Re: Ongoing leak and wrong findings about its source

Dear Whale, thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a detailed reply! I really apreciate you shared your insights and knowledge on the subject! I am going to take your advice and write to the EC. I have actually already sent a couple of emails to the strata manager to that effect but I have the feeling she has been instructed to not give in and try to get me to pay for as much of these investigations as possible. Having seeing the financials of the strara scheme for previous financial years, I know for a fact there isn’t much available there in the way of funds and this situation is already proving to be difficult and costly. I believe that their excuse for making me pay the last plumber’s bill was that he alleged that leak is caused by the faulty membrane on a internal unit wall. I don’t have much hope that I will be able to recoup the cost of that invoice. So much for acting in good faith! I knew it I should have waited for the waterprrofing to be done before paying it…Clearly I am facing another around of plumbing investigations, possibly taking the tiles off again and God knows what else! Which is a major inconvinience when you have a baby! I will suggest to the strata manager that they hire the compny JimmyT reccommended but I very much doubt it they will. And I won’t be hiring them either since I just learned that hiring your own tradesmen only complicates these situations further. 

Just to be clear, is the NSW strata management act the only applicable law in this case? Are there any relevant by laws?

By the way, when I say there is a leak in the unit downstairs,you shoukd not be picturing a damp spot with drops of water falling from it. They have a hole the size of a tea cup in the unit downstairs! Now you tell me how long it would have taken for a leak to grow to this size?! I doubt it very much that the tenant reported it as soon as the leak started. For all I know, the tenant may have been negligent in not reporting the leak straighaway cos surely a hole of this size did not iccur overnight. By the way, the tenant of the unit downstairs works at the strata management company. Just a fun fact which may or may not be related to the ferver with which the strata manager is fighting me….