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When, oh, when is the Office of Fair Trading going to wake up and smell the varnish on wooden floors?
While unit owners are losing sleep and/or money because of the noise from timber, tiled and bare concrete floors, Fair Trading is still sending out all the wrong signals.
“Owners do not require permission to remove their carpet,” their website blithely states. True – but only if there is no by-law to the contrary. OK, the site goes on to say noise may be an issue, but why are they encouraging unregulated hard floors in the first place?
Recently a timber floor salesman phoned us on James Valentine’s show on ABC 702 to say he was sick of executive committees bullying owners when there was nothing in the law to stop them laying down timber or tile instead of carpet.
Nothing? There might be a by-law and if the floor is noisy, the owner could be ordered to either cover it up, rip it up or face thousands of dollars in fines. That’s law.
Amid the confusion, strata committees are wasting time and money devising by-laws that allow owners to remove their carpets without ruining their neighbours’ lives.
Some suggest complex rules packed with technical detail about decibel levels. But prescriptive rules rarely take into account the dripping tap effect – the clack of heels isn’t particularly loud but it’ll drive you nuts quicker than you can say Jimmy Choo. That’s why some suggest banning high-heeled shoes.
Other blocks simply allow owners to find out the expensive way that their hard floors aren’t acceptable … when they’re told to rip them up.
In the absence of specific by-laws, and misled by pushy salesmen and half-baked advice from Fair Trading, owners are wasting money on floors that also cost them good relations with their neighbours.
Fair Trading love issuing warnings about “bitumen bandits” tarring the odd dodgy driveway. But on an issue that brings misery and strife to thousands of apartment owners, the silence is deafening.
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