› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Common Property › Concrete Spalling – owners corp say my responsibility to pay › Current Page
The slab remediation is definately the responsibility of the Owners Corporation not the responsibility of individual owners. Common property includes slabs, shared walls, balconies, and in most instances windows and exterior doors (depending on when your Strata Plan was registered). Check your Strata Plan’s common property definitions with the Department of Lands. To cover the costs of the remediation, no doubt special levies will be called in addition to the special levies you mentioned for the balcony upgrades. So unfortunately, in the end you will be paying indirectly.
Oh, and magnesite is not a floor covering an individual unit owner would have installed. It would have been laid to level the slab and act as a sound proofing agent during construction. It doesn’t get used anymore, due to its destruction of concrete slabs. It leaches magnesium chloride ions into the slab when it gets wet, and that causes the steel reinforcing to rust. The swelling associated with the rusting causes the concrete to spall or blow. The slab is weakened and needs to be replaced. If the ceiling downstairs is cracking, then the upper and bottom layers of steel are rusted, and the entire slab (full thickness) may need replacing.
Magnesite only leaches magnesium chloride ions when it gets wet. That means the building maintenance has not been up to scratch (another reason why it is not a lot owner’s responsibility but the responsibility of the OC). That’s what the insurance company will tell you, and that’s why nobody can claim for concrete cancer repairs through insurance companies. Bugger!