Podcast: Potential noise annoys Toaster nimbys

We’ve been catching up with all the strata stories that emerged while we were away – and there’s a lot of them, covering just about every aspect of apartment living.

The plan to boost Sydney’s night time economy with 24/7 bar openings has alarmed well-heeled residents of Circular Quay (according to this video on the Sydney Morning Herald website).

And there’s more angst over noisy gyms which we first highlighted in this podcast and Sue’s SMH story before we left for Europe.

We discuss why strata schemes are way behind free-standing homes when it comes to installing solar, prompted by this story.  Does it have something to do with embedded networks and devious developers?

We look at a renewed push to wash away outdated and anti-sustainability by-laws that forbid drying laundry on balconies.

And we wonder if councils could be doing more to encourage the inclusion of creative spaces in new apartment blocks, following this report.

That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.

Transcript in Full

Jimmy

We’re back.

Sue

Yes.

Jimmy

We’re back in Sydney. I’m almost over my jet lag. You don’t get jet lag but you have got a cold.

Sue

Yes, that’s a bit of a shame really. Oh well.

Jimmy

You’ve made your voice nice and a bit more gravelly. Gravelly and sexy.

Sue

Maybe more gravitas.

Jimmy

Maybe your fans out there who love your lovely voice. Today we are going to talk about lots of things because while we’ve been away we’ve been talking about things that are happening like in the places we visited like Berlin and Paris and London and then we’ve kind of neglected what’s been happening in Sydney and so I did a quick check this morning. A lot to talk about.

We’ve got things like the 24-7 city causing problems for some apartment residents. We’ve got solar power for apartments. We’ve got laundry on balconies.

We’ve got creative spaces being lost to development. That’s a lot.

Sue

It is. It’s not all good news, is it?

Jimmy

Not all. I don’t know if there’s any good news in any of that. I’m Jimmy Thomson. I write the Flat Chat column for the Australian Financial Review and I edit the flatchat.com.au website.

Sue

And I’m Sue Williams and I write about property for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the AFR and Domain.

Jimmy

And this is a Flat Chat Wrap. So the 24-7 city economy is proving problematic for some people.

Sue

Yeah, I think the government obviously wants us to have a much more vibrant city and they want, especially after COVID when the place died really, and they’re really eager to get it back on track. And lots more people are now working nine to five back in the city and they’re often working five days a week, four days a week, three days a week. And the government is really keen to revitalise all the services and the retail, office spaces, everything about the city.

But I mean, we’ve just been to the city yesterday when we came back from overseas and it’s really lively. It was busy and full and lots of people shopping, lots of people eating in the cafes and restaurants. So it really does seem to be working in lots of ways.

Jimmy

Christmas music in the shopping centre. I mean, it’s only November, for God’s sake. Anyway, there’s a couple of aspects of the 24-7 economy that people are not, some people are not happy about.

There’s a story online, a little video clip online in the Sydney Morning Herald about a bar at Circular Quay called Squire’s Landing.

Sue

That’s over by the Museum of Contemporary Art, isn’t it?

Jimmy

Yeah, yeah.

Sue

On that side.

Jimmy

So if you’re looking at the harbour from Circular Quay, it’s on the left. And that bar has applied for a 24-7 trading licence. So they’ll be open all night, all day, every night, every day.

Across the harbour, 400 metres away, there’s the toaster building, that famous apartment block, which one of the residents of whom I believe is or used to be Alan Jones.

Sue

That’s right.

Jimmy

Yeah. So they have complained that they’re going to be disturbed by the noise from this bar that’s going to be operating for 24-7.

Sue

Because can they hear it currently?

Jimmy

Apparently they can. Or maybe they can just, maybe they just think they can hear it.

Sue

Maybe the noise does travel across the water.

Jimmy

That’s what it says in the video. They’re saying noise, well, they’re saying that noise travels faster through water. I think across the water, it definitely does.

There’s kind of like big ferries going back and forward in between, and the occasional cruise ship docking at the other side as well. Anyway, it’s been quite interesting because on this video, there’s been government spokespersons are saying, well, one quote was, if buying an apartment in Circular Quay is a very odd thing to do if you want to go to bed early. But basically what they’re saying is this is the price you pay for living in a world city.

Sue

I mean, those apartments are really top quality apartments as well. So they would have double glazing. You’d be able to close all your doors, all your windows, and hopefully you wouldn’t be able to hear very much.

Jimmy

Well, you wouldn’t think so, but maybe they don’t want to have to close their doors. Maybe they want to. You know, on a summer evening, you can understand people opening their doors in the balcony and sitting on their balcony and enjoying.

It does feel a bit wowsery though, doesn’t it? A bit nimby-ish.

Sue

Yeah, because it is right in the centre of where everything’s happening really. But then again, I mean, who’s going to be going to bars at three o’clock in the morning? People on cruise ships.

I don’t know. Well, I don’t know. People on cruise ships often want to stay on the ship because they get free drinks.

Jimmy

Exactly. I think it’s this idea of being able to open when customers want them to be open, and they’re not necessarily going to be open 24-7. They just want the option to be open later.

Sue

Yeah. And maybe on a Friday, on a Saturday.

Jimmy

Friday, Saturday night. Yeah. Yeah.

Look, I’m not entirely sympathetic with the toasterizers or whatever they call themselves.

Sue

But I mean, there are an awful lot of apartments on that side of the Circular Quay now. I mean, there’s five buildings, I think.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

And they’re all kind of quite wealthy apartments and wealthy residents. So they would have a lot of say with the New South Wales government, really.

Jimmy

Well, I don’t know if they have much heft with City of Sydney Council. I don’t think they do.

Sue

But they can hire professional lobby groups.

Jimmy

And all that stuff. Lawyers and things like that. Now, the other aspect of this 24-7 city in which we apparently now live is gyms in apartment blocks.

Now, you wrote a story about that before we went away.

Sue

Yeah.

Jimmy

And it’s had quite a reaction. You’ve been getting emails about it.

Sue

Yeah, that’s right. There’s been lots of people responding because there are an awful lot of people in apartment buildings, apparently, with gyms on the ground floor.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

Often commercial gyms on the ground floor who are having real trouble. And now with these new vibrancy reforms, they’re really nervous that…

Jimmy

You mean the city vibrancy rather than the noise vibrancy.

Sue

Yeah. The city vibrancy. Some of the gyms are being mooted as 24-hour gyms.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

And they’re saying the noise is pretty terrible during their opening hours anyway. If they go 24 hours, it’s going to be an absolute nightmare. And that’s really difficult.

Jimmy

Well, the two sources of noise, correct me if I’m wrong, but the two sources of noise from gyms are, on the one hand, it’s the classes with the very loud thumping music.

Sue

And shouting.

Jimmy

And the shouting and screaming. And let’s wrap into that the whole bootcamp scenario. And the other one is, and this is the one that you highlighted in your story, is Olympic weightlifting.

Sue

The clanging of weights and people dropping weights.

Jimmy

And I did a tiny little bit of research into this and discovered that, I mean, whenever I’ve been training with a trainer, which it’s been a while since this has happened, they always tell you that when you lift the weight, then you lowering the weight gradually actually does more good than the lifting of the weight, that resistance that you’re putting in to lower it. And I thought, well, maybe these people in this gym are doing it the wrong way for dropping the weight. But it turns out with Olympic weightlifting, competitive weightlifting, you pull the thing up, you lift it up, you put it above your head or whatever, then you drop it.

And you’re told by your trainers to drop the weight because they don’t want you to waste any energy because you need it for the next lift. So this is an essential part of that practice. And it’s causing a lot of noise.

You imagine, I mean, they’re lifting, what, sort of 300, 400 kilograms, something like that, and then dropping it on the floor. I don’t think there’s a cushion mat anywhere in the world that would absorb that kind of impact.

Sue

It would have to be really deep cushioning.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

And I mean, in the gym I go to, there’s cushioning around the weights area, but you can still hear it when people drop weights.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

And it’s really annoying, especially if you’re doing a bit of kind of yoga or something a bit meditative.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

It just destroys the atmosphere.

Jimmy

But it’s, you know, and there’s no way, the cushion, if you’re lifting competitively, I would think that your feet have to be on the same level as the bar, the weights, right?

Sue

Yeah, but you could probably have the cushioning in front of you where you drop the weights. But if, but sometimes you drop the weights behind you, don’t you?

Jimmy

No, occasionally, if you’ve really screwed up, you have to run away from the weight before it hits your lower back. Anyway, it just seems that as often happens in apartments, there are blanket permissions and blanket bans and they just have the wrong effect. And I think a sensible person, a sensible council, you know, the council are saying, yeah, yeah, you can have 24 seven, but then it’s up to the owners of the apartment block to say, well, this is a breach.

It could be a breach of the bylaws. It could be a breach of the basic law that of noise nuisance that is actually enshrined in strata law. But that requires the individual to take the gym owners who may, it might be a big chain and they might have a lot of money.

They might have a lot of influence in the building because they’re paying a lot in levies. And it’s just, it’s just wrong. You know, the council should either not be allowing this or be saying to the gym, yeah, you can operate 24 seven, provided there are no noise complaints.

Sue

Yep. But it’s hard once you’ve given permission as in, you know, the bar 24 hours over on circular key, it’s very difficult then to start winding it back, isn’t it?

Jimmy

Well, those that particular bar, the squires landing have asked for a trial of a year so that everybody can actually assess whether it’s a good thing or not. And it would, it would either have to be a year or at least a six months around summer, because that’s when they’re going to be busy. And that’s when doors and windows are going to be open.

It just needs somebody to apply a bit of common sense, which seems to be in short supply in both strata and local councils. Talking of common sense, when we come back, we’re going to talk about things that should be happening in apartments, but aren’t. That’s after this.

While we were away, there was a story in the Sydney Morning Herald about drying laundry on apartment balconies, that old chestnut.

Sue

Yeah.

Jimmy

And our good friends, Karen Stiles of the OCN, Owners Corporation Network, and Amanda Farmer, the lawyer from Your Strata Property, were both quoted at length in this story where people were saying they’re having to dry their clothes inside because their bylaws in their building say you can’t dry clothes on the balcony. And it’s that usual argument of people saying it will make us look like a slum. The thing is, here we are in a period of history where we’re trying to cut back on emissions.

Cutting back on emissions means cutting back on use of power. Possibly the least efficient way of drying clothes is your tumble dryer. Every new apartment comes with a tumble dryer because they don’t have drying lines.

And every new apartment comes with a standard bylaw that says you may not dry clothes on your balcony.

Sue

It’s about time that standard bylaw was changed, isn’t it really?

Jimmy

Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, the most environmentally responsible way to dry your clothes is on a clothesline because the heat in the wind, it doesn’t even have to drive solar panels or big windmills.

It directly will dry your clothes. And anything that gets in the way of that is kind of fundamentally wrong and out of date. And that’s something that the government kind of played around it.

I think they’ve changed the standard bylaw to say without permission, but to go and have to get permission from your owners corporation when you’ve got a lot of people saying, oh, we don’t want washing on the balcony. It’s just it’s very outdated.

Sue

Absolutely.

Jimmy

Now, Amanda Farmer in that piece in The Herald, and there’ll be a link to that in the show notes. She says maybe a blanket ban is illegal anyway. And that’s we’re talking about an overall ban rather than a ban on blankets.

And, you know, she cites the pet bylaws that got rescinded because they said you could not have any pets of any kind in any building kind of thing. And she’s arguing, it seems that if you have a ban that says you may not dry your clothes on under any circumstances, that is potentially unreasonable. So what do you do?

What do you do if you want to dry your clothes on your balcony? What would your advice be to people who want to dry their clothes on the balcony?

Sue

I would say do it and wait for somebody to take action against you.

Jimmy

Yep.

Sue

And then argue about it within the action. It might be via NCAT.

Jimmy

Yep.

Sue

Or it could be in a court action. But I think right is on your side really.

Jimmy

That’s exactly what I would do. I would say let them come after you. They’ll send you warning letters.

They might even send you a notice to comply. The notice to comply comes with a warning, a threat, really, that if you continue to not comply, you might get fined. Now, what will then happen is that you’ll get dragged along to NCAT and you will be able to put your argument that in this day and age, these bylaws are unreasonable.

And that is the nub of the matter. It is. That’s the word that knocks over so many rules, unreasonable.

And I would say go for it. And I think I suspect that you in a building where your committee is saying you cannot dry your clothes on the balcony under any circumstances and you say, great, fine, take me to NCAT. They might go, oh, how strongly do we feel about this?

Sue

Let’s rethink this.

Jimmy

Let’s rethink this and they might back off.

Sue

Yeah. It’s funny because when we were in France, we were staying with a friend and she wasn’t allowed to dry her laundry outside. So she had a spare room, which she kind of became her drying room.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

But in Australia where apartments are so expensive. Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge luxury to have a whole room where you just dry clothes.

I mean, some of the old buildings, kind of the 1920s building, they actually have communal drying rooms. Yes. Which is kind of quite fantastic, really.

Jimmy

I know they used to have, sometimes they’d have drying lines on the roof or in the backyard and there would be a rota.

Sue

Yep.

Jimmy

You know, the people on the fourth floor can dry their clothes on a Wednesday.

Sue

Yeah.

Jimmy

And if they left their clothes on until Thursday, people would come and throw them on the ground. It got quite nasty. I remember in Glasgow, the old steamy, which was a public bath and it was actually a bath.

You know, you would go in, even a private room, but you had a hot water bath and it had giant washing machines where you could get your laundry done. And these amazing racks that you’d slide out like library racks and you’d hang your clothes on and then slide them back in and all this warm air would be wafted through.

Sue

Oh, how fantastic.

Jimmy

And apparently in Sweden, they have drying rooms in apartment blocks. Singapore is funny because people have drying poles that they stick out from their windows and it’s like a flagpole, but it’s horizontal and you slide the clothes on and they dry. And they look kind of weird.

You know, they wouldn’t last five minutes in Sydney because they are quite obtrusive.

Sue

Yeah. And of course, Sydney is really windy. Most people just disappear.

Jimmy

Half your clothes would end up down the street. But, you know, there’s better alternatives than just saying you’ve got to use your tumble dryer, I think.

Sue

Yeah, absolutely.

Jimmy

When we come back, we’re going to talk about another couple of issues that came up while we were awake. Another of the issues that came up in the papers while we were gone was about solar panels in apartment blocks. Apparently, Australia has one of the highest uptakes of domestic solar panels in the world.

Sue

Oh, that’s encouraging.

Jimmy

Yeah.

Sue

For houses.

Jimmy

For houses, not if you live in apartments.

Sue

Well, we get so, so much sunshine. It makes sense, doesn’t it? But apartments is a different matter, I guess.

Jimmy

And it’s so corrupted. I mean, corrupted, is that the right word? Yeah, maybe it is.

I mean, we’ve got an investment property where the developer put a solar panel on one tiny section of the roof, which was just enough to get the DA approved. And then it turned out that the solar panel didn’t even belong to the owners corporation anyway, it belonged to the electric company. And the electric company, when the owners corporation said we’d like to use that tiny solar panel to maybe power the lighting in the garage, they said, yeah, that’s fine, go ahead.

We’ll only charge you the normal rate for using the electricity generated by our solar panel on your roof.

Sue

That is outrageous, isn’t it?

Jimmy

It’s absolutely disgusting.

Sue

I wonder if they do that in lots of other buildings.

Jimmy

I think they do it in every other building they can get away with it.

Sue

Well, maybe if any listeners have a building where that’s happening, let us know.

Jimmy

Yeah, please. Because this is one of these embedded network things, like the developer needs to have a solar panel on the roof to get their DA through. Okay.

The electricity company says, hey, how about we put the solar panel up at our expense and we get to charge your owners for all the electricity and power that they use? And the developer goes, yeah, we don’t care. As long as we get our solar panel, we get our DA.

We don’t give a stuff how much you charge our owners because we just don’t care as long as we’ve got their money. And it does happen everywhere. And the government should be getting onto it.

If we had a strata commissioner, remember we used to have a strata commissioner?

Sue

Yes. We haven’t heard what’s going to happen yet, have we?

Jimmy

I think nothing is going to happen until his contract runs out early next year. Oh, right. So he’s in limbo, we’re in limbo.

Government, guess what? The government doesn’t give a stuff about strata people. How can this possibly have happened?

It’s very bitter. It does. Well, there’s so many things that could be done and easy fixes to common problems and nothing gets done because they drive up a cul-de-sac of bureaucracy.

And then when they halfway up the cul-de-sac, they decide that they’ll just stop. And the other thing that’s come up is the developments in the city, which we know we need. We need housing.

A lot of older buildings are being knocked down to create apartment blocks. And some of these older buildings contain creative spaces like rehearsal rooms and artist studios that because the buildings are older and aren’t being used for what they were used before, they’re cheap. They’re cheap to hire.

People can rent the spaces. But these, when the new apartment block comes in, that space is lost.

Sue

Yeah, absolutely. Because the land is so expensive and the apartments are so expensive. I mean, no creative organisations can afford to hire them, really.

The city of Sydney has tried to put in some creative spaces in the bases of their buildings in the city. They’ve done that in one building, particularly. But they don’t make up for the number of buildings lost.

Jimmy

No. And it should be that the councils are saying, look, we’ll give you an extra floor of apartments if you make that a creative space that’s affordable for people. Because that enhances everything for the community, not just the building.

The building has artists in the building, which is nice. Artists in the community have a space where they can go and paint and sculpt and rehearse. And they might even have a music room so that the kids who are having to practice their piano and their violin too much to the distress of their neighbours can actually go and do it somewhere quietly.

But once again, our councils listening, do they care? Do they care about Strata? No, they don’t.

They only care about it because it ruins their skyline. Did that sound better?

Sue

It did as well.

Jimmy

Oh, man.

Sue

God, you are feeling bad this morning.

Jimmy

I’ve come back to bitterness.

Sue

This is holiday-itis.

Jimmy

Holiday-itis. The holiday is over. I’m back and I’m ready for a fight.

Scary stuff. So if anybody wants to have a fight with me on any of the stuff we’ve been talking about, just come on to the forum on flatchat.com.au and give it a go there.

Sue

Okay. And hopefully by next week, we’ll be a bit more optimistic and cheerful.

Jimmy

Everything could have changed.

Sue

Yes.

Jimmy

All the councils in Sydney will have listened to us and gone, oh, this makes great common sense. Let’s just pass all these regulations and make it happen.

Sue

Let’s make Jimmy the new Strata Commissioner.

Jimmy

Oh, God.

Sue

Oh, no, that would be horrible.

Jimmy

Don’t wish that on me. That’d be awful. Sue, thank you so much for forcing your way through your cold to talk to us.

Sue

No problem, Jimmy. Nice to talk to you.

Jimmy

And thank you all for listening. We will talk to you again much more nicely and friendly next week. Bye.

Bye.

Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast. You’ll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au. And if you haven’t already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W, click on subscribe, and you’ll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.