WOLLONGONG MOULD REMOVAL SERVICES
Strata and Body-Corporate Mould Remediation in Wollongong
Who pays is not decided at the committee meeting. It is decided by where the water came from, and the evidence that proves it has a shelf life of about a fortnight before someone cleans it away.
Trusted Strata Mould Remediation in Illawarra, NSW
You have got mould coming through a wall in unit 4. The owner says it is common property. The committee says it is condensation from the tenant drying washing inside. The strata manager wants something in writing before spending anything, and the owner is threatening Fair Trading. Meanwhile it is spreading.
Everyone in that argument is guessing, because nobody has measured anything.
That is what we are for. We come out, read the moisture, and produce a report that says where the water is coming from in language a committee can act on and a manager can put in the minutes. Sometimes that report costs the owners corporation money. Sometimes it lets the owners corporation off. We write what the meter says either way, which is the only reason the report is worth anything to either side.
Wollongong Mould Cleaning & Removal has been doing this across the Illawarra for 15 years, and does residential, commercial and strata work. Where a job needs a licensed plumber, roofer or builder, he organises them and stays the single point of contact, which on a strata job matters more than usual: managers do not have time to coordinate four trades across six lots.
Sound familiar?
- Mould on the inside of an external or boundary wall, worst in winter, worst in the south-facing rooms
- Staining spreading across a top-floor ceiling after heavy rain
- One lot reporting mould and the two lots either side reporting nothing
- A balcony or planter box above a unit that has never been waterproofed properly
- An owner who has already had it painted over twice and wants the owners corp to pay this time
- A manager who needs a defensible document before putting a motion up
We inspect for free and tell you what the moisture says before anyone commits to anything.
FREE INSPECTION, NO OBLIGATION
We will call you back personally to arrange a time.
Common Property or Lot Property, Which One Is This?
This is the whole argument, and NSW Fair Trading has already answered more of it than most committees realise.
Fair Trading’s strata repairs and maintenance guidance sets out who fixes what. On the owners corporation side: roof and gutters, ceilings, boundary walls, the concrete slab, balconies and balcony doors, windows, plumbing in boundary walls and under the floor. On the lot owner side: internal walls, carpet, internal painting, and plumbing in internal walls and fixtures.
Then it gets specific in a way that decides mould jobs. The owners corporation is responsible for “water damage coming from common property.” The owner is responsible for “water damage coming from inside your property.”
Read those two lines next to each other and the whole thing changes shape. The question is not whose wall the stain is on. It is where the water came from. A stain on the inside face of a boundary wall is on the owner’s paint, and that paint is the owner’s. The water that got behind it came through the building envelope, and the envelope is common property.
Which means the argument is not a matter of opinion, a vote, or who is more persistent at meetings. It is a moisture diagnosis, and a moisture diagnosis has to be done by someone with a meter before anyone cleans.
If your scheme has no clear definition of common property, Fair Trading publishes a common property memorandum a scheme can adopt by special resolution, and your strata plan and by-laws are the other place to look.
Two related situations that sit on other pages. If this is a commercial lot, a shopfront or a mixed-use building, the WHS and lease responsibility side is on commercial mould remediation. If the growth has gone through the plasterboard rather than sitting on the paint, the containment and clearance side is on toxic and structural black mould remediation, and the mould remediation hub covers the rest.
Not sure which side of the line yours falls on? Call (02) 4093 0541.
How We Handle a Strata Mould Job
Free inspection with the moisture mapped
Meter and thermal camera on the affected lot, and on the lots and common areas around it. Mould stops at the edge of the damp, so mapping the damp tells you which side of the boundary the water started on. This is the step that settles the argument, and it has to happen before anything is cleaned.
A written report both sides can use
Photographs, moisture readings, the likely source, and a plain statement of what needs doing. Written so a committee member with no building background can follow it and a manager can attach it to a motion. If the reading points at the lot rather than common property, the report says that.
Scope and quote, split by responsibility
Where a job crosses the boundary, we scope it in parts, so the owners corporation portion and the lot portion are separately priced rather than bundled into one number nobody can approve.
Containment, removal, drying
Work in an occupied building means sealing the work area, negative air pressure, and keeping corridors and neighbouring lots clean. Contaminated linings and insulation come out bagged. Wet framing gets dried to a measured target rather than left to the weather, which is covered on structural drying and dehumidification.
Fix the source, then reinstate
Mould does not come back if the water stops. Where the source is a failed membrane, a blocked box gutter or a cracked balcony, we organise the licensed trade and coordinate the sequence so the reinstatement does not happen before the repair. Larger reinstatement runs through building restoration.
Close-out documentation
Before and after photographs, moisture readings at completion, and a description of the repair for the scheme’s records. This is what the capital works file needs and what protects the committee if the same lot complains again in two years.
Why Cleaning It First Costs the Owner the Argument
Here’s where the real value lies.
NSW Fair Trading sets out a path where an owner who pays for an urgent repair can be reimbursed by the owners corporation afterwards. It comes with conditions. To get the money back, the owner has to show the repair was caused by something the owners corporation is responsible for, and may also need to show that calling the tradesperson was necessary and urgent. Fair Trading’s own advice on how to do that is direct: take photographic evidence, and ask the tradesperson to give you written details explaining the problem and what was done to fix it.
Now think about what remediation actually does. It removes the wet plasterboard, dries the framing, and puts a new sheet and fresh paint over the top. Done properly, it destroys every piece of physical evidence about where the water came from. Once the wall is dry and painted, a meter reads the same as any other wall in the building.
So the sequence most owners follow, which is to fix it first because they are sick of looking at it and argue about money later, quietly hands away the case. By the time it reaches a committee meeting or mediation there is nothing left to measure, and the whole thing collapses into two people’s recollections, and rarely gets solved.
The sequence that works is boring and takes one extra phone call. Document, then remediate. Get the moisture readings, the photographs and a written cause on the record while the wall is still wet, and the reimbursement conversation is a formality rather than a fight. That is a large part of what our inspection report is for, and it is free.
There is a clock on it too. Fair Trading states that a lot owner may take legal action against an owners corporation for loss suffered where the owners corporation failed to meet its duty to maintain and repair common property, but only within six years of the owner becoming aware of the loss. Recurring mould that gets painted over each winter is easy to leave for another season. Six years goes quickly when the problem is seasonal.
None of this is legal advice, and the current position should be checked with NSW Fair Trading on 13 32 20 or your own adviser. What we can tell you is the building side: the evidence exists now and it will not exist after the repair.
A note for managers and committees, because the same logic runs the other way. A documented inspection that shows the water came from inside the lot is the cleanest way to close down a claim against the scheme, and it is far cheaper than defending a position with no measurements behind it.
Units, Townhouses, Common Walls and Roofs: Where Strata Mould Starts
Strata mould has a small number of usual causes, and which one it is decides who pays.
- Top-floor lots with staining spreading across the ceiling are almost always the roof, the box gutter or the roof space, which is covered on ceiling mould removal and leaking roof water damage.
- Growth on the inside of a boundary or external wall, worst in winter and worst on the southern side, is usually condensation on a cold wall rather than a leak, and wall mould removal explains how to tell them apart.
- A ground-floor lot with paint bubbling and a white salty crust low on the wall is ground moisture rather than a leak, which needs rising damp treatment.
- Musty smells through a whole block with a shared or ducted system point at the plant rather than any one lot, covered on air conditioning and duct mould cleaning.
- Mould in a lot below a balcony, planter box or bathroom in the lot above is a waterproofing failure, and the membrane is usually common property.
- Ground-floor units over a subfloor or car park with a musty smell rising through the floor need subfloor and mouldy floor treatment.
- Where a buyer or incoming tenant needs the position documented before they sign, you’ll be needing a pre-purchase and rental mould inspection.
How Much Does Strata Mould Remediation Cost?
The inspection and the report are free. Remediation prices by severity, because containment and reinstatement scale with how far the water travelled rather than how bad the stain looks.
| Severity | What it looks like | Who it usually falls to | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspection and report | Moisture mapping, photographs, written cause, scope split by responsibility | Whoever calls us | Free |
| Minor | Surface growth in one lot, lining sound, source already identified and simple | Often the lot owner, if the cause is inside the lot | From $1,000 |
| Moderate | Contamination through linings in one or two rooms, wet insulation, drying required | Split, depending on where the water started | $2,500 to $10,000 |
| Major | Several lots affected, roof, box gutter, balcony membrane or common plumbing involved | Usually the owners corporation, common property source | $10,000+ |
| Severe | Building-wide defect, long-running ingress, multiple lots stripped and reinstated | Owners corporation, often alongside a defects claim | $20,000+ |
Note: These are current Illawarra market rates for scoping purposes. Your figure comes from the free inspection, and the “who it usually falls to” column is a general guide, not a determination of liability for your scheme.
Three procedural things worth knowing before you take a quote to a meeting.
Where the owners corporation is approving work valued at $30,000 or more, Fair Trading requires at least two independent quotes. That does not apply to emergency repairs. Knowing which category the job sits in changes how fast it can start, so tell us at the inspection if the scheme needs a second quote and we will scope it so the two are actually comparable.
Levies for major repairs come out of the capital works fund and need 30 days’ written notice, but where the repair is an emergency needed to mitigate a serious and imminent threat to health or safety, that notice drops to 14 days. Mould jobs occasionally qualify and usually do not, which is worth confirming rather than assuming.
And if the owners corporation will not act, there is a path: Fair Trading offers free strata mediation, and beyond that a formal complaint, with powers to seek a rectification plan or issue a compliance notice.
How Our Local Illawarra Knowledge Changes the Job
As you know by now, Wollongong strata stock has a particular shape to it, and it produces particular failures.
A lot of the older walk-up blocks through Wollongong, North Wollongong, Corrimal and Fairy Meadow are 1960s and 1970s solid brick or brick veneer with flat or near-flat roofs and internal box gutters. Box gutters are the single most reliable source of top-floor mould in this region, because they only need a handful of leaves and one decent Illawarra downpour to back up over the flashing. The unit owner sees a ceiling stain in April and assumes condensation. It is the gutter.
The newer coastal blocks have the opposite problem. Better sealed, more airtight, and full of bathrooms and kitchens venting into a shared riser, with sea air keeping outdoor humidity high for months. Those buildings get condensation mould on boundary walls in winter with no leak involved at all, and no amount of roof inspection will find anything, because there is nothing to find.
Knowing which kind of building you are standing in before you start looking saves a scheme a lot of money in inspection fees for problems that were never there.
We work the whole Illawarra: Wollongong and the northern suburbs, Port Kembla, Unanderra, Dapto, Albion Park, Shellharbour and down to Kiama.
Get Your Free Strata Inspection and Report
Free on-site inspection, free written report, and a scope split by responsibility so your committee can actually approve it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is responsible for mould in a strata unit, the owners corporation or the owner?
Basically, it depends where the water came from.
NSW Fair Trading makes the owners corporation responsible for common property and for water damage coming from common property, and the lot owner responsible for their own property and for water damage coming from inside it.
For example, mould caused by a roof leak, a box gutter, a balcony membrane or plumbing in a boundary wall is generally the owners corporation’s, and mould caused by a leaking tap under the owner’s sink or by condensation from how the lot is lived in is generally the owner’s. The stain being on the owner’s paint does not decide it.
Also, watch our for amendments to strata bylaws – they can be tricky but you’re well within your right to ask your Strata Committee to confirm if there are specific bylaws in place that affect the outcome.
We’ve seen situations where special absolution has specifically stated that “grey area” parts of the plumbing that would usually sit within strata responsibility had essentially been transferred to the owners responsibility. In this case, the owner needed to pay the insurance excess in order to get the ball rolling with the owners corp & insurance before we could even get started. Once we were involved, the process was simple!
Can the owners corporation make me pay because I dry washing inside?
It can argue that, and sometimes it is right.
Condensation mould is real and living habits do contribute to it. What settles it is a moisture reading rather than an assertion: condensation and ingress leave different patterns, and a wall that is wet inside the cavity is not being caused by a clothes horse. Get it measured before the discussion, not after.
Do I need permission from the strata committee before getting mould removed?
For work inside your own lot, generally no. For work touching common property, yes, and that is where a scoped quote helps, because it separates the part you can approve yourself from the part that needs the owners corporation.
For urgent repairs there is a path to act first and seek reimbursement afterwards, but Fair Trading expects you to be able to show the cause was common property and that the call-out was necessary and urgent, so document it before it gets fixed.
How do I get the owners corporation to actually do something?
Put it in writing to the strata manager or committee first, with the report attached. If nothing happens, you can raise a motion at the next general meeting.
If it still does not move, NSW Fair Trading offers free strata mediation, and after that a formal complaint, where Fair Trading can seek a rectification plan or issue a compliance notice. General information rather than advice, and Fair Trading on 13 32 20 is the place to confirm the current process.
Is mould in a unit dangerous?
For most people, no.
NSW Health states that most people will not experience health problems from contact with mould, while people with asthma, allergies, weakened immune systems or chronic lung disease can be more sensitive. It should still be removed, because it means water is getting somewhere it should not be, and in a strata building that same water is usually working on the structure as well. If anyone is unwell, see a doctor about the symptoms.
Do you work with strata managers directly?
Yes, and that is most of this work.
We can deal with the manager, the committee, the owner and the tenant, arrange access, work around trading and quiet hours, and provide the documentation the scheme needs for its records. If you manage a portfolio, a walk-through of a problem building costs nothing.
How long does a strata mould job take?
A single lot with contained damage is often two to four days including reinstatement.
Where the fix involves common property, the timeline is usually set by the trade repairing the source rather than by us, and by the meeting cycle needed to approve it. We sequence the remediation after the repair, because doing it in the other order means doing it twice.