Kaminskiy Care and Repair prices and fixes every finding in your SB 721 report, files the permit with the City of Irvine and documents the close-out. No report yet? Our sister company, Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, performs the inspection.
BBBAccredited BusinessKaminskiy Care and Repair (CSLB #1106209) repairs the exterior elevated elements that California's balcony law, SB 721 (Health and Safety Code 17973), requires Irvine apartment owners to inspect and then fix: the wood-framed balconies, decks, open walkways and exterior stairs of the garden apartments in Woodbridge and Westpark, the rental belt around UCI and the podium buildings of the Irvine Business Complex. Send us the report, whoever wrote it, and we price each finding on its own line, file the permit with the City of Irvine inside the 120 days the statute allows, rebuild the joists and ledgers, redo the coatings and flashing, re-set the guardrails and hand you the close-out letter with photos. If the building has no report yet, our sister company Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, a B general building contractor since 2008 (CSLB #922807), performs the inspection under its own contract with you and signs the report inside 45 days. A condominium association under SB 326 brings us the engineer's report and we do the work. Our Orange County office is in Irvine, on Michelson Drive.
Garden apartments, podium buildings, condo associations.
For an Irvine apartment owner the statute comes down to three obligations: a qualified inspection of every wood-supported balcony, deck, walkway and stair that stands more than six feet off the ground, a written report that stays in the building's file for two inspection cycles, and repairs finished inside the deadlines the report starts. The third one is ours. Kaminskiy Care and Repair reads the report, writes a price per finding, files the permit with the City of Irvine, rebuilds what the inspector opened up, recoats the walking surfaces edge to edge, re-sets the guardrails and documents every item for the close-out inspection. For the first obligation, our sister company Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling holds the license class and the years the law asks of an inspecting contractor.
AFTERBEFORE
Rotted Joists & Ledgers
Deck Coatings & Flashing
Guardrails & Handrails
Open Walkways & Stairs
Immediate-Threat Shoring
The Permit at Civic Center Plaza
Close-out & RecordsStill Need the Inspection?Each of these is a call our Irvine office takes every week. A report with findings gets a written price per item and a permit plan before the first 120 days run down, an immediate threat is shored before anything else, and a building with no report yet gets the inspection booked with our sister company.
Email or text the inspection report with the address. No report yet? Send the street and the unit count and we arrange the inspection with Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling.
We walk the building against the findings, write a price per line, and file the permit with the City of Irvine inside 120 days. Anything tagged an immediate threat is closed and shored first.
Joists, ledgers, coatings and guardrails rebuilt inside the permit window, photographed item by item, the permit finaled and the close-out letter in your file.
Every job is backed in writing by our workmanship warranty and done by a Kaminskiy-certified, background checked technician.
An Irvine report tends to repeat a few phrases: elevated moisture at the ledger, deterioration at the joist ends, membrane worn through at the threshold, guardrail post base not sound. Each one maps to a repair we price every week. On a first-village walk-up the ledger and the joist ends sit behind a stucco soffit, so the finding usually came from a moisture meter or an opened section, and the repair starts by opening the rest. The service-life column matters as much as the findings: an element given two or three years is the one to budget first.
A rental building with three or more units, which is most of the garden apartments and podium buildings in Irvine, is under SB 721: first inspection due January 1, 2026, then every six years. A condominium project with three or more units is under SB 326 (Civil Code 5551) instead: due January 1, 2025, then every nine years, with the inspection itself reserved for a licensed structural or civil engineer or an architect. Woodbridge, University Park, Westpark and the Great Park villages hold both kinds of building, often across the street from each other.
The report starts the first one: the owner applies to the City of Irvine for the repair permit within 120 days. The permit starts the second: the repairs are complete within 120 days of its issue. An element tagged an immediate threat skips the queue, is closed off at once and is reported to the City's Community Development Department within 15 days. Let the repairs run 180 days late and the inspector must notify the City; 30 days after that notice the daily penalty begins.
A single soft joist end or a rotted post base is cut back to sound wood and sistered or replaced. Rot that runs the length of the ledger, or through most of the joists, means the balcony comes off and is framed again. Either way the waterproofing is redone edge to edge, because a patched membrane on an Irvine deck is where the next leak starts, and the close-out inspection expects a complete system.
Irvine is a planned city, and its apartment stock came in waves: the stucco garden apartments and stacked flats of the first villages in the 1970s and 1980s, the student and workforce rentals around the University of California campus, and the podium and wrap buildings of the last two decades in the Irvine Business Complex and the Great Park villages. A handful of very large owners hold whole communities, and nearly every condominium answers to an association. Which wave your building belongs to decides what the report finds and what the repair looks like.
Two- and three-story wood-frame stucco buildings set around courtyards, greenbelts and the Woodbridge lakes, with open stairs, exterior walkways and cantilevered balconies now forty to fifty years old. The water that does the damage here is rarely rain. Forty years of landscape irrigation has soaked stair bases, post bottoms and walkway edges, and the ledger behind the stucco has quietly gone soft where the balcony meets the wall. The usual finding is rot at the joist ends and the ledger; the usual repair is new joist ends, a new ledger and flashing, a fresh membrane and guardrails re-set into solid wood. Many of these streets are condominium associations under SB 326, and we repair from the engineer's report.
The densest rentals in the city serve the University of California campus, and they turn over every summer. That means the exterior stairs and corridor walkways carry more feet than any balcony, the handrails loosen first, and the coating on a landing wears through to the plywood before anyone reports it. The marine layer rolls in here most mornings from May through July and the afternoon breeze dries it, so coatings crack along the seams and the stair stringers rot at the bottom. The inspection on these buildings is planned around the academic calendar and tenant access, and an owner with several communities gets one scope for all of them.
Wood-frame floors over concrete podiums, wrap buildings around parking structures and stacked flats with balconies on a liquid-applied membrane. The framing is young, so the failures are at the details: a door threshold flashed short, a sealant joint the Santa Ana winds have opened, a scupper that ponds water against the stucco. A building whose permit was issued on or after January 1, 2019 runs on its own clock, an inspection within six years of its certificate of occupancy, and a good share of the Great Park and Business Complex stock falls inside that window. The condominium flats here are under SB 326; the rental buildings are under SB 721.
Count the units and look at the deed. A building with three or more rental units is under SB 721 (Health and Safety Code 17973): the first inspection was due January 1, 2026 and it repeats every six years. A condominium project with three or more units is under SB 326 (Civil Code 5551): due January 1, 2025, every nine years, and inspected by a licensed structural or civil engineer or an architect. A duplex is under neither law, though the rot does not read the statute. Own an apartment community that was once a condominium map, or the other way round, and the answer turns on how the units are held today; send us the address and we settle it on the call.
Every finding is opened up first. Rot is cut back to clean wood and the joist end, ledger or stringer is sistered or replaced with treated lumber, new hangers and new flashing. The walking surface is stripped and recoated edge to edge, re-sloped where it ponded, and flashed again at the door and the wall; a patch on an Irvine deck is the next leak. Guardrail posts are re-set into the new framing or replaced at code height. Every item is photographed before, during and after, and the photos go into the close-out letter.
Health and Safety Code 17973 requires the repairs to be made by a qualified and licensed contractor, following the inspector's recommendations, the Building Standards Code and the City's rules; in Irvine that is Kaminskiy Care and Repair (CSLB #1106209), working from any licensed inspector's report. The inspection itself is reserved for four kinds of professional: a licensed architect, a licensed civil or structural engineer, a general contractor holding an A, B or C-5 license with at least five years as a license holder constructing multistory wood-frame buildings, or a certified building inspector. Our sister company Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, a B general building contractor since 2008 (CSLB #922807), is the inspecting contractor, under its own contract with you.
Repairs are priced per finding, from the report, each on its own line: a sistered joist end is one line, a re-sloped and recoated walkway is another, a rebuilt cantilever with a new guardrail is a larger one. You see every line before any work is booked, and you may take the list to another contractor if you prefer. The inspection, when the building still needs one, is one price from Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, set by the number of elements and element types and confirmed in writing before it is scheduled.
We read the findings and the service-life column, confirm which law applies and book the site walk. No report yet? We arrange the inspection with our sister company and pick up from here when it is signed.
Tenants are notified. Each finding is checked at the building, enclosed framing is metered or opened at a soffit, and the scope is written line by line with a price on each.
The application goes to the City of Irvine as a standard plan-check permit with the report and the repair detail attached, drawings where a rebuild needs them, and shoring first wherever an element is an immediate threat.
The work inside the permit window, photos of every item, the City's final inspection, and a close-out letter a lender, a buyer or a reserve study can read without calling us.
Health and Safety Code 17973(a) lists the qualified inspectors: a licensed architect, a licensed civil or structural engineer, a general contractor holding an A, B or C-5 license with five years' experience as a license holder in multistory wood-frame construction, or a certified building inspector. Subdivision (g) requires the repairs to be made by a qualified and licensed contractor, following the inspector's recommendations, the Building Standards Code and the City's rules; nothing in the section stops the inspecting company's group from doing them. The owner contracts with the inspecting company directly, as the statute requires. In Irvine that is Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling for the inspection and the report, with the repairs contracted separately to Kaminskiy Care and Repair, so the report stands on its own if you take it elsewhere.
The local enforcement agency is the City of Irvine's Community Development Department, Building and Safety Division, at 1 Civic Center Plaza. The City's own list of work that needs no permit stops at platforms and walks not more than 30 inches above grade, and an SB 721 element is by definition more than six feet up, so a balcony, stair or walkway repair takes a building permit. Irvine's online no-plan-check permit list (water heaters, HVAC changeouts, re-roofs, minor residential work) does not name balcony repairs, so the repair is filed as a standard plan-check permit with the inspector's report and the repair detail attached; a rebuilt cantilever or a changed guardrail needs drawings. Applications filed since January 1, 2026 build to the 2025 California Building Standards Code with Irvine's amendments. The City publishes no separate SB 721 page or portal; the report stays in the owner's records, and an immediate threat is reported to Building and Safety within 15 days.
The first inspection was due January 1, 2026 (AB 2579 moved it back a year from January 1, 2025) and it repeats every six years, with a building permitted on or after January 1, 2019 inspected within six years of its certificate of occupancy. After a report, the permit application is due within 120 days and the repairs within 120 days of the permit. If the repairs are still open 180 days after the report, the inspector notifies the City, and 30 days after that notice a civil penalty of one hundred to five hundred dollars per day runs until the work is done, with a building safety lien available to the City behind it. The report is kept for two inspection cycles and disclosed to a buyer when the building sells.
Based in Irvine, on Michelson Drive. The Orange County crew starts its day on Michelson Drive by the 405, minutes from the Business Complex, Woodbridge and the campus rentals, so a report with findings gets a site walk fast. Call 714-844-1582, text a photo of the report or the balcony, or send the form. Since 2023 the crew has made 192 repair visits to 130 Irvine homes.
Can't find your answer? Call 714-844-1582 and ask us anything.
Call 714-844-1582Send it to us with the address. We walk the building against the findings, write a price per line, and file the permit with the City of Irvine inside the 120 days the statute allows; the repairs then run inside 120 days of the permit. An element tagged an immediate threat is closed and shored first. You get photos of every item, the finaled permit and a close-out letter for the file.
Yes. The statute asks that the repairs follow the inspector's recommendations and be done by a qualified and licensed contractor; it does not care who holds the pen on the report. Most of the reports we work from in Irvine came from engineers, architects and inspection firms we have never met.
Each finding is priced on its own line from the report: a sistered joist end is one line, a re-sloped and recoated walkway is another, a rebuilt cantilever with a new guardrail is a larger one. You see every line before any work is booked. Call 714-844-1582 with the report and the address and the written scope follows the site walk.
Our sister company does: Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling, a B general building contractor since 2008 (CSLB #922807), counts every element type, inspects at least 15 percent of each and signs the report with photos inside 45 days, under its own contract with you, as the law requires. Kaminskiy Care and Repair (CSLB #1106209) then prices and completes the repairs. Book it through our Irvine office at 714-844-1582.
Two companies in one group do it: Kaminskiy Design & Remodeling performs the inspection and signs the report; Kaminskiy Care and Repair contracts the repairs separately. The statute requires the repairs to be done by a qualified and licensed contractor to the inspector's recommendations and the Building Standards Code; it does not bar the inspector's group from being that contractor. Every finding in our report carries a photo and a description, so the report is usable on its own, and you are free to bid the repairs to anyone.
Book the inspection now and keep the booking confirmation. The daily penalty in the statute attaches to repairs left undone after a report, not to the inspection date itself, and an owner who can show the City a scheduled inspection is in a far better place than one who is still deciding. If the inspection finds an immediate threat, that element is closed and shored the same visit and reported to the City within 15 days; everything else goes onto the 120-day permit clock.
In a condominium project the association is responsible for the SB 326 inspection and, under most governing documents, for the load-bearing framing and the waterproofing it maintains as common area, with exclusive-use balconies divided as the CC&Rs say. The inspection itself must be performed by a licensed structural or civil engineer or an architect. We take that report and do the repairs, building by building so residents keep their stairs and walkways, and documented for the reserve study.
It is the inspection California requires of the exterior elevated elements on an apartment building with three or more units: balconies, decks, porches, stairways, walkways and entry structures that stand more than six feet above grade and rely substantially on wood for support, together with their railings and waterproofing. A qualified inspector identifies every element type, examines at least 15 percent of each, and signs a written report with photos within 45 days. The first inspection was due January 1, 2026 and it repeats every six years.
Send the address and the report if there is one; if there is not, say so and we arrange the inspection. We call back with a scope and a date. Calling is faster: 714-844-1582.
Every finding repaired, the permit finaled and the file complete, from the Kaminskiy crew based in Irvine. No report yet? Our sister company performs the inspection.
We answer in under three rings, 24/7.No price games. You get a clear written quote before any work begins, backed by our workmanship warranty.
