Council is telling me I'm not allowed to raise my home out of flood.....

hi there,

Has anyone heard of this before...

We bought our first home in 2017 one week before the cyclone Debbie floods hit Lismore and of course got a little bit wet. We knew we were buying in a flood zone but didn't expect the water to come inside our house before we had a chance to lifting the house.

When speaking to conveyancing lawyers before purchase no alarm bells came up in relation to records or surveying or restrictions for lifting.

Our home is currently 2 meters off the found and the flood waters came through the house about waist height so it was a MASSIVE flood.

I started looking into having the home raised and came across a few hurdles. The first one was that council said we were not allowed to raise our home because of where it is. 100m away people can lift but we cannot.

Talking to neighbours they mentioned a couple of years ago council tried to change the zoning of our street but the residents apposed.

Anyway I am finding all of this very frustrating and wondered if anybody has any advice.

Do we need approval to raise?

Sorry for the essay.

 

That sucks. What is it about where you are that restricts you raising?

How high off the ground is the peak of your house? What is the highest you can go?

What about instead of raising you just replace the old stumps... and just happen to restump it 1m higher...

 

Apparently we are in a flood way. But most of north and south Lismore is in a flood way. I personally think that it would be in the councils favour to allow people living in a flood way to raise their homes out of the flood?! But then again that may be a little too logical?
Do you need a D.A for re stumping?
That is an interesting thought.....
Cheers tim86

 

Im qld so I dont know your regulations.

I think in qld you can replace 1/3 of the stumps without certification at all.

So you would probably need certification.


You could find a private certifier who is on board with it (dont mention what council told u).

Or you could just go dodgey. Lift the house to "repair the stumps". If council comes knocking on your door tell them a story about repairing, or that you had to lift the house temporarily for access to replace some of the older stumps.

But then just restump everything higher.

It all depends on how cool your neighbours are and if theyll report u.

But try and find a private certifier first that is on board with you replacing the stumps you could sell it to the certifier saying "oh yeah theyll probably have to raise the house to clear out the old stumps. And its just easier for access. Do you see any problems with me just leaving it a bit higher. Ill get the engineer to engineer the hole depth to support a good 1m higher just in case I want to keep it at that height".

Or maybe the restumpers you use will have a good existing relationship with a certifier they use that could be easy going with it.

 

Raising houses isn’t common in Vic.

Are you just wanting to raise the house and leave the space underneath open and uninhabited?

Or are you proposing making the lower area into living space?

Does being in a floodway means that raising it to 3 metres or so would make it potentially dangerous in a flood?

 

Raising is different to restumping, which implies simply replacing stumps without changing anything.

Do you really think people won’t notice if you raise the house? Every person who has been refused permission, or believed raising was forbidden, will be on to the council asking why you were allowed to do it when they weren’t.
Marg

 

Tank the bottom of the house and extend the stumps 3m - if the block floods, then the house will float.

 

Grand Designs episode
Baca Architects completes bouyant house on the River Thames

Have you tried asking your neighbours to see if there is interest in rezoning? Attitudes may have changed post the flood.

The cyclone Debbie floods in Lismore had some very bad and unexpected outcomes. The vault at the Commonwealth Bank in Lismore contained my parents original land titles and wills - all destroyed and the paper land titles are irreplaceable.