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 certify on the basis of the results. That decision belongs to them, not to the person who recorded the test.
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 certifying engineer on our team, Jimmy Tran of Excelo Engineering Consultants, then certifies on the strength of that record.
The split matters. The plumber conducts the flood test, we record it, and the engineer who certifies is not the person who recorded it. That is what keeps the record independent, and it is the structure the certifiers' own letters describe.
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 certification on the back of it involves, before anyone commissions anything.
Certified Waterproofing prepares independent waterproofing evidence records across Sydney. Certification is issued by the engineers on our team at Excelo Engineering Consultants.