Serious defects found at Kiama units in 44 Manning St

Concrete cracks, water leaks, fire hazards – a plethora of faults have been uncovered in an apartment complex south of Sydney.

Serious defects have been found at 44 Manning St in Kiama. Picture: Google

Multiple serious defaults have been identified at an apartment building in Kiama where problems range from structural concerns to water leakage.

The NSW Building Commissioner issued Auxunkia and Jin Guang Yuan work rectification orders to fix the faults at the 10-year-old building at 44 Manning St.

The orders were issued in December and the developers have between one and five months to fix the 23 faults.

Building codes were flouted with uncontrolled cracking between 2mm and 4mm found near the lower ground carpark eaves – causing water to drip through the cracks.

“Some cracks have migrated through the full depth of the suspended post tension slab with water permeating through,’’ the NSW Building Commissioner’s report stated.

Cracking on the concrete spanning above the staircase was also detected.

Potential dangers were highlighted with the failure to provide fire extinguishers in the carpark and the location of a extinguisher placed in the main switch room was deemed a hazard to a potential user.

Fire hazards were among the litany of defects in the building.

The fire stairs also failed to meet building codes with “non-compliant” heights and widths.

More failures to meet building codes were found in the firewalls with inadequate joints in the unsealed carpark walls and “multiple locations”.

Other red flags included fire door certification tags missing across several locations, hollow fire door frames – “indicating voids” – and no smoke seals in the electrical cupboards in public corridors.

An exit from the ground floor carpark requires a key to be opened from inside the carpark.

Inspections revealed faulty waterproofing systems with no adequate drainage to prevent water from entering the building. This was uncovered when the external tiles in front of the main entry wall fell inward.

Water leakage meant drip trays had to be installed to the concrete slab soffits (under the gutter) to manage uncontrolled water penetration “from above”.

A failure to prevent overflow meant the external area “has no points to drain the water away”, the report states.

Leakage was evident on level two with water stain marks on the tiled floor after water seeped through the roof access hatch.

More leakage from the garden bed above a slab had also not been fixed.

The Commissioner’s report took into account the building is occupied when setting deadlines for the faults to be repaired.

Originally published as Serious defects found at Kiama units in 44 Manning St