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I live in a freestanding home unit in NSW and am wanting to convert my garage to a very basic home gym-equipment like a small treadmill, exercise bike. As I have a “thing” about anything that crawls I.e. spiders and insects, I would like to gyprock one side of the garage brick wall and build a false wall with a door behind the Rollerdoor. The rollerdoor would not be touched. Also recently, have had a major heart attack so have been advised to setup something like this for my health. What type of renovation is this classified as and Are there any issues I need to address or encounter? There are only 7 freestanding units.
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A garage isn’t a habitable space so it would be a good idea to check with the Council regarding any requirements that may apply, and if you need any approval to convert the garage.
Generally the planning consent for the building requires a certain number of car parking spaces for each lot.
I am going to say that going by plans I have seen for strata, the builder would have put in the minimum number of parking spaces for each lot.
You may not have a car and say that your garage is superfluous.
But given that you are changing the number of car parking spots for your lot, this conversion would probably require council approval.
You can just do the conversion on the quite but you risk the OC making you take it down until council approved it.
BTW it’s unlikely to get council approval because it would breach one of their planning conditions.
Be circumspect about what you are doing and see what happens.
All the comments about council approval are correct, including provision of parking spaces and change of use from a garage to a gym.
What is critical here, though, is whether or not your neighbours are going to object – they are the ones who will dob you in to the council if you don’t have official approval and they don’t like what you’re doing.
There are a few cases in the Flat Chat annals of people turning their garages into games rooms, rock band rehearsal spaces and TV lounges but it’s only when they annoy their neighbours, either because of excessive noise or because their car is now parked on common property, that the Council sends someone round.
A quiet word with your neighbours would certainly be worthwhile in the first instance, but if the Coucil sends someone round and finds a wall where a garage entrance used to be, they may have issues.
By the way, you can’t expect your strata committee to officially approve something that hasn’t or wouldn’t be OK’d by council planners.
The opinions offered in these Forum posts and replies are not intended to be taken as legal advice. Readers with serious issues should consult experienced strata lawyers.
Couple of thoughts.
There are many ‘pest treatment’ companies that I would think could treat you garage in a manner that it worse than ‘uninteresting’ and so alleviate your ‘thing’
Secondly, you could consult a builder to create a ‘temporary’ room within the garage that can be assembled and dis-assembled, which might not then contravene planning approvals and is in ‘your airspace’ and not affixed to common property floors or ceilings.
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