Legal challenges in ensuring regular maintenance and repairs of owner‐occupied apartment blocks
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare different apartment ownership systems and analyze how to enhance the regular maintenance and repair of owner‐occupied apartment buildings. The dwellings themselves are often in fairly good condition, but the common parts (e.g. walls, roofs, stairwells, and technical installations) are often poorly maintained.Design/methodology/approach – Apartment ownership systems in ten European countries (Austria, England, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland) are analyzed, along with Canada, China, Russia, and the USA, and some of the main findings from each country are presented. The material studied is primary legal sources together with the relevant literature.Findings – It seems that there are severe obstacles in the legislation of many countries. Some of these obstacles are: the non‐existence of a proper decision‐making body (e.g. homeowners' association); the wide use of a qualified majority, or even the use of consensu...
Sustainable Retrofits of Apartment Buildings: Developing a Process to Address the Barriers to Adoption
The increase in the number of people living in apartments, combined with recent debate about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has put pressure on managing bodies to adopt sustainable retrofits for common areas in apartment buildings. The literature posits that involving different stakeholders in the process and developing strategies to overcome the barriers to their implementation will increase the likelihood of adoption. As gaps exist in the literature, a mixed method approach using depth interviews and an online survey with apartment owners is used. The findings demonstrate that some stakeholders have different opinions and expectations with respect to adopting sustainable retrofits, with owners corporation (body corporate) committees members and apartment owners who live in the apartment being the most likely to encourage the adoption of such measures. To overcome the three main barriers to sustainable retrofits, namely, practicality, individuality, and responsibility, this paper recommends three steps be adopted. As well as identifying who are the initiators, an online information tool is needed, as well as financial and other incentives.
Study on Electrical Explosion Mechanism and Ignition Characteristics of Copper and Aluminum Powder Under Ignition Solid Propellant
In order to study the characteristic of the electrical explosion of copper and aluminum powders, a multilayer generator was designed, an experimental system was set up, and the parameters of metal powder electrical explosion were measured and analyzed. The results show that the duration of the electrical explosion process increases significantly due to the addition of metal powder. The duration of aluminum powder electrical explosion jet flow is ~86.36 ms due to its self-sustained combustion, which releases a large amount of energy, and a small fraction of aluminum powder particles is not burned. The duration of copper powder electrical explosion jet flow is ~15.84 ms, and most of the copper powder particles are in the solid state. The current pause process is absent; instead, the first discharge process is connected to the second discharge process. The effect of copper powder on the first discharge process is greater than that of aluminum powder. Furthermore, the ignition ability of copper powder electrical explosion to solid propellant is stronger than that of aluminum powder in a closed bomb experiment. These results are indubitably meaningful for the application of metal powder electrical explosion and ignition of solid propellant in an electrothermal chemical gun.