Some of you may have seen my other thread about building a house- we've gone through the tender, chosen our colours, signed the contract, and now waiting to start.
But the building surveyor, who is supposed to give the building permit, has now suggested that the build does not fit their interpretation of the ResCode - in particular their interpretation of the house setback, and I wonder what you all think of this-
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So here's my block. It's a corner block, and the house next door has a setback of 3.5m, and therefore our minimum setback will have to match theirs at 3.5m.
We also know that the side setback has a minimum of 2m.
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So the minimum setback is represented by the red lines. 2m for the side, and 3.5m at the front. Because there is an angled corner, the front setback moves along with the corner, so the red lines stays follows the angle up, remaining at 3.5m from that front edge. We spoke to the council, they agreed and we drew up all our plans and got our VicSmart permit according to these lines.
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So here's the siteplan: our building fits within that building envelope. 3.5m from the front edge, and between 4-5m from the side. All looks OK right?
So the building surveyor, says they disagree. They think that the building setback should look like this:
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and the red line cuts across the corner of my house, and they want me to cut off that corner of the house. They think that corner of the house should be 3.5m perpendicular from ANY edge, but I'm saying that their red line ends up around 4.5m from the front of the corner, and actually that corner is actually neither a front nor a side edge.
How do you think I should proceed now? I'm clearly not keen to cut a corner off my house, and the Building Regs (which I initially thought were black and white) don't mention what to do for a cut off corner, and I find more and more seems to just be interpreted differently by different people.