Monday, March 25, 2013

DA Approval

We finally got a DA approval late last week. YAY!!

This week we received several more paperworks to sort out such as the DA papers to the Lender, glass splashback to be signed etc.

We want to give a big shout out to our CSO who has been nothing less than excellent to deal with, communicative, prompt, accomodating to our needs. Always returning our email as simple as saying 'Thank you' that she received our email.

I even gave a last minute variation that I forgot to signed 2 weeks ago and her response was assuring. It's nice when someone assure you and you know that she is in control.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

BAL-19 to BAL-LOW

We got a feedback from Council last week about our land in the Bush Fire Zone and asked for the requirements.

Let's move back when we got the land. We are aware about this when we purchased the land. However there were mixed information about the land. One paper says no BAL at all, one says the land has BAL rating.

Apparently in the contract of land sale the land has 88B instrument that is showing BAL-19. After a discussion we went ahead with the purchase. The reason being that our land is next to a Reserve.

So we had $8K in the tender to be provisioned to comply ourself with this Bush Fire rating.

Now fast forward back to the council stage. I checked out our land in the Council Bush Fire Prone Are Map and found out that our land is actually outside the Buffer Zone (100m). This means No BAL or BAL-LOW. This also means we do not need any extra requirements. To challenge this apparently we possibly need to get a Bush Fire Assessment report.

However, after a short email explaining this with screenshots of the Council Map, this week the council officer finally agree that our land is BAL-LOW and now we have the $8K off the tender ..  YAY!!

So moral of the story, if your land has a Bush Fire Rating, check our your local Council Bush Fire Prone Area map. You might be in a surprise like we are. :-)