Yes building consent has been approved. A few minor changes had to be made on the drawings but that all went smooth and well organised. Thanks Kaipara District Council. Pretty good it is all done online and you can track the progress of the application in all the different stages it has to go through.
Resource consent a bit of a different story. To avoid having to apply for resource consent all the works have to comply with the District Plan which checks against the permitted activities under the Resource Management Act.
Rule 13.10.26 Fire safety has been our trouble maker.
1) We would need an extra 45,000l water on site for fire fighting purposes as there is no reticulated water
2) No trees or bush is allowed 20 meters around the house.
We can cut the row of pine trees on our land but to get 20 meter clearance trees on council land and the neighbours would have to be cut. After consultation with the neighbour he didn’t want to cut the trees on his property. We submitted our situation to the fire service department who after going back and forth a few times approved and signed off on our building plans. Luckily without having to make any changes except to dedicate one of the two water tanks for fire safety. We thought we were covered with this sign off but turns out in the end we still have to apply for resource consent. So yesterday another set of drawings, an environmental effect assessment report and creditcard payment went out to formalise the fire service approval. Fingers crossed this will go through smoothly as well.
Hopefully this will be the last expense in the “overhead” category and soon we will be moving into the ‘siteworks” category and cutting down some trees.