Bal report/ bushfire report

Hey people, could anyone out the recommend a company that can do a bushfire report on my block in oran park? I've been told some companies are charging 3 times the price of what they should be

Have you contacted council? They have some maps on their website that state the BAL, and it's free...

Yeah but we have 3 different bal levels on our block. Our builder has put it down as a bal 29,but when you look at the report its only 29 for the first metre or so then 19 for about the same, then 12.5 for most of the block! Our neighbour built under 12.5 as they had their own assessment done, I tried their guy but he isn't doing any this year as he is flat out on another project

Has your builder actually had a report done though? Just because they put down BAL29 doesnt mean thats whats locked in generally its done at the same time here in Vic as a soil report or property report more accurately based on where the house sits on the block.

Contact a building surveyor, they will be able to help you

Thanks all, I have one getting done tomorrow.

In NSW, around $300 is a fair price for a bushfire certificate.

You can do the assessment yourself, speak to someone from Rural fires... I rang them when I was at the same stage as you but in the end we didn't need it as we clearly weren't in a BAL area, are you going council or CDC? When my builder was telling me we needed an assessment and we thought we didn't need one, we contacted our certifying company and they also told us what will satisfy them in terms of issuing a construction certificate.

+1 for yourself and Rural Fire Service

We got a few quotes and around $700 was the going rate. We are BAl12.5/

I followed the info on this site http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=1009

I also phoned RFS and they did tell me (~12 months ago) the state government were trying to make it more difficult for home owners to do their own reports and more or less were going to shut down the ability of RFS to provide free advice and make people go through the pay method, took some screen shots from google satelite and wrote my own report. took a good day to do (as I'm not experienced) but $700 isn't bad for a days work.

The fact my block was even in a bushfire zone is laughable. If you visited you'd soon realise that there isn't much chance of the pacific ocean catching fire and washing over the sand dunes to our house! So that may have been one reason why my own report got through council, because the assessing officer would have looked at block and probably not bothered.

From memory if you want to apply through CDC, you need an official certificate.
You can do a self assessment for a DA, but that's no guarantee they wont conduct their own assessment.