This is another reason why EEE inspections are necessary!
At William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC, we take balcony inspections very seriously as life safety is paramount! Don’t wait until an accident happens, even though no one died in this accident, we’ll bet good money that one or both victims of this railing failure will bring a lawsuit against the building owner. A good inspector likely would have flagged the railing as being unsafe.
Here at William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC we have found many structural deficiencies over the years on EEEs we have inspected. We have had to post notices informing residents that the balconies were off limits until repairs were made.
When decks fail structural inspections, they need to be closed from use until repairs are made.
“Two boston College students were injured when a deck railing collapsed at an off-campus party in brighton, officials confirmed Monday.
City inspectors told bc that the railing collapse was “caused by a structural failure involving deteriorated wood,” Dunn added.
Witnesses said the two people who were injured were holding drinks and talking when they leaned against the railing, near the point where it connected to the stairway. “Without warning, a section of the railing, estimated to be approximately six to eight feet in length, suddenly broke away,” causing them to fall onto the paved driveway below, police said.
Police said the railing and portions of the deck “appeared to be in poor condition.”
“The nails securing the railing to the deck structure were noticeably short and heavily corroded,” the report said. “Additionally, the wood appeared to be deteriorated and rotten in several areas, although it had been covered with paint, which may have concealed the extent of the damage. one person was apparently seriously injured as they were taken to the hospital with an advanced life support ambulance.
Get your balconies stairs and walkways in compliance with SB326/SB 721 now before an accident happens and lawsuits are filed.
Call the Deck Inspection Specialists at William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC and get started with a free quote for your inspection. Call Bill Leys the Deck Expert at 805-801-2380 today.
Bill Leys performing quality assurance inspections at Stanford Hospital
The answer in short is no, all inspection companies are not the same. Here is an explanation on why inspection companies are not at all equal in experience, ethics and in following the balcony bill requirements.
The SB 326 balcony inspection bill failed to ban inspectors from owning construction companies and failed to ban inspectors who own waterproofing and construction companies from bidding on jobs they inspected, so unscrupulous individuals are popping up to take advantage of unsuspecting and unknowledgeable consumers.
Without a doubt, during your Google search you are bound to come across deck inspection companies advertising on the world wide web which are run by individuals who opened a deck inspection company to take unfair advantage of HOAs despite their contractors licenses having complaint disclosures listed on their license for such offenses such as failing to complete work for the price quoted in their contract, taking a deposit in excess of $1,000, hiring unlicensed sub contractors and departing from trade standards.
We personally know of one deck inspector/deck inspection company who is under active investigation by the Board of Engineers for practicing engineering without an engineering license. That investigation was opened in July 2025 and remains active today.
Since the balcony bills became law, many companies cropped up to perform balcony inspections. There were also many legacy companies that started doing deck inspections as well. The main difference between the two seems to be that the legacy consulting firms continued to provide just inspections and consulting, and the new firms were compromised of contractors who saw easy marks and offered “all in one” services in an effort to squeeze out any competition from bidding on their projects. This has led to serious issues where we’ve personally seen highly unethical companies preying on HOAs. We know of a number of HOAs that have been seriously financially damaged because of dubious unethical practices used by these firms.
Of course, there are also inspection firms like ourselves here at William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC who only seeks to assist you in meeting your legal obligations ethically and in strict compliance with the balcony bill. The problem lies in distinguishing companies like ourselves and unethical inspection firms owned by contractors that are preying on HOAs.
At William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC, we can help with you making that distinction. We do this by guaranteeing in writing that our inspectors are properly licensed engineers who possess the required expertise and have extensive experience to meet your inspection needs. You would be wise to stay away from so-called inspectors who have complaint disclosures against their contractors license. A good idea is to seek referrals or recommendations from others to help weed out these unethical morally corrupt unqualified inspectors.
HOAs can protect themselves from the unethical inspection companies in the California balcony inspection market by asking questions that are answered in writing such as:
1. Who is the architect or engineer of record that will be signing our report? Hint-This is important information to know and once you have this information you’ll want to look up the engineer or architects license to ensure they have no complaint disclosures against their license.
2. Will the architect or engineer of record or one of their direct employees who is also licensed as an engineer or architect be performing the inspection? Hint- if the answer is no, our recommendation is do not hire that firm. If the engineer or architect is not physically present, that means they are going to robo-sign your report.
3. Are you a licensed contractor or do you work for a licensed contractor that works on HOAs? Hint- if the answer is yes you need to decide if you want a contractor to do your inspection. If you decide to go ahead, you must ensure that they know your HOA will not entertain any bids for repairs from them and that you want the contract to commission a clause that they will not provide a bid for any repairs.
Other ways HOAs can protect themselves from unethical inspection companies is by refusing to allow companies to lower their price if they aren’t the most responsible bid; this is unethical, bids provided should be the companies best most competitive price. If a firm bids $10,000 and a competitor bids $9,500, and the firm that bid $10,000 now says we can beat that price by 20% it suggests they are unethical.
This ad by an inspection company is at the least unethical, suggests bad faith pricing and undermines competitive sealed bid integrity.
William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC is committed to being honest, transparent and competitive with our HOA clients. We hope the information provided above helps our clients understand the risks of hiring the wrong inspection company.
We appreciate the outreach from so many people around the state who are appreciative of what we’re doing here at William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC!
If you don’t trust your balcony inspection report, if your balcony inspection company is pressuring you to take out special assessments, if your balcony inspection company also does repairs, you need to reach out to us today to help you defend against unethical immoral tactics designed to separate your HOA from its money. We perform second opinion inspections that can help an HOA determining if they got a good report or not.
Call today, I answer the phone personally! Bill Leys 805-801-2380
Condominiums with EEEs and are turning 6 years old will need to do inspections.
In all of the rush to get older condominiums in compliance with SB 326, what’s been forgotten is the section in SB 326 that requires condominiums that are turning 6 years old to do an inspection.
Watch our video instead here-
Closed caption for your convenience
That’s right, when your condominium turns 6 years old from the date of issuance of the certificate of occupancy, the board of directors will need to commission a SB326 inspection. We’ve found that many management companies aren’t paying attention to this requirement or don’t know about it.
HOA managers will need to figure out their HOA/Condo clients buildings age and get them bids for balcony inspections as they turn six years old. Reserve study companies will need to incorporate into the reserve study the anticipated costs for their SB326 inspection ASAP so that the association can set aside cash for their inspection costs.
If your HOA is turning 6 years old from the date of issuance of the certificate of occupancy, reach out for a bid on doing your first SB-326 inspection. We’ll lead you through the inspection process and get you in compliance fast with our proven inspection methods.
Given that the association is fairly new and hopefully you have been doing your maintenance, the only inspection that should be necessary on newer newer buildings is a stage 1 visual inspection.
We check off all the boxes for our clients! No conflicts of interest, a structural engineer inspects the EEEs, and fast report turn around!
January 1st is almost upon us and every year in California we see new laws come into effect on the first of the year and this year is no different.
You can watch our video here if you prefer
Deck Expert Bill Leys Discusses SB 410 & How It Effects HOAs & Deck Inspection Firms Reports
Notably for HOAs and balcony inspection companies SB 410 will take effect on January 1st and impose certain requirements on HOAs and on balcony inspection companies.
For HOA Boards of Directors, you are affected in several ways; the first being that SB326 reports are now considered to be HOA records, which means an owner can request and review them at any time. Secondly, reports cannot be withheld or redacted and third sellers of a common interest development property now must provide buyers with the most recent SB326 inspection report.
In regards to inspection companies, their reports must include as of January 1st, the date of the inspection, the total number of units in the community. How many exterior elevated elements there are? And I think it would be a good idea to break down how many of each type there are IE stairs versus balcones versus walkways. How many units have exterior elevated elements? How many exterior elevated elements were inspected and whether any safety concerns were identified.
Our engineering partner is already in compliance with these requirements and so we are ready to forge ahead and set the bar with our superior inspections and inspection reports.
Lastly But probably the most important part of sb410 is the requirement for HOAs to have an engineer issue a final report after repairs are made to life safety issues. This final report is needed to be able to enable buyers of property obtain mortgages and sellers of properties to be able to sell without undue delay. Personally, I expect that we will see legal claims brought against HOAs that fail to obtain final inspection reports and unnecessarily delay there homeowners to be able to close a sale.
As always, this is not legal advice. Please obtain the advice of your HOA attorney related to SB 410 sb326 and any other bills that may affect common interest developments related to balcony inspections.
Please contact us for a quote on a final inspection to be able to close out your documents related to your 326 inspections.
I keep seeing some firms offering 20% off a competitors lower price to steal the deck inspection job away.
That should not inspire confidence in their capabilities as inspectors, in fact it should cause your board concern.
We allow ample time to perform the on-site balcony inspections, giving ourselves the ability to really stop and review EEEs that raise our suspicions that something maybe ain’t right as we say in these parts lol. This method has proven to us over and over that careful Inspections take time and by taking our time, we often find hidden problems that a cursory inspection would miss.
Your balcony inspection is not something you should take lightly; there’s a lot of liability and if something goes awry, selecting the wrong deck inspector company with a contract that heavily favors them with clauses that excludes them for their errors and omissions will cause your HOA to assume liability.
I’ve heard of one company that has a forty page contract; ours is nine for comparison. A forty page contract sounds like a nightmare that no average consumer can reasonably understand in my opinion.
Don’t rush to the conclusion that all balcony inspection companies are the same; they aren’t. Let us show you why we are setting the bar in performing #SB326 inspections in Southern California. Reach out for a free proposal and a conversation on how we approach this critical inspection with you.
Watch this quick video about using fire pits, turkey fryers and grills on combustible decks… To ruin the plot line, do not use turkey, fryers, fire pits or grills on any decks.
Please be safe this Thanksgiving holiday and don’t grill, use a fire pit or fry the turkey on your deck!
We’re pleased to announce that we were awarded the contract to perform a SB 326 inspection for a condominium complex on Pacific Street in Santa Monica. The three story building with decks stairs and walkways requiring inspection received several bids from competitors.
The Board after reviewing the bids and each firms credentials, selected our bid over the others, citing that our bid included a guarantee that our engineer will personally inspect the EEEs, that we don’t perform repairs and that our inspection team’s bonafides gave them the confidence in awarding the job to William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC.
These walkways and stairs are EEEs as defined in SB 326 and will be inspected by the best inspection team in the industry.
Of course it might also have helped that the Associations Board has an engineer serving as president and recognized that qualifications matter. Our engineer is an award winning structural engineer with years of experience doing structural inspections.
Don’t leave your critical inspections to the lowest priced inspection company, there’s too much risk in thinking all inspectors are the same. They are not.
Our team has a waterproofing expert with over 20 years of experience in waterproofing and inspections. We guarantee in writing that an engineer will perform the inspection personally and that we don’t bid on any repairs as it’s a conflict of interest. Call today and ask for Bill Leys 805-801-2380.
We aren’t the biggest inspection company, but we are rated highly by our clients and peers as being one of the most diligent.
Many companies are offering deals that have hidden motives behind them. Before buying, you need to know what it’s really going to end up costing your HOA.
William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC was recently contacted by a member of an HOA in Ventura County where that member had learned that his association’s Board of Directors were considering passing a special assessment in the range of 2 million dollars for repairs to balconies and stairs.
Information we got from the owner was that a large nationwide HOA reconstruction firm told the HOA that they had 13 emergency repairs and 300+ non emergency repairs to do and the budget was apx 2 million dollars for this work.
The resident also learned that this nationwide HOA reconstruction firm had waived the $41,000+/- Stage 1 inspection fee provided they were given the repair work. We believe that to be highly unethical and so does that owner. We provided a letter of opinion that the association could self finance the non emergency repairs over a period of several years, taking on a couple buildings at a time to make repairs.
We’re also seeing companies now advertising “free inspections” and “20% off” specials. With all of these offers, there is always fine print, and fine print never benefits the consumer. If you’re going to buy into these offers, make sure your legal counsel is protecting your interests by reviewing their contract before you sign.
One thing these companies have in common is that they are larger firms with a lot of overhead and with the slowdown of inspection requests coming in they need to churn business. Due to the other services that we offer, we are staying busy with work that they don’t offer such as construction monitoring and building envelope inspections.
At William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC, we provide upfront honest bids on SB326 inspections. We strictly follow SB 326 requirements by guaranteeing that an engineer is physically present at the inspection and inspecting the structural elements. We have competitive prices that are straightforward without fine print in our contract. We have a waterproofing expert who writes the waterproofing report which is then appended to the engineers sealed and signed report.
Our strict ethical standards demand that we only inspect and report for the benefit of our clients, not ourselves. We believe that inspectors should not be bidding on repairs.
Reach out today for a discussion on how we can assist you with your balcony inspection requirements. Call us at 805-801-2380
Download our free inspection certificate and ask every inspection company you are considering hiring to sign it. This will rapidly separate the legitimate inspection companies to the top when the contractors who also inspect don’t want to sign it.
SB 326 Deck Inspection Specialists * Building Waterproofing Consultants * Construction Defect Investigations By Bill Leys The Deck Expert 