Plans of Townhouses and Houses

Overview

Townhouses, houses and dual occupancies you draw or fill in Build get a plan, level by level: a garage, an entry, a stair, and rooms that line up with the 3D model's front. The Check then measures the plan against Clause 55's inside standards.

The plan is generated, not designed. It shows what fits and how it would fare against the rules, so you can test a home's size before an architect draws it. You can edit any level.

How It's Laid Out

Select a home in Build, then Plan.

• Which way it faces: the street side, as Fill and the 3D model have it. A home you placed by hand with no direction takes its shorter side as the front.
• Windows: a townhouse's side walls are party walls, so its windows are front and rear. A house's sides are off the boundary.
• The stair is a dog-leg in the rear corner, in the same place on every level: 17 risers of about 182 mm and goings of 240 mm, within the Housing Provisions' Table 11.2.2a. It's indicative, not a building-code check.
• Living, kitchen and dining are separate rooms where the width allows. Where they're one room, the Check takes about 7.5 m² off for the kitchen and dining: the clause excludes them and gives no figure, so that's our reading, from what the plans draw (a 2.7 m bench with 1 m to stand at, and a table with chairs). A planner should confirm it.
• Bedrooms are what fit, and the yield bar counts them. If the floor area would usually hold more, the plan says so.
• A dual occupancy is two mirrored homes.

What doesn't get a plan: a home under about 5.5 m wide or 7.4 m deep, over 24 m across, of more than three storeys, or a footprint that isn't close to a rectangle. It says why. Library houses and imported models keep their own rooms, or have none.

How Fill Shapes Them Now

So that a plan fits, Fill keeps these homes deep where it can: a house up to 9.6 m, a garage and a living room behind it, by getting narrower; a wide, shallow townhouse by dropping a storey. It only does this at no cost in floor area. The number of homes didn't change on the real lots we tried, but shapes and storeys can differ on new fills.

In the Check

These are measured for every dwelling, on sites Clause 55 applies to, which means two or more dwellings on a lot. That includes a home you keep.

The results are only for homes with plans. The Check says how many buildings with homes aren't in them: no rooms, apartments, or a count of homes the plan doesn't show. A home you keep isn't read either, which the finding beside it says.

A pass on a generated plan means that plan fits the standard, not that a building as designed does. Edit the plan, or bring in a model, and the Check reads that instead.

Results change: sites with townhouses or dual occupancies now get these findings, including variations they didn't have before. VicSmart and the no-review route don't change, as they rest on Clauses 55.02, 55.04-1 to 55.04-4 and 55.05-2.

Small homes read as they are. A 2-storey townhouse of about 6 m by 7.5 m, with a garage, can't fit the living room B3-7 asks for, and the Check says so. It's a real result: a garage takes most of a ground floor that small. Somewhat bigger homes, such as 8 m by 9 m, have to put living, kitchen and dining in one room.

Apartments under Clause 55 aren't measured here yet, as their standards differ. The Check says so. An imported model is read only if its rooms are grouped into dwellings.

What Else You Can Do

• Walk through: choose a level at the top. You can't walk up the stair: use the level list.
• Edit this level: the same editor as for units. Keep the stair where it is, as the levels above and below rely on it. It reads B3-7 across the home's levels, and B3-8 and B3-9 on this level, as you go. An edited level is dropped if the home's size or storeys change, and the panel says so. The Check reads the whole home.
• Sun and outlook: on the living room, from its own level.
• Download this level: PDF, DXF or SVG. A sales sheet draws every level side by side.

What This Isn't

• Not a building-code check. The Livable Housing standard in the National Construction Code applies to townhouses and houses, and asks for things like a step-free way in and a toilet on the entry level. The plan says if no toilet fits there. Nothing else from that standard is measured.
• No structure, services or energy rating.
• A kept building has no rooms: Keep What's Here.
• One-storey plans are only laid out on homes about 9 to 10 m wide or more, and 9.6 m deep.
• The editor can't tell a party wall from an outside wall, so it lets you put a window on one, and the Check would count it.

Sources