Planning Approval

A letter arrived in the mail today from the council. Inside was our planning approval.

This brings our dream another step closer to commencement. Now we need to finalise the plans with engineering, energy efficiency and septic system for submittal to the building department for building approval.  Once building a approval is obtained we can commence earthworks and star building our new home.

Owner Builders License Granted

Major news!! Our application for an owner builder licence has been granted! We were very worried about this as we had to apply for an exemption as we owner built less than 7 years ago. They aren't automatically granted and we had to put across our extenuating circumstances and get stat decs to apply.  It then needed to go to the panel to be approved. This is a major piece in the puzzle of getting permission to build our house.  Apologies to Brett's work colleagues who had to put up with his cheering and crazy dancing but this was a huge relief.  Without this exemption we couldn't submit our building plans till the 6 year period was up (around June 2015).

So what does owner building mean and why is this piece so important to us?  In Western Australia any work carried out over $20,000 requires either a registered builder or an owner builders license.  To submit building plans to council over this amount you either need a registered builder to do all the work for you or you need to have an owner builder license.  We decide early in the piece to be owner builders which basically means we manage the build process our selves.  We have done this before so it is not as daunting for us as for others undertaking such an endeavour.

So the question we most often get, is "Are you mad? Why would you take on something like this?".  We are doing this for 3 reasons

1. It means we can do a lot of the work ourselves which means a big saving on the budget.  Given we are very handy this is an attractive option.  Work hard and reap the reward as my Dad used to say.
2.  It means we have free range to make the choices we want. The interesting and eclectic design ideas we have can be incorporated.  We can choose from any taps or door handles we want.  We aren't restricted by the options a project builder puts forward. We can build the house we want to build.
3. The quality of workmanship in some project homes leaves a lot to be desired.  In our case, the project manager and main tradesman is Brett, who is very pedantic about getting things right.  Then we have tradesmen that we have used and know well (plumbing, electrical) and recommendations from them for any other trades we may use.  We know we will have a well built house with walls that are plumb and rooms that are square and level.

So celebrations all round and now we wait for planning to be approved.

Soil Testing

This week saw some minor progress with the site soil survey being completed.  The contractors arrived on site early with a small excavator.  The process involved digging a series of holes across the building area.  Each hole hit cap rock at around 30cm.  Basically they were looking for reactive clays or soil that might cause problems.  Given the general lack of soil and the nature of the soil they decided there was no need for samples,to be analysed and we shouldn't have any problems.

So the soil report should come back next week at which stage we can send the plans to the structural engineer to get the structural drawings and details completed ready for the submission to building.  Still no word back from the planning department or the builders registration board (they don't meet till the end of July so unlikely to hear anything before then).

Once planning is approved we can submit to building.  For this we need engineering, energy efficiency, owner builder license and septic system plans.  Hopefully we have all these pieces in place ready for the owner builders license approval to come through at the end of July.  In the meantime there is plenty of pruning and tidy up to do on the block to get the place bushfire safe before next summer.