› Flat Chat Strata Forum › Common Property › Unapproved Changes to Common Property – Contractors’ Liability. › Current Page
KP – the problem with making Owners responsible by default for any changes or additions that they may make to common areas within (or on the outside of) their respective Lots is that some (not all) use un-licensed, un-qualified, and un-insured persons to do half-baked jobs, or worse still do those works themselves.
Some may say “that’s OK, it’s their property”; but it’s not, it’s common property where shoddy work impacts on the Owners Corporation (O/C) as a whole (i.e. all owners).
I can give you one example that occurred in our Plan, where an Owner replaced a 300mm dia. bathroom exhaust fan by fitting a 200mm dia. unit to the grille of the original, and omitted to purchase the ducting to take the moisture-laden air outside through the existing fitting in the (cavity brick) wall.
Result?
Apart from the aesthetics of what could only been seen from inside the bathroom, most of the steam and moisture-laden air emerged in the bathroom of the Lot directly above, and the remainder finished up in the roof void!
Whilst our O/C leaves the maintenance and repair of “fixtures and fittings” within Lots to the respective Owners, it’s “nanny” enough to require them to advise (but not seek consent for) what’s proposed where any impact is likely to affect common property (consequently). The O/C then reserves the right to arrange the works itself based upon whichever complying quotation the Owner chooses to accept (and pay for).
Again, extra work for the hard-working Secretary, but believe me, very much worth it when the prospect of retrospective fixes and mediating disputes between affected Owners is taken into consideration.