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IMPORTANT WARNING -
Purchasing a block of land?
It is vital that if you are looking at purchasing a block of land to build on, that you FIRST make contact with your local council building department or a local bushfire construction consultant to find out whether the land you are considering is within a designated bushfire risk area.
If it is, prior to designing your home, you should invest in having a formal bushfire risk assessment done on the land by either a bushfire construction consultant or your local Rural Fire Service as and where they offer such a service.
You will receive a report which tells you the level of bushfire protective construction required for your home to meet AS 3959, and what constraints and requirements you are most likely to face in the design of your home.
There can be some significant design and construction limitations and demands placed on the construction of your home depending which catagory your land falls under and these can significantly add to your end building costs.
DO NOT FALL INTO THE TRAP of assuming that if you are purchasing land in an urban area that there will be no bushire related construction demands. Following the recent bushfire disasters many areas in Australia have been BUSHFIRE RISK mapped and many urban locations now fall under the requirements of the AS 3959 code. If your area falls into one of these designated bushfire risk regions, your council will have all these maps.