Question: When it rains, water backs up into the door tracks and drains into my garage below. The OC will not assist as they say it is not their problem. How do I solve this?
I live in a 2 story townhouse in a block of 8. The block is about 15 years old. I have a street level sliding door opening onto a 25 sqm balcony. I was told by tradesmen that the issue is due to a building defect causing my balcony to sit higher than it should.
The sliding door tracks are buried into the balcony so rainwater cannot drain out of the tracks and instead, flows into the garage below. The OC will not help as they say it’s not their problem.
Answer: There should be a step down from the inside of the apartment to the outside of the balcony.
In accordance with the building code, there should be a step down from the inside of the apartment to the outside of the balcony. That step can vary, but we’re talking around 75 millimetres or 3 inches. This can change dependent on the exposure of the particular building, type of building and what exposure it has to the coast, etc.
That step is, very regularly, compromised. Modern architecture has a big part to play in that. We all enjoy that indoor outdoor living transition where don’t want to step over something or down, we’d like to just go straight out onto the balcony.
How have they overcome that in modern architecture? One of the solutions is strip drains at the openings, and effectively the step is within that strip drain where there’s an ability to capture the water before it can come inside.
The purpose of a step is that if you looked at an outdoor balcony, if there is a 75 millimetre step, the balcony can effectively fill up like a bathtub. It’s not until the water reaches that 75 millimetre height that it will spill inside. That’s your layer of protection. You would like to think that by then the water has overflowed off the balcony and you don’t have a problem.
The problem outlined in the question is very, very common. We see this regularly. This building is 15 years old. Quite often around that era, many buildings alleviate that step. Also, in a building of that age people make decisions to renovate. They may choose to put tiles on the balcony, the floor gets built up and all of a sudden it eliminates that step.
Drainage is normally in the aluminium sill. When the water hits the glass door it runs down into the track at the bottom and there are slits that allow the water to escape onto the balcony and run away. If you cover those slits up, it’s like putting a plug in a bathtub and the water can’t get out. Water will build up and the closest place it can go is normally inside the apartment because that is it’s only form of escape.
When those slots are blocked, you are limited in what you can do. Are there retrofitted tiles on the balcony? If so, they may need to come up and the floor lowered to a new height if that’s possible. Another solution, and we’ve done this before, is for contractors to cut strip drains to allow the water to escape. This solution is very dependent on the structure below as you may not be able to cut into the structural members of the slab.
These issues are normally associated with a lot property problem given it is a balcony and a sliding door. Are there other units in the complex that have the same issue?
This post appears in the July 2022 edition of The VIC Strata Magazine.
Bruce McKenzie
Sedgwick
E: bruce.mckenzie@au.sedgwick.com
P: 1300 735 720
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