As a follow on from an announcement made at the recent AGM here are some further details on the investigation of Air Conditioners and their allowed installation in the heritage section.

1 - We have always been told that air conditioners are mostly not allowed in the heritage apartments.  The existing exemptions are if you are able to install the compressor somewhere on your proeprty where it will not be visible externally and will not cause any major changes to the heritage building.

2 - Most of the apartments in the heritage section have their hot water heaters in the common property ceiling space.  This would be an ideal place for the compressors to also be installed for those apartments.  To have this approved, we need to get sign off from Heritage Victoria, our insurance company and engineers to say that this would not pose any risk to the building.  It would also need to be possible to run the hoses from the roof mounted compressor to the cooling unit mounted in the apartment.  In some cases this may be difficult but there is usually existing duct work for the hot water pipes.

Krissy, our OCM and one of the CoM members, Angela, have been working hard to find ways to allow this to happen.  They have also been investigating ways to allow other heritage apartments without access to roof space, such as the centre wing to also have air conditioning.  There are possible options but nothing will be allowed if it is visible from common property or need too much modification of the heritage fixtures.

There are a number of challenges for this project, but it is definitely worth investigating this option.  There should be very little or no cost to the residents as any owner who wishes to have air conditioning installed will obviously have to pay for the installation themselves.

We will keep residents updated whenever we get more information.

Location

Willsmere is located at 1 Wiltshire Drive Kew VIC 3101. Visitor access is via Yarra Boulevard.