This article discusses strata retaining wall maintenance dispute and why a forensic engineer’s report may be needed when owners refuse to act.
Question: A retaining wall is failing in our scheme. Other lot owners or the Council of Owners are not interested in maintenance or even an engineers report. What can be done?
I live in a small strata of 4 units that was built in 1987. There are substantial cracks appearing in the front retaining wall split between the visitors’ car park and one unit’s courtyard. I am a landscape architect with some landscape construction knowledge and feel that the wall is just a single brick wall. Part of this conclusion is supported by the fact that at the back was retained using fencing sheets that were recently replaced. In both instances over a meter of soil (X 20m) is being held back. Council no longer has records of the plans.
Insurance says they will not cover this. No one wants to spend any money on maintenance or even agree to getting an engineers report. I have no support from other lot owners or the Council of Owners. What can be done?
Answer: The only way to get to the bottom of the matter is with a forensic engineer.
Bruce McKenzie:
That’s a tricky one and obviously not getting support from other owners is problematic in itself, and it is probably not something that I can give advice on.
This property is well over 30 years old and you’re getting cracks in a wall. My first opinion is that there has to be some kind of change of event that is causing those cracks. Something’s changed, because otherwise this would have occurred 10 or 15 years ago. I’ll list some of the changes that can occur. The first typical thing with retaining walls is trees. Obviously, as they get bigger, root systems develop. This can impact foundations and things like retaining walls. There could have been some sort of weather event, or I’m not sure of the actual property, but whether there’s been subsoil water conditions or something that’s occurred.
Really, when you’re talking about structural matters like this of a retaining wall (and I acknowledge that it doesn’t appear to wall and significantly high, but it’s long), the only way to get to the bottom is a forensic engineer. Get someone with that background to take a look, do an assessment on the wall that may extend off into things like geotechnical. They may have to check the soil and see if there’s any movement or other reasons. In my experience, trees have a lot to answer for with these sorts of issues, they are inherently normally present. Quite often it could be the tree, well across the neighbour’s property somewhere else and the root system is made its way over. So really, a forensic engineer would be the way to got.
Given the age of the property, I think any sort of recovery through original building design, construction, anything like that is obviously not an option for you, unfortunately. I in this circumstance, whether you do have to fund the cost for that forensic engineer in the first place to help lay your case down as to how significant that problem is or not would be a start point, and that document will carry a fairly good amount of weight I think moving into that next conversation, even with the council, where you could you could talk along the lines of the severity of it, and whether within your strata arrangement that would permit you to move forward and have a bit more owner accountability, once that is discovered.
Nikki Jovicic:
Sam, would you like to address the lack of support from the Council of Owner?
Samantha Reece:
I deal with lots of difficult council of owners, I attend lots of AGMs and the beauty about my ‘tag’ of being ‘The Erin Brockovich of apartments’ is I actually can deal out the delivery in a way that makes people realise that sometimes, inaction is not the best action.
In this situation you’ve got to ask yourself, what would be the impact if that wall falls over? It’s more of crisis management than it is actually dealing with the crack. I agree that a forensic engineer definitely is the way to go. At the end of the day, if that wall fails, whose car might be impacted? Then insurance won’t cover that car because you haven’t dealt with the wall. You can reach out to me and I’m happy to come and talk to you or the Council of Owners.
This post appears in Strata News #498.
Bruce McKenzie Sedgwick E: bruce.mckenzie@au.sedgwick.com P: 1300 735 720
Samantha Reece Australian Apartment Advocacy E: sam@aaadvocacy.net.au P: 0452 067 117