general updates as as 26/4/14

few matters to update our beloved Vista residents...

1) walkway shade - the 6 walkway shades have get completed on Thursday, so far our residents response is quite encouraging, especially those with little kids & elderly ppl, for these shade will be helpful during rainy days, as now we can see more rains are visiting Penang, and we mentioned in last posting, our bigger concern is the safety, for these shade also provide some covering for our residents from those falling object like gutter, bottles, pots, etc....

2) foreigners' hostel - we have contacted EXCO YB Jagdeep Singh's PA & get the confirmation that the ruling that low medium cost (LMC) & low cost (LC) apartments are not supposed to convert to be foreigners hostel & it also applies to private apartments like us, so for this we have asked the management office to get for us the list of such hostel in Vista, and it have been forwarded to EXCO's office for them to send notice the house owners & take further action if they fail to comply with the ruling.

3) lift upgrade - we have warned the vendor to complete the process of lift upgrade in blk k, for which the electrical & mechanical have been upgraded but the new door, wall & floor still remain outstanding, we told them if they don't get it done in May then we may not be able to advice the state gov't to release full payment to them, and we also will think twice for the future upgrade in blk j lift, perhaps should give other vendor a chance...

4) building repainting - thank God there's some new development concerning this matter, our blk k resident Mr Selva has found out from EXCO that now the state gov't also willing to consider the application for the financial aid for building repainting for private project (in the past they only opened for gov't built & low cost flat), now we are contacting contractors to provide quotations & will present to residents during AGM (end of May or early June) for approval, under this scheme state gov't will contribute 80% of the cost, and 20% by our residents, pls wait for the notice for the AGM.

thanks.

the 6 walkway shades

we are installing 6 walkway shades in vista condo, 3 sets each for blk j & k, for both convenient & safety purposes.

it should be completed by next week, at the moment our residents may notice some metal have been fixed at the both walkway walls behind the lifts & another one lead to the motorbike parking area, some earlier response from residents are encouraging one, most of them said it will provide some coverage during the rain, useful especially for little kids & elderly persons :)

yes it's true that Vista residents will enjoys it's benefits when it's rains, and more importantly, it's abt safety.

we are concern more abt the falling object from high, especially the old drain pipe gutters which are already passed 20 years. Last few years we have seen few gutters fell to the floor, most of them just a short sections, but one time abt 1/3 of the whole gutter fell, another one time abt quarter of it.

we thank God that these incidents didn't cause injury (only once it damaged a MC member's car door with it's window) but we should not take thing for granted, so as now the finance is more ready then we decided to install the walkway shade in those areas which most of our residents need to pass by regularly.

the material the vendor use for the shade is abt double thickness of the usual car park shade, which should be able to withstand the pressure of falling object like bottle or stone, or short section of gutter. It may not be strong enough to block the long section (like half of the gutter) from falling to the ground but it definitely can reduce much of the impact which will cut the risk of the possible injury to the minima.

some may ask why not get the permanent solution for the gutter problem, we did try in the past to ask residents' cooperation to let our gutter vendor to enter their balcony & rooms so that they can to the gutters to tighten the clip which hold the gutters firmly to the walls, but unfortunately not many of them willing to open their doors for the gutter vendor to carry out the jobs, so lastly we thought instead of waiting for them to be ready, perhaps to install the shade is the best option at the moment :P

thanks.

further cost saving & increase revenue actions

after seeing 2 successful project on the cost saving & increase the revenue, namely rental parking area which bring in extra money for abt RM1800 per month & T5/LED lights project which save our management fund for abt RM1200 to RM1400 monthly, this give us more motivation to look into more of this kind of plan so to continue to generate more income for Vista Condo, the extra income will be used for betterment of facilities here & also serve the purpose of keeping the monthly service charge to RM100, trust that by this our residents already know that some of our neighbors have increased their monthly service charge, but thank God for we still manage to keep it at RM100 :)

2 plans we have at the moment....

1) we are now buying 2 recycle bin (660 litre each) to be placed at the ground floor of blk j & k respectively, the bins should be sent in to our place by end of April, for this we would like to invite our Vista residents to donate their recyclable items, such as papers, metal, cans, aluminium, etc, we hope our residents don't mind to go extra miles by placing the mentioned items into the recycle bins which should be not more than 20 meter from the lift lobby :)

we believe with the support of our residents & helps from the office staffs, we should be able to collect another few hundred Ringgit extra income through this project, imagine that if it's 400 per month, then by a year's time we should have 4800, quite a sizable money...

2) another plan we have is to expand the rental parking area, we are now studying the possibility of shifting the swimming pool fencing inward, to build another perhaps 8 to 10 lot, which will bring 400 to 500 extra income per month, if this project goes well, plus the 400 from the recycle project, our finance will in the much better position to bring more improvement to Vista Condo :)

let's pray for the sinking fund too, as now we are now still "doing" something on it.

thanks.

Report on T5 tube cost saving

some pleasant news for our beloved residents....

we have just got the 2nd TNB bills after 100% blk j common light & 80% blk k common light changed to T5, together with 80% of car park & entrance light change to LED light, the whole project cost us abt RM8000, but as we check on the TNB bills, we know that we are on the right track, indeed it's all by God's grace :)

the calculation shows the blk j TNB bill has dropped 20% from the total usage, from average monthly usage of 10500KW drop to 8200KW in these 2 months, or RM1000 as goes by RM0.51 according to new tariff. For blk k TNB bill, it drop from average monthly usage of 4500KW to 4000KW, or RM250, so the total saving is abt RM1250 per month as per Feb & Mar TNB bills, and we are happy to find out that the return of investment (ROI) will take only 7 months to fulfill, so much shorter than the earlier estimation of one & the half year.

the reason why the blk j usage is so much higher than blk k is it also supports all the car park compound lighting, T&G barrier, office & guard house power, entrance spot light, firefighting facility, but honestly we are still trying to find the convincing justification for this huge gap, earlier on we even suspected some irresponsible party may curi current, but as we & the electrician went floor by floor to check, and even checked outside Vista Condo fencing, but found no illegal connection, well, will continue to check until we are satisfied on the situation.

now we still waiting for another 30 set of T5 to be delivered to fix for blk K common lighting, and also the remaining car park light changed into LED type, and trust that it will save even more after all these is done :)

thanks.