The SLAM before the storm! A battle between an African Warrior, a non-compliant gym and local council in Sydney Australia.
We all know to undertake due diligence when looking to rent or buy a property but there are many disasters which cannot be foreseen.
I previously knew nothing about acoustic engineering, decibel readings, Olympic lifting, squat power racks, kettlebells and medicine balls; but after my experience, calling me an expert would be an understatement. I was hopeful that businesses would follow council’s strict regulations to accommodate retail establishments underneath residential apartments, in order to prevent disrupting residents in their homes. Call me naive but I had to learn the hard way! Picture this:
Being woken up from as early as 5:20am every morning by excruciating metal scrapping noises, loud music, over 30kg of weights being slammed onto the ground, alongside repetitive banging noises, which carried on throughout the day until just past 8pm. Little did I know that what myself and other residents initially assumed were tables, chairs, bed and fridges constantly being moved around and dropped by some crazy tenants living above, would end up being a frivolous non-compliant “gym rat” swinging rack to rack in his rented gymnastics cross fit gym shop below; and to make matters worse, it was brought to light by the local council that the gym was in fact operating without a compliance certificate and without an occupational certificate while operating for over 3 years.
My journey began by me reaching out to a number of other residents in my building to ensure I was not the only victim and to my surprise, I was quickly supported by a number of residents who shared their frustrations and anxiety around the noises from the gym. Some residents also shared that they had raised multiple complaints to the building manager, but their complaints fell on deaf ears.
With no success having involved the building manager, I decided to directly reach out to the gym owner and express my concerns which only resulted in mediocre changes and complacency. The gym owner made it very clear that his goal was to prove that he was “complaint” rather than aid the cry of suffering residents due to his operations.
My next point of contact was strata. To my disappointment, this process ended up with condescending remarks and a lack of interest and comprehension of the severity of the noise offences. At this point, I was close to giving up as this battle seemed difficult and I even considered moving out. It was not until a friend advised me to contact the local council that I decided to give my quest for sanity one last push. I called my local council immediately and was assigned to a senior compliance officer who seemed supportive at first, but later shared that the gym was in fact “compliant” as per the acoustic report that was conducted. The next step presented to me was a visit by council’s environmental health officers.
I advised the health officers to attend my apartment as early as 6am the following week and upon their arrival, within minutes, one of the “gym rats” displayed a painful performance and slammed an Olympic lifting weight which followed multiple metal scraping noises from the power rack systems. The environmental health offers witnessed these noises for about 45 minutes and decided that they had heard enough and speculated if the gym was in fact “compliant”. I invited them to my apartment again a few hours later at around 12pm and I had to give the gym a big round of applause because independent professionals from council had finally experienced a small dose of the distress myself and other residents have been living with.
And just like that, council’s environmental health officers liaised with the senior compliance officer, who later shared with me that there was in fact an “error” with the gyms acoustic reports and further testing and treatments were required before the gym was to be issued with further certificates to comply. I was also informed that the gym would be issued with an order to comply after a representative period which proceeded with a regulatory action and then a development control order.
One would think that informing strata that environmental health officers at council had visited my apartment and witnessed the ‘impacts’, would be enough to at least plead with the gym owner to take into consideration the levels of distress his equipment’s were having on residents. However, strata instead shared that they still needed advice from an acoustic engineer as to whether or not dropping over 30kg of weights (where up to 10 floors of units vibrate) was in fact in alignment with the Australian standards for residential apartment living. I found a moment in my sorrows to chuckle at their assumptions and instead of feeling anger, I actually found it quite comical that 10 floors of units vibrating by a retail gym on the ground floor was in question as to whether this was a breach of the strata byways around “disturbing the peaceful enjoyment of residents”.
After much persistence, Strata concluded that if I wished to undertake an acoustic test and the results came back compliant, I will have to cover the costs and if the tests come back non-compliant, they will cover the costs. I proceeded to engage a reputable acoustic engineer who also has close affiliations with the AAAC (The Association of Australasian Acoustical Consultants) who undertook over 4 hours of professional testing onsite. After witnessing this process, I felt relieved that yet another professional also experienced a small dose of the distressing noises and was in a position to present this in a professional sound acoustic report.
To call this journey challenging will be an understatement. The consequences of lack of negligence and not complying to rules which have impacts on health, has resulted in sleepless nights, medical support, financial loss, serve headaches and countless hours liaising with professionals and logging events . While I am hopeful that moving forward local councils and buisneeses will try to follow policy and processes efficiently, it is evident that perhaps some processes still get overlooked due to lack of negligence and some organisational “cowboys” do in fact slip through the cracks and get away by working around the system. These errors can have detrimental consequences to not only an individual, but to a community living within a residential block. Gym owners and acoustic engineers , please find it in the kindness of your hearts to be mindful of residents in mixed used buildings and employ the appropriate sound mitigation strategies. Local councils, please support the community by ensuring approval of business are thorough. Strata organisations, please refrain from isolating individuals in strata lots and try to support residents (both owners and renters) as we are all a community. And to the local community, please take the time to undertake thorough research and speak up respectfully and honestly to the appropriate authorities if you are experiencing detrimental health affects due to businesses in mixed use retail and residential zones.
I can conclude by sharing that the gym has now been ordered by council to cease operations until further notice. While I am trying to remain hopeful, it is worrying that council are still trying to support the gym towards regaining operations while they are still deemed "non-compliant", rather than support the health of local residents.
I would love to hear your stories if you have or are currently experiencing similar issues
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