March 12th was the deadline set by the City of Airdrie for owners/occupants of an apartment complex that experienced two carbon monoxide leaks within one week of each other to get their boiler units checked and serviced.

The city's Team Lead for Building Inspections, Pertti Harkonen says 120 units of the Willowbrook Apartment Complex, where a young boy died in the first leak, had to be inspected.  "We've received 114 responses back.  We're waiting for six more responses which we're currently pursuing to see possibly if they're on vacation or they didn't receive the original notice." 

Harkonen says that inspectors found a number of units that were faulty.  "We had 11 boiler units turned off because of different issues that may have come about and 10 permits have been pulled on those 11 boilers so far.  Obviously, they were turned off because there was some form of risk there to the occupants and possibly the building so they will have to be repaired or replaced depending on if it was the actual exhaust system or ventilation system or the actual boiler unit that was flawed or needed repairing."

Harkonen says the minute a permit is pulled, under the Safety Codes Act and provincial legislation the city must follow up to make sure that the boilers that are in need of service are installed to CSA Standards and manufacturers specifications.  He says since the boiler units are now turned off and can't be turned back on until they are serviced, those condo units won't have any heat or hot water until they are properly serviced.  Harkonen says they have already had a couple which have called in for another inspection.

Harkonen says the Willowbrook complex is the only one of the city's larger condo or apartment buildings which has individual boiler units that supply heat and water.  Other complexes have a single boiler system in the basement that provides heat and hot water from one source or they have hot water tanks in the apartment units and the boiler system provides heat for the unit.  He says the risk is reduced with those types of units.

"There's not even anywhere close to the risk when you talk about a single boiler system because, if that fails, then the whole system is down for the whole building so they would be repaired in one shot."

The owner of the plumbing company that did many of the inspections on the boilers is calling on the provincial government to make inspections, by certified personnel, mandatory on the types of boilers in the Willowbrook complex.

Harkonen says the City of Airdrie couldn't offer an opinion on that saying, "We're confident in provincial legislation: the safety codes act, the building codes, the electrical codes, the plumbing codes and the gas codes, are established by the province and follow a national code guideline.  We're confident that they have those in place for a reason, for the ultimate safety of people.  If the province chose that they were going to make changes to those, of course, we would support the provincial change, but we're not in a position to make recommendations to the province to make changes to anything." 

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