A little light relief this week – at least that’s what one owner is hoping for when it comes to the question of switches.
QUESTION: I’m a member of a strata Executive Committee. Another member of the committee has submitted an invoice for the cost of having broken light switches in his apartment replaced by an electrician.
What’s the owners corporation’s and what’s the apartment owner’s responsibility? And could you please recommend a document or publication that sets out this kind of issue regarding ceilings, internal walls and plumbing? – TF, Sydney
ANSWER: Your neighbour is having him or herself on. Unless your building has a very strange set of by-laws, light switches are fixtures and fittings and not part of common property. Basically the rule is that everything inside the paint on your walls is the owners responsibility and everything outside that is common property.
There are grey areas like electrical wiring or plumbing that services more than one apartment. And there are anomalies like door closing mechanisms – because they are part of fire safety, they are common property.
But if light switches were part of common property, you’d need owners corporation permission to replace them with, say, dimmers and I’ve never heard of that.
It’s interesting you mention plumbing because someone wrote to me after last week’s column in which I pilloried a strata manager for being less than helpful on an issue of water hammer.
The argument was that since water hammer is cause by taps and taps are not common property, it’s up to the individual owners to sort it out. Suffice it to say I could not disagree more – just because the letter of the law allows you to ignore common sense and collective responsibility doesn’t mean you should.
However, trying to pass on the bill for a new set of light switches is really trying it on.
To answer your other query about guidelines on what is and isn’t common property, easiest way is to go to Fair Trading’s website www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au and click your way through to the section on “common property and the lot”.
But remember different buildings have different rules and what’s common property in yours may not be elsewhere.