Lic. 000000C (demo)
BarBeach
Much of our Bar Beach work happens inside a flat rather than beside one. That puts the strata plan and the owners corporation into the job as firmly as the tile samples, and it is the first thing we explain when owners call us as builders in Bar Beach: a cliff-top bathroom starts with paperwork a house inland never needs.
On the cliff top, a new bathroom is a strata decision before it's a building one.
Bar Beach climbs from about 20 m on its western side to 65 m on the cliffs above the sand, and almost half of it is parks and beaches: Empire Park, Reid Park's tennis courts and the Cooks Hill Surf Life Saving Club. The AA Company released residential lots here in 1924. Bar Beach is known for heritage-listed Art Deco flats. The council's plan also lists unit blocks by name, Parkhurst Flats, Kamarem Court, Brooklyn Court and Acropolis among them.
Our bathroom renovations page explains how strata law sorts work in a flat, and why the waterproofing puts a bathroom beyond what an ordinary meeting resolution can approve. In a Bar Beach block the practical question is timing: when the owners corporation next meets, whether the by-laws let the committee deal with it sooner, and how much notice a motion needs in your building.
The strata plan answers the other question, which is whose the bathroom is. In one block the floor membrane and the waste may belong to the owners corporation; in another, a by-law has handed the whole room to the owner. We read both before we price, because the date of the meeting can become the date the job starts. For the committee we put together the scope, a drawing, our licence number and a program, so the motion has what it needs the first time it's read.
A listed block adds council to that list of approvals, and because almost the whole suburb is mapped coastal use land, council considers coastal matters in the same application. We draw the job once, so the owners corporation and council are looking at identical plans, and we lodge with council only once the strata side can see where it's heading. Listings here reach well beyond the flats, too: the council's plan also takes in the Former King Edwards Girls Home, the surf club and its memorial, and the bowling club fence at Empire Park, so we check every address, not only the unit blocks.
Not everything here is a flat. The houses on the lots the AA Company released from 1924 sit mostly on Guideline 3A and 2 ground, and none of Bar Beach is in a conservation area, so a bathroom in one of them is a plainer job: if the house isn't listed and the room keeps its shape, the state's exempt route is open. Being high and close to the surf, they take the weather harder than the streets inland, so we choose the exhaust fan, its outlet and the window hardware to live with salt. The suburbs further from the water are on our Newcastle page.
In a Bar Beach block the bathroom's membrane, waste and floor can be common property, so the owners corporation's approval is lined up before the tiles are ordered and the program is built around the meeting date.
Where the whole building is a listed item, a new kitchen in one unit needs council consent as well as the owners corporation's, so both applications are drawn from the same set of plans.
On the detached houses closest to the cliffs, windows, doors and their fixings take the salt directly, so we choose hardware made for the coast and allow for rinsing when we hand over.
Send the building's address, your unit number and a photo of the bathroom as it is. We'll check the listing, the coastal layer and what your by-laws ask for before we visit.
Yes, with council's consent. When the building is a heritage item, the state's exempt and complying routes are both closed, so even a bathroom that keeps its layout needs development consent from council. You'll also need the owners corporation's approval, which is a separate step, so we run the two side by side.
The council's plan lists Parkhurst Flats, Kamarem Court, Brooklyn Court and Acropolis by name, and has at least one more Bar Beach entry described only as residential units, so a name check alone can miss it. Search the street address on the heritage layer of the NSW Planning Portal's Spatial Viewer, or look at the property's section 10.7 planning certificate, which says whether the land holds a heritage item.
It comes into play when the work needs a development application, because council then considers coastal matters for land inside the mapped area, and nearly all of Bar Beach is. Internal work that goes ahead without consent isn't assessed that way. Where your bathroom does go to council, because the block is listed or the work changes the structure, the coastal side is part of that same application rather than another one.
Some days, yes, and we tell them which. The noisy part is the strip-out and any concrete cutting, usually the first few days, and your by-laws may set the hours. The drainage and the waste connections are done by a licensed plumber we coordinate, and the new membrane is left to cure before any water goes near it, so nothing reaches the ceiling below. We give the strata manager the program before we start.
It reaches whatever opens to the outside. Corrosion rates climb near breaking surf, and wind can push the salt further in, so an ocean-facing window, its hardware and the exhaust fan's outlet take more of it than a sheltered room. We pick fittings, fan grilles and window hardware rated for the coast, and keep chrome that isn't up to it away from an open window.
The whole suburb is, mostly on Guidelines 3A and 2. For a bathroom it rarely matters: Subsidence Advisory's exempt list includes internal work such as ensuites and toilets on all guidelines, provided it's framed in timber or steel and leaves the structure alone. Shift a load-bearing wall, or cut into a slab in a way the engineer calls structural, and the work comes off that list.