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Why a balcony cannot be half fixed.
Every remedial job starts with the same question from an owners corporation: can we just do the bad one. Almost always the answer is no, and it is worth understanding why before the quotes arrive. Tick what you can see and this sets out the scope a proper repair has to include.
Count the balconies showing symptoms, not the whole building. If you are not sure, put in what you know about. Most schemes find the number grows once someone gets up close to all of them.
Tick everything that applies. Each one changes what has to be in the scope.
Six reasons the partial repair fails.
None of these are commercial. They are what the construction actually forces on you once the tiles come off.
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Waterproofing is a system, not a surface
A membrane only works if it is continuous and terminated properly into the upturns, the door threshold and the drainage outlet. Water finds the join. Patching the middle of a balcony leaves every original termination exactly as it was, which is where the failures usually are in the first place.
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You cannot lap new membrane into old
To bond a new membrane to an existing one you need to know the existing product, its age and its condition, and you need it to be sound at the lap. On a balcony that is already leaking, none of that is true. No builder will warrant a membrane joined to one they cannot inspect.
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Getting to the membrane means removing the screed
The membrane sits under the screed and the tiles. Once the screed is off, the falls have to be reset, and falls are set across the whole slab to a single outlet. You cannot reset the fall on half a balcony and have the water go anywhere sensible.
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Concrete repair follows the corrosion, not the drawing
Where reinforcement is rusting you chase the spall back until you reach sound concrete and clean steel. The true extent is only known once it is open. A scope written to a fixed patch size is a scope that will be varied, which is worse for the owners corporation than pricing it honestly at the start.
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The balustrade passes through the waterproofing
Balustrade posts are usually fixed through the slab or the upturn, which means every fixing is a penetration through the membrane. If the balustrade is being touched at all, those penetrations get re-made and the membrane re-terminated around them. That work cannot be isolated to one section.
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You pay for the access twice
Scaffold is charged to erect, charged per week to stand, then charged to dismantle. Doing the worst balconies now and the rest in three years means paying the erect and dismantle again, and standing the scaffold again for a second programme. On most buildings that costs more than doing the remaining balconies in the first campaign.
There is a real exception. Where a single balcony has an isolated, identified defect and the rest of the building has been verified as sound, a targeted repair is legitimate. That verification is the part people skip.
The warranty point people miss.
Waterproofing is a major element under the Home Building Act 1989 (NSW), which puts it in the six year statutory warranty period rather than the two year one.
Two things follow from that. If your building is still young, the original builder may still be on the hook for the balconies, and the owners corporation should establish that before it raises a levy. And when remedial waterproofing is done, the builder doing it carries six years on that work from completion, which is the other reason nobody sensible laps new membrane into old.
Work out where your dates fall with the warranty period checker, and if the scheme is heading toward a special levy, the strata levy calculator splits a total across unit entitlements.
Work the rest of the numbers.
Free, no sign up, and none of them ask for anything before they show you the answer.
Common questions before the quotes arrive.
Only where the rest have been verified as sound. Without that check you are usually funding the first of several campaigns rather than a repair.
Where there is structural concrete repair or any question over the slab, yes. Where an engineer is engaged we build to their specification. Where none exists, we can prepare one.
Usually. Balcony access is lost for the duration on the affected stack, so the programme is staged around residents and notified in advance.
The repair itself is a small part of it. Membrane systems have cure and test periods that cannot be compressed, and the programme is normally set by access and staging rather than by the work.
Send us what you are looking at.
Photos of the balcony and the room below tell us more than a description does. We will tell you what we think it is, whether or not there is a job in it for us.
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