROJECT
● Replace vinyl siding across 36 buildings
BUDGET
$4.2 million
PARTICIPANTS
Linda Kobetitsch, board president
Michael Popeck, senior project manager, The Falcon Group
National Contractors
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Photo by Jason Carpenter. Click to enlarge.