Here’s a question that will resonate with owners in older buildings. When your block’s electrical wiring isn’t good enough to safely power a domestic oven, should the owners corp be obliged to rewire the whole building?
In fact, is it not a fire risk not to do so?
It’s not just the cables – although cloth-covered copper wire isn’t ideally suited to deal with overheating – it could be an ancient power-board that has been fiddled with and fixed up over generations.
When you consider the electrical load on a block in the 2020s rather than the 1920s – TVs, toasters, microwaves, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, computers, phone chargers, heaters in winter and fans and portable air-con in summer and, yes, electric ovens – it’s probably stressing the load more than a couple of electric lights, a steam radio and a countertop hotplate.
And are ancient fuses more likely to overheat than blow? You can join in or just follow that discussion HERE.
In a similar vein, from another older building, a Flatchatter wants to know if you have to reinstate bodgy additions to common property when you need to rebuild crumbling balconies for safety reasons.
It’s a mess. Some of these balconies have shutters and windows added to enclose them so that they could be used as laundries! That’s HERE.
Also in the Forum:
- To avoid tenants’ untrained pets being refused because of potential damage (it happened in Canberra) should there be a double bond for tenants with animals? That’s HERE.
- The water shut-off valve (stopcock) is inside lot property. Is it owner’s or owners corp responsibility? That’s HERE.
- Do I need council approval to build a louvred roof over my terrace? Or is it an exempt or complying development? That’s HERE.
- Can the strata committee push through a by-law limiting the number of times owners are allowed to contact them? That’s HERE.
- The strata manager made an error in the wording of a by-law … now he says we need another general meeting to correct it. That’s HERE.
You can ask a question or answer someone else’s on the Forum.
