[SA] Building in Field River Estate, Trott Park

And in other happy news, we finally got our footings variation, a full $10,600 under the quoted amount for our footings which will help us out nicely

And in other not-so-happy-news we found out we'll also need to put a full step-down in the footing too, so there goes part of the saving on the footing price

Was down there on Sunday morning, the whole area drains well That Rossdale place is 2 story as well...

The Rossdale house has its driveway (garage) on the wrong side compaired to what is display on the envelope plan. I'm wondering how they got away with that???

Maybe because as you said vortex its a double story and therefore wouldnt be building its garage on the boundary, so they dont care.

Hi all, we have a block in this estate too, but are having a little bit of difficulty in getting our plans through the councils very tight regulations. Our block slopes from front to back as well as side to side and with having to cut and fill are having trouble satisfying all concerned regarding the height of retaining walls. also made more complicated by the location of an easement on the block aswell. We are not the only ones that are having trouble in the estate either.

Not at all I think everyone else on this board building in the estate has had the exact same troubles, our's has just come back with the Council requesting a stepdown in the footing as well.

Quite frustrating but hopefully we'll have a slab by christmas

Hi Vortex, doesn't your house already have a split with the garage, so do they want you to put another split in? Council recommended to us to have a side split, which our builder cannot do. What to do is what I ask myself.

Yes it does, they want us to step down the entire front half of the house rather than just the garage.

I don't like the sound of what they reccomended to you...

Hi everyone, havnt been on for a while and eek...seems like everyone is in the same boat. Does anyone know where we stand by being made aware of the split requirement by council before buying the land? I mean surely Realty SA would have known this?

Im still waiting to hear what is going on with mine and no further forward really. Hmmm would be nice to be in by next June at least but with all this going on, who knows.

If anyone gets any info or finds that council have approved their plans it would be a good idea to share - that way if one gets through then a precedent has been created and perhaps we all stand a better chance of sorting it out quickly

ps...maybe a street party with name badges of our users names when we are all in would be fun ha ha

The step in the footing isn't actually a requirement, the problem is occuring because of the height of the retaining walls required at the front and/or rear of the house itself and what the council is prepared to allow in this instance. It just so happens that the step in the footing is one way of getting around the problem with the retaining walls required.

Our drawings were prepared by Fairmont with the understanding that retaining walls under 1m were acceptable in Marion Council, we discussed this with our sales consultant specifically - but it seems that the Council have decided not to allow all these places to have retaining walls over a specific size, the number I heard was 300mm.. We were aware of a potential problem with the angle on the driveway in our place so that is why our garage only was stepped down. Ironically we talked about stepping down the whole front half, but decided against it at the time

I can kind of see why Marion Council don't want to allow retaining walls everywhere - if you drive around other recently developed hilly areas and look at the retaining walls on some of the places they look real ugly and could have probably been done differently.

It's annoying they are being like this, but personally I think it will be for the best. Plus the 3m ceilings in the bedroom and lounge we will have at the front of the house as a result of having to step the footing down will be real nice



I like the sound of that, I can imagine there will be a few house warming parties around the same time anyway

Ha ha, this is the Marion council we are talking about. Look how hard it is to get approval following their guidelines. Probably take us 3 years to get approval for the street Party.


Vortex I understand exactly what you are saying. You only have to go on realestate.com.au and check out houses for sale in Flagstaff pines. My Wife and I were looking to buy established there originally. Some of the houses have no back yard, and then 3 or 4 lots of 800mm to 1000mm retaining. So so on some of them, the back fence was sitting above roof height from the road.

Congratulations to those of you who were lucky enough to get land in what looks like will be a very nice little estate. I also have purchased a block in Field River Estate, from the 2nd stage. I am having a bit of difficulty being on the higher side of the road with my slope and getting alot of mixed opinions from Building Consultants on the price of footings!! I will have to split my home to avoid retaining walls as much as possible. Is anyone else having trouble with this? Its becoming very frustrating and I do not know who to believe. Does anyone know who to talk to so I can find out contacts for my potential new neighbours, so I know what they are doing with their blocks in relation to potential side retaining walls, etc? So glad I have found this forum, its a great idea!! If anyone could help me with their similar experiences I'd be very grateful. I'm sure alot of people are having similar difficulties. I've been told Marion won't accept any retaining walls higher than 1.0 to 1.5 m. cheers!!

We're all having the same problem with the Council asking us to split the footings. We're on the high side of Bayley Circuit near the retirement home and have been asked to step the footing down, even after Fairmont submitted what they believed to be a plan that would satisfy requirements. If you PM me I am happy to disclose our lot number, but would prefer not to post it publically.

We now have to have our plan re-drawn (at our cost) to meet the requirements, but thankfully we have a contact in the Council who has verbally said our modification would be accepted should it be submitted officially. We had the Garage floor stepped down to meet their requirement for driveway incline, but now have to step down the whole front of the house, 516mm I think the number is. That will make moving the Pram around inside a fun challenge (note the sarcasm...).

If only the Council were following their own guidelines we would all get through smoothly, our place was designed with the 1m retaining wall in mind as is outlined in their own guidelines, but it seems they don't actually want anything over 500mm - and I also heard 300mm somewhere along the lines, but I may have my wires crossed on that one.

Welcome to the Estate laj83 I also bought in stage 2, went to the Estate yesterday and noticed another block has been cut ready to start. This block appears to be a split level home with a 1500mm cut at the deepest. Now that doesn't fall into line with the council 500mm Retaining wall heights that they are telling everyone else does it. My block requires an 800mm cut at the most and they are telling me that it is too excessive, some double standards somewhere along the lines i think, although I have not spoken to anyone from Council for over a week, will do that on Monday morning.Cheers

Hello to all I have been following this blog for a little while now as me and my family are also building in this estate. Our application is in council at the moment and I am just awaiting our letter of rejection and the request for a split level home. With any luck we will get straight through but I doubt it. Our block is relatively level (from highest to lowest point I think it is only 1.3mt difference) so we will see what the council thinks. So far that I have seen only one house has been approved (apart from the two story number) that is not split level, 9 Tischendorf Rd has just been approved as a standard dwelling so I am curious to see what the levels are like on that lot. For any of you who want a closer look at the criteria the council are working with to determine split level etc here is a link to the guidelines: [url]http://www.planning.sa.gov.au/edp/pdf/MAR.PDF[url] I have read most of the relevant pages in this document and as I can understand it there is actually no definitive answer on height of retaining walls. It would seem that their main concern is to keep with the natural flow of the land and MINIMISE excavation and the need for retaining walls (I dont remember seeing any mention of maximum heights allowable). In another section it also makes reference to your roof lines complimenting the natural flow of the land, so perhaps a sloping pitched roof design could be an alternative on the right allotment? Any how I hope some of you may have found this useful and good luck to those with a split level request I hope a reasonable price V.O comes your way.

Hi guys, well I have taken my custom plan (which has the option for 2-3 splits) to a few builders today - format, homestead and rendition. They seem to be fairly knowledgable of split level homes. One builder,who I will not name, was really not helpful (just coz split levels are not their usual thing, not coz they were rude, infact they were very apologetic) and reccomended another company I'm also going back to see Oakford tomorrow and Rossdale at Blackwood park as they deal with lots of split level homes. So now I just have to wait 2 weeks or so for more of an idea on price but I dare say I am going to be stretching it to make my budget This whole split level thing is proving very expensive. My fingers are crossed for some good news. I hope everyone else is starting to make some progress.

Hi all,
Unfortunately my partner and I were the ones's who lost the block on Tischendorf Street from stage 1 in July. Finance was approved, house colours and tiles all picked out, landscaping organized, but last minute the council wouldn't approve our plans either. As our finance required the plans to be approved, we quickly lodged more with split levels and all retaining walls less than a meter and denied again! Even after all of the sellers delays, we were a bit disheartened when they wouldn't give us even a few more weeks back in July to fix the plans or change our finance to just a land loan, and to hear that some peoples settlement is in December...ouch!

We paid an engineer for footing reports, and the builders told us which block we needed to fit the house we wanted, and after all that we got nothing We still had to pay the builders a ridiculous amount of money.

I just think maybe it would have been nice to mention in the encumbrances the issues with cutting and filling blocks, retaining walls, and need for split levels as the engineers and builders were pretty shocked we were denied mutilple times.

Good luck to you all though....I'm a little jealous that we missed out on any land, despite being one of the first to get in. Such is life

Not sure I understand.. how did not having a house plan approved mean you lost the finance and the land? Who was the Bank?

We bought our land entirely seperate to building the house, that's another painful mortgage all of it's own

Hi Miss_M

Our block was a fallen over finance scoup. But not from Stage 1. Ours was a block on Tischendorf from Stage 2. The block from stage one was the 719sqm block? Thats very unfortunate for you.

The banks are being a pain in the butt at the moment. We have felt it, having to take drastically less for our house (we had to sell) so we could get approval for the build. The bank wouldn't loan purely on our house equity. Which wasnt fun either.

Hey. Yeah, it was the 719sqm block. We paid a broker who said to go with Homestart...and it was a construction loan, not a land loan so without the approved house plans, we couldn't get the land. We hadn't bought or built a house before so we made sure we had alot of people involved to make sure things worked out...which they didn't. Knowing what we do now, if we went for a straight land loan, everything would have gone through.