So, we finally settled on our block of land! We thought we had everything in place to go straight to council and lodge our DA but in a cruel twist of fate Basix would come to rear its ugly head.
Unfortunately our Basix had expired but Rawson thought they could get the council to lodge the DA and they could “update” the certificate with the DA number therefore making it valid even though the 3 months had passed. The council wanted no part in this and after 2 weeks of back and forth returned our DA for the second time.
This meant that our house now had to meet the new Basix requirements as of 1st April 2018 which have some strange rules which meant our house no longer passed Basix.
I guess with the new requirements still being fairly new it’s taken a while to figure out what changes we had to make to meet the new requirements. One takeaway from our experience with the new Basix requirements is that the don’t like fixed windows, this meant that our facade needed some changes to pass.
These are the changes we required:
- R2.5 + Sarking to all external walls (Upgrade from standard R2.0)
- R2.5 to internal walls between House and Garage (Upgrade from standard R2.0)
- Openable windows on ground floor facade (The Rawson facade is all fixed windows)
- Openable windows in Media Room
- Openable windows in Dining Room
Nothing major, we’d prefer not to have the windows openable at the front facade but if we have a [Fixed | Awning | Fixed] window it shouldn’t look any different from the 3 fixed panels currently in the plans.
We’re happy to being moving forward again, that’s all we can say. Here’s to a smooth ride in council when they finally accept our DA!
