The Certifier Won't Tell You What Test to Run
In the last fortnight three different matters have arrived at the same wall. A bathroom or balcony is finished and tiled. The builder has stopped answering. A private certifier or a council wants the waterproofing certified before an occupation certificate or a building information certificate can issue.
The owner's first question is usually the same one. Can you come out, inspect it and certify it?
Not from looking at it, whoever you ask. Once the tiles are down the membrane is concealed. Nobody can see its coverage, its thickness, its terminations or its junctions. A visual inspection of a tiled bathroom tells you about the tiles.
The certifiers know this. What surprised us is what they do next.
What the certifier actually says
In one case the owner went back to his private certifier and asked directly what he would accept. The answer, as the owner relayed it to us, was that the certifier could not accept certification based on a visual inspection. It would need to come from a suitably qualified person who was satisfied they had sufficient evidence to verify compliance, which might require photographs, testing or invasive investigation where necessary.
It says what is not enough. It does not say what is.
In a second case a council reviewed an independent evidence report we had prepared on two existing wet areas. Council's response said the material was insufficient to verify the presence, continuity, adequacy or compliance of the concealed waterproofing. It also said the report had accurately explained the limits of non-destructive inspection and identified further options. And then it said that council had not selected a particular step or specified an exact test, opening location or acceptable outcome.
The shape is the same: the deficiency is named and the remedy is left open.
The third caller had no letter yet, only a builder who had gone quiet and a certifier who "needs it certified". We gave him the answer below over the phone.
Our reading is that this is caution rather than evasion. A certifier who specifies the test takes on the test. If they name a flood test and the membrane later fails in a way that test could not catch, the method was theirs. So the people who sign say what would not satisfy them and leave the method to whoever is asking. That is a defensible position for them. It leaves the owner in the middle with a rejected report and no instructions.
What unblocks it
Someone on your side proposes the method, in writing, before anything gets opened up.
The certifier will respond to a proposed test. They will not write one.
For an existing wet area, a proposed method usually covers:
- Which areas are being tested, listed one by one.
- How each area will be flooded. The waste plugged, water to a stated depth, held for a stated period.
- What is being checked, and where. Moisture readings at the ceiling below, the adjoining rooms and the external face where relevant, with photographs before, during and after.
- Who conducts the test. Usually a plumber, since plugging wastes and filling the area is plumbing work, and it keeps the person documenting the test independent of it.
- Who observes and records it independently.
- What counts as a pass, written down before the water goes in.
- Who will issue a statement on the results, and what it covers. Whether to accept it is the certifier's or council's decision.
Put in front of a certifier or a council, that document changes the question. They are no longer being asked to invent a standard. They are being asked whether a specific test, run a specific way, would satisfy them. That is a yes-or-no question, and it is the one their own letters invite.
Where we fit
Certified Waterproofing can run the whole sequence. We write the proposed method, attend the test, and produce the independent record of what was done, what was observed and what the readings were, with the photographs to match. The engineer on our team attends the test and, if the results support it, issues a signed Engineer's Statement on Flood Test Results. It is not a compliance certificate, and the certifier or council decides whether to accept it.
The split matters. The plumber conducts the flood test and we record it independently. The engineer who issues the statement did not install the waterproofing or run the test.
If you are at this point, send us the certifier's or council's letter. We will tell you what a proposed method for your situation looks like, and what the engineer's statement on the results would cover, before anyone commissions anything.
If a certifier has asked for more than a visual inspection, an independent record of a flood test is a method you can propose.
Certified Waterproofing prepares independent waterproofing evidence records across Sydney. Where a defined test is run and the results support it, the engineer on our team can issue a signed statement covering only what was tested.