Flat Patios South Perth

The peninsula end is dense. Apartments and townhouses along Mill Point Road and Melville Parade, with terraces and courtyards rather than yards, and a strata company involved in nearly every decision.

Kensington and the older streets of South Perth hold 1930s and 40s character housing on regular blocks, with the fixing considerations that come with brick of that age.

Como, Manning, Salter Point and Waterford are largely postwar and later, brick and tile on decent lots. That is where the conventional rear patio job lives, and where there is generally enough room to do it properly.

Waterford and Karawara sit slightly apart from the rest. Closer to the Canning than the Swan, with a mix of later housing and university-adjacent rentals, and yards that tend to be more functional than decorative.

Low ground near the Swan and the Canning carries a high seasonal water table. In winter the groundwater can sit close enough to the surface that a deep soakwell is partly submerged before a drop of rain falls on the roof.

A submerged soakwell has nowhere to discharge to. That is why the design on foreshore blocks often uses a wider array of shallower wells sitting above the seasonal high level, rather than fewer deep ones.

It is worth establishing the water level before the layout is fixed. It affects the number of wells, where they sit, and occasionally which side of the patio the downpipes run.

On a block with a river view, a patio roof is a genuine risk to the thing that makes the house worth living in. A pitched structure with a ridge across the outlook will take a slice out of it permanently.

A flat roof is a thinner object. A single low plane with a shallow fall, and a slim fascia edge rather than a bulky gutter line, removes far less of the view from a seated position inside the house.

Fall direction becomes a design choice rather than a default. Running the fall back toward the house lifts the outer edge slightly and keeps the sightline under the roof, which is usually the right call on a view block.

Established South Perth backyards frequently have large trees, and the root plate of a mature tree is wider than the canopy suggests. That has to be respected when the footings are set out.

Post positions get adjusted around them. It is generally better to move a post half a metre and resize a beam than to excavate a footing through a structural root and lose the tree two summers later.

Local tree protection is also worth checking. Councils across Perth increasingly apply controls to significant trees, and the position on your particular tree is better confirmed before the auger arrives.

There is a shade dividend in leaving them. A big established tree already does half the work of the patio in summer, so the roof only has to cover what the canopy misses. That often means a smaller structure than the original brief assumed.

You need a building permit for the Class 10a structure before construction, supported by a site plan, elevations, engineering and an on-site stormwater design that reflects the groundwater conditions on your block.

Class 10a applications can be lodged uncertified for the City of South Perth to assess, or certified with a certificate of design compliance from a registered building surveyor.

Properties near the foreshore may also fall within the development control area under the state legislation covering the Swan and Canning rivers, which can add a referral step. On strata-titled properties the strata company approval comes before any of it.

South Perth catches the afternoon breeze coming up the river, and people often assume that means coastal-grade steel. It does not. The suburb is well inland of the marine environment that drives that specification.

Standard Colorbond and ordinary fixings are appropriate here, and paying for marine grade buys nothing measurable. The money is better spent on the roof type or the ceiling finish.

Exposure still affects the structure though. An open riverfront block with clear approach across the water has less shielding than a mid-block site in Como, and the engineer takes that into account when setting the wind classification.