Cladding Safety Victoria has reduced the risk posed by combustible cladding on a larger scale than anywhere else in the world, having completed rectification on more than 300 private residential apartment buildings.
Despite making massive progress, pre-existing other defects have impacted the delivery of the Cladding Rectification Program.
CSV’s analysis has found 168 buildings (50%) of the total funded buildings in the program (339 as of October 2022) have defects unrelated to cladding.
Some of the most common building defects relate to mould and water ingress and balcony defects, among others.
This video is a visual representation of some of the issues identified during cladding replacement works.
“Running in there (and down the wall), and running down there.
“Water damaged plaster, basically comes out, and then behind, the timber damage.
“Also letting moisture come in, which has caused this to rot away and crumble.
“So what we can see here, is a beam that picks up the balcony from above, and this is mould and rot that is degrading this structural element – and its due to the construction of the balustrade above. If you just see here, the original builder has fixed through bits of chip board – probably what the kitchens were made out of – pieces of EPS, down through the top capping. That’s caused a weak point where water’s entered into the structure and over time has caused the degradation of this structural element.
“There’s no waterproofing or weatherproofing to the bottom plate of the timber. So moisture rises up from below and rots that timber out. This issue with the lack of weatherproofing to the timber is present around the entire building.
“This stud wall here, is not engaging on anything; there’s nothing below. So this is basically floating in the wind and then transferring that load back onto the other timber members which is not how it was designed – it’s picking up the balcony above and it’s degraded by mould and rot, so you can imagine the kind of structural issues this will pose.
“The original builder has cut out a massive chunk of the balcony floor joist, and that means that that element is now taking zero to no load.
“What you can see here is some pretty significant movement that’s opened up a joint between the two balconies.
“The window hasn’t been waterproofed properly; it’s caused water to exit from the inside out. You can see down here the signs of that degradation.
“Pretty consistent throughout the building – we have penetrations through the concrete slab that haven’t been coordinated properly and haven’t been fire rated, so all of these individual penetrations, and we count 90 of them in total, throughout the basement, would need to be rectified.
“The builder’s got the height of the column incorrect, and then he’s put another bit of column above that. There’s questions as to whether the reinforcement’s been continued properly in here."
Non-cladding defects impact directly on the program’s ability to progress these buildings and on the safety of the owners who need to complete the rectification works.
It also highlights the likelihood that these defects are not confined to buildings in the Cladding Rectification Program but are prevalent in Class 2 construction.
For more information and to download a copy of CSV’s research paper, visit: http://www.vic.gov.au/cladding-safety
Updated