Street Access
The accessibility of your block during the build phase of the project is a significant factor that you may not have considered, and the reason we raise the topic is not simply for the convenience and ease of the tradespeople that will be in and out of your new home site for the next 12-months or more.
You will need to take into account how accessible your block is for both the demolition and construction stages – especially when you’re rebuilding a new home in an already established area where lots of people already live, work, drive and go to school.
Accessibility to your new home site, not to mention the impact imposed on all your new neighbours, can be far more tricky to navigate. You don’t want to get off on the wrong foot before you’ve even moved in!
But aside from how your new home will impact your tradespeople and the rest of the neighbourhood, a good part of the reason we advise you to think about it is because restricted access blocks will actually impact on YOU. Specifically, your bottom line.
Please be aware that additional charges may be incurred for things like traffic management or the manual unloading of materials where trades are unable to get close enough to the job site.
Below are some factors you’ll need to consider:
- Road sizes, including parked cars:
- Can large trucks get in?
- Can they manoeuvre in and out easily?
- What times are best?
- Parking:
- Outside of the job site itself, is parking available?
- How far away will trades and deliverers have to park?
- If parking isn’t available on-site, what is the street terrain like?
- Will heavy deliveries have to be pushed uphill?
- Local schools:
- Increased traffic at school pick-up/drop-off times
- Are children likely to be near the job site?
- How will you minimise danger to children?
- Best times for trades/deliveries to avoid your site?
- Overhead powerlines: likely in older areas where overhead powerlines are still in use.
- What is the height restriction for trucks, cranes and other machinery to gain access to your site?
- Traffic:
- How busy is the area?
- What times are peak traffic periods?
- How difficult is your site to access? Will traffic flow be interrupted if a large truck takes 5-10 minutes to manoeuvre in?
- Is traffic management required for certain stages/days of the build?