Site analysis

The plan gives you boundary geometry, not ground truth. It will not tell you where the fence actually sits, and it carries no levels, no trees and no house footprint. Buy it anyway — it is the only defensible source for your boundary dimensions.

The line on screen is a spatial dataset, not a surveyed boundary position. Landgate sells the deposited plan separately for a reason. Never scale a setback or a wall position off a map viewer.

It lists individuals, not trading names. Get the surveyor's own name off the quote before you search, because the firm you rang may be a marketing front for a licensee you have not been told about.

UK content. Ignore its equipment prices in pounds and ignore its assumptions about where boundary information comes from — in WA that is Landgate, not the UK Land Registry. The measuring technique itself transfers unchanged.

UK, and the planting advice around it is irrelevant to Perth. Read only the surveying and scale-drawing section; that part is climate-independent.

Imagery is georeferenced but not survey grade — treat anything measured on screen as indicative only, never as a set-out dimension. Note also that Google has announced the desktop version will no longer be available for download from 25 June 2027.

Stirling is one of about thirty metropolitan councils and is here as an example of the process, not as a fee guide — this page does not publish the fee, and each council sets its own price, format and turnaround. Find the equivalent page for your own council. Archived plans are also only as good as what was approved; patios, sheds and paving built without a permit will not appear on them.

British site, so the recommended fall ranges are quoted against British Standards rather than AS/NZS. The maths is identical everywhere; check your target falls against the NCC and AS/NZS 3500.3 figures rather than the BS numbers on this page.

British, so it assumes British kit and drainage conventions. The instrument technique, the datum convention and the arithmetic transfer to Perth unchanged.

The 100 mm concession for sandy, well-drained areas covers most of the Swan Coastal Plain, but it is the building surveyor's call, not yours. On a renovation the relevant question is what clearance you actually have left today, not what the code required when the house was built.

This is a laser level retailer's tool, so the surrounding site is selling instruments. The calculator itself is free, needs no sign-up and cites the standards it checks against — treat the product pages as advertising and the calculator as a utility.

Finding a benchmark near your block is one thing; levelling accurately from it across several hundred metres of suburb is another, and beyond what a garden survey needs. Use this when a council wants AHD levels and there is a mark in your street. Otherwise an assumed datum on your own block is correct practice.

This is one council's specification, not a statewide rule, and East Fremantle is a small older municipality with tight lots. The AHD requirement and the 0.0125 m depth factor are common across Perth councils but the numbers vary — read your own council's version before you design anything.

Dated July 2019 and written for Wanneroo's sandy northern suburbs. Confirm the current sheet and the sizing table with your own council, particularly if you are on shallow limestone or over a high watertable where infiltration rates are worse than the table assumes.

Joondalup's policy, not a statewide one. The 0.5 m building permit threshold and the general principle are consistent across Perth, but setback tables and local planning policies differ by council — confirm the current thresholds with yours before you design a level change.

Rates are not published on the site — the page says prices are subject to change and include 10% GST, and directs you to call. Price-check against Kennards and Coates, both of which also hire levels in Perth, before you book.

This is a Perth soil supplier's own page, and it recommends its own products alongside the generic advice. The rates and the reasoning are sound and match what the trade uses; treat the specific product recommendations as advertising and price-check them against other Perth soil yards before ordering.

Written for broadacre farmers, not gardeners. The mechanisms and the reasoning transfer directly to a suburban block; the machinery and the hectare-scale application rates do not.

The project is broader than gardens — it covers energy, building fabric and water-sensitive urban design as well. The landscape and water material is the part relevant here.

Nationally framed but built largely on WA research — it notes that 10.2 million hectares of WA is at risk of water repellence. Written for broadacre cropping, so the management section talks about claying at tonnes per hectare. The diagnostic method and the severity scale transfer to a suburban block unchanged.

The acidity focus reflects WA agricultural land, where poorly buffered sands make up more than 40% of the south-west's farmland. On the Swan Coastal Plain your problem is more often the opposite — alkalinity from limestone. Read it for the method and the water-versus-CaCl2 distinction, not for the assumption that you need lime.

Written for grain growers diagnosing paddocks. Ignore the sampling grid advice, which assumes hectares — on a suburban block, one composite sample per planting zone is the equivalent.

Aimed at turf managers and local government parks officers rather than homeowners, so the scale is larger than your block. The nutrient logic is identical; the application equipment is not.

It screens for metals only. It will not give you pH, organic carbon, phosphorus or salinity, so it supplements your other tests rather than replacing them. Postage from Perth to Sydney adds a few days and a few dollars; sample and send early in your site analysis, not the week you want to plant.

The free map shows only classified sites — contaminated with remediation required, contaminated with restricted use, and remediated for restricted use. Sites reported but not yet classified do not appear, so a clean map result is reassurance rather than proof.

It is a retail garden centre, so the advice that follows the reading will lean toward products they stock — take the number and form your own view on the amendment. It is also in Guildford, which is a long drive from most of the metro area. Ring your nearest independent nursery or soil yard first and ask whether they do the same thing; several do.

The calculators are national, so Perth is handled correctly, but they output numbers rather than pictures. Pair them with a visual tool if you want to see the arc instead of reading it off a table.

Global dataset, so Perth is fine — but the first time you use a sun tool in the southern hemisphere, the arc will look wrong to you. Confirm the noon sun sits to the NORTH of your pin before you trust anything you read off it.

Enter Perth's latitude as a negative number (about −31.95) and set the timezone to GMT +08.00. Western Australia does not observe daylight saving, so leave any DST adjustment off.

It is a blog post, not a climate statistics page. The Bureau publishes 9am and 3pm wind roses for Perth Metro under its climate averages section if you want frequencies and speeds rather than description.

A tertiary source, included as a last resort because the primary climate pages are hard to read and there is no equivalent public summary. It cites the Masselink and Pattiaratchi study of Perth's sea breeze system and Bureau wind rose data. Treat the specific figures as indicative and confirm anything you are designing around against the Bureau's own wind roses.

It is a Fremantle block — coastal, limestone-influenced and slightly milder than the eastern suburbs. The orientation logic transfers anywhere in Perth; the plant list is coastal-biased.

This is Canning's specification, not a state-wide rule. Councils differ by roughly 20 percent on the coefficient alone. Use it to understand the method, then get your own council's number before you order anything.

East Fremantle sits on Spearwood sand and limestone. The formula is generic across Perth councils, but the soakwell setback and linkage rules are that Town's own policy — confirm the equivalents with your council.

Joondalup is deep Bassendean and Spearwood sand where infiltration is easy. If you are on clay in the foothills or a wet winter watertable on the flats, the sizing guide will be optimistic.

WA adopted NCC 2025 on 1 May 2026, with NCC 2022 still usable for building permit applications during the transition. The H2P1 wording is unchanged between the two editions.

Written for subdivision and street-scale water sensitive urban design as much as for single lots, and the branding predates the merge into DWER. The design factors apply unchanged to a suburban block.

It is a regional model, not a bore log for your block. It gives you an estimate and a warning, not a design figure — for a difficult site you still want a geotechnical report.

Written for local government engineers and subdivision designers. Chapters 3 and 4 are superseded by the 2017 Decision process for stormwater management in Western Australia. Skim for principles rather than reading cover to cover.

BYDA is national. In Perth the responding asset owners are typically Water Corporation, Western Power, ATCO Gas and the comms carriers, and each replies separately with its own plan set and its own conditions — so expect several emails, not one document.

The clearance tables live in the linked Residential guidelines for designers PDF rather than on the page itself, and Water Corporation states it will not advise on structural design — that is your engineer's job. Get the numbers from the current PDF before you finalise any footing near a sewer.

This code was originally made under the old Occupational Safety and Health Act 1984 and continues in force under transitional arrangements. A replacement Excavation work code of practice was out for public consultation in early 2026, so check the WorkSafe publications page for a newer version before relying on the detail.

Written as legislation, not guidance. The duties in Part 6.3 attach to a person conducting a business or undertaking — so they bind the landscaper, excavator operator or plumber you engage, and they bind you if you engage workers, rather than a homeowner digging alone on their own house.

Western Power covers the South West Interconnected System — Perth, the South West and the Wheatbelt. If your block is outside that, Horizon Power is the operator to contact instead.

The title lists encumbrances by document number; to read what an easement actually restricts you usually have to order the referenced document as well, at the same fee. Free alternative — your settlement pack from when you bought the house almost certainly contains a title search already.

The 10 mm per watering day target is a Perth and Peel default for a two-day roster on sandy soil. It is a scheduling starting point, not a plant water requirement — hydrozoning changes it, and this course revisits the number in Phase 8.

Endorsement means the business has been appointed to deliver the program, not that it is the cheapest or the best designer. It also lists Victorian members, so filter by state.

Checked in August 2026, the published round ran from 1 September 2025 to 31 May 2026 for Perth and Peel Water Corporation account holders with a system that has watered in the last two years. The program runs in annual rounds and allocations can be exhausted early, so confirm the current round dates and eligibility before you book the work.

North American document. Ignore the freeze-thaw material entirely — it does not apply here. Substitute compacted crushed limestone for the crushed aggregate base it describes, since that is the Perth standard, and read its drainage warnings as being about compaction rather than saturation, because a Perth sand subgrade drains fast. Base failure in Perth is almost always poor compaction, an uncompacted service trench, or no base at all.

These are the work health and safety thresholds that bind anyone doing the work for fee or reward. A homeowner working on their own home also has duties under the Health (Asbestos) Regulations 1992 and must dispose of the material at a facility licensed to accept it — ask your local government environmental health officer before you touch it.

Declared status is a legal category, not a horticultural one. Plenty of genuinely invasive Perth garden plants are not declared and still deserve a REMOVE verdict.

Intertek Inform is an authorised reseller; Standards Australia's own store sells the same document. You almost certainly do not need to buy it for one back yard — an arborist applies it for you, and the calculator below does the arithmetic free. Note also that most WA council policies still name AS 4970-2009, so expect the older wording in council paperwork for some time yet.

Run by a NSW consulting arborist firm as a lead generator. The maths is the standard's rather than theirs, so the numbers are fine, but the output is not an arborist report and no WA council will accept it as one.

Applies only inside the City of South Perth. Do not assume your council does the same — two of the three councils compared in this lesson do something completely different.

A City of Stirling policy adopted 15 October 2024, so the thresholds and the panel process are Stirling's alone. The definitions of structural root zone, tree protection zone and arborist report are generic and transfer anywhere in Perth.

Vincent's position can change — several inner Perth councils have moved toward tree registers in recent years. Confirm the current position with the planning counter before you rely on it.

The zone boundaries and the movement conditions have been revised repeatedly since 2021. Check the current Quarantine Area Notice on this page before you book a removal or take green waste anywhere, rather than relying on what a contractor told you last year.

Written for local government heritage officers, not homeowners. Read Part One and the section on defining a curtilage; the assessment criteria and worked examples are for people preparing listings.

IACA is headquartered in NSW and the WA member list is short. Arboriculture Australia also runs a national directory, and several Perth consultancies hold AQF5 without IACA membership — treat this as one filter, not the only one, and always ask to see the qualification.

This is a consultancy's marketing blog, based in Karrinyup, and it exists to sell arborist reports. The technical summary matches an independent NSW source checked alongside it, but treat the framing as advertising and confirm anything load-bearing against the standard itself or your council.

Written for the northern hemisphere and in imperial units. Flip the sun: north-facing is the warm aspect in Perth, not south, and every sun-path diagram in it is mirrored. Ignore the recommended 1 inch = 10 feet scale and use 1:100 (or 1:200 on a big block), and call Before You Dig Australia rather than 811. The drawing method itself transfers unchanged.

These are the outputs of the design phase, not a constraints and opportunities plan. Read them for graphic convention, annotation density and layering — not as a template for this deliverable. Fremantle sand over limestone will not match a Bassendean block in Gosnells.

Viewing is free but products are paid, and the imagery pricing above is what Landgate published on the day this was checked. The boundary shown on screen is indicative, not a survey — if a boundary dispute is possible, that is a licensed surveyor's job.

The R-Codes are read together with your local planning scheme and any local planning policy, and councils vary the provisions. Confirm the numbers that apply to your lot and your R-code with your council before you commit them to the drawing.

The specific clearance distances are in the linked Residential guidelines for designers PDF, not on the page itself. Get the number for your asset and your structure from Water Corporation rather than assuming a figure.

Designation is lot-scale and does not tell you your BAL rating — that comes from an accredited bushfire practitioner assessing vegetation, slope and separation. Treat the map as a yes/no flag on the drawing and follow it up in Phase 4.