Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jan 08, 2010 1:56 pm Hi everyone, Happy New year! We are in the process of building a new house. Our land has about a 2 meter drop from the front to the back. I want to raise the level of the backyard, near the back fence to have a flatter backyard for the kids. I will be contacting the council but any advice from other people with the same situation would be appreciated. Here are some of the questions I have? - Can I simply do this by pouring fill? - How much would I be looking at? - The neighbours on the other side of the fence are lower than us. Do we need to build a retaining wall? - How much higher can I bring the block? 1 or 2 meters? - Is it allowed to pour fill onto an easement? How about a retaining wall? I searched through the forum and there are many posts regarding blocks the need a cut, not ones that have a fall. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Orangie Re: flatening backyard 2Jan 08, 2010 3:52 pm our block was lower on one side and rather than just getting the house slab section cut and filled we got the guy to flatten the entire block and then just retained as required. you should be able to do anything, especially with only 1 or 2m of fall. we got our landscaping done by the builder so they just planned everything for this. Blog - http://snakedr.blogspot.com/ Build Thread - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=12084&p=307406#p307406 Status - PCI 15/10. Things nearly done. Re: flatening backyard 3Jan 08, 2010 4:00 pm I'm fairly certain that you wouldn't just be able to fill on top of your easement without first getting prior approval from the authorities. You would almost certainly require some sort of retaining wall to stop anything from sliding down into your neighbours block too. Hope this helps Re: flatening backyard 4Jan 08, 2010 4:27 pm Hey orangie Happy New Year to you too Great idea to flatten out the backyard. We did ours and can't believe how much it has opened up the back of the yard and made the space more usable. You'll definitely need retaining walls, as the other posters said and definitely need council approval to build the walls on the easement. They'll most likely approve them, it's just a bit of a paperwork hassle to go through. We had to do the opposite of you- dig out, rather than fill (17m x 8m). It was two days solid digging in 37 degree heat but worth every drop of sweat and every dollar of the 2k it cost. Can I suggest you put a sign up next to the road and/or advertise on http://www.landfillregister.com.au. You'll probably find someone who'll deliver the dirt for free! That's what we did; within hours of putting our sign up by the roadside we had a call from a guy who wanted 100 truckloads of dirt to flatten out his front yard. We gave him 18 (from memory) and were very happy to trade with him! Good luck with it, you won't regret it! Here's a before and after of ours so you can see the difference it made- http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/af280/felicitycw/IMG_0352.jpg http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/af280/felicitycw/flindersbyronsthellillies521-1.jpg Re: flatening backyard 6Jan 08, 2010 10:09 pm sorry i missed the easement note, it depends on the type of easement, we have stormwater and sewerage running under our easement, so we levelled everything up to the easement and had to put in some retaining backing onto the easement http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_t9wrRLonTCw/S ... ng+005.jpg that kind of gives you an idea of how we had to do ours, if we hadnt flattened it the entire block would have been on that slope, not good for trampolines, swings, forts ............................... Blog - http://snakedr.blogspot.com/ Build Thread - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=12084&p=307406#p307406 Status - PCI 15/10. Things nearly done. Re: flatening backyard 7Jan 09, 2010 6:36 am Wow Billdsl that backyard looks fantastic! Our situation is a little different in that our block slopes down and we want to bring the level up so I am not sure how we can build a retaining wall against the fence so the extra fill doesn't push the fence over into the neighbour's house. Re: flatening backyard 8Jan 09, 2010 6:53 am orangie - Can I simply do this by pouring fill? - How much would I be looking at? - The neighbours on the other side of the fence are lower than us. Do we need to build a retaining wall? - How much higher can I bring the block? 1 or 2 meters? - Is it allowed to pour fill onto an easement? How about a retaining wall? Answers, as I've just finished doing exactly what you want to do: 1. No. 2. It cost us ~$25,000 to build our wall. This includes engineering plans, council fees, construction and fill. 3. Yes. It will have to be engineered and approved. 4. I'd bring it up to slab height, but I guess that depends on how much you can afford. 5. No and No: you absolutely need both council and utility permission to pour fill onto an easement. My easement has both sewer and storm water: I needed to raise both the sewer inspection pit ($1200) and stormwater pit ($1800). Once that's done, I got approval to build over the easement from the water company. Then I could apply to build over the easement and build a retaining wall from council. For the Whittlesea Council in Melbourne, the approval process took about 3 months. You also need approval from all of the affected neighbours, i.e. all the properties that border onto your property where the wall will be built. Here is a picture of our completed wall and raised ground level: You can see the raised sewer/stormwater inspection pits as well. Re: flatening backyard 10Jan 12, 2010 2:43 pm orangie Wow, Djelibeybi that looks great, but the cost is sooo much and our backyard is bigger. Ouch! The fill is the cheapest part by far: the wall itself was the most expensive. Those steel posts sit in 1.8M deep holes to retain the fill, given the weight of the house itself. Given your backyard is bigger, I strongly recommend you go to an engineer. Otherwise, you may land up with the wall falling over. DIY, Home Maintenance & Repair That laser level looks lovely! We bought one for less than a quarter of that price off eBay. It worked really well for us and it's still going now, five years later. After… 1 16704 It's possible but a soak well is usually much larger. Your 'soak well' only holds 424 litres when full. What is your soil type? Soak wells need sandy soils. 10 8985 Need advice on the backyard plan above. Should I excavate and cut all of the dirt to level with the house slab or semi-excavate as per photo above? Both left and right… 0 24832 |