Floating timber flooring and unsympathetic Owner and tenants

Hi All,

I live in a cozy 8 unit strata block that was built in the early 70’s. All things considered the first four and a half years of ownership have been relatively incident free and reasonably blissful. That is until February of 2012 when the long term tenants in the lot directly above mine moved out and the owners took the opportunity to install floating timber flooring. New tenants moved in at the end of February (a young family) and my nightmare formally begun.

After two weeks of pounding stomping and running/jumping on the new floorboards accompanied with frequent loud door slamming which began at 5-6am and continued almost uninterrupted until 12.30-2am, I had had enough. Enquiries with my other neighbors adjoining the offending unit indicated that they also had been badly affected by the incessant noises and also were at wits end. Attempts to discuss the issues with our new neighbors were met with a shrug and being told that they were not making any noise.

My two other neighbors and I decided to send an email to our strata manager to ask them to intervene. After several weeks of trying to track the owner down (the owner was overseas), contact between the strata manager and the owner of the offending unit was established. What followed was a brief exchange of emails where the strata manager pressed the issue with the noise and the timber floor and the owner’s protests that “he did not need approval to install the floor” and “I have an acoustic certificate from the installer and it meets the BCA standards”. Despite pointing out that the certificate was issued 3 years prior to the install of his floor and that the acoustic underlay mentioned in the certificate was different and thicker than the underlay on their invoice, the owner stuck to his guns. He did say he would talk to his new tenants.

Fast forward 6 months of no change in the incessant noise and email exchanges between me, the strata manager and the unit owner, and nothing had been achieved except that cordial relations were now badly degraded. It was at this point that I realized that despite some early promising signs, relations were at a low ebb and I would need to approach the CTTT for a resolution.

 Prior to this I consulted with a Strata lawyer at some considerable expense. He recommended that I take both the owner to the CTTT for a breach of by-law 14 and s117(a) and the tenants to the CTTT for breaches of by-law 1 and s117(a).. Interestingly the owner had not informed the strata manager of the new tenant’s details and it took a strongly worded letter from the strata manager to extract the information.

I decided to take the owner to the CTTT for by-lay 14 initially and follow up with the tenants if that did not bring any relief. Mediation with the owner’s representative and me was a farce with much waving of the now infamous acoustic report in evidence and protests that we were harassing his poor innocent tenants.

A follow-up application to the adjudicator is now in progress with submissions containing detailed noise notes, stat decs and letters from witnesses.

My question is how long will it take for the adjudicator to make an order (submissions closed a month ago) and if appealed how long does it take to go to the Tribunal. Does anyone have a database of similar cases that I can look at should this need to go to the tribunal?

Any additional advice on how to deal with the distressing issue would be greatly appreciated

Cheers

andyj