Plastering and Gyprocking in Sydney Olympic Park
Sydney Olympic Park is a purpose built precinct rather than a suburb that grew, and it shows in the housing. Effectively every dwelling here is an apartment, there is not one detached house, and nobody lived here at all until 2012. Two thirds of the residents rent, and the buildings are reinforced concrete with light gauge steel internal framing, plasterboard throughout, square set finishes and a great deal of glass. So everything we do here is high rise strata work. The other thing that shapes a job in this postcode is the event calendar, because on a big event day a trade vehicle cannot necessarily get to your building at all.
Common plasterboard problems in Sydney Olympic Park
There is no aged stock here at all, which removes an entire category of problem that dominates most of this list. What replaces them is a set of issues specific to recent high rise: the light, the structure, the shared walls and the age at which buildings start to show what was done to them.
A finish that was specified for the wrong light
These apartments have full height glazing, continuous downlights and square set junctions, which together are as unforgiving a lighting condition as a room can have. A Level 4 finish is not specified for that, and where one was used the joints band and flash across the wall all day. This is the signature complaint in the suburb. It is a specification question rather than a workmanship one, and in a refurbishment it is the single thing most worth getting right before anybody paints.
A crack that the strata committee is told is the ground
It very rarely is. These buildings sit on engineered foundations, so the reactive clay explanation that fits half of Sydney does not apply here at all. What does is slab deflection and differential movement between the structure and the non loadbearing partitions inside it, showing as cracking along the head of a wall where there was no control joint or deflection head to absorb it. Getting that right matters because it sends an owners corporation to the correct investigation rather than an expensive irrelevant one.
Sound between apartments in an event precinct
A separating wall in one of these buildings is a certified fire and acoustic assembly, and where one fails to perform the culprit is almost always a later patch made in ordinary board, or a penetration cut for a service and never sealed behind. Both are invisible once painted. What makes it matter more here than elsewhere is the precinct itself: residents living beside a major event venue are considerably more alert to sound transmission than they would be in a quiet street, so a wall that would pass without comment somewhere else generates a complaint here.
Buildings now old enough to show what was done to them
The earliest residential towers here date from 2012, which means they are reaching the age at which facade and waterproofing issues surface. Water finding its way into a building shows up internally as staining, blistering and damaged linings, and the lining is the symptom rather than the cause. Some of these buildings sit inside the statutory warranty periods and some are past them, and which one yours is in changes who pays. It is worth establishing before anybody starts.
Humidity off the bay slowing everything down
Apartments fronting Homebush Bay and the surrounding parkland and wetlands carry higher ambient humidity than an inland tower, and compound cures more slowly in it. Painting or recoating before it has cured properly gives you a joint that opens months later and a paint film that lifts, which in a rental means doing the same wall twice between tenants. In a room that stays genuinely damp, board made to resist mould is worth specifying rather than repainting annually.
No asbestos above the slab, and a different question below it
There is no asbestos and no lead paint anywhere in the residential linings here, because nothing is old enough, and that is worth saying plainly because it makes a job faster, cheaper and lower risk than the identical work in an older suburb. The separate point is that this is remediated land under an active containment and monitoring regime, so anything that disturbs ground or below grade structure is governed by site specific environmental controls that do not exist elsewhere. For internal plasterboard work above the slab, none of that applies.
Why Sydney Olympic Park homeowners choose Sydney Gyprock Masters
Our plasterers work across Sydney Olympic Park and the City of Parramatta Council area, supplying the sheets, cornice and compounds for every job, so there is nothing for you to order, collect or store on site.
How our plastering service works in Sydney Olympic Park
Getting plastering work quoted in Sydney Olympic Park starts with a call or the quote form on this page. For a new home or a renovation, send the floor plans and we can price the job from those, so a site visit is often not needed at all. For a repair, a photograph of the damage is usually enough to price it. A site visit and measure is free wherever one helps, and there is no travel charge to reach you.
Once the price is agreed, most residential jobs in Sydney Olympic Park are completed in one to two days on site. We deliver and supply the plasterboard, cornice and compounds ourselves. Each coat of jointing compound dries in under an hour, so the plasterer works through the coats in sequence rather than booking a return visit days later, and you do not need to be at home while anything dries. Walls are left sanded and ready for your painter to prime.
Two things govern access here and both are booked rather than assumed. The first is the building: service lift bookings, loading dock timeslots, building manager sign off, inductions and after hours restrictions, with the sheet length set by the goods lift rather than by the truck. The second is unique to this suburb. Sydney Olympic Park hosts major stadium and arena events with road closures and crowd management, and on those days getting a vehicle and materials to a building is difficult or impossible. So we check the event calendar before booking your job rather than discovering it on the morning, and where a job runs across an event we plan the deliveries around it.
Residential plastering and gyprocking in Sydney Olympic Park
Everything residential here is post 2012, which is a statement that can be made about no other suburb we cover without a caveat. The buildings are reinforced concrete frames with post tensioned slabs, light gauge steel internal framing, plasterboard linings throughout, mostly square set finishes and high glazing ratios. There are no houses, no townhouses, no walk ups and no heritage stock of any kind. The population is young, around two people per dwelling, with two thirds renting and only about one in sixteen owning outright, which is the lowest ownership figure on the whole list.
That produces three kinds of client and no others. Owners corporations, dealing with common property, defect work and the facade and waterproofing issues that arrive as buildings pass their tenth year. Landlords and agents, turning over one and two bedroom apartments in a young, high turnover rental market. And owner occupiers refurbishing an apartment that is now a decade or more old, where the job is usually matching a 2014 builder's finish with 2026 work, which sounds trivial and is not: different compound, a different sanding standard and a different paint sheen all show under downlights even when both surfaces are modern.
Get a free quote in Sydney Olympic Park
Tell us what you need done in Sydney Olympic Park and we will get back to you with a price as soon as we can. There is no obligation to go ahead.
Services we provide in Sydney Olympic Park
New home gyprock installation
Renovation plastering
Suspended ceilings
Bulkhead ceilings
Fire rated walls and ceilings
Soundproofing walls and ceilings
Cornices
Sagging ceiling repairs
Wall repairs
Water damage and wet areas
Commercial plastering
Asbestos in older homes
Suburbs we service in Sydney Olympic Park and surrounds
Our service vehicles reach every suburb within the City of Parramatta Council area and the surrounding localities, with no travel charge to any of them. If your suburb is not listed below, contact us to confirm coverage.
Frequently asked questions about Sydney Olympic Park
Do you service all suburbs in the Sydney Olympic Park area?
Yes. We work across the City of Parramatta Council area and the surrounding localities, including every suburb listed on this page. There is no travel charge anywhere we work. If your suburb is not shown, contact us and we will confirm coverage.
What are your working hours in Sydney Olympic Park?
We work Monday to Saturday, 7am to 5:30pm. A quote can be requested at any time through the form on this page or by sending through your floor plans or a photograph, and we come back to you during working hours.
Is there any asbestos in my apartment?
No. Nothing residential here was built before 2012 and asbestos was banned nationally well before that, so unlike almost every other suburb in Sydney we can say it flatly rather than hedging. The same goes for lead paint. For a quote that means no sample sent away, no job stopped while you wait for a result, and no allowance sitting in the price for something that might not be there. It is one of the very few places we work where the answer to this question is a simple no.
There is a crack along the top of my wall. Is the building moving?
The building is moving, and that is normal rather than alarming. Concrete slabs deflect over time, and where an internal wall was built hard against the structure above it, that movement gets taken through the wall and shows as cracking along its head. Built with a gap at the head and the right track, the wall simply lets the slab move above it and stays where it is. What it is almost certainly not is the ground, because these buildings sit on engineered foundations, so the soil explanation that fits much of Sydney does not apply here. If the wall is common property it is a matter for the owners corporation rather than for you.
Can you work during a major event?
Sometimes, and we check before we promise. On big event days there are road closures, crowd management and access restrictions across the precinct, and getting a vehicle and materials to a building can be difficult or impossible. So we look at the event calendar before booking your job, and where a job has to run across an event we plan the deliveries around it. It is not a constraint anywhere else we work, and it is the one thing about this suburb that a plasterer from outside it will not think of.
Why do the joints show in my living room but not the bedroom?
Because of the light, not the workmanship. A living room here typically has full height glazing and continuous downlights, which rakes light along the wall all day and shows every joint. A bedroom with a smaller window and softer light hides the same joints entirely. The finishing standard has a higher level specifically for those critical lighting conditions, and where a builder specified the ordinary residential level throughout, the glazed rooms are the ones where it shows. It is fixable, and it is worth specifying properly in any refurbishment.
The block went up recently. Is this a defect or is it mine to fix?
Depends on the building's age and on what the defect is. NSW statutory warranties run six years from completion for a major defect and two years otherwise, and since buildings here have been completed continuously since 2012, some of this suburb is inside those windows and some is past them. So the answer genuinely differs from one tower to the next. We will tell you what we think caused what we are looking at and put it in writing, which is generally what an owners corporation or a builder will want to see.
Who approves work here, the council or somebody else?
It is worth asking rather than assuming, because this precinct does not follow the ordinary council pathway that applies in the suburbs around it. It has its own planning and management body, which is an unusual governance layer that most trades will not have encountered. On top of that, in strata the owners corporation approves anything touching common property. We are plasterers rather than planners, so we will not tell you what your particular job needs. Ask the precinct authority and your strata manager before you commit to anything structural.
Explore our other Sydney service areas
Ready to get started?
Get a fast, free quote for your job in Sydney Olympic Park, or call now and speak to someone who can help.