Ground-floor owners help pay to waterproof the lanais above them
Ground-floor owners help pay to waterproof the lanais above them
2026-09-10 · Hawaii · Courts
A Kauai association may charge all 56 owners equally for waterproofing lanai decks on the second, third and fourth floors, including the ground-floor owners who get no deck out of it. Certiorari was rejected on June 10, 2026, so the point is settled for this association.12
Frost v. Association of Apartment Owners of Pu‘u Pō‘ā, No. CAAP-23-0000436, memorandum opinion filed February 27, 2026. Unpublished.
The building, and why it produces this question
Pu‘u Pō‘ā is cantilevered. Its post-tensioned concrete slabs are simultaneously the roofs of the units below and the lanai and atrium decks of the units above. Leaks into living spaces have occurred on all lower floors since 2012. The association bid Duradek waterproofing for floors two through four and proposed to charge it as a common expense.
The ground-floor Frosts, excluded from the work, sued for a declaration that the cost be specially assessed to the upper-floor units instead.
What the declaration said, and what followed
Applying Harrison v. Casa De Emdeko — the declaration and bylaws are the contract between owners and association — the panel read Part 3.B(4), which includes in each apartment “the inner decorated or finished surfaces of all walls, floors, and ceilings… lanai and atrium air space.”
“As a matter of law, the roof/lānai slab is not part of an Apartment. Nor is the slab’s surface. Only the outside air space above the slab surface is part of an Apartment.”
On who pays: “It is uncontroverted that Duradek is ‘roof-grade waterproofing.’ It can also serve as a finished walking surface, but that is an incidental benefit of the product. It doesn’t mean a second-floor apartment must bear the entire cost of the Duradek that protects a ground-floor apartment from water intrusion, and protects the structural integrity of the condominium’s multi-story buildings.”
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