A small apartment building near my house is being renovated and they’ve removed all the windows and doors and covered them with plywood. Presumably there wasn’t a problem with EVERY window, so why take them all out and board them up? I imagine they were intending to replace them, but why take them out as the very first step in the reno?
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Windows are not really salvaged unless it is a historic property. if you are upgrading everything it makes sense to do 100% of the windows. There may even be tax incentives to do so because they are more efficient. Also for the owner, having a consistent window system throughout makes maintenance easier.
Good chance it’s part of the demo phase of the project. Big jobs will often sub out a demolition contractor to prep the site for the builders to come in and do thier thing.
There are a few construction salvage companies in my area. If you’re doing a demo of a house they’ll buy items in good condition. Doors, windows, sinks etc. They resell it to people doing small repairs on their homes but can’t afford brand new full priced items.
One reason I know of and have witnessed is that the work inside can lead to a sudden pressure change and that can blow out the windows. Happened to a building in a town near me. People say it’s because the building is haunted.
When a property, commercial or residential, is being renovated it can be a target for theft, vandalism and temporary housing for the homeless. While there’s safety factors that play into windows being boarded up, it’s more about protecting the investment.
Safety, accidents can happen more easily if the glass is still there, not to mention people breaking the glass just for “fun” and also it’s easier to break in with glass
Did you not spend your childhood wandering the streets of a decaying urban area throwing rocks into empty windows?
prevents homeless ppl from breaking in trough the window to sleep inside.
bad for several reasons.
1 – ppl living tax-free on someone else’s propety
2 – risk of them taking over the propety due to squatters rights
3 – some buildings are in danger of collapse, people walking inside could get pinned down under the rubble and die
It’s actually got a name and it’s called “the broken window effect”. When people notice an unoccupied building it doesn’t take long before some hoon throws a stone through one window. When one window is broken others follow suit and soon there are no window panes left intact. The term “broken window effect” is commonly used nowadays to describe a whole lot of cause and effect situations completely unrelated to windows.
The windows are removed and boarded up coz it’s much simpler in the building schedule to do all the teardowns in one lot from the crew that does all that, get them off site and get the various installation crews in.
If you’ve ever worked with contractors, you’ll know that they will absolutely never do anything more than what’s said exactly on the contract. That means you should, at all times, keep the necessary number of people on site to the minimum and keep them separated if possible. That makes it easier for everyone to manage risk and responsibility coz whatever happens, you can just tell the site supervisor “it was good when we were done here, you were here and we sent you guys photos”.
For the situation with old windows being left in, the story would probably be that they would be broken by just about anyone, could be scaffolding, joinery, electricians etc. And when that happens it becomes a responsibility of who’s cleaning up or who’s fault it is. Then whoever was unlucky enough to have broken the window would shift the blame on the main contractor for leaving the windows in, which tbh it IS their fault for being cheap pricks if they didn’t do the appropriate temporary/removal works to get the site ready for installation.
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