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  • #9538
    AJG
    Flatchatter

      Hard flooring on (essentially) a ground floor apartment?

      ________

      We have owned a studio apartment since the block was built back in the late 70s. No one has ever lived there, and we’ve never rented it. But now, my daughter will be moving in, and it’s in desperate need of an update from all of its 1970s glory. 

      Our Strata seems to take pride in being particularly difficult, and have been extraordinarily frustrating to deal with. 

      There was a standard by-law that said that renovations need EC approval, and some guy a few years back put down a tiled floor (ripping up the carpet) without underlay or sound proofing or whatever and without permission. I don’t know the whole details of the case, but apparently they took him to mediation and then to court and it was declared he could keep his floors. Whatever. But now the strata have a new by-law which states: 

      _______

      ii) An owner or occupier of a lot must not install or allow the installation of: 

      a) a floating floor, 

      b) a vinyl floor or floor covering or similar;

      c) tiles, paving, parquetry, timber, marble, limestone or other hard flooring or floor covering 

      in any room of the lot 

       

      iii) Without limiting paragraph 2, the owner of the lot must ensure that the floor to the lot is covered or otherwise treated to an extent sufficient to prevent the transmission from the floor of noise likely to disturb the peaceful enjoyment of the owner or occupier of another lot

      iv) This By-Law does not apply to the kitchen, bathroom, lavatory, laundry or balcony of the lot, provided that such room is in its original location in the lot 

       

      _____

       

      This is all fine, except our apartment is on the 6th floor, and below us is 5 floors of CARPARK. So, thinking that the by-law was a bit unreasonable to be applied to our apartment, we took it to an AGM. The EC told us we couldn’t even present the argument unless we spoke with a acoustic engineer and a lawyer, which at great expense, we did. There is also a by-law which says that all renovations have to go through the AGM but we couldn’t present our renovation until we had the floor approval and weren’t allowed to present the two options (if we’re allowed the floor, or one if we’re not) so we left that out.

      Anyway, the AGM was a disaster. (Not only because of the floor – before we even got to that, the secretary was being accused of fraud, everyone on the EC resigned, no one wanted to run etc etc – there are nasty personal politics at play here) We failed, and failed largely because lots of people spoke about the pain of having someone with wooden floors above you. Our amendment to the by-law was completely restricted to the 6th floor and only with EC approval and a 5 star underlay rating. But everyone kept saying it would be loud to be below someone with a wooden floor. I tried to tell everyone that unless they moved into the CARPARK, this could not possibly be them.

      Anyway, so the by-law stands. My question is essentially, what grounds to do we have to appeal, and what would the chances be of success? It’s perhaps worth noting that the majority of the building is leased to a serviced apartments provider, and the entire 6th floor is used as serviced short stay apartments, except for us. Also, the current floor plan means that the bathroom and kitchen (tiles and rubber {UGH}, respectively) are actually larger than the rest of the studio, so we’re not even changing that much of the floor to being hard – it’s already majority hard flooring! 

      What would happen if we decide to put down a floor without permission? What action could they take? 

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