December newsletter
Is your balcony safe?
Posted on Tuesday, November 24 2009 at 10:00 AM
Do you ever have your balcony or verandah inspected professionally? Regular safety checks might be worth thinking about in the wake of three recent balcony collapses.
The balcony of a Perth home hosting a Halloween party collapsed last month, following on from collapses in Morayfield and Ascot.
Solutions IE managing director James Freestun says all multi-storey buildings should have regular safety inspections, with records kept up to date.
"Ensuring safety inspections are carried out annually on your buildings is imperative to the safety and wellbeing of residents or anyone using the balcony," Freestun says.
"Many local councils recommend this be done, one example being the Gold Coast City Council."
Freestun says the Gold Coast Grand Prix (formerly Indy) highlighted the need for regular checks because it saw balconies being used to their maximum capacity.
He says a fatal collapse in Ascot in November 2008 might have been avoided if a safety check had been properly conducted, as an investigation into the collapse found corrosion of nails, rotting timber and dirt between beams and joints.
Solutions IE says it's increasingly finding issues relating to concrete cancer and rusting steel supports and fixings on building balconies.
"High-rise buildings are now starting to age and the maintenance issues relating to safety issues like balconies are becoming more and more of a risk to those who live, work and visit them," Freestun says.
"Buildings with the highest risk have timber supports or balustrades, non-galvanised fixings, are within one kilometre of salt water or are older buildings with concrete balconies. It has got to a point where one in five buildings that have their balustrade load tested fail. This is an alarming result and indicative of the growing issue."
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