[brentclark]

As a temporary solution, the Owners Corporation could ask the EV owner to purchase at their own expense a plug-in electricity meter ($25 from bunnings) and sign an End-user agreement to manually re-imburse the Owners Corporation.

This can be done under s.171 in NSW strata schemes act and doesn’t require a by-law, as there is no change to common property.

An example of this type of agreement is attached.

Regards,

Brent Clark

Wattblock

 

[brentclark]

An Owners Corporation can enter into an agreement with an Owner or an Occupier of a lot to provide amenity or service to the Owner or Occupier of the lot. This doesn’t require a motion or a by-law. This can include supply of electricity from a general power outlet connected to the common area/houselights meter.

In the case of a general power outlet on common property (which is not located in a private carparking space/cage or garage), which is not to be changed physically in any way, an end user agreement could be used for cost-recovery by the Owners Corporation where:

1. the Owner or Occupier supplies at their own cost a temporary $25 plug-in/unplug electricity meter
2. the Owner commits in the agreement to plugging in the temporary electricity meter for each charging session and then plugging the EV charging cable into the plug-in electricity meter and then unplugging the temporary electricity meter after each charging session
3. the Owner commits to re-imbursing the Owners Corporation for the kWh consumed in each charging session on a periodic basis e.g. quarterly

This approach has been used with electric vehicles such as Hyundai Kona’s charging in strata apartment buildings in NSW.

If the EV in question is a Tesla, then a free third party smartphone application can be used to record the kWh of each charging session to assist with cost-recovery purposes, without the need to even spend $25 on a temporary plug-in power meter.

[brentclark]

The above ground 3 storey red-brick walk-up with lift-up garage doors on the ground floor is possibly the most sustainable housing structure ever to be mass rolled out in the history of Australia. This red brick wonder is possibly more sustainable than houses as you have similar construction costs to houses but smaller construction cost per apartment than a house, smaller floor areas to heat and cool (if they are heated or cooled at all!) and when it comes to demolishing them, the cost is minimal. However, developers don’t seem to build red-brick or white-brick walkups any more. There are juicier profit margins in going bigger.

If we use an outlier, we can say that Ed. Square in Sydney’s south, which is a carbon neutral apartment complex of 2,000 residences is more sustainable at “run-time” or “operate-time” than the average house in Australia. However, there was a massive carbon cost in building this place.

All the other apartment blocks in Australia which aren’t red brick/white brick walk ups or marquee top end environmental developments are likely to be worse than the average house in terms of lifecycle of carbon emissions.

If we go to some Korean research “A Study on the Analysis of CO2 Emissions of Apartment Housing in the Construction Process” we find that re-inforced concrete during construction is responsible for 73% of the total carbon emissions during construction.

The load distance between the construction site and the steelworks or concrete manufacturer (when concrete is collected for reinforced concrete work), and the fuel efficiency of the transportation vehicles must be managed in order to reduce the amount of CO2 emissions in the construction process.

So, until we have solar-powered electric trucks moving steel from Bluescope (Port Kembla) to Sydney’s apartment development sites, and solar powered electric vehicle concrete trucks delivering concrete to Sydney’s apartment development sites, it is safe to say that Sydney based apartments are less sustainable than the average house in Sydney.

[brentclark]

Totally agree with cutting electricity costs in the common areas as the #1 way to lower your levies.

In our building we have run 10 energy saving projects over the past 3 years and reduced our common area electricity costs from $22,800 to $5,200, a saving of 77%.

This is equivalent to a saving of $440 off each unit’s strata levy each year.

The bonus is that reducing electricity costs increases rental yield and the value of each apartment in our block has risen by an average of $8,800 just due energy cost reduction.

Brent Clark
Chairperson
Chatswood (precise address deleted – Whale)

[Author]

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