Establishing what your site will allow before anyone designs anything: character, flood, demolition control, height, setbacks.
Someone has told you your house is pre-1947 and you've been trying to work out what that means ever since. The character overlay Brisbane applies across much of the inner city sounds like a prohibition, and what you can do under it is almost always more than you expect.
The overlay is a mapped thing — your address is either in it or it isn't. A great deal of inner Brisbane is: Paddington, Red Hill, Camp Hill, Norman Park, Wooloowin, Coorparoo. It's a set of rules about where and how, and most of what you want to do sits on the permitted side of them.
Two questions decide most projects: whether you can change what faces the street, and how much height you have to work with. The rest — setbacks, site cover, flood — I work through for you at the start.
You'll know what your site will take before anyone spends your money drawing on it.
A clear written picture of what your site allows before anyone draws on it: overlays, demolition control, height, boundary setbacks, site cover and flood. Knowing it up front shapes the scheme correctly the first time.
You get to stop guessing. Rather than hoping a design will be allowed, you'll know what your site will take before anyone spends your money drawing on it.
On your own, a design often meets the City Plan for the first time at lodgement. For simple work that's usually fine. On a character block it can mean redrawing, or a longer conversation with council.
Most of what I do is Brisbane houses — Queenslanders, workers' cottages, post-war brick, and the well-meaning additions people have made to all of them over the years. Character overlay and demolition control shape a design more than anyone expects, and they're far better understood at the start than discovered halfway through. It isn't a prohibition on doing anything. It's a set of rules about where and how, and I know which arguments this council will entertain.
It's arithmetic rather than a rule. In most low density residential areas the City Plan allows a building height of 9.5 metres and two storeys, measured from ground level. A habitable room needs a 2.4 metre ceiling, so the new lower level needs that plus its floor structure, then the existing house above it, then its roof. A steep gable eats a lot of that, which is why some Queenslanders raise comfortably and others don't.
Slope, roof pitch and ground level. Height is measured from the ground below the building, so on a block that falls away the downhill side reaches the limit first and governs the design. A shallow-pitched roof leaves far more room than a steep one. The envelope decides whether raising is possible. The character code decides what it looks like.
Not without approval, where demolition control applies and the house dates from 1946 or earlier. Full demolition is assessed by council, and the test turns broadly on whether the house still shows traditional character and contributes to the street. Wanting a different house isn't a ground. Partial demolition is far more permissive — taking the rear off for an addition is routine, because what's protected is what the street sees.
Brisbane City Council publishes a free FloodWise Property Report for every address. Flood affectation isn't a reason not to build — a great deal of good Brisbane housing sits on flood-affected land — but it changes minimum floor levels, what the space under a raised house can be used for, and your insurance.
There's no single number, and any number you find online is probably for someone else's site. Two sets of rules apply — the City Plan's dwelling house provisions and the Queensland Development Code's siting standards — and both change with wall height, lot size and zone. In character streets the front setback follows what your neighbours do.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.
