Question: If a building experiences water ingress, how can owners and committees differentiate between damage covered by their strata insurance (e.g., cyclone damage) and damage that might be existing or due to lack of maintenance?
Answer: If your building has existing problems like concrete spalling or timber rot, these are not ordinarily accepted as cyclone damage because it’s fairly obvious they are pre-existing.
Most committees, body corporate managers and building managers are reasonably aware of the existing maintenance issues and problems in the building, e.g., dark stains or the efflorescence you see coming out of balconies, concrete spalling, timber rot, steel corrosion. They’re all visible signs of water damage, but none occur within a week or two after the cyclone. They’re signs of long-term maintenance problems and would not typically be covered by insurance. However, they may very well impact how an insurer will respond to a claim. Long standing defect issues can result in a claim being denied in full, a partial response or the requirement of defects to be repaired before any resultant damage from an insurable event will be paid.
As a building consultant, when we attend the building for an assessment or project manage a site, we look for damage that happened during the cyclone. Also, our duty of care is to identify other things that could have contributed to damage, like water ingress.
Mould is always tricky. Mould can develop within days in Queensland, so it can be complicated to determine the difference between existing mould and new mould as a result of water inundation. Experts can determine that to help get a clear picture of what sits in that maintenance area and what may have contributed to further damage because it wasn’t repaired.
If your building has existing problems such as steel corrosion, rust, or timber rot, these are not ordinarily accepted as cyclone damage because it’s fairly obvious they are pre-existing.
This post appears in the April 2025 edition of The NSW Strata Magazine.
Bruce McKenzie Sedgwick E: bruce.mckenzie@au.sedgwick.com