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One issue you will find if you claim on the Buildings legal liability insurance is that you may only be able to claim for the depreciated cost of the carpets. If the carpets were in the unit at the time you bought them you then you may find that you will be get relatively little compared to the cost of new carpets. Generally if you want replacement insurance you it has to be specifically stated in the policy.
The local council should be interested. Any internal alterations that involve moving doors have the potential to change the way fire spreads in the building and the options people have to get out of a building in the event of a fire. This must be assessed by the council and councils take this seriously.
If there is a fire in your building then there will be some ambiguity as to whether that building was compliant with fire regulations at the time of the fire. This may delay any insurance claims or worse.
I would at the very least seek an interim order from the Tribunal as outlined above. I would also make sure the rest of the committee knows that all internal alterations should go to the council for fire safety reasons.
I live in an 18 unit building that is 20 years old. We started having water hammer issues about 10 years ago. One of the tenants was a plumber and he told us that the issue was often solved by turning OFF the water taps to front loader washing machines when you are not using them. To our surprise it works. We still have a little water hammer but it is nowhere like it was. When we get new people in the block we tell them to turn their taps off. Some don’t believe us but after a bit of noise they do!
Apparently the solenoids that are used to turn the water on and off in front loaders compress and expand unless they are isolated from the water system by being turned off. It is worse in units designed in the days when most people had top loaders like ours was.
I would ask your neighbours to give it a try. It is cheaper than a plumbing investigation!
We had a brothel in our block. We rang the local council. A council guy came to see then sent the owner a letter. The tenants who were running the business were gone in a week. Apparently using an apartment zoned residential as a brothel was illegal in NSW. We are also very close to a church and a school which contravenes the law as well. It may be the same in Canberra. If the owners were running the brothel they could have been prosecuted.
Apparently the council guy came , saw the men hanging around then checked ads online and rang numbers until he found the address. This was the evidence. The council told us they close down around 30 illegal brothels a year! The irony is that here are two legal brothels that have been operating for over 10 years less than 5 minutes walk away!
If it is a 60s building someone in the near future will renovate. If it involves structural changes it will need a DA. The council will ask for a copy of the fire certificate as part of the DA process.
In many blocks this is the trigger to start the fire assessment process.
I would bring this up with the committee. If you have a strata manager start with them. The strata manager would have no doubt already gone down the fire compliance path in other buildings. Yes it is a cost but it has to be done.
Good Luck!
Yes you need council and strata approval. The reason is that your installation may compromise the fire safety of the unit. Before everyone starts grumbling about nanny state etc, there was a fatality in a unit in Bankstown that was caused by an alteration to a unit to add a bedroom in 2015. All Strata Managers and are now extra vigilant about making sure any alteration to a unit however small is checked by the council.
As part of your submission the council will check that your unit block has an up to date fire certificate. If your block doesn’t have this the Owners Corporation may have to update the fire safety in the block. This may prove to be expensive.
I don’t know what state you are in or council area but in NSW most council areas have a ratio of hard to soft surfaces that cannot be exceeded. It is done to minimise and control stormwater. Most developers use as much hard surface as possible – this includes any buildings so any increase in hard surface is often not possible as it will make the hard surface exceed this ratio and so the development will be non compliant. In most medium or high density areas in NSW any change to soft to hard surface needs a DA at least.
I would contact your local council and ask to speak to the duty planner. They should be able to tell you if the Owners Corporation needs to submit a DA. If the OC needs to submit a DA at the very least this will give you time to discuss the implications with other owners.
I am very passionate about the need for locks on windows but before I go into why please, please, please check the quote. In our block we halved the quote because a lot of the windows were not high enough from the ground, some were actually doors opening to balconies, and the bathroom windows were more than 1.7m above the floor. Having said this I will continue…
Before retiring I worked at Westmead Childrens and saw the results of way too many falls from balconies and windows. Many of these children who survived had acquired brain injuries due to the fall. The prognosis for these kids was never very good and the lives of their families as well as their own were changed forever mainly due to the ongoing expense of caring for a brain injured family member.The startlingly and sad fact was that most of the children did not live in the block but were visiting other people. I know this because Westmead did a report about it in around 2009.
This exposes the Owners Corporation to insurance claims via public liability. The insurance industry as well as the hospital started the agitation for windows locks resulting in the law change. It is to minimise the risk that the Owners Corporation should install window locks.
You may be better off netting your balcony. I have a unit where most rooms open with sliding doors to the large balcony which runs the full length of the unit. I wanted my grandchildren to be safe and it is impractical to keep them inside . We moved from Hong Kong where most families installed netting on the balcony with young children and thought this would be easy. My owners corporation had no problem with it as you hardly see it, It is black netting. The hard part was getting it. I eventually ordered it from Hong Kong but I just googled now and there are firms that now do it in Sydney.
I think there was an NCAT case about safety netting a couple of years ago so there may even be a precedent for you to use on the committee. You can always argue that the net protects people below from toys and other projectiles from the balcony!
Good luck. It is really annoying that people put obstacles in the way of children’s safety. If it were a work site they would be compelled to do it!!
We had a similar problem in our block. Are you sure that it is the occupants who are causing the problem? The easiest way to tell is to see if you hear it during the day or if they out at night. In our block the problem was two defective toilets in another unit. These toilets had a very slow leak from the cistern into the bowl. Eventually the cistern refilled and the flushing noise was heard through the pipes. Some units however heard water dripping periodically throughout the night from the same toilets. They assumed this noise was someone using the toilet because it was often followed by the flushing noise.
It was a really difficult thing to workout what was causing it and it annoyed everyone on our side of the building for months. We eventually worked it out by asking everyone to turn their toilets off at the cistern one night. This solved both problems. We then looked at everyone’s toilets until we found the leaking ones.
My advice is to ask other residents if they hear the noise as well. We did it by putting a notice in the foyer. This told us more than one unit was affected and which water riser the units were on meant we knew who to ask to turn their toilet off.
Unless you have tried to sleep in units where there are problems with the toilets you have no idea how much sleep disturbance they can cause. I hope you can ort this out quickly.
Theoretically you will need the approval of the local council. This will involve getting plans drawn up and paying fees. Your neighbours will be consulted and will probably object. You would then use the plans to ask for approval from your OC. You will find that the OC will probably not approve it because you are modifying common property by adding a shower and basin. If this requires a new floor waste this may need an engineers approval anyway etc etc…….
So while it is theoretically possible it is usually too hard to do. Because it can be so hard there are specialized building companies that will take it on for $$$$$.
Having lived in Hong Kong where many balconies are netted for child safety I think it is time that properly tested, approved and installed netting was exempt from needing strata approval provided it is unobtrusive which it was in the buildings I lived in.
Many apartments these days have large balconies with furniture on them set up for entertaining so that keeping children off the balcony is unfeasable at times. While off course the children are supervised if a plant pot or lounge chair is close to the rail an accident can happen even with a parent there.
Another solution I saw in Hong Kong was to add a higher temporary railing to the inside of the balcony rail using an expandable system like the security barriers used to shut off areas by security staff. This had the benefil that it was removable and so only used when entertaing on the balcony. The owners corporations may find this more acceptable than netting. They are not chaep but they are moveable so can be sold when no longer needed.
Just thought I had better clarify my last post. I meant that we keep our washing machines with the water turned off when we are not using them.
In our block of 18 units we had a similar problem. One of the residents who is a plumber told us to all turn off the water supply to washing machines if they are front loaders. To our astonishment we found that it did reduce the problem to an acceptable level.
To get everyone to turn the water off was difficult at first but once we did it and people realized it worked it has become second nature for everyone. Whenever a new person moves in we put a friendly note in their letter box about it.
The amazing thing is that it costs nothing.
We were in this situation when we bought. We had 2 cars and one space. What we did was to put up a sign on the strata noticeboard and also on the door to the garbage room asking if anyone wanted to lease us a space they were not using. We had replies and ended up leasing a space next to ours. This has worked out well as the owner is old, does not have a car and is happy to get some cash for it.
We are in NSW. Our solicitor told us that buying an extra space would be difficult as in our block they are all on the same title as the units and it would be very expensive and difficult to split up. He said it may affect the unit entitlements which work out levies etc which means all the owners would have to agree. In other words a big deal.