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Topic
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Our 3 storey / 11 unit apartment block is three and a half years old.
When the building was completed it was fully certified by Council for Fire Safety Certification. A couple of months ago the building had its annual inspection and we received a huge list of faults. Most of these are installation problems, rather than maintenance. They include:
gaps between fire doors and door frames,
fire doors installed back to front,
exit lights not on own circuits and wrong decals installed,
door frames not back-filled with cement,
unreliable smoke alarms installed,
no fire dampeners on site,
etc.To rectify the faults will cost $thousands. Our SM has been trying, unsuccessfully, to speak with the council fire safety inspector for two months. Meanwhile, we have taken no action regarding the report.
1. Where does the OC stand, when a council fire expert passed the building as fire safety compliant and another inspector is now saying it isn’t?
2. Can the builder be held liable for the installation problems when it is outside the 2 year warranty period?
3. Is the council liable for passing a building when they apparently shouldn’t have?
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Replies
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According to Section 18E of the Home Building Act faults in a fire safety system are considered “major” defects.
As such, your warranty period is six years, not two.
If the builder or developer is no longer around, you might be able to take legal action against the original fire inspector since their dereliction of duty resulted in your scheme’s financial loss.
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I think you need to talk to an experienced strata lawyer immediately about making a statement of claim.
If the builder is already refusing to fix things, then you need to step up the pressure and you are very likely to end up goping to a strata lawyer (like our sponsors Sachs Gerace Broome) eventually anyway.
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We are an old building-nearly 60 years old. We had good solid doors but were told they were not fire compliant for a number of reasons so reluctantly got 27 new doors fitted in July 2018 from a well known company. They were signed off as ‘compliant’. We just had our annual inspection (by the same company) and the report says 12 out of the 27 are not compliant citing excessive gaps, hinge adjustment, etc for a cost of $3697.65. Surely this makes a joke out of the regulations if every 18 months adjustments need to be made? What do we do?