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I am the secretary of a strata. Our building has some water remediation work that need to be completed.
We have had an engineer complete the scope and a QS give us costings. Currently $3.6 m for a 9 unit complex … ouch!!
The owners don’t want to commit to the full project as outlined for a number of reasons (one of them being the current costing). But more importantly they want to have the roof repairs completed first (and be certain that this will fix the overall problem), before committing to anything further.
The Engineers have said they would only do the whole project or nothing. (they say because of their insurance … which I get).
We were wondering who we could speak to to find out if what we are proposing is possible under the new legislation, or what other avenues we could consider.
Can you suggest what body we could ask these questions?
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I can feel the hate mail coming my way already but I am reliably informed that waterproofing roofs is the new embedded networks when it comes to scams, rip-offs and egregious over-servicing.
The myth propogated by some firms is that it is illegal to do a partial repair on a roof’s waterproofing and you have to do the whole area in one hit (very convenient for the contractor!).
However, I have spoken to some very senior people at the Building Commission who have told me this is BS and have heard from other buildings that as long as partial repairs don’t overlap then it is perfectly legal to patch waterproofing, as long as the patches are guranteed.
My own strata committee has been sucked in by this nonsense and, of course, since they are never wrong about anything, we are headed for a bill almost double yours and rising with every estimate.
My advice would be to contact the Owners Corporation Network (OCN.org.au) to see where they sit on this. And contact some other contractors and ask them a simple question first – “do you patch waterproofing on apartment block roofs” and if they say no, move on to the next one on the list.
By the way, there may be circumstances where a whole-roof re-waterproofing is the only solution. But it doesn’t apply to every situation and the excuse that they can’t get insurance has alarm bells ringing for me.
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If you are in Sydney and you’d like some recommendations for builders and roofers that we used recently on our house, and who I feel were honest and treated us fairly, send me a private message. The builders in particular were fantastic and had all kinds of trades amongst their staff and contractor networks. Like you, we have water remediation needs and we started from the roof and we’re working our way down.
PS: $3.6Million for a 9-unit complex sounds like a lot. We’ve had multiple quotes to replace part and/or all the roof on our house (the house has a big footprint, so the roof is big) and none were anything like that. I don’t think it’s an urban myth that some contractors inflate the prices for strata because the costs are shared amongst many owners.
- This reply was modified 2 months, 1 week ago by .