Works inside a flat: hours, notice and damage to the neighbour

Renovating your own flat is a right. Running rubble through the lift for six weeks is not.

A flat changes hands and the works start. Breaker at eight in the morning, lift monopolised, landing covered in dust, rubble stacked in the courtyard. The board gets the first messages in week two.

The distinction is easy to state: what happens inside the flat is its owner’s business, but anything touching the common areas or the other occupants belongs to the association.

What the association can regulate

• Working hours, often set by the building rules or by local noise regulations.
• Protecting the common areas crossed: lift, hall, stairwell, floors.
• Rubble removal: no storage in the common areas or in the building’s bins.
• Daily cleaning of the areas used.
• Prior notice to occupants: nature and duration of the works.

The second point costs most when neglected: a scratched lift car or a damaged hall floor is repaired at the association’s expense if nobody documented the state beforehand.

Works that require approval

Some works, even inside a flat, touch the common areas: cutting a load-bearing wall, altering a façade opening, creating or moving a connection onto a common stack, removing a flat door.

Those require the meeting’s approval: see private works and common areas, plus replacing windows and fitting air conditioning.

The habit that protects everyone

Before a significant project starts, a photographic record of the common areas crossed takes twenty minutes. It protects the association — able to show where damage came from — and the owner, who will not be blamed for pre-existing defects.

That record is kept with its date: exactly the use described in the incident log.

When works damage the neighbour

Cracks appearing in the flat below, lifted tiles, ingress after a bathroom refit: these fall between the two owners and their respective insurers, not the association.

The board does not arbitrate, but it can restate the route: written record, dated photos, insurance declaration. See water damage: who pays and handling a claim.

The most effective method

A one-page note, handed to any owner announcing works, settles nearly all the friction: permitted hours, expected protection, rubble removal, contacts in case of a problem.

It works because it arrives before the conflict, not after. It is the kind of document a board writes once and reuses for ten years: see board communication.

Twenty minutes of photographs before the works start beat six months of argument about where a scratch came from.

Document projects with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony records the state of the common areas before works, receives resident reports and keeps the exchanges with the owner concerned. Create your free space.

One point is better raised before the works than after: acoustic treatment beneath the new floor.