After last week’s webinar on selecting Reserve components (click here for the recording), one attendee asked why they often see many “painting” components… one for stucco, one for wood trim, one for the ironwork around the pool, one for balcony railings, etc.
The answer is that they are separate projects. Due to daily exposure to sprinklers, ground-mounted ironwork often requires painting twice as often as ironwork up above the ground. Thus because they have two different Useful Life expectations, they need to be listed separately. Wood trim paint often has about half the life expectancy of stucco surfaces, so for the same reason we may have a wood trim repaint project scheduled every five years, while the stucco gets painted every 10 years.
We cycle the projects logically, to take advantage of cost efficiencies. So every-other time the pool perimeter ironwork is painted, the balcony railings are painted. And of course that is a good time to paint the stucco, which means that is a good time to paint the wood trim also. So as much as possible surfaces actually get painted at the same time. Where assets need to be painted more frequently, those assets need to be identified as their own separate Reserve Component. In the case of the wood trim painting example, every-other time it is painted, it is painted all by itself (no stucco). But hopefully in that same trip the painter can paint the pool perimeter ironwork!
Plan ahead, and plan so that projects get done, wisely, and cost-effectively. That often means different components for different projects.