Forum Replies Created
-
Replies
-
Even if you have a management agreement that delegates all functions to a managing agent, the executive committee or the owners corporation as a whole can still exercise any of their functions that they care to exercise.
If you were to employ a gardener, it would be wise to ensure they have their own workers compensation and liability insurances. If you find a gardening contractor you like, it would keep the accounting simple and transparent if you were to instruct them to send their monthly account to the managing agent and for the managing agent to pay that account.
If this were the ACT, I would look to the default rules (aka bylaws) that:
-require a unit owner to repair and maintain their unit, and
-require a unit owner to not use their unit in a way that unreasonably interferes with the reasonable use and enjoyment of anther unit, and
-allows a representative of the owners corporation to enter a unit if reasonably necessary for repair and maintenance subject to reasonable notice etc., and
-the provision of the Act that allows an owners corporation to resolve at a general meeting to take on certain maintenance tasks on behalf of units owners that would normally be a unit owner responsibility.
Between these provisions, I think you could mount a case for and provide the process by which the OC could require the maintenance to be done on all balconies for the benefit of other units and the building as a whole and for the OC to undertake that maintenance and to have access to all units for that purpose, subject to reasonable notice etc.
I assume that other jurisdictions have similar provisions. You would just need to string them together and have the relevant vote and then nobody could refuse and all would be up for sharing the cost. Whether the cost was from the sinking fund (with an amendment to the sinking fund plan) or billed at a flat rate or by unit entitlement to each unit would be another part of the resolution.
Sounds like fun. Every AGM, we could have a motion to vote one person ‘off the island’.
I am in a townhouse with an entirely internal bathroom. We have a conventional extractor fan that does not prevent mirror fogging and general dampness.
We have stopped using the extractor fan in favour of running a portable desiccant dehumidifier just while showering and drying off. This is far more effective – no more mirror fogging and much less overnight condensation on windows elsewhere in our unit. It consumes about 730W, which, in a small room, is enough to also be useful warming in a Canberra winter. Without the fan running, that heat stays in the room.
PS. My wife just mentioned that a Sydney friend’s vegepod is doing well on her apartment balcony, where it would be visible to other residents.
“… Prior to me moving it to its intended position out of the line of sight of other residents, someone took a photo of it & complained to the building committee…”
Sounds like you could easily ignore this and if the committee pursues the matter you could innocently say that the complainant’s photo was from before you had moved it to its final position out of sight and that you had assumed that moving it had addressed the matter.
If it can still be seen, then argue that it is a very normal and reasonable thing for people to have on balconies (just like drying washing 😉 ) and they should stop being so precious.
As I write this, I can see my vegepod out my window. It is sitting on a low retaining wall and, strictly speaking, overlapping my courtyard boundary making a minor incursion onto common property but nobody has ever complained about it.
Sounds like the council or local utilities have an easement for the underground drain. An easement is a limited right for someone else, in this case to have and maintain a drain, within your land. There is also an obligation on the landholder (you or your owners corporation) to avoid doing anything that interferes with the rights of the holder of the easement rights. So, for example, you might be welcome to have a tree there but you might also be obliged to remove it if it ever got in the way of making a repair to the pipe. Similarly, you might not be allowed to build a structure in a location such that its footings would put a load on the pipe but you would be allowed to build outside the easement with sufficiently deep footings that their loading passes below the pipe.
Where I am, we were able to build a wall that run up to the edge of an easement perpendicular to the line of the easement because it would not fall in if the easement needed to be excavated to access the pipes. However, we could not build a wall at 90 degrees, along the edge of the easement, because that could topple in if the easement were ever excavated.
The NSW Act might be worded differently from in the ACT…
I just checked. NSW is very different. JT is right in NSW and I am right in the ACT.
In NSW: “In this Act, a resolution of an owners corporation is a “special resolution” if–it is passed at a properly convened general meeting, and, of the value of votes cast, not more than 25% are against the resolution…”
In my 51/25/24 example of yes/no/abstain, it would pass in the ACT and fail in NSW. The difference is that in the ACT the 25% against are out of everyone who could have voted at the meeting whereas in NSW it is out of only those who cast a vote, and abstaining is not casting a vote.
I prefer the ACT approach since the test is really about determining that there is not a substantial minority opposed and only those who actively vote ‘no’ are really opposed. People who abstain might be ambivalent, which is not opposition.
The NSW Act might be worded differently from in the ACT but in the ACT a special resolution requires 1) a majority in favour and 2) “the votes cast against the resolution number not more than 1/4 of the total number of votes that can be cast on the resolution by people present at the meeting (including proxy votes)”. [It can also be done on unit entitlements in a poll vote.]
People abstaining on a particular motion are nonetheless present at the meeting and could have cast a vote. So, if there were 100 people eligible to vote at the meeting, 51 voted in favour, 25 voted against and 24 abstained, the motion would pass as a special resolution. On the first criterion, there are more votes in favour than opposed. On the second criterion, 25 ‘no’ votes out of the 100 “votes that can be cast on the resolution by people present at the meeting” is not more than a quarter, even though it is almost a third of the votes that were cast. Both criteria are satisfied and the special resolution is passed.
I think an abstention is an active decision to neither support nor stand in the way of some proposition, which sounds exactly like what the original poster wants to do.
Sir Humphrey – thank you. Looks like the next step is to ask for 2 compressors to be on common property. Could they just say no? Where do I find the information to present to the OC that it is necessary to have the compressors so as to fit the amount of KWs available?
You would need an electrician to tell you the available supply capacity into each unit. Doing load calculations is something an electrician should be able to do. That said, be a bit careful. Some will, for example, incorrectly calculate as if an electric hob will draw its full rated current, when in practice nobody ever has every ring on full power at the same time.
Then the key thing to understand with a heat pumps, whether for space heating/cooling (ie an air conditioner) or for water heating is that a system rated at (say) 3kW heat output only requires 1kW or less electrical input. This is because the electrical energy is only being used to move heat from the air outside into the space or water. Even when it is subjectively cold outside, the air still contains heat. This is what makes heat pumps so much more efficient than converting the electrical energy into heat, which is necessarily using 3kW of electrical energy input to produce heat output at 3kW.
As for ‘Can they say no?’. ‘They’ is you. You and your neighbours are the Owners Corporation. You are all in the same boat. I think you need to work with your committee and/or some neighbours to develop an energy plan to work out the best solution for getting the building off gas that can work for every unit and be given permission for. If that means two compressors, then the OC as a whole might want to decide on a uniform solution about where they may and may not be put.
In general, the Common Boundaries Act 1981 would apply and there have been several ACAT decisions applying the CB Act to strata situations. The fence marks the boundary between two lease areas, the common property and the unit area. In general, the result is that the unit owner and the Owners Corporation would bear half the cost each.
However, there could be exceptions such as if a resolution has been passed to make it fully the responsibility of the unit owner or the OC. If the site was built with uniform fences around each unit area, the OC might decide that it would be more efficient and result in better maintenance if the OC took on responsibility for maintenance of all the fences.
Where I am, fences around unit courtyards are discouraged and this was made explicit in a landscaping policy adopted by general meeting resolution. Fences were not part of the original construction. However, a unit owner will be given permission to erect a fence subject to certain agreed constraints on height, permissible styles, not enclosing any common property and a condition that the cost will be borne by the unit owner. This carries through to maintenance also being the unit owner’s responsibility in our situation.
It sounds like the instantaneous hot water is the problem. They require high power for a short period of time. If a larger tank can be accommodated somewhere, the water can be heated more slowly at lower power – same energy over a longer time. Ideally, a heat pump hot water system with a decent sized tank would store hot water and it would require lower power still due to its intrinsic efficiency.
You might need to put two compressors outside on common property, one for the reverse cycle aircon (efficient electric heating) and one for the hot water system.
I don’t know for sure but I would guess that you could have a wire mesh fence against which you grow a hedge so that the fence becomes invisible over time. That would be a barrier from day 1 without needing to wait for the hedge to grow but eventually you would not see the fence that would be buried inside the hedge.
For what it’s worth, our strata development had a brick retaining wall that had a bit of a lean to it and had had for quite a while. We got an engineer to look at it. He advised that it was not unstable or unsafe and might be fine like that for many years. He advised how far it could go before we would need to worry about it. We monitored the lean at several points with a plumb bob several times a year. For most of a decade it barely moved but eventually it reached the point where we had been advised that we would need to rebuild it, so we then got a builder in to build us a new wall at that time. We now have a nice straight wall.
In short, fix it if an engineer says it is unsafe. Save your money if it is not unsafe.
We need to know more. Is this supposedly the power supply to the whole site or the power available for a circuit in a block of share parking garages? Is it common property power or the supply to individual units we are talking about?
Each individual unit has its own garage, with at least 2 10 amp power points.There is not enough space in the common property to install a a shared EV charger. The power supply is such that 100 amps is shared by 3 units, so 300 amps for all 9 units (if that makes sense, I don’t really understand electricity!). The residents interested in EVs have roof top solar panels and smart meters. The complex is 25 years old and was set up for a mix of electricity and gas. It might be worthwhile having the wiring checked for the whole complex as people discard gas appliances in favour of electric ones.
Thanks for the extra info. 100A shared by 3 units is a bit tight. You certainly don’t want three units charging at 32A each leaving nothing over. However, what you can do is allow the existing 10A power points in the garages to be used. Most cars are supplied with portable charge cords that tell the car to draw up to 10A. Some are conservatively set to only 8A. Either way, you are likely to be fine at 10A if you make a rule that charging is not permitted for 4 hours during the evening, say 5PM to 9PM. This is the time of peak demand when people are turning on heaters or air conditioners, cooking, TVs, etc.
Units with solar will be aiming to charge during the day with solar. Most car models can be set to schedule when they charge and when they pause charging. So, you could have the car set so you can plug in any time you like but the car will only charge during solar hours or it will pause its charging during the evening peak period.
Nine cars each charging at 10A each overnight from a 3x100A supply is only 90A out of 300A. That is no problem outside of the peak demand period.