Even though we haven't yet bought the land, we're pretty sure by now that we'll end up in Palerang Council in NSW, to the west of Canberra where we currently live.
We have a bunch of friends who own property a bit outside of Braidwood, and we've been going there for various camping events with the historical re-enactment community for quite a few years.
Palerang Council offers optional pre-approval meetings for people intending to lodge development applications to meet with a town planner to discuss their intentions in the early stages. This is intended to make the eventual application process smoother for both parties. We asked them "how early is too early" and mentioned we hadn't actually bought the property yet, and they said "how's thursday?" so we went along to meet with them this morning to discuss our very rough plans and see what they thought.
This was a very nervous moment for us, having heard any number of horror stories about approving authorities from others. We were very aware the Council could potentially put so many barriers in the way that our project is completely derailed before it begins. This is exactly the reason we were keen to seek a pre-approval meeting before we buy the block of land we've found - we wanted to sound them out before we're committed.
Prior to the meeting we were reasonably sure we would be this council's first experience with earthbag building as a primary residence, though we have to assume they've dealt with other more common styles of natural building such as straw bales. There was always the possibility we might have to change strategies and explore these styles if they turned us down for earthbags. We don't take a lot of pleasure being the first (I get the feeling a lot of EarthShip builders quite enjoy that), it just means we have more explaining to do.
So we toddled along, not sure what to expect but armed with a SketchUp model of our intended house, a book on EarthBag building with lots of pictures to explain what we wanted to do, and an extensive list of questions to ask.
As an initial discussion our experience was overwhelmingly positive. The person we spoke to was open minded, and had even looked up earthbag building before we got there so he had some idea of what we were talking about. The general outcome of the conversation was that as long as we can convince an engineer to sign off on our plans we'll be good to go so far as the council is concerned, though they did confirm our suspicion we would be their first experience with it. The same goes for building water tanks out of earthbags.
So the structure was straight forward, but our ideas on DIY composting toilets and greywater reuse were (understandably) met with somewhat less enthusiasm. We will need to cross our t's and dot our i's with that one, and probably have some extensive discussions with NSW Health. Apparently over the last few years they have been discouraging people to consider greywater recycling because of the health implications (one would think the health implications of running out of water would be more significant, but there you go). The advice on this aspect was to keep the conversation with the council open as we progress - they can give us an idea of yes or no before we get to the final application, which will make the eventual process much smoother. As this was essentially the philosophy we went into the initial meeting with we think it will work well for everyone, and hopefully be relatively painless.
It seems we are off to a good start, however, and armed with the goodwill of the council (or at least not the ill will) we'll start the process of buying the land and getting all our paperwork sorted for a final Development Application!
So we toddled along, not sure what to expect but armed with a SketchUp model of our intended house, a book on EarthBag building with lots of pictures to explain what we wanted to do, and an extensive list of questions to ask.
As an initial discussion our experience was overwhelmingly positive. The person we spoke to was open minded, and had even looked up earthbag building before we got there so he had some idea of what we were talking about. The general outcome of the conversation was that as long as we can convince an engineer to sign off on our plans we'll be good to go so far as the council is concerned, though they did confirm our suspicion we would be their first experience with it. The same goes for building water tanks out of earthbags.
So the structure was straight forward, but our ideas on DIY composting toilets and greywater reuse were (understandably) met with somewhat less enthusiasm. We will need to cross our t's and dot our i's with that one, and probably have some extensive discussions with NSW Health. Apparently over the last few years they have been discouraging people to consider greywater recycling because of the health implications (one would think the health implications of running out of water would be more significant, but there you go). The advice on this aspect was to keep the conversation with the council open as we progress - they can give us an idea of yes or no before we get to the final application, which will make the eventual process much smoother. As this was essentially the philosophy we went into the initial meeting with we think it will work well for everyone, and hopefully be relatively painless.
It seems we are off to a good start, however, and armed with the goodwill of the council (or at least not the ill will) we'll start the process of buying the land and getting all our paperwork sorted for a final Development Application!
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