Our first victory was getting our $8500 bush fire levy removed. The bush Fire zone only comes into our land by approx half a meter along one boundary as viewed on http://services.land.vic.gov.au/maps/bushfire.jsp. After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, i thought i should at least try and get it removed as we are not building on that boundary. After speaking with the Victorian Builders Authority, they informed me that we should not be required to build to the bush fire requirements that PD wanted to do. I mentioned this to my BC, and she said that she would mention it to the surveyor. Then within 24hrs, my BC called me with the good news. She told us that we are no longer in the firezone.
Another issue we had was the crossover. Unfortunately it is pushed to the left hand boundary. The plans for our house is to have it pushed to the right. This was to maximize the size of the back/side yard. We have an 18 meter frontage, which meant our garage finished 4 meters from the left hand boundary.
As you can see with the photo, moving the crossover is not an option because of the drain. That drain is in exactly the place we would need it. The only option we have now, is to extend the garage by 2 meters. So the money we save on the bush fire levy will now pay for this
Things we are looking at doing apart from extending the garage, is giving it a higher clearance of 2.4 meters. We will also put a wall in the lounge /dining room to make a study. We believe that lounge will not really be used anyway. This also keeps the WIP and laundry the original size. If we went the "study option"upgrade, they would have taken space from the WIR and the laundry to fit it in between the two. This will give it a similar ground floor plan to the Porter Davis Sandarah.
Forsyth Sandarah
We are off for another visit to World of Style tomorrow to try and settle our colour scheme for the facade (belmont).
Then Tender is on the 17th...
I'm thinking of building the same house in about 6 months time. It would be great to connect.
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