Keep What's Here
Keep the house at the front and build behind it, or keep one building and lose the shed. You choose, building by building, what stays on a site. The totals, Fill, the Check and the drawings all follow.
Choose What Stays
- Open a site's card in Build. Under What's here now, select Choose what stays.
- Tick the buildings that stay. Or tick Show what's here on the map and click them: grey outlines stay, red dashed outlines go.
- If a footprint is wrong, clear it and select Draw an outline. Click each corner on the map, then Finish, and set its storeys.
Footprints can be wrong. They come from aerial mapping, and can merge a house and a garage, or miss one. Each building in the list says where its footprint comes from.
Each kept building's outline, height and source are saved on the site, as map data changes.
What It Changes
| Where | What happens |
|---|---|
| Totals | Lost is only what goes. Homes have no count per building, so what's here is shared by floor area. That's an estimate, and you can change Homes kept. If what you keep is too small for any of the homes to fall to it, it could be the house or a shed, so it reads as not known: enter 0 if it isn't a home. People go with their homes, and jobs by floor area |
| Fill | Lays out around what stays, and finds a way to the land behind it if it can |
| Coverage, permeable area, garden area | Kept buildings count. The land around them isn't drawn, so it reads as open until you draw it |
| Number of dwellings | Kept homes count. One new home beside a kept one is two dwellings on a lot, so a permit and Clause 55 apply. If the number of homes isn't known, it counts as one and the Check says so |
| Nothing placed yet | The site's limits are read for the type's usual lots, as if what's kept weren't there, and the Check says so. Fill lays them out around it |
| Demolition | The note and the permit are only for what goes |
| Sun, outlook and the walk-through | Kept buildings stand and cast shade. Those that go don't |
| Map, 3D, site plan and DXF | Kept buildings are drawn in grey at their height, and labelled. The DXF has a KEPT_BUILDINGS layer |
| Yield bar | Coverage includes what's kept. Homes and floor space are the new ones |
Building Behind a Kept House
Where the streets can't reach the land behind, Fill tries a shared driveway past the building:
- The way past: 3.5 m wide, in a straight line from the street's frontage, on the site, at least 0.5 m clear of the building, and clear of anything drawn or placed and of trees standing on the site. Street trees and where its crossover would go aren't checked. Clause 52.06 asks for an accessway of at least 3 m, and 3.5 m is our allowance.
- The kept home's yard: 8 m behind it stays with it. That's our allowance, about what Standard B3-6 asks behind a two-storey wall.
- The land behind: at least 120 m² and 9 m deep. If it's too small for the type's usual lot, all of it becomes one lot.
- The new home: stands on its own, with its own side setbacks and a backyard at least 3 m deep. It faces the driveway, and it has no street setback to meet.
- The driveway stops at the last home it reaches.
Homes along the street keep 2 m from what stays, and a way in to it at least 3 m wide. The 8 m yard is only for homes behind it, so check the yard if Fill lays homes around a kept house on a corner: the Check gives how close they come.
Homes built this way stay on the one lot with the kept home. Fill doesn't subdivide them.
If there's no way past, Fill says so and places no homes behind. This is common. On 12 real lots of 850 to 2,200 m² we tried, keeping the largest building:
- 1 got a home behind it.
- 4 got 1 or 2 homes by the street.
- 7 got none, mostly as the house leaves under 3.5 m on each side, or reaches too far back.
Clearing a garage or carport can open the way, if it has its own footprint.
What the Check Doesn't Know
- Kept buildings aren't assessed. The standards are about new buildings, so a kept building's own setbacks and height aren't measured.
- New buildings beside a kept home read as to check, never as a pass. The Check gives the distance and the height. The kept home's windows and open space aren't known, so daylight, shade and overlooking on it aren't measured. Standards B4-1, B4-3 and B4-4 protect existing dwellings, and most aren't limited to neighbours, so we read a kept home as one. A planner should confirm that.
- Parking is worked out for the new homes. The kept home's spaces aren't counted, and the Check asks you to confirm they stay.
Limits
- Results can change for sites saved with the old tick. They read as keeping everything, so their next Check counts those buildings, and may fail coverage or take a different route. The saved site isn't edited.
- A site saved with the old tick isn't drawn in grey on the map or plan, and home sun and outlook treat its buildings as gone, until you choose its list. Fill and the Check read what's standing for it, and say so if the read fails.
- Feasibility values only what's new. It has no demolition cost, and doesn't split land value for a kept house.
- A kept outline that a reshape leaves off the site counts for nothing, and the Check says so.
- The design-tool package (SketchUp, Revit) gets kept buildings with the neighbours, for context.
- Not covered: extending or altering a kept building, or subdividing a kept home onto its own lot.
Sources
| Source | Used for | Edition | Licence | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 55 | Two or more dwellings on a lot; B3-5, B3-6, B4-1, B4-3, B4-4 | Current | © State of Victoria | Clause 55 |
| Victoria Planning Provisions, Clause 52.06 | Car parking and accessway width | Current | © State of Victoria | Clause 52.06 |
| Building footprints: Microsoft, Overture Maps and others | The buildings standing on a site | As read | Each source's own | Data Catalogue |