Interlude: mortem in nocte

Driving home at night, Viktoria and the Android came across a Tawny Frogmouth hunched in the middle of the road near their home.
Often mistaken for owls, Tawny Frogmouths are more closely related to nightjars, not raptors. Their main defence is to close their large orange eyes and pretend to be a tree branch. If this fails, they will open wide their mouths and hiss.
This particular Tawny did neither, only briefly flapping its wings when approached on foot.
Tawnies are territorial, and we feared it was one of the family group that Viktoria had only recently photographed in the back yard.

The Android was able to pick it up easily - never a good sign with a wild bird. A few feathers fluttered loose, but we found no obvious injury. Still, given where it was found, it had most likely been hit by a car, the driver not stopping to help the injured bird.
Not wanting to leave it to be struck by another vehicle or taken by a dingo, we wrapped it up carefully in a towel and took it home. During the short journey, it wriggled in Viktoria's lap, muttering quietly to itself.
We positioned it carefully in a box in a darkened room, hoping that if it was merely stunned it could recover in peace and we could release it.
After feeding the feline hoard and ourselves, we sneaked into the room to check on our unexpected noctural visitor.
Its orange eyes were closed. Its head hung limp and lifeless. Sometime in the intervening hour, it had died.
We dug a deep hole and buried it near where the photograph had been taken.
Sleep peacefully, beautiful bird.
For you, this journey has ended.

A Weekend at Home with the Architect

Sunday last dawned a glorious day.
The sky a perfect cerulean blue, the local wildlife in magnificent display, the live-in felines relatively well behaved. Even Viktoria (not renouned for her domesticity) managed to not screw up lunch - a rolled lamb roast, stuffed with blue-vein cheese with a salad of mixed leaves, chickpeas, fetta, chargrilled capsicum and green beans, if you were wondering.
The Android drove down to the city to pick up our architect, Neal, from his hotel in the morning and brought him up to our home.
As the second meeting with the bushfire consultant had yet to occur, we sadly couldn't force Neal to sketch any designs for us. Neal too, seemed frustrated at the turn of events.
But he did get to experience how and where we live, and see all the furniture and other paraphernalia we plan on taking with us to our, as yet, mythical home in Tasmania.
In short, we had a lovely, relaxing day with Viktoria and the Android happily confirming that they both liked Neal also as a person, and not just for his architectural acumen.
Later in the week, Neal telephoned Viktoria following to much anticipated second meeting with the bushfire consultant and Neal's friend from the Tasmanian Fire Service.
After securing a promise from Viktoria that she wouldn't start doing backflips just yet, Neal advised that the outcome of the meeting was something along the lines of:

• If we would agree to build the house to a BAL-40 level, and
• If we would agree to prepare the land around the building site to a BAL-29, and
• If he was satisfied with yet another proposed site ontop of the escarpment
• THEN the bushfire consultant would be prepared to sign off on the site.

So it's not quite a 'yes' (yet) but nor is it exactly a 'no'.
Neal will accompany the bushfire consultant out to the site again next week, with strict instructions to get the man's written confirmation agreeing with the above points in blood - and it will hopefully be on a site that Neal is happy with (as Viktoria and the Android both know that if Neal is happy, then we most definitely will be too).
All this administrative agony made us wonder how folk with a land mortgage coped - in Australia, most loans taken out on vacant land require the mortgagee to build on that land within either six or 12 months. It's actually written into the contract. We engaged JAWSarchitects in March. Nearly three months later, and we are still unravelling the red tape to get all parties to agree to where we can simply put the house. We don't even have a design, much less be in a position to commence building within three months. How do people do it?
We are very appreciative of the fact that we have something of the luxury of time on our hands, as we don't have any mortgage over the land. So even though these meetings are costing us more, we believe the expense worth it. If we were sitting in our new home a few years from now wondering "what if" we had just pushed a little harder to get the site we really wanted...we know we would have wished then that we had tried just once more. But if a bank won't let you have the time to do that... then what??

TIP: If you can afford the time, it's worth having a second attempt at getting what you want.

We had every intention to zip forward a week to discover outcome of that meeting and thus put ourselves out of the misery of waiting. Unfortunately, the timemachine has a dodgy flux capacitor at the moment, so it seems likely we will just have to wait until we hear back from Neal...

Building in bushfire prone areas - new laws, new confusion

As Viktoria and the Android have mentioned previously, Australia is introducing new laws regulating where you build and the type of building you construct, in relation to "bushfire prone areas".

The problem is (like so many government initiatives worldwide) that nationwide regulations are being overlaid on existing (and often very different) State- and Region-specific legislation.  At the present time, there is not even a consistent nationwide definition of what a "bushfire prone area" is.  And yet, the regulations set out in the Australian Building Code and National Construction Code are meant to be applied equally.

Can anyone see a problem with that?

Suffice to say, if you are looking at building on a piece of land in Australia, and you want to know whether it is considered to be "Bushfire Prone" and you can't locate a government map as not all States have conducted bushfire mapping, the following definition may apply (at today's date):

BUSHFIRE PRONE AREA means an area of land which is subject, or likely to be subject to bushfires, being any area of land within 100metres of a single area of vegetation of greater than 1 hectare

1. a bushfire prone area does not include land over 20metres from a strip of vegetation less than 20metres in width regardless of length; and
2. areas of vegetation separated by less than 20metres are to be considered as a contiguous area of vegetation for the purposes of defining a bushfire prone area.

Our own unique problem with this new legislation appears to stem from the fact that we want to build on a cliff.  The bushfire consultant has said "no" due to the degree of slope of the cliff (like, you know, it's a cliff).

Where it gets confusing is because the Australian Standards are silent on the issue of building near a slope with a > 40 degree incline. We believe that the bushfire consultant's assumption that, in the absence of any specific regulation, the site must therefore be disallowed, is incorrect.

Tasmania has not, to date, declared bushfire-prone areas for the purposes of the Australian Building Code. The Building Act 2000 therefore, does not currently require that the construction of residential buildings in areas susceptible to bushfires be built to the standard required under the Australian Building Code.

Further, one would think that a reasonable person would expect that there should be greater flexibility applied to buildings being considered on existing titles compared to new titles. To do otherwise would unduly impact on the value of existing titles. Ours is an existing title.

The Tasmanian Fire Service's Guidelines for Development in Bushfire Prone Areas of Tasmania 2005 is the only document currently formally referenced or relied upon by the majority of planning schemes in Tasmania. Within that document, it states that buildings on slopes, which are cut into the slope will be momre sheltered during a bushfire. Buildings on slabs on the ground are also considered the safest.

Our intention is to build a home on a slab on the ground and cut into the slope.

TIP: Given that new Australian regulations on building and construction in relation to bushfires are only likely to become tougher - always involve a bushfire consultant very early in the design and development process.

Our architect neal has one more meeting scheduled for next week with the bushfire consultant to see if there is any way we can build on our chosen site.

How would you rate our chances??

We'll let you know how things turn out...

Red tape and the art of building

On 1 May 2011, the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) published the National Construction Code. Some of these regulations within the code relate to building in bushfire prone areas. So why are we bleating about this now?

Since our last post, the Bushfire Consultant had a change of heart, and has said that we cannot build on top of the cliff as we wish to do.

There are a couple of things that are really making Viktoria and the Android pull frowny faces:

1. When we purchased the land, the Bushfire Regulations weren't in place. However, now that those regulations do exist, we are the ones who have to bear the cost (either financially or lifestyle) because of those changes
2. A flow-on effect of these regulations is to discourage individuals from moving from cleared urban areas due to the cost involved in building in a treed rural area
3. A further effect is that large sections of vegetation are required to be cleared to meet the standards, thus destroying wilderness and native animal habitat

The intergovernmental agreement between the Commonwealth, State and Territory Ministers requires “a rigorously tested rationale for the regulation; the regulation would generate benefits to society greater than the costs (that is, net benefits); [and] there is no regulatory or non-regulatory alternative (whether under the responsibility of the Board or not) that would generate higher net benefits”.

We are not so naive that we cannot understand the necessity for additional considerations for building bushfire prone areas.

The ABCB is directed by the government to ensure that “building requirements are based on minimum, least-cost solutions”. The ABCB concedes that buildings at the lower levels of attack should be less costly to construct when compared to the existing standard, however buildings at the higher levels will be more costly.

The Victorian Building Commission calculates the additional approximate cost would be in the range of $3,000-$3,500 (excluding 10% GST). These costing were done by an independent Quantity Surveyor on behalf of the Building Commission and are based on these base parameters:

• Standard 3 bedroom
• Single garage
• Slab on ground
• Brick veneer external wall construction
• Pitched tiles roof including sarking
• High performance windows as part of energy efficiency requirement

In our situation, those "least-cost solutions" could amount to an additional $35,000 - $40,000 in construction costs.

So if you wish to make a lifestyle choice to live in the countryside, construction requirements increase in stringency and construction costs likewise as a direct relationship to the increase in BAL.

Rather that governments seeing this as an opportunity to invest in new building materials, infrastructure, or other innovations, the new regulations instead curb an individual's choice as to where they can build, and the type of building they can have.

Neal is going to put on a brave face and meet again with the Bushfire Consultant (who is well off our Christmas Card list at this point) to see what it is he would require to be satisfied that we could build on our block.