Services
Find out why your building leaks before you pay to fix it again
A fixed fee $660 diagnostic consultation for Class 2 apartment and strata buildings. A registered architect visits, traces the problem toward its cause, and tells you what a proper fix involves.
Your building does not need another quote. It needs a diagnosis.
If water is getting into an apartment, someone has probably already been out to look at it. The render got resealed, the grout got redone, maybe a balcony got a new coat of membrane. And the water came back, sometimes in the same place, sometimes one unit along.
That cycle is not bad luck. It happens because the person quoting the repair is usually the person selling it, so the diagnosis quietly becomes whatever that contractor happens to fix. Water is rarely so cooperative. It enters in one place, travels through the structure, and appears somewhere else entirely. Patch where it appears and you have paid to decorate the symptom.
The consultation exists to break that cycle at its cheapest possible point: before the next repair is priced.
What you get for $660
A diagnostic site visit by a registered architect. Shea Cullen is a NSW Registered Architect (registration 9748), registered with NSW Fair Trading for Class 2, Class 3 and Class 9c buildings, which is the registration this work legally requires. Under the Design and Building Practitioners Act, waterproofing on apartment buildings is regulated design work, and the person advising you on it should be someone registered to design it.
A cause, not a quote. We trace the problem toward where the water actually enters, and we tell you plainly what we find, including when the honest answer is that further investigation is needed to be sure. You will not get a price for a patch. You will get an explanation of the problem in plain English, and what fixing it properly involves.
The next steps, costed before you commit. If the problem warrants investigation or remediation design, we tell you what each stage costs before you agree to it. Remediation design is billed at $2,200 per window or issue, invoiced separately after the diagnostic. No open ended engagements, no surprise invoices.
Independence you can take to a committee. Because we do not build the repairs, our advice has nothing to sell except being right. We design the fix, then work alongside builders who specialise in waterproofing remediation and inspect their work against the design. Our remediation service explains the whole five step process from diagnosis to completion documentation.
This is for you if
- You own an apartment with a leak, damp, mould or a balcony problem that has been "fixed" before.
- You are on a strata committee facing recurring leaks across units and conflicting quotes that do not explain the cause. Our strata waterproofing FAQ answers the questions committees ask us most.
- You have a builder's quote in hand and want an independent professional to tell you whether it fixes the cause or the symptom. We wrote about exactly that choice in engaging a remedial consultant vs a builder quote.
It is not for you if the water problem is in a freestanding house. This consultation is specifically for Class 2 buildings, which means apartments and units, where the law, the strata layers and the stakes are different.
Why we do this work
We started this practice because too many apartment owners are paying twice, sometimes three times, for the same failed repair. It is why we exist. Waterproofing sits at the centre of the NSW apartment defect problem: when Building Commission NSW ran Project Intervene to resolve serious defects in apartment buildings, the defects were mainly waterproofing and structural problems. The industry's default answer, another patch from another quote, is exactly how it stays that way.
We will not tell you the news is always good. Sometimes the diagnosis is a bigger problem than the committee hoped, and we will say so, along with what it costs to fix properly and in what order. What we can promise is that you will know what is actually wrong, which is the one thing no amount of patching ever buys.
How it works
- Book below. The form takes a couple of minutes and payment is handled securely by Stripe.
- We contact you to arrange the site visit at a time that works for you or your committee.
- You get our diagnosis, in plain English, with the costed next steps, and you decide what happens from there.
Shea is an absolute professional, with equal parts creativity, inspiration, technical mastery and ability to listen.
Your investment
Class 2 Waterproofing Consultation
$660
A diagnostic visit to understand your waterproofing problem, identify causes, and scope remediation. Remediation work is billed at $2,200 per window or issue, invoiced separately after the diagnostic.
All prices are in Australian dollars and include GST. Standard Conditions of Engagement · NSW Code of Conduct (PDF)
Questions people ask us
What happens during the consultation?
We visit the building and look at the problem the way a designer does: where the water appears, where it travels, and where it most likely enters, which are usually three different places. We talk with you or your committee about the building's history and previous repairs. You get our honest read on the likely cause, what investigation or design work is needed to fix it properly, and what each next step would cost before you commit to anything.
What does the $660 cover, exactly?
The diagnostic site visit and our professional assessment of the problem, for a fixed fee of $660 including GST. It is a complete piece of advice on its own. Detailed investigation, testing and remediation design are separate stages, quoted after the diagnostic so the scope is real rather than guessed.
What happens after the diagnostic?
If the problem justifies it, we design the remediation. Remediation design work is billed at $2,200 per window or issue, invoiced separately after the diagnostic, and we tell you the cost of each stage before you commit. Once a repair is designed, we bring in builders who specialise in waterproofing remediation and check their work against the design.
Do you do the repair work yourselves?
No, and that is deliberate. We are architects, not builders. The people who diagnose the problem and design the repair should not be the people pricing and building it, because that separation is what protects you from paying for the wrong fix. We design the remediation and oversee specialist builders against that design.
Should we pursue the original builder instead?
We will be honest with you: owners often spend heavily on legal action and recover little, especially where the original company no longer exists. We are not lawyers and will not pretend a lawsuit is a repair strategy. What a proper diagnosis and documentation do give you is evidence, so if a claim is worth pursuing you are in the strongest position, and either way your building actually gets fixed.
Where do you work?
We are based on the Central Coast and work across NSW. Newcastle and Sydney are available by arrangement. If the building is further afield, ask first and we will tell you straight whether the travel makes sense for a diagnostic visit.
Imagine knowing exactly where the water gets in, and exactly what it will take to stop it.
Book a waterproofing consultation