He wears strange pants, he carries a clipboard, he is totally annoying, he may be a Building Inspector! Part 2.

Ok, So the last blog on Australian Standards was more around building in general. Read Part 1. This blog is a guide for Australian Plumbers when dealing with Building Inspectors, Australian Codes, Standards and Regulations.

For the Victorian Plumbers, there is a website you can get lots of free information from. www.vba.vic.gov.au

This is the landing page of the Victorian Building Authority who administers the legislation.  In other words, the police for your industry.

You will see the reference to three documents, these are free if you know where to get them from.

Government websites are often clunky to use, but you can find the Building Act 1983 and download it.

• The Building Act 1983…Go to www.legislation.vic.gov.au

Using the same clunky website you can find the Plumbing regulations 2018 and download it.

• The Plumbing regulations 2018…..115 pages…: Go to www.legislation.vic.gov.au

Specifically for our Australian plumbers after National Constructions codes, see below.

• The National Construction code – Volume 3 – 2019.  To get this document, you need to go to www.abcb.gov.au  . 
• Look for the NCC volume 3. Create a login and download it.  Back in the day you had to pay for it, Now it’s free to increase its awareness.
• Now, if you need any Australian Standards, you may have to pay for those. They can be found on the Standards Australia website, www.standards.org.au

VBA Part 1 – Plumbing Code of Australia

On the VBA website (Victoria Building Authority), there are a lot of guides and practice notes. Too many to mention, but worth a look.  You can download these for free.

Apart from understanding water is wet and pipes are round. There is a lot of reading in the legal side of things and we haven’t even discussed what type of plumbing work needs to be done.

More to come but after briefly reading some of the legal literature available, I will leave you with the following facts and questions.

Part 13 of the Plumbing regulations notes the changing of a water efficient shower head is a Plumbers task, however may be carried out by someone who is not licenced nor registered.  Ditto for tap washers and minor repairs. DEKS products have technical documents and engineering drawings to help, check them out.

The clearing of blockages or using CCTV to inspect pipes using inspection openings or grates is not plumbing work.

Whilst looking at the legislation website, I found the Plumbing (Building) Act 1998. I wonder why this is not listed on the VBA website under the legislation section.

Oh well, more reading to see what that document requires.

Are the 50 plus technical notes on the VBA website enforceable documents? Are they only suggested or best practice?  I may need to call the VBA to answer this one.  My thought is if it’s not referenced in the legislation, then it’s not the law… But it’s on their website??? Read about how shit websites can be.

So this is getting bigger and bigger the more I look. Guess there is more reading in store for me……I do wonder if they teach this at trade school?