TL;DR — Haven Compliance inspects, installs and certifies window safety in Epping — a suburb at the junction of two train lines and three local government areas, whose building stock shows it: post-war flats and 1990s brick-clad strata around Beecroft Road and the station, now joined by the apartment towers rising since the town centre’s rezoning. Every openable window is tested against section 118 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 — 125mm and 250 newtons — with portfolio scheduling for managers running schemes across Epping, Eastwood, Carlingford and North Epping, and same-day digital certificates on every building. Call +61 2 8000 0287.
Haven Compliance — a NSW window safety specialist serving a suburb whose geography made it a compliance crossroads. Epping sits at the junction of two rail lines and three local government areas, and its residential development took correspondingly many forms: post-war flats and 1990s brick-clad strata buildings along Beecroft Road and the blocks around the station, now overshadowed by the newer apartment towers that have risen since the town centre was rezoned for density.
We work with the strata managers and building owners responsible for all three generations — and with the practical reality that managers covering Epping rarely cover only Epping. Portfolios here sprawl across Eastwood, Carlingford, North Epping and the Hills fringe, so we built the service for the patch, not the postcode: portfolio scheduling, one report format everywhere, and renewal reminders per building so nothing slips between LGA boundaries.
Three council areas meet here; the strata law is identical in all of them, and so is the duty. NSW settled this in law on 13 March 2018: under section 118 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, every residential strata scheme’s owners corporation must ensure complying devices on windows that open, sit over floors two metres or more above the external ground, and begin their openings under 1.7 metres from that floor.
The hardware standard is twofold: restrict the opening to 125mm or less — or fit a robust screen — and withstand 250 newtons of outward force, with AS 5203:2016 supplying the test method for both. Devices may include an adult release provided they re-engage afterwards; insect flyscreens do not comply under any reading. The duty also makes no distinction between common property and lots — every qualifying window in the scheme is the owners corporation’s responsibility.
Two corrections worth stating plainly, because older marketing material — including material previously circulated about Epping — gets them wrong. There is no statutory requirement for an annual inspection: yearly checks are prudent best practice, not a legal mandate, and we will never tell you otherwise. And the maximum statutory penalty for a non-compliant owners corporation is $550 — the serious exposure is not the fine, it is a preventable child fall and the civil liability and insurance consequences that follow.
Records of inspections and remediation belong in the scheme’s files for 7 years under section 180.
Three clean generations, each with its own failure profile. The post-war flats carry the oldest problem: windows that predate safety practice entirely, retrofitted piecemeal or not at all, with compliance records thinned by decades of management changes. The 1990s brick-clad buildings carry transitional hardware — devices fitted to superseded standards, now decades worn, that pass a glance and fail a newton meter. And the post-rezoning towers carry the modern profile at scale: construction-installed restrictors and integrated systems, warranted once and verified never, in buildings dense with the young families that have made Epping their suburb.
The family demographics deserve their own line. Epping’s towers and townhouses house one of northern Sydney’s highest concentrations of households with young children — the exact population section 118 exists to protect — which moves window safety from the compliance column to the duty-of-care column for every committee in the suburb. Three generations, three profiles, one standard: every qualifying window, measured, tested, photographed, registered.
Never-verified construction hardware in the new towers — present since handover, tested by no one. Superseded-standard devices in the 1990s stock — fitted in good faith to yesterday’s requirements, incapable of today’s 250 newtons. Never-fitted windows in the post-war flats. Family-disengaged restrictors — in a suburb of young children, windows work hard and re-engagement is the habit that fails. Renovation losses across a steadily updating suburb.
And flyscreens doing a job they cannot do, as always and everywhere. Each generation fails differently; the inspection standard that catches all three is the same physical test.
One technician, one visit, everything in scope. Access and entry notices run through the manager’s process with our resident notice template — which, in a family suburb, opens doors that a bare compliance notice does not. The technician completes a thorough assessment of every window in scope: identified by type and generation, tested against the 125mm and 250 newton requirements, photographed and logged. Walk-ups and 1990s buildings complete in a morning; the towers run floor by floor from a pre-planned schedule.
There is no second visit for documentation and no report to chase: the signed digital certificate and full photo report are delivered the same day, and failed or missing devices are replaced on the spot with REMSAFE hardware where pre-authorised — or quoted fixed per window for committee approval. Every stage of the visit is described in our inspection process guide. For managers booking across the district, buildings sequence into a coordinated program — several schemes inspected in a run, certificates renewed together, one administrative push instead of five.
District portfolio runs — Epping, Eastwood, Carlingford in one program — are the most economical way to buy this across a patch. Pricing is per unit, fixed before booking, and shaped by the number of units, access logistics, and window count. There are no hourly rates and no open-ended extras — the quote you approve is the invoice you receive. Three numbers cover almost every engagement: $250 + GST for a single property, $490 + GST for schemes of 2 to 10 units, and a fixed on-request quote above that — certificate included, delivered the same day as the inspection.
Anything that fails is quoted per window in REMSAFE hardware before a dollar is committed, with on-the-spot replacement wherever standing authorisation exists. Consolidation is the committee’s real discount lever: one combined inspection-and-remediation project instead of two engagements, and a place on the local grouped run instead of a standalone booking — the overhead saved is genuine and repeatable. There are no hidden line items behind the fee: report, register, photographs and same-day certificate are all part of it, as is the hardware call-out.
The comparison worth making in Epping is end-to-end — what does certified compliance actually cost by completion — because inspections priced cheap and documented extra have a way of arriving expensive.
One conversation, one program, many buildings. The manager supplies the list — schemes in Epping, Eastwood, Carlingford, North Epping, wherever the patch runs — and we sequence them into a coordinated inspection program: geographically batched visits, certificates renewing together, and a single report format so your team reads every building the same way. The administrative overhead of compliance across a mixed portfolio consolidates into one push per cycle.
The renewal machinery then keeps it consolidated: automated reminders track each building’s anniversary individually, so a portfolio inspected together stays together, and next year’s program books itself off this year’s register. For managers whose patch crosses three LGAs and a dozen scheme sizes, that consolidation is worth as much as the testing — compliance stops being twenty separate deadlines and becomes one program with twenty line items.
The program also absorbs portfolio change gracefully: a newly acquired scheme slots into the next run with a baseline audit, a sold building drops out cleanly with its register handed over intact, and the manager’s compliance picture stays whole through every acquisition season. Handover-proof records are a quiet differentiator when pitching for new management contracts, too.
Strata managers with district portfolios — the defining client here, served with the portfolio program above. Owners corporations and committees across all three building generations, including self-managed schemes in the older stock. Property managers and landlords in a strong rental market, using unit inspections and end-of-lease window safety audits. New-tower committees approaching defect-period decisions, for whom a tested register inside the warranty window converts failures into builder’s claims.
And families — this suburb’s defining residents — engaging us directly for their own apartments. Ryde and the Hills corridor have their own location pages; portfolio scheduling crosses the whole district.
Because three building generations need one discipline, not three guesses. A provider must recognise superseded 1990s hardware on sight, know why a post-war casement’s fixings matter, and test an integrated tower system at its restrictor component — and then document all of it to a standard a committee, an insurer or a buyer’s solicitor can rely on. Our technicians do window safety exclusively; our reports show every window, its measured result and its photograph; and our certificates arrive the same day, filed before anyone has to ask.
One provider from first test to final record, fixed pricing, portfolio programs. And the standing honesty notes: NSW has no official inspector certification scheme, and no statute mandates annual inspection — the duty runs every day, not just inspection day, in whichever of Epping’s three generations it was built.
With the program doing the remembering. Buildings on our annual reinspection and maintenance program get every device retested each cycle — superseded hardware progressively replaced, tower components checked, wear items maintained in-visit — with registers rolled forward and a one-page change summary per committee. The district portfolio re-books as a program, automated reminders track every anniversary, and the manager’s compliance patch runs on rails rather than memory.
Annual is best practice rather than statute, stated plainly as everywhere. But for a family-dense suburb spread across three council areas and twenty years of construction booms, the standing cycle is what turns a sprawling obligation into a quiet one — which, for the committees and the children behind those windows alike, is exactly what it should be.
Often not. Transitional-era hardware was fitted to superseded standards and has worn for decades since; it passes a glance and fails the 250 newton test more often than any other category we test. The newton meter settles it window by window.
Yes — that is the standard arrangement here. Buildings sequence into one coordinated program, certificates renew together, and each scheme still receives its own register, report and same-day digital certificate.
Yes — construction-installed devices need verification, not assumption, and testing inside the defect liability period turns any failures into the builder’s claim rather than the scheme’s future levy. Newness is an argument for testing sooner, not later.
Keep cots, beds and climbable furniture away from windows, never trust a flyscreen, and re-engage restrictors after opening windows fully. Hardware plus habits is the full protection — our reports flag furniture-adjacent windows for exactly this reason.
No — no NSW statute fixes an interval. Annual retesting is prudent best practice, and portfolio programs make it cheap to hold; the legal duty is a building that complies continuously.
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