USEFUL INFORMATION FOR RESIDENTS
Air conditioning
Every apartment is equipped with ducted heating, heated using a gas heater (located next to the electric hot water service) within your apartment.
Only the apartments on the upper floor were built equipped with airconditioning to cool the apartment. The airconditioner compressors are located in a small open space on the building roof, in a space above the relevant lift column.
The owners of other apartments are allowed to locate airconditioners on the balconies, north or south, of their apartments. HOWEVER airconditioner units must be concealed from view at street level or from the courtyard, to avoid the building looking too industrial in character. Also, make sure your airconditioner is properly installed so that the water condensate does not trickle onto the tiles or other balcony surfaces, risking leaking through to the balcony below.
Broadband Internet
There are three alternative infrastructure sources of broadband Internet and telephone services available to each apartment in the building:
- Lightning Broadband’s optical fibre cable not just to the basement, but to an edge switch high within the building, which is connected to a Wireless Access Point in the ceiling outside the lift on each residential floor.
- Gigacomm has a broadband radio link on the roof to connect it to the Internet. From there it has run an optical fibre cable through the building to a network terminating unit (NTU) in the basement. This NTU uses the historical (previously Telstra) main distribution frame (MDF) to connect its network by copper twisted pairs to your apartment’s telephone socket, which needs to be conected to a WiFi router within your apartment if you contract to sue tgheir service.
- An NBN-based retailer (e.g. iiNet, iPrimus, Optus, Telstra, TPG …) uses NBN’s optical ‘Fibre to the Basement’ infrastructure, connected via the original copper twisted pairs from the MDF in the basement to your apartment.
Lightning Broadband’s Wireless Access Point (WAP) is the white circular object on the left of the photo below. Each WAP, which has a capacity of 140 Mbps in each direction, is located in the ceiling immediately in front of the lift, on each residential floor.
Lightning Broadband offers 50, 100, 200 or 1000 Mbps symmetrical broadband services via the Wireless Access Point (WAP) on your floor. They will supply a small plug-in WiFi bridge to connect your internal WiFi router with their WAP.
Electricity meters
These can be found in the Electricity cabinet next to the lift, on Floors 1 and 3 of your building. The meters on Floor 1 serve units 1 to 6, and the meters on Floor 3 serve units 7 to 10.
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This example, from a cupboard on Level 3, shows that each meter has been marked to show which apartment number it services. |
Fire services
Each apartment is fitted with both smoke alarms and fire sprinklers in the ceilings. In the photo below, the smoke alarm is the larger object on the left.
Smoke alarms. Smoke alarms emit a high-pitched warning signal when they detect smoke in the vicinity. Note that smoke alarms are not connected to any fire alarm panel and therefore will not alert the Fire Brigade. If urgent attendance of the Fire Brigade is required, call 000 immediately.
The maintenance of the smoke alarms is the responsibility of the owner and occupants of each apartment. Each smoke alarm contains a 9 volt battery which should be changed at least every 12 months, otherwise it might not work in a real emergency.
Fire sprinklers. The apartments and the car park are fitted with a pressurised sprinkler system for fire suppression, designed to release large amounts of water when they are actoivated. Please do not tamper with the sprinkler heads as they may activate, causing large amounts of water damage, not only to your apartment but also to the adjacent apartments and especially to the apartments directly below.
Note: if a sprinkler head cover drops off as a result of vibration, stand carefully upon a stool or ladder and gently screw it back in.
Garden sprinklers
The courtyard gardens, and the garden beds on Dudley St, are watered at night by a sprinkler system. Please discourage small children from playing with sprinklers or any of the hose fittings in the courtyard. We need the sprinklers to keep our plants and grass lawn alive through our hot summers.
Garage
Replacement remotes for the garage door can be bought at Jaycar Electronics, 110 Franklin Street for $49.95 each. They are called Single Channel Key Fob Remotes, Elsema model KEY-301. You will then need to get the current code from the Owners Corporation Agent or from your property manager, and adjust the internal switches accordingly.
However a free alternative is to register your mobile phone number with our OC manager (Strata Management Victoria) as a resident who want to use the SIM card method to open the door. Once registered, you will be given a mobile number to ring whenever you want to either enter or exit the roller door at the entrance to the garage.
Gas meters
These are located in a special locked room off the common garage, adjacent to the lift maintenance room for your building. The meter readers for your gas company are given access to this room by arrangement with the Owner Corporation’s manager.
Gymnasium
To unlock the gym, use your building key. Please re-lock it when leaving. Note that children are not allowed to use the gym equipment, for safety reasons.
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The gym is the small building on the left. |
| Some of the gym equipment: |
Lifts
Our lifts are serviced on a regular monthly cycle. To call out a lift technician between these times incurs a significant call-out fee, and should only be done in the case of real emergencies, such as some-one being unable to get out of a lift. If the lifts won’t respond to the call button being pressed on the outside of the lift, ring the Otis Elevator Co. at 1800 626 847 – it’s worth recording this number in your phone. Always carry a mobile phone when using the lift, so you can call for help in an emergency. A laminated notice inside the lift provides the lift emergency number as well.
If you need to arrange to open a lift’s doors for an extended time, e.g. when delivering or removing heavy furniture to or from your apartment, call the Owners Corporation’s Manager (Nicole at 9707 5330) some days in advance, to obtain a lift key for that purpose.
Rubbish removal
For hard rubbish other than eWaste, contact the Melbourne City Council to organise a roadside pick-up on the William St side of the building. All City of Melbourne residential ratepayers are entitled to one free hard waste collection each year. Never leave hard rubbish in the building’s rubbish rooms, the garage or in other public places.
For all small land-fill items, especially food (which should be double-bagged) and plastic bags, place them in the grey bins in your building’s Rubbish Room (on the LG floor). These bins are normally emptied early on Monday and Friday mornings
For small recycleable rubbish, such as empty bottles, small cardboard cartons and newspapers, use the yellow bins in your Rubbish Room. They get collected each Tuesday to be put out for collection on Wednesdays. DO NOT PUT PLASTIC BAGS IN THE YELLOW BINS – THIS CAN LEAD TO THE WHOLE BIN BEING REJECTED BY THE CONTRACTOR.
For large cardboard cartons, fold them and place them in either of the two large yellow bins in the garage.
For eWaste (e.g. old TV sets, mobile phones and computers) use the large grey bin in the garage.
Note: the large white bin previously in the garage (shown below) had to be been withdrawn as some residents abused it by regularly leaving large items of furniture etc outside the bin, which would never be collected. These days the OC uses the CCTV to identify and chase up anyone who dumps rubbish of any form in the garage, other than in the appropriate bins.
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Swimming (lap) pool
Residents are able to use the swimming pool up until 10 pm each day – but note that guests may not use the pool unless you (as an owner or tenant) are present there with your guests. Note also that children must be accompanied by an adult (over 18 years old) when in the pool area.
The blue thermal cover should be pulled back over the pool if you are the last person using the pool. Its purpose is to minimise heat loss from the water overnight or on cold days. The water is normally kept at 25 to 27C temperature.
Note that there is a shower available, with hot and cold water taps, behind the gym, and also a toilet near that shower.
For safety reasons, glass objects and cigarrettes are not allowed in the pool area. The fence around the pool is not safe for anyone to climb on.
TV and telephone distribution
The building includes a coaxial cable network which distributes Free-to-Air TV signals from an antenna on the roof to all apartments.
Another cable network feeds the video signals from the security cameras in the Dudley St foyers to each apartment’s TV outlets. You can tune your TV sets to check out visitors in the foyer of your building (and in the other three foyers), using TV channels 51, 52, 53 and 54 (for 18, 22, 26 and 30 Dudley St foyer cameras respectively).
A separate network connects the telephone outlets in each apartment to a small distribution frame in the Sprinkler Room in the basement, which is used by two of our broadband infrastructure providers to provide WiFi services to individual apartments. See teh section above on Internet Broadband.
Telephone access can only be obtained using mobile phones or using Voice-over-IP connections with your Internet provider.
Water meters
A water meter is located within each apartment, at the point where the water inflow occurs – usually under the sink of a laundry or kitchen. Most by now have WiFi smart meters attached, which allow the water meter readers to access the meter from the street outside.