Ozceltic

Following on from my last "Building" thread where I got some great advice and help I am back with another question.

We are in the process of planning our new home and with a large(ish) family and the possibility of more kids not ruled out we are building a 220sqm 4 bedroom home.
The problem is not really with the house as we have that squared away, designed and planned and are almost at the soil test and "Give us your money" stage.
The problem is with our block of land which is a pretty unique shape. It is a corner block with 2 street frontage on the northern and western sides. it is a kind of weird triangle shaped block which makes it very hard to build anything on the land without going over the normal 6m setbacks from the road.
We are now filling out forms and gathering evidence to help our case for an appeal to the planning department to allow us to build one small point of the building to within 1.5m of the boundary.
Has anyone had any success with a similar appeal or problem?
We know that the council will look at each case individually and make a ruling on merit but this is just the latest problem we have had.
Any advice out there?

Ozceltic

I just produced this very poor quality drawing to help show what I am talking about.
The outer line is our block and the inner line is our building envelope, the red portion is the house with the overhang highlighted.
I know it is a crap drawing which is why I am not an artist for a living.
It should be enough to go on though.

wanderingwombat

Hard to say how you would go.
The restricted traffic sight lines (forget the fence argument) may be enough for the council to reject it. You could also be up for a townplanner (fee$) to be involved on your behalf. It may also have to be advertised to give neighbours the opportunity to object (= possible time delay & $) .

As you cant put the pool on the roof, it will have to be a second storey.

WW

Wal10

You never know, you might get lucky with your appeal, but I'd say most councils would be reluctant to open the flood gates. If they say 'no' you have 2 choices here:

1) build up instead of out
2) sell the block and buy a bigger one (you could probably offload it easily enough to an unsuspecting new migrant!!)

Sorry if that sounds flippant, but it's how things work here.

Y.

biggy

can u not just flip the house plan from north to south

wanderingwombat

Might be a bit difficult getting the cars into the garage

WW

JaneandJim

This can also depend on who you get dealing with your case. We tried to get our building envelope extended by 5 metres so we could fit the disposal area for the septic tank on it, but the tosser handling it refused outright. He wasn't open to any kind of compromise such as changing the shape of the envelope. (His suggestion was to build a smaller house, not an option when it was already built and there was a developers covenant which said it couldn't be any smaller )

However, our builder contacted somebody else in the same department and he allowed us to use an extra metre long strip next to the building envelope. Does your builder know anybody at the council? It might be worth getting some professional help.

Jane

biggy

only thing about building up is it adds THOUSANDS on to the price to cover the scaffolding!!!!!

jad n rich

Only way you'll get a definate answer to this is to approach relevant local council, however if you were building in many shires and had a 2 street frontage you would be allowed to nominate one for the 6 m setback and the other would be (again depending on council, town plan, block size) standard 1.5 or 2m for 2 level.

Again that would depend on any other easements etc, also depends if your estate has put a building envelope in the covenant and can enforce that over the council regualations. Go and have a prelim chat with your local council office or independant building certifier.

biggy

would it not fit on the block like this??

Ozceltic

The house would fit like that but it is not really the way we want to go, call us fussy.

We spent the weekend filling in all the forms to apply for a siting deviation on the building envelope, the town planning guy I spoke to tonight when I submitted the forms and $270 said we have a 50/50 chance due to shape and size of block, fingers crossed.
We will get a ruling on this within the month so..... It will be a very merry Xmas if we get the go ahead for this our dream home.