Building or renovating in Knox means clearing Knox City Council’s planning controls before the building permit can be issued, and the foothills add overlays the flatter suburbs do not have. Cornerstone issues building permits, carries out the mandatory inspections and signs projects off against the National Construction Code and the Building Regulations 2018 across the City of Knox.
We take on every class of building work, residential, commercial and industrial. Whether the job is a second storey in Wantirna, a dual occupancy in Rowville, a retaining wall on a sloping block in Upper Ferntree Gully or a warehouse fit-out in Scoresby, you deal with one practice from siting check to occupancy permit. Fees are fixed and quoted up front.
Local knowledge in Knox
Knox is a mix of leafy 1960s to 1980s brick veneer streets, the later estates of Rowville and Lysterfield, and a growing run of townhouses around Knox Central, Bayswater and Boronia. Wantirna South, Rowville and Scoresby see the most dual occupancies and subdivisions.
Council’s housing strategy treats the Dandenong foothills differently from the flatter suburbs. The Basin, Upper Ferntree Gully, the upper parts of Boronia and Ferntree Gully and the hill edges of Lysterfield and Rowville sit in its Dandenong Foothills area, classed as bush suburban, where the planning scheme layers mandatory height controls, landscape and environmental overlays and vegetation protection over the neighbourhood residential zone. A planning permit is often needed there for work that needs none elsewhere, and a building permit cannot be issued until that planning permit and its endorsed plans are in place. We check the planning property report before you pay for construction drawings.
Much of the same foothills country is a designated bushfire prone area, and the higher-risk pockets carry the Bushfire Management Overlay as well, so a new home, extension or attached deck there needs a Bushfire Attack Level assessment and construction to match, and the overlay can add a planning step. We flag it when we quote.
Common jobs in Knox
- Extensions and second storeys on the older brick veneer houses, where setbacks, wall heights and overshadowing under Part 5 of the Regulations decide whether a report and consent is needed
- Knock-down rebuilds and dual occupancies on the large Wantirna, Scoresby and Ferntree Gully blocks, with the demolition permit and Section 29A consent handled as part of the job
- Retaining walls and cut-and-fill on the sloping, often reactive-clay blocks from Boronia up to The Basin. The key threshold is one metre: a wall under a metre high that stands on its own is exempt, but a wall of a metre or more, a wall built as part of other building work, or a wall holding up a neighbour’s land needs its own permit and an engineer’s design
- Decks, verandahs and carports, which need a permit once they are attached to the house, and which on the downhill side of a foothills house often sit a metre or more above the ground, so a compliant balustrade comes with the job. Our guide on which verandahs, pergolas, carports and decks are exempt covers the rest
- Sheds and garages on the larger Lysterfield and Upper Ferntree Gully blocks
- Shop and office fit-outs along Burwood Highway and in the Bayswater and Scoresby industrial estates
Nearby
We work across all of Knox: Wantirna, Wantirna South, Knoxfield, Scoresby, Rowville, Lysterfield, Ferntree Gully, Upper Ferntree Gully, Boronia, Bayswater and The Basin. Our eastern suburbs page covers Maroondah, Whitehorse, Monash and the Yarra Ranges; south of the Monash Freeway the work rolls into south-east Melbourne.