Browse Forums Outdoor Living 1 Nov 04, 2010 7:55 pm Just wondering if anyone can offer any advice. We bought our property a few months ago and when we moved in we wanted to put a swimming pool in the back garden. Buccaneer Pools applied for the licence on our behalf and we got a letter from city of joondalup to say that we had been knocked back as there was a retaining wall in the vicinity of the pool that was not licenced. We therefore had to get the wall licenced before they would give us the licence for the pool. We were told to get out a structural engineer which we did at a cost of $660 dollars to be told that as the wall did not have the right backing as per current regulations for retaining walls that we would have to pull down the wall and build another one to the correct specifications. So after getting several quotes we pulled the old wall down and put up a new one - at a cost of $10,000 which was not in our budget (pool will now have to go on credit card!). I then phoned the city of joondalup who said that i would have to get the structural engineer back out (at our expense yet again) to say that the wall was structurally adequate. I explained to them that we were going to backfill behind the wall with the cleanfill that was being dug out for the pool to go in, and that one of the things that the structural engineer would check was compaction of the soil behind the wall. So we could not get the wall approved before the pool went in (if common sense was to prevail). Finally it did and the person i spoke to at c of joon asked how high the wall was (about 1.2 metres) and how far it would be from the pool (about 3 metres). He then intimated that the two were unrelated anyway as the wall would not affect the pool even if it fell down!!! So it appears that we may have taken down a perfectly good wall that had been standing perfectly well for over 20 years for nothing! Do we have any come back against city of joon? Or the previous owner for not licencing it? Or maybe the wall was erected before licencing rules came into place anyway in which case the wall was fine?!?! Or maybe come back against the real estate agent who should have checked the form was completed correctly by the guy that sold it to us. Anyway, I have a new wall, a pool going in next week that we now can't afford and the city of joondalup hassling me about getting my new wall certified - all at more expense to get the engineer out. Any ideas anyone - it's driving me mad. thanks Re: building licence problems with a retaining wall 2Nov 04, 2010 8:18 pm Amazing story, but can't really help you. Although, it shows that we have to be absolute experts in every little detail and every single profession . I suppose you did try to find out yourself about any special rules (in writing or standards and similar) about retaining walls (and in relation to pools) before even thinking of replacing them (and not just rely on verbal advice)? Funny you mentioned the real estate agent. Heard of a story where an agent sold a house where the block was full of easement lines and no build was possible outside the footprint of the current tiny little fibro cottage. The buyers were planning to knock down and rebuild a large house on that large block, but they couldn't. They were lucky they managed to sell it pretty quickly after they realised what they bought. And then they sued the agent. My signature is distracting people from my wise posts ... Thank you again Simeon.. I will call my certifier for that. Have a good day 4 5141 Hello, We are about to build and the plans show a part of the exterior wall is being built on top of a limestone retaining wall. Does this mean the retaining wall will… 0 6949 Thanks for the insights, that makes perfect sense, and yeah, I will be leaning on the experience of the excavator operator entirely. 6 16105 |