Two metres up, a window is a different job.
Inside the glass, for an openable bedroom window in a Class 2 or 3 building, the building code’s protection starts where the floor below the window is 2 m or more above the surface beneath. Outside, WorkSafe Victoria, SafeWork NSW and WorkSafe Queensland step their work at height duties up at that same 2 m. This is one wall of a three-storey home, drawn to scale, with every window linked to the guide about it.
General information about window cleaning and the rules around it in Australia, not advice for your own windows. Where this page quotes NSW’s strata rules, it says so; the workplace rules are quoted as duties on employers and businesses, never as rules for a householder.
- Terracotta: yours. In NSW, the model by-laws in the strata regulation, which a scheme may adopt in whole or in part, write it out: “An owner or occupier of a lot is responsible for cleaning all interior and exterior surfaces of glass in windows and doors on the boundary of the lot, including so much as is common property.”
- Blue-green: the owners corporation’s. The model by-laws keep one exception, and it is the one the blue-green window carries: “The owners corporation is responsible for cleaning regularly all exterior surfaces of glass in windows and doors that cannot be accessed by the owner or occupier of the lot safely or at all.” NSW’s strata window safety law reads the same glass for another purpose, and puts two more numbers on it: a window that opens, whose lowest level sits under 1.7 m above the floor, on a floor 2 m or more above the ground below.
- No ink: not assigned. Which upper windows a given home can reach is not something a public source states, so the drawing gives the corporation’s ink to one window only and leaves the rest uncoloured: a question for the ladder guide and the cleaner guide, not a colour.
The two sides of the glass
Inside: the national code
The Australian Building Codes Board’s guide to the code’s openable window provisions says their intent is “to limit the risk of a person (especially a young child) falling through an openable window.” Three heights decide it. On the way out of the rules: “Where the floor level below an openable window is less than 2 m there are no specific requirements,” and “If the openable part of a window is at least 1.7 m above the floor, no further protection is required.” Where protection is required, the code’s own words ask for a screen or device that keeps a 125 mm sphere out of the opening and resists a 250 N push, and for the device to be difficult for a young child to operate.
From the ABCB’s NCC guide to D3D29, protection of openable windows.
Outside: the work at height duties
Victoria’s employers meet Part 3.3 of the OHS Regulations once a fall of two metres or more is possible: the risk has to be removed, or cut down, by working through the prevention of falls hierarchy of control. SafeWork NSW puts it in one line: “A safe work method statement (SWMS) is required for construction work where a person could fall more than two metres.” Queensland classes construction work where someone could fall more than 2 metres as high risk construction work. The same regulators are careful with the line itself: WorkSafe Victoria’s warning on ladders is short and unqualified, that a fall is a risk on any ladder, including below 2 metres.
From WorkSafe Victoria on fall prevention, SafeWork NSW on working at heights and Queensland’s falls code of practice.
The five guides, window by window
Every window on the wall above opens a guide, and every guide redraws the same wall with its own window lit. Where the drawing cannot assign a window, the guide says so rather than colouring it.
Who cleans the outside of apartment windows? Guide 1: NSW strata
How far may a window open when children live there? Guide 2: The code and the NSW law
Can I clean my own high windows? Guide 3: Ladders and the law
What should a window cleaner do above two metres? Guide 4: The hired cleaner
Will a window lock stop me opening the window? Guide 5: The device