We live on the third, top, residential level of our apartment building and there are lock-up garages on the ground. Our block of 46 is in Sydney and we have a decent strata manager who does everything while the strata committee does nothing much at all. It’s been peaceful enough lately, however we’ve a new problem.

A very nice, polite, sixty something empty nester guy has just retired who has always had a hobby keeping his 30 year old V8 purring nicely and we’ve lived with it. He also has two, yep two, Dakar Rally style motor bikes which he works on as well. All kept in his single car garage under us. This means lots of car – bike shuffling. He has a bench at the back where he tinkers with parts and electronics.

So we have the echoing noise from him messing round and moving cars and bikes more often these days but also he has an automatic garage door. This door seems to go up and down 30 times a day and evening starting and finishing with a thud you can almost feel and the door may also need a lube. It was installed by a previous owner years ago in the days of the wild west. There would be no permission for it, I’m certain. Maintenance would be the current owners responsibility.

What can we do? We don’t want to make an enemy of this nice old guy and his wife, we want him to enjoy life. We don’t feel comfortable approaching him. Could the strata manager approach him and us be anonymous? It all sounds a bit difficult but we shouldn’t have to put up with this. (Ten years ago a guy was stopped who was selling kayaks out of a garage downstairs but he wasn’t nice so nobody minded shutting him down.)