Lic. 000000C (demo)
The Ridge House
Two storeys on the hill below Glenrock, drawn to the subsidence guideline and the bushfire report before anything else.
Sample project. Tallbeam is a demonstration business, so this house, its owners and its numbers are illustrations of how a job like this runs.
The owners had a sloping block in Merewether Heights and a short list: a study, a main bedroom upstairs and a covered terrace they could use most evenings of the year. Before we drew any of it we read the lot on the NSW Planning Portal, because on this hill the ground decides the shape of the house.
The owners wanted a house that worked with the slope instead of fighting it. One of them works from home most days, so the study had to be upstairs, away from the entry and the street. The main bedroom went up there too, with the ensuite beside it. Downstairs they wanted a living room that opens straight onto a covered terrace, and a garage they could drive into without a ramp.
A friend had told them the hill would make everything twice as hard. In our experience it changes the order of the work more than the difficulty: the subsidence guideline, the bushfire report and the survey come first, and the design follows them. That's how every new build we take on starts, and our Newcastle page covers the other suburbs we build in.
01 Terrace
The terrace is where the slope shows most. Guideline 2 rules out stepped and suspended slabs and retaining walls built into the house, so we cut the block to one level pad for the house and the terrace together and held the fill behind a retaining wall that stands on its own. The pergola over it is hardwood, and the bushfire report decided what the posts, beams and battens could be made of this close to the Glenrock bush. At about 39 m² it went in with the house's approval, not as a separate exempt job.
02 Side path
A block that falls toward the house sends its rain at the house. Along the side path we set a dish drain and a line of pits that carry water from the cut out to the street, laid by a licensed drainer we coordinate, because drainage is specialist work at any value. The path is wide enough to walk a wheelie bin down without scraping the wall. On the uphill side the retaining wall stands clear of the house, as the subsidence guideline asks, with its own footing and its own drainage behind it.
03 Entry and living
Inside the front door everything is on one level: entry, stair, bathroom, garage, kitchen and living. That is Guideline 2 again. A stepped slab would have saved some digging on this lot, but the guideline doesn't allow one, so the house sits on a single reinforced slab designed by the engineer to AS 2870. Outside, the brick veneer is broken by articulation joints, so that if the ground ever moves under trough subsidence the brickwork opens along a joint instead of cracking across a wall. The joints are sealed and coloured to match the mortar.
04 Stair
The stair rises between framed walls, and every internal wall in the house is timber framed, because Guideline 2 rules out masonry internal walls. That suited the stair: a framed wall takes the wiring for the step lights without chasing brick. The lights sit low on the wall, wired by a licensed electrician we coordinate and switched at the top and the bottom. Our carpenters built the treads and risers to the dimensions the building code sets for a stair in a house, and the balustrade to its height and gap rules.
05 Study
The study sits upstairs at the back, looking toward the bush, and that view is why the bushfire report mattered here. The report's level set the window frames, the glass and the screens on the walls facing Glenrock, and we built to it rather than to a catalogue. We don't print the level for a sample house. On your lot it is whatever the report finds, from the vegetation, how far away it is and the slope between. The upper floor is framed timber, and the whole house keeps inside the 24 m length and 400 m² footprint Guideline 2 allows.
06 Main bedroom
The main bedroom takes the far corner upstairs, with the ensuite beside the study. Above it, the roof is where the bushfire rules meet the weather. Planning for Bush Fire Protection, the state's guide, adds ember protection to the Australian Standard at the lower bushfire attack levels, and its list includes sarking, fascias and bargeboards, so here the roof is sarked throughout and the fascias and bargeboards are built to the report. None of it shows from the bed. The owners asked for a quiet room, and it is built to the same rules as the terrace below it.
$400,000 to $900,000
The range above comes from our new builds page and covers single and double storey homes on very different ground. Before they signed, the owners could see the survey, the soil test, the bushfire report and every approval priced as its own line, which on a slope is where the surprises usually hide.
Steep blocks above Merewether and around Glenrock change the footings, the bushfire report and the stairs. Send us the address and we'll read the lot before anything is drawn.
Because the lot is mapped Guideline 2, and that guideline rules out stepped, suspended and drop-edge slabs. A house that follows the fall in a series of half levels needs exactly those, so it can't be built that way here. Instead the block is cut and filled to one level pad and the house sits on a single reinforced slab. It costs more in earthworks and less in argument, and the design was settled before anyone spent money on drawings that couldn't be approved.
Articulation joints. Guideline 2 asks for masonry to be articulated, which means the brick veneer is built as a set of panels with flexible joints between them rather than one long rigid wall. If trough subsidence ever moves the ground under the house, the brickwork can shift along those joints instead of cracking through the middle of a wall. They are sealed and coloured to match the mortar, so from the street they read as part of the brickwork.
Guideline 2 doesn't allow integral retaining walls, where a wall of the house also holds back the earth behind it. On a sloping block that is the obvious way to build, and here it isn't permitted. So the retaining wall along the uphill side stands on its own footing, with drainage behind it, and the house stands clear of it on its own slab. The gap between them is the side path, which also carries the water away.
The materials on the side facing Glenrock. The report's level set what the terrace pergola could be built from, what the window frames, glass and screens on the bush side had to be, and how the roof was sarked and its fascias and bargeboards built. We don't publish the level for a sample house, because on a real lot it comes from that lot's own report: the type of vegetation, how far away it is and the slope between them.
No. Most mapped parcels in the suburb are Guideline 2, but there are pockets of Guideline 1, where shallow workings carry a risk of a pothole forming, and Guideline 7, which is always assessed by Subsidence Advisory NSW on merit. On a Guideline 1 lot the footings are designed for a pothole and an officer inspects the reinforcement before the pour. On a hill like this one, two neighbours can sit on different guidelines, so look up the lot itself before planning anything.
The owners did. The law gives that choice to the person having the work done, not to the builder, and a builder must not pressure the decision. We explained what a principal certifier does, gave them the information the law asks us to give, and worked with the certifier they appointed. The certifier issued the complying development certificate once the subsidence approval was in hand.