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
“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle…”
A recent Insta video posted by One Structural/Balcony 1 reminded me of the lyrics from a 1972 song by Stealers Wheel… And after watching the video several times I wondered why I wasn’t having a stroke over the numerous defects in their work. The video purports to show their expertise in rebuilding a set of stairs and waterproofing them. (The video appears to have been removed from their profile located here https://www.instagram.com/onestructural?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==)
In the video it showed a timeline of rebuilding a set of stairs. As I watched it play out I screenshot a few pics, see below.
Starting with the framing rebuild, we can see water/fungus damaged stair stringers that weren’t replaced, damaged sheathing on the wall that wasn’t replaced and new wood that looks like my 3 year old nephew installed. Next set of defects we see is that although One Structural installed weep screed to the wall, they didn’t install weep screed down the stairs. Weep screed is required for ALL stucco terminations! The stucco is installed down to the deck to wall termination over the flashing. Stucco should terminate 2″ above the transition using weep screed. Next set of defects we see are that One Structural has installed is that they are using FortiFlash Butyl on the stair treads. According to FortiFlash Butyl Instructions, any application to a horizontal surface should not have any mechanical fasteners attached through it! Secondly we’re not aware of any manufacturer of deck waterproofing that specifies using FortiFlash under their system! FortiFlash Butyl Instructions With all the defects covered, these stairs await their eventual failure from improper construction. It may take a decade or more, but eventually defects always show up in our experience.
All in all, this video simply highlights the incompetence of the contractor to correctly rebuild and waterproof these stairs. The video also highlights why hiring William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC as your quality assurance inspector would have protected this poor association from incompetence and wasting their money.
1.) At the framing stage we would have brought the damaged framing and sheathing left in to the Associations attention.
2.) At the stucco installation stage we would have brought the lack of weep screed and improper termination to the Associations attention.
3.) At the stair waterproofing stage we would have brought the incorrect installation of the FortiFlash Butyl to the Associations attention.
Simply put, with a quality assurance inspector on your job, none of these defects would have slipped by. The work would be halted at the framing stage, the association would be able to demand corrections and at each step of the installation of the waterproofing the save thing would happen. Work would be halted, the association could demand corrections and with us as their advocate, they would have gotten the work done correctly.
We don’t like picking on others’ work, but when their work is just one defect after another, our duty to point this out overrules.
The lesson associations should take from this is quality assurance inspections can save headaches, heartaches and stop the built-in defects from continuing. Hiring the right contractor is paramount!
The best contractors aren’t afraid of having quality assurance inspections being done on their jobs, but the worst contractors are.
Give us a call (805-801-2380) or email us (LeysWaterproofingConsultants@gmail.com) to talk to us about quality assurance inspections for your HOA EEE repairs today!
Put William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC on your team today!
We were recently hired to do a follow-up inspection at a condo in the Los Angeles area. The client, an individual homeowner, had serious concerns about the report the association received from Dr Balcony. Their concerns began when the inspection was done, saying that a person showed up, said they weren’t licensed but that “someone” who was a licensed architect would review their photographs and information before signing the report.
We got a copy of the Dr Balcony report and reviewed it before we did our own inspection. (Please note our inspection was not an SB326 inspection.) Many of the photographs in the report were blurry and weren’t marked up to identify a defect that supposedly was in the photograph (we mark up all our photographs to show you exactly what defect we found) and the report was difficult to read. We completely agree with our client, I’ve read more than a few reports from other companies and Dr Balcony’s report is a tough read. Defect codes that are for their internal use confuse readers, information on an EEE are in different places and many photographs are of irrelevant subjects.
An example of that is Dr Balcony inspectors seem to obsess over code issues that SB 326 doesn’t require us to concern ourselves with. (We do check railing heights & railing stiles and note that they may not meet current code, same with stairs, but these aren’t noted as defects, rather we advise that the HOA may wish to address these in the futureand that your insurance company may require upgrading in order to renew a policy).
So after our report review, we inspected one set of decks and a set of stairs and attached landing serving their condo unit. We found damage and other issues that Dr Balcony failed to discover even though it was readily apparent to us.
Before are photos of a few of the issues we found that Dr Balcony failed to identify in their report.
Dr Balcony identified the dry-rot circled above but failed to identify a fungus infection. Dr Balcony failed to identify dry-rot in the joist, failed to identify that the post has improper hardware connecting the post to the joist & failed to identify that the post is improperly supported/connected to the joists. Dr Balcony failed to identify that the rusted railing is perforated and needs immediate repairs.Dr Balcony failed to identify that the waterproof coating is delaminating from the flashing and that there is dry-rot in the joist. They also failed to identify that the deck to wall flashing is missing (not shown in photo). Our comparison chart shows what Dr Balcony missed vs what we found.
The association took one of the cheapest bids they got, believing that it would be competent as they expected and deserve. Instead, they got an incompetent inspector and an architect who robo-signed the report that was written by Dr Balcony. Given that the total price to do the inspection was less than $2,000 to inspect 16 EEEs, we have to wonder what the architect was paid to scribble his signature and stamp the report? The professional signing your report becomes liable for errors in the report on our non legal opinion. Did you know? We guarantee in writing that our structural engineer is personally performing your SB 326 inspection!
All in all, we have to question the competence of the inspection the Association got. If we found all these missed issues on just a few EEEs, what else did Dr Balcony miss? Yes, in the event of an accident where a balcony collapsed that they said was ok, they would have liability, but that’s small consolation to anyone that might be killed or injured.
An inspector’s competence should be the Associations first concern. Ensuring that a structural engineer or architect is present and personally performing the inspection is paramount. At William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC we have extremely competent experienced inspectors doing the inspection. We have years of experience in waterproofing EEEs and our engineer is an award winning structural engineer. The lesson you should take from this is that the cheapest inspector is probably not the most competent inspector!
Give us a call or email us to get a cost on doing a second opinion inspection to verify that your SB 326 inspection was done competently. 805-801-2380 or LeysWaterproofingConsultants@gmail.com
Thorough competent reports by William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC are our hallmark!
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.
Termed controversial by one well known attorney in the HOA industry, Bill pulls no punches when it comes to seeing what’s going on and calling out the grifters that flooded the inspection market. We’ve made multiple complaints to state agencies, pissing off the bad apples, been sued to shut us up by POS pretend deck inspectors who use the bill to sucker HOAs into expensive repairs, we’re going to remain controversial and wear that label as a badge of pride.
Watch our video on our thoughts on CLACs plans to fix SB326. We’ve seen so many issues, from insurance companies denying associations insurance coverage if they have structural issues with their EEEs, to banks denying buyers mortgages on condos with EEE issues to the grifters plaguing the balcony inspection industry using the bill to literally steal from HOAs.
Had enough of the companies that are unethical, devious and sordid? Find out why William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC gives written guarantees that our award winning structural engineer will inspect the EEEs, that we will not bid on any repairs because that’s unethical and why with our experience and professionalism your HOA will be in good hands.
Call today 805-801-2380 and start your SB 326 inspection with William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC.
Our Expertise & Guarantee That Our Structural Engineer Performs the Inspection Stands Out Over Other Firms
We’re happy to announce that we were selected to perform balcony inspections at a mid rise HOA in Signal Hill by the Board of Directors. Our detailed proposal and years of experience gave the Board of Directors the confidence that we were the best choice out of the five firms bidding.
Cantilevered Balcony at A Signal Hill Condo Association
We are so happy to hear strong praise like this as it reinforces our belief that we are one of the best qualified firms in the balcony inspection industry. Our guarantee of no conflicts of interest, our guarantee that a structural engineer personally performs the inspection and that our 20+ years of prior experience in waterproofing as deck contractors is a deciding factor, along with competitive rates for Boards faced with enormous pressure to get in compliance with SB326’s requirements to inspect.
Let us show you why we are one of the best firms in the balcony inspection industry and let us earn your business with our professionalism and expertise. Get in touch today by calling 805-801-2380 and talk to Bill Leys with no obligation.
Great question — SB326 inspections (balcony/deck inspections for multifamily housing in California) are a big deal, and unfortunately, not every company advertising them is legitimate. The biggest red flag consumers should watch for is:
🚩 If the company performing inspections also performs repairs.
Here’s why:
Conflict of interest – The law (SB326/SB721) was designed so that inspections are objective and not influenced by profit motives from repair work. If the same company inspects and repairs, they may be financially motivated to exaggerate problems or recommend unnecessary work.
At William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC we guarantee in writing that we do not have any conflicts of interest.
🚩 Compliance issues – The statute is clear: inspections must be done by a licensed architect, structural engineer, or a qualified building inspector who is not associated with a repair contractor. If someone is offering both, they may not be following the law.
Other red flags to watch for:
🚩No license disclosure (can’t prove they’re an architect, engineer, or building inspector). Who will be inspecting? An engineer or architect, or just some rando’s who may not be qualified in any way shape or form.
At William Leys Waterproofing Consultants LLC we guarantee that a structural engineer that we partner with will perform the physical inspection. Some companies flirt with danger by hiring subcontractors who do the inspection, and then those companies have an engineer robo sign your report.
🚩 Low-ball pricing far below market rates — often a sign they’re using inspections as a “loss leader” to sell repair work.
This is exactly right, and that’s what they are doing. We’ve done second inspections for clients and they were very happy to learn that the repairs the other company said had to be done in an emergency basis was exaggerated.
🚩Vague or incomplete reports — a proper SB326 inspection requires documented findings, photographs, and repair recommendations (if needed).
🚩 High pressure sales tactics — pushing you to sign a repair contract right after the inspection.
👉 Bottom line: Choose an independent, inspection-only professional who has no stake in whether repairs are needed. That independence is what protects you and your HOA from unnecessary costs.
At William Leys Waterproofing Consultants, as our client, we only work in your best interests.
Reach out today to get a quote and see the difference in our professionalism, due diligence and expertise. This is why we’re known as the deck experts.
SB 326 Deck Inspections & Building Envelope / Waterproofing Experts
SB 326 Deck Inspection Specialists * Building Waterproofing Consultants * Construction Defect Investigations By Bill Leys The Deck Expert 