You recently ran a story in "Ask the Engineer" about balcony repairs. Our building (132 units) just went through a 3 year rehabilitiation of our balconies, facade and garage deck. A previous board had installed the aluminum cladding over the balcony curbs and this was a big mistake and did nothing to solve the problem.
When our engineers, Lawless & Mangione began their survey, the removal of the cladding showed serious deterioration of the concrete curbs and aluminum posts. The building, a 1960 brick structure had the aluminum posts set in steel sleeves in the concrete curbs. The water got in, the sleeves rusted and blew out the curbs as exemplified by radial cracks from each of the posts. Working with L&M, our contractor, AM&G Waterproofing suggested a better repair.
We brought the curbs up to code height by installing new railings and glass and leveling the curbs. The posts were welded to square alumimum plates. Each plate took 4 stainless threaded rods that were screwed and epoxied into place so that no water could enter and eliminated the rust problem.
We used a Decothane coating on all the curbs and balcony surfaces after all were checked for proper pitch. Boards should understand while this material is not officially toxic (see the Material Safety Data Sheet) it created a serious odor problem that caused several shareholders to have to vacate their apartments while the material was applied. Keeping the windows closed and not running A/C units created great unhappiness but it eventually came to an end.
We were midway through the balcony repairs when a co-op on the West side experienced an accident with a deficient railing causing the DOB to shut all balconies subject to inspection. We were glad we were ahead of the curve and had repair prices set as part of our contract.
We have established new house rules about no carpeting and the use of floating wood floors on the balconies. As the story pointed out, the elimination of the porous surface does increase the ponding somewhat, but our standard requires the water to be gone in 24 hours, partly through drainage and partly through evaporation.