Terrace/balcony doors in the ACT.

Thanks for the response.

It’s a Class A unit.  It’s a repair/maintenance issue.  The external terrace/courtyard doors no longer close properly and can’t even be locked.  They seem to be out of alignment or maybe the rollers have worn out.  This is a ground floor unit and the doors open to a private walled terrace/courtyard area.  The unit above has a balcony instead and a similar sliding door arrangement to that balcony.

The OC manager has now told me maintenance of these doors is an owner responsibility because “The door is not typically considered to be a common area issue, they form part of the unit that the unit occupier has sole access to, therefore the doors would be considered to be the individual owners issue to repair.”

It seems the OC manager considers “sole access” to be a reason for the OC not to maintain them.   The balcony doors would be sole access too.

Is the OC manager correct?

Thanks.  I’ve already quoted that part of the Unit Tiles Act to the OC manager.

The OC manager is pointing out the “if load-bearing” condition and has stated that the sliding doors would have to be load-bearing to be considered an OC responsibility.  I suspect they are not load-bearing although they do form a complete (glass) “wall” between the interior living room and the exterior courtyard (or balcony). 

Being an external window/door, I would have thought that alone would make it, at least partly, an OC responsibility. 

It might depend on how the boundary lines are drawn.  I note the advice below from VBCS (for Victoria, but the interpretation is the important part):

Q: Our balcony door is damaged and won’t close properly.

A: If the boundary of the lot extends past the wall to the edge of the balcony, the door will be within the owners lot and the responsibility of the owner to maintain.

I’ve not seen the boundary plan for the unit but on other plans that I have seen there’s usually a line drawn between a lot’s interior and exterior parts .  Even if that line exists, I understand that “Median” is the default boundary division in the ACT (and probably applies here as the unit was built in the 1980s).  So that would mean the OC and the owner are 50/50 responsible for lot perimeter walls, windows, doors unless if they are load-bearing?

Tricky!

And now I have seen the actual Units Plan (sub-division plan) and there is a boundary line drawn between the unit’s interior and the unit’s exterior courtyard (called a unit subsidiary on the plan).

So this means the sliding doors to the courtyard are part of a boundary wall.  And as it’s an external wall of the building, the following applies (from Unit Title Act 2001):

If a class A unit or a unit subsidiary is bounded by an external wall of the building containing the units, then, unless otherwise indicated in the relevant unit title application or units plan—
(a) the boundary of the unit or unit subsidiary lies along the centre of the wall; and
(b) the part of the wall outside the boundary is common property.

So now the OC manager is telling me that the interior half of the sliding doors is an owner responsibility while the exterior half is an OC responsibility.   And, I guess, some repairs would be split 50/50. 

I never thought I’d champion Interior Face! (haha)  But it seems a lot simpler.

@Kangaroo said:
Austman,

I’m not familiar with Vic and ACT laws.

But if you look at NSW doors, the sliding pane is always on the inside of the centre line, and the fixed pane is always on the outside of the centre line.

That’s if you want to get that pedantic.

In my experience, sliding doors get misaligned (and fail to lock) for two reasons:

1) The rollers are worn (or flat) and should be replaced. Cost $100-$200.

2) The whole building has become infinitesimally trapezoidal due to subsidence. This might be fixable by adjustment of the roller height. Cost $100-$200.

Thanks Kangaroo. Pedantic is often exactly what strata law is!

I just took a look a my own sliding external door.  It’s a well known brand, sold all over Australia.  The sliding door part is on the outside.

As for where a boundary “centre-point” actually lies in structures like doors and windows, it’s clearly defined in VIC: Subdivision (Registrar’s Requirements) Regulations 2011:

10 Use of buildings to define boundaries (c) Median (wall, window, door, balustrade):  lies along the mid point between exposed surfaces of any wall, window, door, and balustrade of the relevant part of a building.

So in VIC at least it’s the exposed surfaces that are the determining points, not any centre line.  So the boundary can vary even within a door or window structure!

Does anyone know if this is the same in the ACT?