Building Designer and Draftsman Inner West Sydney

Start with the terrace or the semi that is already standing. We survey it by hand, party wall included, then work out what the block will carry once floor space ratio, landscaped area and the conservation controls have taken their cut. Out of that comes a concept, then the site plan, floor plans, elevations, sections and the technical notes your builder works from. Because the front facade in streets around Haberfield and Balmain is effectively fixed, most of the design effort lands in the rear half of the house and the level above it. One set carries both the development application and the construction certificate.

Cost, and the kind of work involved. Most jobs we draw between Rozelle and Strathfield are rear additions, a first floor tucked behind the existing ridge, secondary dwellings off a rear lane and plunge pools in a courtyard. That work rewards someone who knows how the four councils here read a conservation area, rather than a design fee running as a percentage of the build. We quote a fixed amount, draw a set your builder can price, and take the council questions ourselves. A one off architectural house on an unusual site is a different brief, and that is where an architect earns the money.

Anything that changes the outside of an Inner West house tends to need one. Rear additions, a level above the existing roof, granny flats, courtyard pools, garden walls, decks and lane garages are the usual triggers, and inside a conservation area even a new opening on a visible elevation can be. The lodgement is a package rather than a drawing. Site plan, elevations, shadow diagrams, streetscape context, engineering input and a written statement showing how the scheme sits against the controls. We assemble the lot so the officer at Inner West Council or Canada Bay is never waiting on a missing document.

Six to eight weeks is typical for smaller items, a deck, a carport, a crossover or a garden wall. Put a room above a Newtown terrace or a secondary dwelling behind a Summer Hill cottage and 10 to 14 weeks is more realistic. A heritage item, a contributory building inside a conservation area, or a scheme that has to be notified to the neighbours either side will all push it out further. Thin documents cause most of the waiting we see, so we lodge complete and answer whatever council sends back while your file is open.

Nothing gets built until one is issued. It is the stage where the approved design is tested against the Building Code of Australia and the Australian Standards, so structure, waterproofing, energy performance and fire separation all land here. On a semi or a terrace the fire separation is the interesting part, since the wall between you and next door belongs to both houses and the certifier wants that detail drawn properly. We put the CC set together and keep the engineer and the certifier moving in step, so the site is not sitting idle once approval arrives.

Usually a good idea on a small block. A rear addition and a plunge pool, or a deck plus a garage off the lane, can sit inside one lodgement when the works belong to the same site and the same stage. It costs less than two applications, it takes less assessment time, and it shows council how much yard survives once everything is built, which matters when landscaped area is the number that decides the scheme. Before drawing, we ask what else you have planned over the next year or two, then package the lot wherever the controls allow it.

On an Inner West block the first job is proving a secondary dwelling fits at all. Behind a terrace you are often left with 60 or 70 square metres of yard once the addition is drawn, and the separation, the private open space and the landscaped area rarely all survive that. We run those numbers first and give you the answer early. If it works, you get a site plan, floor plan, elevations, sections and the lodgement documents for either complying development or a full application, tested against zoning, height, setbacks and site coverage before anything is drawn properly.

In a 100 year old terrace the bathroom question is usually where the waste can go. Sewer lines here are often shared, run under the back yard and sit deeper or shallower than anyone expects, so the stack route decides the layout well before the tiles do. Our bathroom draftsman documents fixture positions, falls to the waste, waterproofing, the tile setout and any framing or services change the new room forces. Most of this work sits under complying development or needs no application at all, and we confirm which applies to your house rather than assuming it.

Keep the kitchen inside the existing rooms and you generally need nothing from council. The trouble starts with the wall people want gone, because in a terrace or a semi that wall is often holding up the floor above, or it is the party wall shared with next door, and then an engineer becomes part of the job. Push the kitchen out into the yard and it turns into an application. Either way our kitchen draftsman produces the floor plan, joinery elevations and services layout, so the cabinetmaker, the plumber and the electrician all work from one set of numbers.

Infill is what a new house means around here, a knock down and rebuild on a 5 or 6 metre frontage with a neighbour hard against each side. Before floor plans there is arithmetic, floor space ratio, landscaped area, height, setbacks and how a new roof reads against the two houses either side of it. The set you end up with covers the site plan, floor plans, elevations, sections and the DA or complying development documents. Our custom home designer runs the consultant reports alongside the drawings, so the scheme you sign off is the scheme that can be built.

Almost always. What holds a courtyard pool up is never the shell, it is the excavation, the drainage, the barrier and the distance to things that were built in the 1890s. In a terrace yard the dig sits a metre or two off a boundary and often beside footings nobody has ever laid eyes on, so council wants levels, barrier design and every separation figure shown clearly. Our pool draftsman documents all of that for new pools, rebuilds and the paving and screening around them, then lodges it with the rest of the works where that saves a second application.