Current Page

[Fey Knows]

It’s Sunday afternoon. At our Sydney block of 40 a small amount of sewage has been overflowing out of a broken PVC cap onto our common property driveway / walkway since Friday morning when it was first noticed and I notified the Strata Manager. It’s unsightly, smelly and obviously a health issue.

I texted the Strata Manager today, since it seemed worse (he doesn’t mind being contacted at weekends) and he told me the Strata Committee didn’t regard it as an urgent issue and it will be attended to ‘sometime on Monday’, tomorrow.

I confess to being surprised; shocked even. I don’t think this was a sensible decision by the committee and it should have been attended to immediately by an emergency plumber, for an emergency fee if necessary. Am I right?

Topic

[Jimmy-T]

The strata manager can usually really only act as advised by the committee but someone has made a judgement, different from yours, that this was not a serious enough issue to merit emergency attention.

If the strata manager is aware and has decided to do nothing (they will have certain powers to allow them to act in a significant emergency) there’s not much an ordinary owner can do.

I’d say at this stage your best bet is to wait until your next AGM and raise this as a reason why the members of your committee who made this decision should not be re-elected and let the other owners decide.

If you want to be alerted when anyone replies to your posts or responds to this topic, please register and login, then you will be able to subscribe to the topic. The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers. NB: Longer threads may spill over to additional pages - look for the numbers on the bottom right, under the last post.

Quote

[Fey Knows]

Thanks for that JimmyT. Someone here just quoted you to me: “Your strata manager can only be as good as your committee”. That accurate? Seems applicable here. I wish I could post a picture on Flat Chat, the area in question looks like a packapoo ticket and I don’t mean the Chinese lottery game 🙂

Quote

[Lady Penelope]

If I was you I would have a plumber come and look at it and assess the seriousness of the problem. I would then get the plumber to write a short report which you would submit to the SM and the committee ASAP.

SMs and committees usually react more quickly if a specialist rather than an owner raises a concern. 

If it is a raw sewage issue then that would concern me greatly – as it clearly does you!

Quote

[Fey Knows]

Thanks very much lady Penelope. But if it looks like hunks of poo and toilet paper flowing down the driveway / walkway, and it smells like poo and toilet paper flowing down the driveway / walkway, then it’s probably poo and toilet paper flowing down the driveway. An emergency, at the weekend. However I asked for other opinions and I got ’em, thanks again 🙂 

Quote

[scotlandx]

For what it’s worth in our scheme the manager would have just sent someone out, I don’t see why the Committee needed to be consulted on something that clearly needs urgent attention.

Quote

[Author]

Replies