Our principle concerns with this are:
1. The 1.25m walkway on the boundary becomes about 900mm wide, which means we can’t fit a hot water heater (so the builder has relocated it to the west facing boundary where the clothesline needs to go, exactly where we don’t want it).
2. The backyard becomes stepped in height, which again is an issue for a usable clothesline, makes it hard to extend our alfresco area in future, and means the kids have nowhere to play backyard cricket etc.
I’ve asked if they can raise the slab or investigate something else and this is the response received:
Firstly, we won’t be able to avoid retaining walls to the LHS. Providing our platform at 49.600 would require the entire platform to be on fill and would increase the retaining wall towards the front of elevation B and also to the front of the garage.
Is there any other solution to avoid a retaining wall and a stepped backyard? The land slopes 300mm along the length of the house.
The soil profile requires 30 degree batters which unfortunately makes retaining walls required to avoid earthworks extending on to your neighbours lot.
Can we raise the slab to avoid a retaining wall?
Additionally, increasing the building platform height any further will also trigger a dispensation for Reg 75 Building height at our 1m side setback and a dispensation for Reg 80 walls on boundaries. Drafting think that it is highly unlikely that these dispensations will be approved.
Is the builder right? Is there any chance of dispensation in this case or perhaps another solution?
They have also advised that we are unable to allocate the retaining wall on the boundary line due to the AG drains required on the neighbouring lot.
This seems reasonable, though could I do it with the neighbours permission?
A raft slab can be provided in lieu of a waffle slab to suit your request, however providing a raft slab on this much fill will increase the slab and earthworks costs significantly. Just wanted to remind you that the energy items associated with a raft slab are also likely to increase due to the poorer performance of a raft slab.
It seems they are doing a lot more cut than fill, given they are charging me $2500 to take excess soil away. Should I really expect a much higher price for a raft slab? And given a raft slab is not as a high as a 310mm waffle slab, would this have any benefits in terms of the issues above?
I’m hoping for some advice on what options there are to resolve our concerns, or if we just need to suck it up and live with the retaining wall and stepped backyard.
Thanks all!