November Newsletter

Mov­ing out of COVID and back to “nor­mal­i­ty”, how do we inspire con­sumer con­fi­dence?

The fol­low­ing tips can help reduce the risk of expo­sure to the coro­n­avirus for work­ers who per­form in-home repair ser­vices:

• Stay home if you are sick.
• Pri­or to arrival, ask if any­one in the house is expe­ri­enc­ing COVID symp­toms.
• Con­sid­er delay­ing non-emer­gency work if there is a symp­to­matic indi­vid­ual in the house. Fol­low all appro­pri­ate infec­tion con­trol mea­sures if the work can­not be delayed.
• Encour­age work­ers to wear face cov­er­ings for all in-home vis­its.
• Wear gloves and use dis­in­fec­tants and san­i­tiz­ers to wipe sur­faces or equip­ment.
• Avoid shak­ing hands with cus­tomers or oth­er occu­pants of homes being ser­viced.
• Main­tain at least six feet of dis­tance from co-work­ers and cus­tomers when­ev­er pos­si­ble.
• Use walls and closed doors to sep­a­rate work­ers from occu­pants or install plas­tic sheet­ing to close off areas of the home.
• Reg­u­lar­ly clean and dis­in­fect tools and equip­ment with clean­ing chem­i­cals approved by the EPA from List N or that have label claims against the coro­n­avirus. Avoid shar­ing tools and equip­ment when­ev­er pos­si­ble.
• Report any safe­ty and health con­cerns to a super­vi­sor.

• On 7 Novem­ber 1861 about 4000 peo­ple gath­ered at Flem­ing­ton Race­course in Mel­bourne to watch a horser­ace that would become one of Australia’s most impor­tant sport­ing events.

Fifty-sev­en hors­es were slat­ed to take part in the race, though only 17 actu­al­ly start­ed. Syd­ney horse, Archer, trained by Eti­enne de Mestre, was the win­ner by a stag­ger­ing six lengths.

Today, the Mel­bourne Cup is known as ‘the race that stops a nation’, draw­ing crowds of thou­sands on the first Tues­day in Novem­ber every year.

• 04^th  Novem­ber 1930, Phar Lap wins the Mel­bourne Cup
• 01^st Novem­ber 2005, Makybe Diva wins her third Mel­bourne Cup.
• On 16 Novem­ber 1920 W Hud­son Fysh, Paul McGin­ness and Fer­gus McMas­ter estab­lished the Queens­land and North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Aer­i­al Ser­vices Ltd with two open-cab­in biplanes.

Today Qan­tas is the sec­ond old­est air­line in the world and the com­pa­ny, and its fly­ing kan­ga­roo liv­ery are Aus­tralian icons.

• 02^nd Novem­ber 1922 QANTAS begins its first sched­uled flights, between Charleville, Qld and Clon­cur­ry, Qld.
• 1948: Australia’s first local­ly made car, the Hold­en 48–215, launched
• 1956, 16^th Sum­mer Olympics is held in Mel­bourne
• 3rd Novem­ber 1985, The first Aus­tralian For­mu­lar One Grand Prix takes place on the streets of Ade­laide.
• 22^nd Novem­ber 1921, Gin­ger Meg­gs, Australia’s longest-run­ning com­ic strip, is first pub­lished in The Sun, a Syd­ney-based news­pa­per.

• 27^th Novem­ber 1979, The first day-night ODI crick­et inter­na­tion­al played at the Syd­ney Crick­et Ground.

Vic­to­ria:

• It is an offence in Vic­to­ria to fly a kite to ‘the annoy­ance of any per­son’ in a pub­lic place. Max­i­mum penal­ty is a $777.30 fine (Sec­tion 4, Sum­ma­ry Offences Act 1966 (Vic)).
• Singing an obscene song or bal­lad in a pub­lic place can attract a max­i­mum fine of $1,554.60 or two months impris­on­ment; $2,331.90 fine or three months impris­on­ment for a sec­ond offence; $3,886.50 fine or six months impris­on­ment for a third or sub­se­quent offence (Sec­tion 17, Sum­ma­ry Offences Act 1966 (Vic)).
• It is ille­gal to cor­re­spond or do busi­ness with pirates. The max­i­mum penal­ty is 10 years impris­on­ment (Sec­tion 70C, Crimes Act 1958 (Vic)).
• It is an offence in Vic­to­ria to make unrea­son­able noise with a vac­u­um clean­er after 10pm or before 7am on week­days and 9am on week­ends (Sec­tion 48A, Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Act 1970 (Vic); Reg­u­la­tion 6, Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion (Res­i­den­tial Noise) Reg­u­la­tions 2008 (Vic)). The noise will be con­sid­ered unrea­son­able if it can be heard in a ‘hab­it­able’ room in any oth­er res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty, whether they have the door or win­dow open or closed. Police or the coun­cil can direct you stop mak­ing the noise for 72 hours and a breach of their direc­tion can car­ry a fine of up to $18,655.20, with an extra fine up to $4,663.80 per day for con­tin­u­ing noise vio­la­tions.

South Aus­tralia:

• Obstruct­ing or dis­turb­ing a wed­ding, funer­al or reli­gious ser­vice is an offence that car­ries a max­i­mum fine of $10,000 or two years impris­on­ment (Sec­tion 7A, Sum­ma­ry Offences Act 1953 (SA)).
• It is an offence to sell a fridge with a capac­i­ty of 42.5 litres or more, unless all of the doors can be eas­i­ly opened from the inside or it was brought into the state before 1 Jan­u­ary 1962. Max­i­mum penal­ty is a $750 fine (Sec­tion 58B, Sum­ma­ry Offences Act 1953 (SA)).
• A $250 max­i­mum penal­ty applies to a per­son who, with­out rea­son­able excuse, dis­turbs anoth­er by wil­ful­ly pulling or ring­ing the door­bell of a house or by knock­ing at the door of a house (Sec­tion 50, Sum­ma­ry Offences Act 1953 (SA)).

West­ern Aus­tralia:

• Chal­leng­ing anoth­er per­son to a duel is pun­ish­able by a max­i­mum $6,000 fine or two years impris­on­ment (Sec­tion 72, Crim­i­nal Code Act 1913 (WA)).
• You can be jailed for up to a year for clean­ing up seabird or bat poo (guano) with­out a licence (Sec­tion 387, Crim­i­nal Code Act 1913 (WA)).
• It is an offence to make a sign that offers a reward for the return of stolen or lost prop­er­ty if you promise not to ask any ques­tions. Max­i­mum penal­ty: $2,000 fine (Sec­tion 138, Crim­i­nal Code Act 1913 (WA)).
• It is ille­gal to car­ry a weapon in most cir­cum­stances, but a law­ful excuse exists in WA for elec­tri­fied brief­cas­es (Sec­tion 68A, Crim­i­nal Code Act 1913 (WA)).
• It is an offence to be in pos­ses­sion of more than 50kg of pota­toes in WA, unless you have pur­chased the pota­toes from a grow­er or retail­er autho­rised by the Pota­to Cor­po­ra­tion. Police also have the pow­er to stop and search a vehi­cle sus­pect­ed of car­ry­ing more than 50kg of pota­toes. The max­i­mum penal­ty is a $2,000 fine for a first offence or a $5,000 fine for sub­se­quent offences, as well as a fur­ther penal­ty up to twice the val­ue of the pota­toes (Sec­tion 22, Mar­ket­ing of Pota­toes Act 1946 (WA)).

NSW:

• Dri­vers can be fined up to $2,200 for not tak­ing enough care to avoid splash­ing mud on pub­lic bus pas­sen­gers (Reg­u­la­tion 291–3, Road Rules 2014 (NSW)).

QLD:

• It is ille­gal to post a fake job adver­tise­ment, or pub­lish false notices about engage­ments, births, deaths or funer­als. Max­i­mum penal­ty is a $1,219 fine or six months impris­on­ment (Sec­tion 21, Sum­ma­ry Offences Act 2005 (Qld)).

Ear­ly this month, QLD’s south­east was hit with cat­a­stroph­ic hail storms that have caused exten­sive dam­age to many prop­er­ties. This has cre­at­ed a large clean-up oper­a­tion that has become big­ger than any­one expect­ed.

The Spring­field Lakes Com­mu­ni­ty has ral­lied togeth­er to help res­i­dents over the past few weeks. Health author­i­ties have urged peo­ple to be aware of food safe­ty as some prop­er­ties have only just had pow­er return. They have also been encour­aged to take note of any mould devel­op­ing due to the hail and water dam­age that has occurred. 

It is impor­tant for res­i­dents that have been affect­ed by the storm to under­stand what they can/can’t expect when recov­er­ing from these sit­u­a­tions.

Bev Laird from local car­pet clean­ing com­pa­ny State­ly Car­pet Care and Pest Con­trol recent­ly asked:

Bit of a tough one but restor­ers I need your help.

We are close to Spring­field Lakes where the hail storm occurred last week. We have had a few queries about mould and this is not our area of exper­tise.

Basi­cal­ly one of our cus­tomers doesn’t have insur­ance and has a mat­tress that got wet and is now show­ing signs of mould.

Am I right in think­ing this is not restor­able?

There is also anoth­er one where mould is form­ing on the ceil­ing and the real estate is say­ing it’s not a big issue. They have tarps cov­er­ing the whole roof as the ceil­ing has also col­lapsed in every room except the garage.

There is so much dam­age in this area it looks like a war zone and peo­ple just don’t know what to do.

Peo­ple with­out insur­ance and renters are the most vul­ner­a­ble.

Our answer is:

Just a sim­ple ref­er­ence for any fur­ther ques­tions which may be asked.

Was it there before the cur­rent (lat­est) event?

If yes: There most like­ly is anoth­er under­ly­ing issue.

If no: Good chance it is from the cur­rent (lat­est) event and should be returned to pre-event sta­tus.

Best prac­tices dic­tate porous items (i.e. mat­tress­es) affect­ed to be dis­posed of.

Infor­ma­tion from the Qld Gov­ern­ment RTA web­site:

Mould

Decid­ing who is respon­si­ble for clean­ing mould depends on how it appeared in the first place. The ten­ant should noti­fy the prop­er­ty manager/owner as soon as they are aware of a mould issue.

Gen­er­al­ly, if the mould is a result of prob­lems with the prop­er­ty (e.g. a leak­ing roof) it is the prop­er­ty manager/owner’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to clean the mould and make any nec­es­sary repairs.

Some build­ings may be more prone to mould due to fac­tors such as the age of the build­ing, struc­tur­al issues, loca­tion, or the absence of ade­quate ven­ti­la­tion or extrac­tor fans. The prop­er­ty manager/owner is more like­ly to be respon­si­ble for mould in these cir­cum­stances.

If the ten­ant caus­es the mould they are respon­si­ble for clean­ing it and pay­ing for any dam­age caused.

Exam­ple. if the ten­ant con­tin­u­al­ly allows steam to build up in the bath­room with­out prop­er ven­ti­la­tion and/or reg­u­lar clean­ing, result­ing in mould, they may be respon­si­ble for the mould.

Any spe­cif­ic arrange­ments about mould should be includ­ed in the spe­cial terms of the agree­ment.

Picked by Phill McGurk

1. Jon Jones                              @Jonnybones
2. Khabib Nur­magome­dov      @TeamKhabib
3. Aman­da Nunas                    @Amanda_Leoa
4. Stipe Mio­cic                          @stipemiocic
5. Kamaru Usman                    @USMAN84kg
6. Valenti­na Shevchenko       @BulletValentina
7. Israel Ade­sanya                   @stylebender
8. Weili Zhang                          zhang­weil­im­ma (Insta­gram)
9. Petr Yan                                @PetrYanUFC
10. Alexan­der Volka­novs­ki       @alexvolkanovski

*Pho­to Cred­it @UFC

Mould reme­di­a­tion may seem like a sim­ple task, but a lot of clean­ers are unaware of the cor­rect process­es to achieve this suc­cess­ful­ly.

This course is suit­ed to clean­ers want­i­ng to pro­vide mould reme­di­a­tion to res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial indus­tries. Learn the basics of mould reme­di­a­tion and set your­self up for suc­cess.

Expand your knowl­edge and under­stand­ing in mould reme­di­a­tion. Learn the indus­try terms and feel con­fi­dent in com­plet­ing mould reme­di­a­tion work.

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With Australia’s only CFO (Cer­ti­fied Foren­sic Oper­a­tor) and CBFRS (Cer­ti­fied Bio-Foren­sic Restora­tion Spe­cial­ist) Phillip McGurk, this course has been devel­oped as an entry lev­el course to Mould Reme­di­a­tion.

The course fol­lows strict local, nation­al, and inter­na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion devel­oped for the real-world clean­er. Oth­er cours­es are devel­oped by admin­is­tra­tions to pro­duce course mod­ules.

Course con­tent cov­ers terms and def­i­n­i­tions, an intro­duc­tion to mould includ­ing what it is, how it grows and the health effects it may cause, WHS&E require­ments, PPE that should be used for mould reme­di­a­tion, an intro­duc­tion to mould reme­di­a­tion includ­ing the pur­pose, clean up process and antimi­cro­bial prod­ucts, and struc­tur­al reme­di­a­tion includ­ing inspec­tion and step by step process­es.

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