New plumbing for 1970's block

Hi Guys,

Just looking for some advise / recommendations on upgrading the plumbing in a 1970's block in Melbourne. We have recently purchased our first PPOR and ran into one of the neighbours this week who we quizzed about the up coming body corporate meeting. She informed us that they were looking at upgrading the plumbing / hotwater service. There is currently no issues (prevention is obviously better than emergency repairs) but she seems to think the pipes are built into the walls and very difficult to access at this stage. She had received a quote to get an upgrade, which came in at a whopping 200k! Is this the ballpark we would be looking at?! Even though there are quite a lot of owner occupiers in the building some of them are about 100 and will be hard pressed to fork out that kind of money! If this upgrade is done, would it then be possible to have all apartments individually metered?

Thanks in advance

 

Typical Corp Body mess up

Committee member gets a diagnosis and quote that is extreme

then goes to 5 other plumbing company's and say's

" give us a quote to do XYZ and that's what they do"

even though the original scope of works was way over the top.
Pay other company's to come up with some good ideas

blocks of units with common hot water will circulate the hot water
with a pump so you don't have long wait time's before the hot water arrives (I suspect this is the upgrade )


as for the meter
you have a common Hot water system so you have to meter the hot
then you have to meter the cold , to each unit then have someone read them both , then allocate a bill to each unit . (This is unmanageable )

Better to pay a plumber to water audit every unit and make sure there is no leaking taps or cisterns or common pipes

 

Thanks for the reply We are trying to go in to the AGM as informed as we can try and get everyone on side with the most practical solution! 200k seems insane so I will keep doing my research on a more reasonable solution. The water bills are pretty high which makes me suspect a leek of some sort, not to mention there is a lot of people who seem to be home all day driving up the costs! Ah the joys of apartment living! But you have to start somewhere right

 

Generally the body Corp should have a sinking fund that has been saving up for years to handle big project work and so there might be no outlay to any owners.

Did you seek copies of past AGM minutes, copies of body Corp financials before buying? They have a lot of information in them

 

Agree find out what the issue is then get two or 3 plumbers to diagnose the issue and suggest a course of action. Don't use the first quote to get the other 2 quotes.

 

What you may find is all the pipes are the old Galvanised pipes ,and to refit in plastic or copper then separate meters if they are set into the walls would be very costly time wise and materials..imho..

 

If it's a 1970's block in Victoria I would put my money on this being the case. I had to have a few old homes get all the old galvanised pipes replaced throughout and it was easily $2000 - $5000 depending on the extent of the work.

And this! Who is the body corp? There is one in particular that operates down there that is not good news, I would assume there is no sinking fund if it is who I fear......