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I live on the ground floor of a multi level building in Sydney, directly below me is 8 levels of basement car parking.
There is a vehicle that parks directly below my unit that has an extreme exhaust, and fills my unit with exhaust smells which also irritates my eyes.
Is it a breach of anything like some sort of strata law or building code for exhaust gasses to enter a unit from the car parking area? It is coming through both an intake vent for the air conditioning unit and seemingly through the wall in another spot.
The vehicle owner is not a resident, and even though this breaches the security by laws the EC doesn’t seem interested in doing anything about this, and even if they did i have to assume other exhaust gasses are entering my unit.
I plan to ask the EC to do something about this, but i expect they will just ignore me, so i’d like to be armed with the knowledge of what my legal options are before i approach them.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
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bubbles – a couple of questions first:
1) Are you an Owner?
2) Is the vehicle parked on the Common Property of the building, such as in the carpark, in a visitors’ parking space, or a driveway?
3) If the owner of the car is not a resident, then who are they?
Hello bubbles
If the “extreme exhaust” from the vehicle you refer to is emission of excessive amounts of smoke, you can report the matter to the EPA here:
https://www.epa.nsw.gov.au/esdsmoky/
If I were in your shoes I’d also be discussing the positioning of the air conditioner intake and any building requirements for sealing your unit against car park exhaust fumes with the local council, they also may require some sort of effective extraction equipment to ventilate that area in the event of limited natural air circulation, particularly where basement areas are involved.
Dave
Bubbles – some advice recently provided by “tharra” in another post suggested that a Local Environment Plan (LEP) of The City of Sydney Council restricted the use of carspaces in residential buildings such as yours.
The following was posted as being a reflection of that LEP in the Development Approval for “tharra’s” Strata Plan:
“The on-site car parking spaces, exclusive of designated visitor car parking spaces, are not to be used by those other than an occupant of or person residing in the subject building and any tenant or registered proprietor of the development site or part thereof shall not enter into an agreement to lease, licence, or transfer ownership of such car parking spaces to those other than an occupant or resident of the subject building.”
It may be worth your while to check with The City of Sydney Council or alternatively provide this extract (above) to your Executive Committee and see what’s forthcoming so far as the possibly illegal use of a carspace by the offending vehicle is concerned.
On the broader issue of carpark ventilation, I had a similar problem and took some initial measurements with THIS hired gas detector to, in the case of our Plan and at a cost of $144, prove to a resident that there was no problem with CO emissions – where an 8 hour average reading of <70ppm is acceptable from a workplace perspective; but check with NSW Health regarding levels for a residence of your type.
bubbles – the first thing that I would do, if only to satisfy your curiosity, is to contact the EPA and try to ascertain what actions if any they took subsequent to your complaint.
Then, as the offending vehicle shouldn’t be on the Common Property irrespective of its non-compliance with air pollution laws, and as whoever it is that has given a security card to that vehicle’s Owners/s is in breach of your Plan’s Special By-Law in circumstances where neither your Executive Committee (E/C) nor your Building Manager (B/M) is prepared to do anything about that, you should immediately write to your E/C Secretary (cc your Strata Manager) advising that unless you receive a written response to your past complaints within say 7 days, then as an initial step you’ll be lodging an Application for Mediation of those complaints against the Owners Corporation with the NSW Office of Fair Trading.
Your Application shouldn’t be about the exhaust smoke, but be about your Owners Corporation (incl. the E/C as its representative) not acting to rectify breaches of your Plan’s Special By-Law regarding security keys, and the Model By-Laws 1 & 2 relating to noise (the exhaust) and to vehicles parked on Common Property.
Just ensure that you have properly documented everything, including the details of your initial complaints to the E/C and to the B/M and about the visitors to your Unit.
As a matter of interest, did you follow-up with Council regarding possible breaches of the Conditions of your Plan’s Development Consent?
bubbles – I would hope that, perhaps unlike yourself, your Strata Manager has not been distracted by or confused the issues of the one vehicle’s noise or of its smelly exhaust, and has instead focused on the fact that an Owner has breached your Plan’s Special By-Law by giving one of their security access tags to a non-resident, and has therefore issued them with a Notice to Comply with that Special By-Law; because that’s the real issue!
bubbles – in respect of your question as to who you send the letter to, you address it to the Owners Corporation and send it to the strata manager. If you like, you can also send a copy to the Secretary.
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