Flat Patios Swan

Ellenbrook, Aveley, Brabham and Dayton are the volume-housing end. Project homes on 350 to 500 square metres, an alfresco already built under the main roof, and a rectangle of yard behind it that people want covered.

Beechboro, Ballajura and Altone are older and roomier. Mostly 1980s and 90s brick and tile on regular lots with straightforward fascias and enough depth to build a proper outdoor room.

Out east and north it turns rural. Gidgegannup, Bullsbrook, Red Hill and the Valley run to hectares rather than square metres, and the patio is often the only shade on the property that is not a tree.

Most of the newer Swan estates carry developer guidelines or restrictive covenants registered on the title. They can dictate roof material, colour, how far a structure sits from the street and what the front elevation may look like.

That is a private legal obligation, not a council rule. The City of Swan does not police it, and a patio can satisfy the council and still breach the covenant on your own title.

Check it before the sheet is ordered. Colour restrictions in particular tend to settle the whole look of the patio, and finding out late is an expensive way to learn.

Guildford holds one of the most intact early streetscapes in Western Australia, and much of it sits inside a conservation precinct with heritage controls attached.

A rear patio is usually the least contentious thing you can add to a property like that. It is behind the house, below the ridge, and generally invisible from the footpath.

Age bites at the fixing point instead. Century-old brickwork, rear additions of unknown vintage and lath-and-plaster interiors all argue for standing the structure on its own posts rather than hanging it off the house.

Valley properties at Herne Hill, Millendon, Baskerville and Henley Brook come with space most suburban clients can only imagine. Long spans are possible, the posts land where the design wants them, and the roof can be genuinely large.

Land use is the complication. The Swan Valley sits under its own state planning framework, and where a property runs a cellar door, a function space or a farm stay the structure may be assessed as commercial rather than domestic.

That changes the building classification and the approvals, not the engineering logic. Raise the intended use at the first conversation so the design is drawn to the right standard from the start.

The eastern suburbs of the council area sit on the scarp foot. Stratton, Swan View, Greenmount and Jane Brook give you lateritic gravel and rock instead of clean sand.

Two things follow. Excavation is slower and sometimes needs different plant, and infiltration is poorer, so a soakwell that would clear overnight in Beechboro can sit full for days.

Slope arrives at the same time. Once the yard falls more than a little across the span, post lengths vary, footings step, and the roof plane has to be set out from a level datum rather than off the paving.

A good part of the City of Swan is mapped as bushfire prone, particularly Gidgegannup, Bullsbrook, Red Hill and the scarp-foot suburbs. Belhus, Brigadoon and parts of the Valley are worth checking as well.

Where the map applies, the bushfire construction requirements can reach a patio attached to or sitting close to the house. The bushfire attack level assessed for the site is what sets the standard the structure is built to.

Steel helps. A Colorbond roof on steel posts is non-combustible to begin with, so the work goes into detail: gutter guard, closing gaps where embers lodge, and care with anything timber under the roof.

A lot of the newer housing at Ellenbrook, Aveley and Dayton is two storey with the ground floor pushed close to the rear boundary. There is no fascia to work from, just a wall going up past you.

That is usually an advantage. Fixing into the ground-floor wall below the upper storey gives more height to play with than a single-storey eave does, so the roof can sit high enough for the space to feel open.

The detail has to be right the first time. Flashing into a rendered or brick wall two storeys up is not something anyone wants to revisit later with a ladder and a tube of sealant.