TL;DR — Haven Compliance inspects, installs and certifies window safety in Marrickville — one of the Inner West‘s densest strata suburbs, where a single manager’s week can span a heritage-listed terrace near the Conservation Area, a 1980s walk-up with louvre banks off Petersham Road, and a new mixed-use development rising over Sydenham’s former industrial land. Every window type the Inner West has ever produced lives here, and every one answers to the same test: 125mm and 250 newtons. Single-visit inspections, photographic reports, same-day digital certificates. Call +61 2 8000 0287.
Haven Compliance — a NSW window safety specialist built for exactly the variety Marrickville concentrates. The suburb has transformed over a decade: the industrial precincts around Sydenham station giving way to mixed-use apartment developments, while the established streets off Illawarra Road and Marrickville Road keep their dense fabric of converted Victorian terraces, post-war walk-up blocks and newer six-storey buildings.
We work with the strata managers and owners corporations across that whole range — from a two-unit converted terrace on Illawarra Road to a fifty-lot block near the Cooks River end of the suburb — and we bring the one competency Marrickville portfolios genuinely require: technicians experienced across every window type this suburb holds. Sashes, casements, awnings, louvres, aluminium sliders, and the big glazed panels of the new Sydenham stock — each assessed on its own terms, tested to the same standard.
A heritage terrace and a Sydenham mixed-use tower carry the same duty — the criteria never ask what the building used to be. NSW put the obligation beyond argument on 13 March 2018, when section 118 of the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015 took full effect: owners corporations must ensure complying safety devices on all qualifying windows — those that open, sit over an internal floor two metres or more above the outside ground, and begin their opening less than 1.7 metres above that floor.
A complying device restricts the opening to 125mm or less, or is a robust screen, and must resist 250 newtons of outward force — the AS 5203:2016 test method covers both checks. Devices may be releasable by an adult for cleaning or full ventilation, provided they can be re-engaged. Ordinary flyscreens do not comply. The duty covers lot windows as well as common property: the owners corporation cannot discharge it by checking the stairwells and ignoring the apartments.
And because older Marrickville material muddied two facts, here they are clean. One: the law sets no inspection interval — annual checks are our recommendation as best practice, never a legal requirement. Two: the maximum statutory fine is $550 for the owners corporation; the exposure that should drive decisions is a preventable child fall and the civil and insurance consequences trailing it. Section 180 requires records to be kept for 7 years.
The full Inner West window catalogue, in one suburb. The terrace conversions — including heritage-listed buildings near the Marrickville Heritage Conservation Area — carry timber sashes and casements whose compliance turns on frame condition and sympathetic hardware. The post-war walk-ups add the louvre problem: banks of louvres off Petersham Road and through the older stock, where individual blades create openings and removal is often possible, usually resolving to robust screen solutions rather than conventional restrictors.
The 1980s-90s blocks run aluminium sliders with worn tracks; the new six-storey and Sydenham mixed-use stock carries construction-installed hardware awaiting its first real test. For the property managers who carry large, diverse Marrickville portfolios, this is the practical problem: every building demands its own window knowledge, and a provider strong on one type and weak on the rest produces registers with confident entries and hidden gaps.
The suburb’s demographic layer sharpens it: Marrickville’s apartments increasingly house young families, and the louvre-heavy older stock — the hardest windows to get right — is precisely where much of that family population lives.
Louvre banks with no compliant solution — the suburb’s most consequential finding, because louvres fail in ways ordinary restrictors cannot fix. Never-fitted terrace windows, rear elevations above courtyards especially. Track-worn sliders in the 80s-90s stock, defeating compliant-looking limiters. Conversion-era hardware in the new mixed-use buildings — fitted at construction, never force-tested. Renovation losses across a suburb refurbishing street by street.
And flyscreens mistaken for safety devices, which fail identically in every decade of building. Every window type has a compliant answer; the findings simply prove which windows were never asked the question.
With the van stocked for everything. Marrickville is the suburb where carrying the full REMSAFE range — and the robust screen solutions louvres demand — pays off daily: whatever the building presents, the fix is on hand, and authorised replacements happen in the same visit rather than a return trip. Every qualifying window is identified by type, tested against the 125mm and 250 newton requirements, and photographed. Heritage-listed buildings get the sympathetic treatment — hardware chosen to sit quietly on period joinery, fixings matched to the timber’s actual condition — while the big newer buildings run floor by floor on a planned access schedule.
Entry notices go through the manager’s process with our resident notice template. The digital certificate, photographic report and unit-by-unit register are delivered the same day, and where louvre banks or unusual configurations required specific solutions, the register documents the reasoning — so the building’s window logic survives every future change of manager. For the complete on-site sequence, see our inspection process guide.
A diverse portfolio prices building by building, but the tiers stay simple — and grouped Inner West runs keep the per-building cost down. 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. In Marrickville the money works the way it works everywhere we operate: single properties at $250 + GST, 2-to-10-unit buildings at $490 + GST, larger schemes on fixed request quotes — and the same-day certificate rides inside the fee.
Remediation is quoted window by window in REMSAFE hardware, fitted on the spot wherever authority already exists. The cheapest version of this work is the most consolidated one: inspection and remediation booked as a single project, and the building slotted into a grouped run with its neighbours. Separate engagements and solo visits are where window lock compliance budgets quietly leak. Nothing is unbundled: inspection, photographs, the register and the same-day certificate all live inside one fee, hardware call-out included.
Marrickville committees comparing quotes should compare finished outcomes — certified compliance, fully documented — where the inclusive fee consistently wins.
Usually a robust screen, and always a configuration decision. Louvres complicate compliance twice over: individual blades can create openings a child fits through even when the bank looks closed, and in older frames blades lift out entirely — so a device that limits one blade solves nothing. The compliant path assesses the bank as a whole: where the configuration can hold a 125mm limit reliably, purpose-made hardware may serve; where it cannot — most older banks — a robust screen over the opening, tested to 250 newtons, is the honest solution.
Two practical notes for committees with louvre-heavy buildings. Screens done properly preserve ventilation completely — the louvre keeps working behind them, which is the whole point of choosing screens over sealing windows shut. And priced across a building rather than lot by lot, louvre remediation is far cheaper than its reputation: one decision, one hardware standard, one visit. Our flyscreens guide explains why ordinary insect mesh never counts — the 250 newton screen is a different object entirely, and the difference is what holds the child.
Strata managers carrying the suburb’s large, mixed portfolios — grouped scheduling across Marrickville, Newtown, Petersham and Dulwich Hill, one register format across every building type. Owners corporations and committees from two-lot conversions to fifty-lot blocks, including heritage-area schemes. Property managers and landlords in a deep rental market trending family, using unit inspections and end-of-lease audits.
Developers and building managers of the Sydenham mixed-use stock, converting construction assumptions into tested registers before the defect period closes. Newtown, Leichhardt and the wider Inner West have their own location pages; portfolio scheduling crosses all of them.
Because window-type breadth is the whole game here. A provider who knows sliders but not louvres, or moderns but not heritage sashes, inspects half of Marrickville confidently and the other half cosmetically — and the register cannot tell you which half is which. Our technicians assess every type this suburb holds, test everything under load, and document type-specific reasoning so the record explains itself. Every link of the chain, one provider — assessment, REMSAFE and screen solutions, re-verification, records — fixed pricing, same-day certificates.
And the standing honesty notes: NSW offers no formal inspector credential and requires no fixed inspection cycle. The obligation is continuous compliance, in every window type it happens to own.
By letting the register carry the complexity. The first inspection solves each building’s type-specific questions — which banks took screens, which sashes took limiters, which sliders need track attention — and every annual reinspection verifies rather than re-derives: devices retested, screens checked at their fixings, worn tracks flagged before they defeat their limiters, the register rolled forward with its reasoning intact.
Automated reminders track each building’s anniversary across the portfolio. Annual is best practice rather than statute, as we say on every page. In a suburb where the window catalogue runs this wide, it is also what keeps hard-won building knowledge working: the register remembers, the cycle verifies, and no future manager pays to rediscover what this year already established.
Assess the bank as a whole, not blade by blade. Most older louvre banks resolve to a robust screen tested to 250 newtons — ventilation preserved, opening protected. Priced building-wide, louvre remediation is cheaper than its reputation.
Full compliance with sympathetic hardware: sash limiters and stays that meet the 125mm and 250 newton requirements while respecting period joinery. Heritage status shapes the solution, never the obligation.
That is the point of type-breadth: sashes, casements, awnings, louvres, sliders and modern glazed panels are all assessed on their own terms and tested to one standard, with one register format across every building you manage.
Their hardware was installed at construction — which is not the same as compliant today. Construction-fitted devices need force-testing, and buildings still in their defect period should test now, while failures are the builder’s claim rather than the scheme’s cost.
No — the statute is silent on inspection frequency. Yearly retesting is sound practice, and in a suburb with this much window variety it is also what keeps each building’s specific solutions verified and its register current.
Not sure which service tier fits your building? Our compliance specialists can help you understand your requirements and choose the right option.
