Well today was a big day. Our Building Vendor, Oak Construction Ltd, met us up at the property today and helped me to stake out the new EXACT position of our house on the building pad. As you may know from Following Matthew R’s posts we have begun earth works, and not to give too much away… wait until you see what we have done to our pretty paddock!
Anyways, the big issue is we need to have the house placed EXACTLY on the site, in order to determine how close it is to our property boundaries. I’ll explain why that is important in a moment but first I think I need to provide you (and more importantly the drafter of the blue prints) with the measurement / placement diagram:
So here is the skinny on why this is so important.
Back when our plot of land was sub-divided from its source the rule of house placement was that the house had to be 6 meters (that’s 19.7 feet to you folks in the Colonies in Rebellion) from any property boundary. Unfortunately in the intervening years (last year in fact), the District Council changed the zoning laws and changed the positioning rules.
Now your house must be at least 15 meters (49.25 ft) from any property boundary! Well you can’t see the measurements of my building pad, but trust me when I say that given its shape and other placement restrictions, there is no way I can put a house on the pad and have it be that far away from every boundary unless I make the house a short hallway.
The problem is that if you are NOT at least 15 meters away, you have to get permission from your neighbors (and their tenants as well if the land is rented out) for the placement of your house, and they have to review the blueprints and put their signature on a copy of the layout. And if you move the house so that the measurement might be less, you have to go back to them and get more signatures, and approvals, and it all has to be resubmitted to the council again for permits! Oy Vay!
So we had to know FOR A FACT, EXACTLY where the house (and porch) were going to be in relation to the property boundaries, so the drafter can update the blue prints to make them “perfect”, and I can get all my signatures to authorize me to build the house.