Car Fumes & Garage Storage with People Complaints

silvia-0707 on 09/05/2017 - 09:42
Last edited 09/05/2017 - 11:23 by 1 other user

My partner recently received a note from an unknown tenant in the building, We live in a apartment and we have a 2 car garage. Please note the the car is a VW Golf that is getting a bit old and has to be warmed up for exactly 5 minutes or until the revs drop. (Has a timer to let you know. Also the car is not started ever until the hallway door is closed and the garage door is open (its also part mesh the garage door)

Can they really complain to strata and could anything actually be done about it? If strata wants to enforce a set of rule on us than it has to be enforced across the whole complex in my opinion. Its actually encouraged that we park in our garages and not in the public parking spots as its for visitors.

Id also like to point out on a side whining note, that there is people in the building that smoke and it stinks the hallways out, but i don't go and complain. The hallways don't have any fresh air provided so not alot can be done.

Note:
Could you kindly stop warming up your car in the garage because your car is polluting the building hallways with fumes which are toxic to all the people living in the building.

Please also consider to park your car front end first so the fumes escape the garage and don't come inside the hallways.

If this issue does not change. this matter will be referred to the owners co-operation and strata.

Update:
Everyone thankyou for comments I will be taking my list to my partner. I will get him to change his car position like recommended in the letter, and also add extra covering around the door frame to cover any small gaps so hopefully no car emissions make it into the hallway. As for the 5 mins warming time, i'll try and argue the point with him, though I haven't worked as a mechanic like he has so I might be falling on deaf ears!

Automotive

Comments

  • tonyjzx on 09/05/2017 - 09:44
    +3

    why dont you just move the car offstreet then do this?

    • silvia-0707 on 09/05/2017 - 09:55

      Warm the car up off street or park off street? apparently the most damage to the engine is made in the first 5 mins because the car hasn't been warmed up. Parking isn't wise else you want the car reversed/sideswiped, dinged. Its a very congested street. And i also think, why pay for a 2 car garage but than not use it for its purpose.

      • ESEMCE on 09/05/2017 - 12:21
        +2

        "the most damage to the engine is made in the first 5 mins"

        As far as I'm aware, this logic just doesn't apply to modern (ie 20 years or less) vehicles, in fact can do more harm than good cause the oil pump requires revs to circulate oil!

        If OP's partner wants to warm up the car anyway… back it out so the fumes are outside and then leave it to idle..

      • [Deactivated] on 10/05/2017 - 07:16

        Yes your right
        30 years ago, oils would sink to the bottom of the sump leave the engines moving parts completely dry.

        Today the oils systems have significantly different layouts to make distribution almost instant and the oils deliberately designed to bind to engine parts so they are not dry.

      • skillet on 10/05/2017 - 10:27

        I spill engine oil in my garage for fun regulary. The oil actually climb up a cm or two via capillary action if it touches anything.

  • [Deactivated] on 09/05/2017 - 09:50
    +13

    i think you should let the car run for a few days just to kill everyone off.

    • tonyjzx on 09/05/2017 - 10:52
      +1

      best to close the garage door while you do this and sit in the drivers seat…

  • geek001 on 09/05/2017 - 10:03
    +2

    Technically, I am not sure if they can force you to do anything. You have taken precautions by closing the hallway door first to stop the fumes. Morally, maybe you should consider replacing your car if it is that old. I don't think I have heard of a car that needs to be warmed up. Save some petrol money, be greener and probably better for your own health too.

  • altomic on 09/05/2017 - 10:12
    +2

    buy a $15 fan from kmart and place it in front of the hallway door to blow air away from the door.

  • 2jzzzz on 09/05/2017 - 10:13
    +11

    Mate, warming up a car is such an old, out dated way of thinking. Yes cars have cold start built into it, but something that's as new as a Golf doesn't need it to happen stationary. It's there to get coolant up to temperature as quick possible, you don't need to sit there for 5 mins. Just don't go and thrash it for the first 5 minutes.

    http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a19086/warming-up-your-…

    • Peter Enis on 09/05/2017 - 10:19
      +6

      Agreed, just get in and drive it, don't sit there for 5 minutes! I'd get annoyed too if I lived in your apartment.

    • silvia-0707 on 09/05/2017 - 10:27
      +1

      Not my way of thinking, my partners way. I just listen to the same riot act every time i have to go anywhere with him. But a female try and tell a male about cars..and him listen… he literally laughed at me when i showed him the article. But ill keep working on him and than the complaint issue might be solved.

      • k-rokfm on 09/05/2017 - 10:36
        +5

        Just warm it up for 30 seconds and then drive it casually until you are a couple of streets away (and most peoples normal would be pretty casual). Theres no need to warm it up for 5 mins.

      • mooseymoose on 09/05/2017 - 12:36
        +4

        He sounds pretty ignorant if he is writing off your input just because you're a female. If new information is given he should listen and learn.

      • resisting the urge on 10/05/2017 - 19:06

        He is plain wrong. Completely wrong.

        Unless it is 20 years old, perhaps. (ie predates electronic fuel injection)

        Teams of qualified, let alone highly experienced engineers with knowledge in orders of magnitude above anyone like your partner or anyone any of us combined or have ever met have designed and tested that car, in fact they spent months and possibly billions on doing so, you are talking about serious German dudes working amongst their peers to do the best possible job.

        And yes, they designed it to be driven from start-up. Of course it is correct that most of the wear happens whilst cold. But the car warms up much faster when you drive it, because the engineers balanced time, heat transfer and all the inputs to came up with an engine design that achieves the perfect balance.

        So the best advice is (not just to drive it from immediate start-up as it will say in the manual), but to do so very smoothly and not to accelerate hard. This will minimise the wear whilst it is in warmup.

        OTOH, if this is because your car is old and doesn't drive when cold, just fix it.

    • PJC on 09/05/2017 - 12:27
      +1

      Yes, even cheap 'n' cheerful coolant won't need 5 minutes. By the time he's got his seat-belt on it should be ready to go.

  • Ryanek on 09/05/2017 - 10:53
    +1

    Could you not just park the car into the garage nose first and start it with the butt hanging out?

  • resisting the urge on 09/05/2017 - 10:55
    +4

    The reason the OP is warming it up is because it won't drive properly until warm. If automatic it can be very hard to drive if it stalls and splutters (not to mention wreaking havoc on the transmission when it is cold and least able to deal with running problems)

    Modern cars are full of seals that need to be replaced, and they leak much more when cold than when warm. If your car needs to warm up to drive, or is >10% up on fuel consumption, you have bad seals and need to fix it. If you don't, other problems that will cost more will arise. The seals are supposed to be replaced before they fail (and leak cold or warm) so this is likely an example of neglect, poor dealer servicing or poor third party servicing.

    The seals are mainly around the intake manifold and fuel preparation system. They include things like o-rings, plastic pipes, plastic connectors and rubber tubes- they get old and brittle and no longer expand and contract. Some literally shrink. They live in a pretty nasty environment, bathed in solvents, other petroleum-based and synthetic chemicals, hot engine oil, massive changes in heat, etc.

    Normal servicing should involve changing these before they fail. But at >10 years old, these and any other parts in the cooling system should be replaced to prevent major failure (water pipes, water pump, thermostat, all the plastic bits again). One has to simply go through the parts diagram and replace every bit that could harden and fail. If you don't the car behaves like this, the emissions controls fail, fuel and oil consumption increases, internal engine wear increases, and the bill gets greater.

    All the parts are cheap and available, you just have to spend the time or pay someone to do it. Not doing it is false economy besides.

    If I were the OP's neighbour, I'd be shitty too. Smoking out the garage and giving others cancer is downright anti-social in a shared, enclosed space, let alone in any way acceptable. It's not just for 5 mins, the worst part is probably in the hour or so after the car is gone- or in hallways leading into the garage area

    • Euphemistic on 09/05/2017 - 11:57
      +1

      you can still move the car at low revs on startup before it warms up. You should be able to move out of the garage on idle unless it is on a significant slope. You will not do any harm at such a slow speed.

      • resisting the urge on 09/05/2017 - 15:19

        No that'll just be the idle control valve (computer) keeping the throttle high to compensate for all the extra air going in leaning it out and making it so hard to drive during early warmup.

        • tonyjzx on 09/05/2017 - 15:21
          +3

          nah I dont believe this for a second… owned and driven carb fed cars from old pushrod fours to Ford Holden 5.0 plus V8s, even older cars like Minors with chokes

          they do like a warm up but as long as you're easy on the throttle until the car warms up you're good

        • Euphemistic on 09/05/2017 - 15:23
          +1

          But you can still drive it slowly without doing any harm. Modern cars can cope with driving when they are cold.

        • resisting the urge on 09/05/2017 - 15:25
          -1

          @tonyjzx: You're living in the past my friend, modern cars have multiple temp sensors and lambda probes on each cylinder so the fuel mixture and timing can be actively controlled down to the millisecond during warmup and across the range. They all do this now, unless they're pre-historic (nowadays that means >3years old)

          But I didn't mean it couldn't be driven cold like this. Nursing it may be possible but it probably just stalls going into D…

        • tonyjzx on 09/05/2017 - 15:30
          +2

          @zerovelocity:

          I made no comment about 'modern' cars. Read what I said again… I was able to drive slowly in D or low gears in a carb fed car. Even at worst, the OP has a 1975 VW Golf and they arent like terrible.

          I've driven a friend's VW Bug from 1961 or whatever and they driven fine even when dead cold, sure not fast, but enough to get onto a street and keep up with traffic.

        • resisting the urge on 10/05/2017 - 19:08

          @tonyjzx: My apologies, I mistook the context of what you said. What you contributed was dead right.

        • smux on 10/05/2017 - 22:18

          @tonyjzx: I had a 1972 vw beetle with the original owners manual which actually advised to not let it "warm up" but to start driving straight away. I'm guessing that would be in part because they were air cooled cars so had to be moving to stay cool?

        • resisting the urge on 14/05/2017 - 17:18

          @zaidoun: It'd be because the manufacturer tested wear during warm up, and confimred that driving moderately resulted in less wear than letting it warm up first. The cooling system doesn't matter, the speed at which the wear surfaces and the oil they are supplied with warm up.

          They've been designing them this way for decades. but the industry was warned by its lawyers that it had to change engine designs that encourage consumers to carry on with 'better let her warm up' habits. Not doing so, or just giving the problem lip-service with a few marketing campaigns wouldn't stop them getting sued by owners- a surprising number of whom get poisoned in the garage by carbon monoxide, or end up contracting cancer (let alone their family members and their neighbours, etc).

  • holdenmg on 09/05/2017 - 11:00
    +7

    All you need to do is hook yer VW Golf to emission monitoring gear and…

    Oh wait…

  • try2bhelpful on 09/05/2017 - 11:14
    +1

    I agree with the others, you really don't need to warm up a car like that for 5 minutes - these cars are designed for European conditions where the temperature gets much lower than over here. All you are doing at the moment is burning petrol and annoying the neighbours. The worst that can happen is the car fails - it is quite old and you could get another second hand one pretty cheaply. I also agree if you have to warm it up then open the garage door and hang the back end out the door.

    • resisting the urge on 09/05/2017 - 15:23
      -1

      yep, nowadays the entire combustion section of the engine is designed to warmup in 30s in order to reduce wear and pollution as quick and much as possible. The bit that stays cold is the intake side and the valve cover seal/gasket, where all the failing seals are.

  • [Deactivated] on 09/05/2017 - 11:32
    +2

    5 minutes of your life sitting and waiting while you warm your car EVERY time you want to go out. Clearly you don't have a life, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. Even if its just to and from work, that is 50 minutes a week (assume you work 5 days a week). Add 1 trip on the weekend and that is an hour a week you have sat in your car.

    • tonyjzx on 09/05/2017 - 12:09
      +3

      If I parked a car outside your window and let it idle for 5 mins, would you be happy?

      I cant understand how people can be so inconsiderate of other people?

  • Euphemistic on 09/05/2017 - 11:59

    I would prefer to put our car in the garage in get-a-way parking (rear in) but then the exhaust can get into the house so much easier. Reversing out is a pain, but I'd prefer to have fresh air inside.

    Parking nose in is an easy enough concession to make.

  • mooseymoose on 09/05/2017 - 12:39
    +3

    If cigarette smoke is an issue for you guys, then I would bring this up separately once this is resolved. If you are only mentioning it as tit-for-tat, let it go. If you're living in a shared space its important to consider how your actions are effecting your neighbours, not bringing up an unimportant issue to retaliate.

    The exhaust would bother me too. If your partner insists it needs to be warmed up, I would look into offsite parking where it isn't in an enclosed space. Sitting in the garage for 5 minutes can't be healthy for him either. But I would agree with the above, 5 minutes to warm up a european car in australia (or any car) doesn't sound necessary.

    • tonyjzx on 09/05/2017 - 12:54
      -1

      yeh this is bullcrap "whatabout-ism"

      if someone smokes then they made their own choice

      they didnt choose for you to idle your car outside their place

      • Sexysimon94 on 10/05/2017 - 08:47

        Think you missed the point of the cigarette smoke thing. The complaint isn't, "this person made a bad choice in life by smoking therefore has no right to complain about me", the argument was, "I don't complain about their cigarette smoke so don't complain about my exhaust." Still bullcrap whataboutism though.

  • [Deactivated] on 09/05/2017 - 13:04

    just get in and drive, save u petrol and save disharmony over something so minor, that way everyone wins.

  • teasatotalling on 10/05/2017 - 08:11

    All the people dying of cancer from vehicle emitting airborne carcinogens.
    We have right wing voters to thank for all these millions of deaths

  • Karsta on 10/05/2017 - 09:27

    I don't think the owner of this car understands that the fumes from a car Sitting in a garage enclosed areas. warming up it can make people really ill or worse death.
    Why the Hell would you warm up a newer car is beyond belief.
    Be prepared to receive a notice from Strata at least warning you if not removing you.

  • [Deactivated] on 10/05/2017 - 09:40
    +2

    If this is indicative of your partner's behaviour in other areas you may think about trading him in.

  • WT on 10/05/2017 - 10:14
    +1

    what year is the car? If it wont run right when cold he should use his previous skills as a mechanic to tune it.

    I dont get why people insist on warming up their cars in major cities, youre just going to go and sit in traffic anyways. Same deal with people warming up for track days, 40 mins ago your oil was over 110deg from the last session- no reason to warm an engine up before a session

    The amount of people that think their POS car/bike is built to race clearances amazes me

    I would love to find the marketing guy who made the ad about cold start up wear and kick them as hard as I can in the nuts. Yes its there but only applies to less then 0.01% of the population. It probably doesnt even apply to 1% of guys at track days or race meetings. It only applies to F1 really where they have to use external heaters to warm their oil and water on cold engines

  • wolfazrael123 on 16/05/2017 - 10:32

    Put it this way. You have all the right to complain about smoking issue. Although you didn't do it, I think you realized that it is annoying.

    Other residents have all the right to complain about your fume. Apparently others found that annoying too and they didn't want to just keep quiet. Owner's corporation sure can vote for a bylaw to stop your kind of warming up car behavior. While you can still seek for legal advice to determine if this sort of bylaw is legit. And maybe taking the issue to court and void the bylaw.

    If we are talking about right things. You are constantly annoying your neighbors. Although you mentioned the car would not be started until the hallway door is closed. I'm pretty sure 5 minutes warming up still would make the hallway smell like hell, of course it would be much worse if the door is open.

    If we are talking about right. You have your right to warm up your car but other residents sure have the right to vote for new bylaw to stop you. Only judge can decide whose right comes first.

  • nuno on 31/10/2017 - 09:52

    If there is no tenant \ owners rule forbidding you to warm your car up, I wouldnt worry about it. If the car park area does not have adequate ventilation for extraction purposes, its not your problem.

    5 minutes is the maximum you're allowed to warm up your car in residential , communal areas. And thats imposed on the basis of noise levels.

    tell them to go jump.

    nb: Cars dont have to be warmed up anymore since they did away with manual chokes 30 years ago. Drive off after 30 seconds and take it easy until the temperature needle starts moving towards the middle. which should only be a few kms at the most.

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