Flat Roof Patios in Vincent

A hundred-year-old house is not a modern one with more charm. Wall construction varies, older brickwork can be single skin in places, and the rear of the house has often been modified more than once.

That changes the fixing decision. Where a project home gives you a straight structural fascia to work from, a Federation cottage may give you a rear verandah, a lean-to addition and a wall of uncertain vintage.

So we look at the actual structure before promising an attachment method. Sometimes the right answer is to fix into sound original masonry, sometimes it is to stand the patio on its own posts and touch nothing.

The City of Vincent applies character retention controls across much of its residential area, aimed at protecting the streetscape and the older housing that defines it. Demolition and street-facing alterations attract the most attention.

A rear patio is usually well down the list of concerns. It sits behind the house, below the ridge, and in most cases cannot be seen from the footpath at all.

The exceptions are worth checking. A corner block, a property on a heritage list, or a patio proposed to the side of the dwelling can all pull the job into a planning assessment before the building permit stage.

Many Vincent blocks back onto a right of way, the narrow rear laneways that once served night carts and now serve garages and bins. Where one exists, it changes the job for the better.

Material access improves enormously. Long sheets and beams can come in from the rear rather than being carried down a side path barely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, and the mess stays out of the house.

It can also affect the design. A rear boundary onto a laneway rather than a neighbour's yard changes the setback conversation and often frees up where the outer posts can stand.

Not every block has one. Where the laneway was closed years ago and absorbed into the properties either side, access reverts to the side path. Sheet lengths then get chosen around a gate opening rather than a truck bed.

Vincent has been infilled steadily for decades, and the result is that a single-storey cottage frequently has a two-storey rear addition on one or both sides of it. Upper windows and balconies look straight down.

The R-Codes deal with this through visual privacy provisions, which restrict where an elevated outdoor space can look. They apply to what your neighbour built and to anything raised you might build.

A flat patio roof is the low-impact answer. It is not an elevated space, so it does not create a privacy issue of its own, and it puts a solid plane between your table and the windows above.

Most of Vincent sits on the grey Bassendean sands. Free draining, deep, and easy to dig, which is a good starting point for both footings and stormwater.

The complication in old suburbs is fill. A hundred years of sheds, paths, brick rubble and buried services means the ground under a Vincent backyard is not always what the geology map says.

It is a practical issue rather than a serious one. Footings may need to go through the disturbed layer into undisturbed sand below, and a soakwell position sometimes moves once the first hole shows what is down there.

Buried services are the other surprise waiting down there. Old sewer runs, abandoned clay pipe and unrecorded stormwater lines cross plenty of Vincent backyards, so a dial-before-you-dig check and a careful first hole are standard practice rather than excessive caution.

A patio is a Class 10a structure, so a building permit from the City of Vincent is required before construction. That means a site plan, elevations, structural engineering and a stormwater plan showing on-site disposal.

As elsewhere in WA, the Class 10a application can be lodged uncertified for the council to assess, or certified with a certificate of design compliance from a registered building surveyor already in the pack.

The R-Codes questions bite harder here than in the suburbs. On a narrow block, boundary setbacks, the open space percentage and whether the required outdoor living area is still uncovered are what determine if development approval is also needed.