Water on the brain

Sleep deprivation and water torture sound like they’re straight out of the Guantanamo Bay handbook. But it’s no joke if you are the victim and your neighbours are allowing it to happen because it doesn’t affect them.

QUESTION: We are only getting between 5-6 hours of broken sleep a night because of severe water hammer. The problem was reported by the previous occupant over a year ago but no official strata report was lodged so we had no indication of any problem when we bought.

We lodged our own complaint at the beginning of May but the strata managers only gave us the phone number of one plumber who, we were eventually told, was not qualified to undertake such complex work.

The strata managers now say they can’t guarantee the problem will be fixed as it might be too expensive for the owners corporation.

The executive committee chairman has told us to get quotes from plumbers but the only way to diagnose water hammer requires actually fixing the problem through trial and error and the plumber wants to get paid for this. – MA, Sydney

It’s a Catch 22: strata won’t pay until they have a quote; the plumber can’t quote without doing the work to fix it. What can we do?

ANSWER: It doesn’t matter whether the owners corporation has the money to fix this or not – they have a duty of care to you and to the building and if they have to raise extra money that’s their problem, not yours.

To get things moving, find a plumber who has fixed this problem in a building the same size and age of yours and get them to give you a ballpark figure on costs.

If the executive committee isn’t happy with that, or any overspend, they should have got their own quotes.

Water hammer is a complex problem in apartment blocks because of the many different outlets on different floors but that doesn’t mean that that you should have to suffer.

If the chairman still won’t budge, call Fair Trading on 13 32 20 and start proceedings with them. And then talk to your executive committee about getting a new strata manager – the one you’ve got sounds like a drip.

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