We are renovating a new house in Sydney's north shore. We need to replace the windows and make some larger. We undertook a bushfire assessment for council in which we were rated BAL 40 and the bush labelled rainforest. We have a buffer of 22m between the bush and the house which is comprised of lawn and a swimming pool.
Apparently with the new fire regulations the council had to forward the assessment to the fire brigade. We received it back and are now listed as BAL FZ. This states we are required to not only put in BAL 40 standard windows but also bushfire shutters on all windows which is going to cost us a considerable amount of money. I guess we don't understand why we were upgraded (do the fire brigade actually come to the house and look!) and would like to know if anyone else has had the same experience and if anyone out there knows how we can appeal this decision.