H&H submitted our DA last week. Today Ryde council came back with some pre-assessment notes which we need to address - going to cost us more money and time. We have to pay our landscape designer an extra $220 to get some fence elevations - I am shocked the $990 we already paid them didn't cover this, tempted to ask them to remove the front fence from the landscape plan but they will probably charge for that. We also need to get an arborist report though not sure which tree Council wants the arborist report on since we are not removing any trees, just a bunch of shrubs. I've made an appointment to see Council to get some clarification as the arborist report is going to cost $1000+ and we don't even know which tree they are referring to. Sigh....this build is starting to feel like an uphill battle and we haven't even done the proper DA assessment yet!
That's so frustrating! Good idea to meet with council, hope they can be clear with what they want regarding the trees, such an odd request to get arborist given you are keeping your trees. I agree with you that the landscape plans should be complete, including side elevations for fences given the money you have paid. Grrrr. Hope it gets sorted out quickly for you and for minimal cost.
Did you go Ok with the council meeting? hope they could give you some clarity.
We found out the arborist included up to 9 trees on the report, including trees on neighbouring properties, so we didn't end up going to Council to check which tree specifically. At our site inspection, the arborist said one of the trees on the neighbouring property was too close to our fence, our options were to ask if they would consider cutting down the tree (more delays since we have to apply to cut down the tree through council) or H&H would have to redesign how they are doing the cut and fill (and potentially redesign the house layout). Good news is - the tree is just far enough away that we don't have to cut it down, will just have to prune the roots later when we start construction. Huge relief! Now just waiting for our other neighbour to consent to us connecting to the stormwater pipe on their property, hopefully after their due diligence, we will get their consent soon. Slowly knocking off one council issue at a time, fingers crossed will be done soon and council can start their actual DA assessment!
Doing our home options appointment next week. Finally getting to the fun part of the KDR process!
How's your build going? Weather has been awesome so you should see lots of progress this week