Houses built boundary to boundary- 'neighbour' wall setting

Created by Vicki Marshall, Modified on Tue, 28 Mar, 2023 at 2:50 PM by Vicki Marshall

Region: All States

Assessor Question:

For terrace properties (inner city melbourne for example), I'm trying to find in the notes and manuals about how to treat walls on boundaries where they either abound an existing structure, or an open space on the neighbouring allotment. My understanding is that they are marked as 'neighbour' in the adjoining space for the wall setting, but I'm not clear on if you do this for all walls on the boundary in this situation or just the ones currently showing as physically bounding the neighbouring property wall.

I'm also not clear on if we then also have to add these walls as screens following the rule of the same setback and height ( I assume so?) for neighbouring properties.

TechLink Response:

There are two main conditions for walls on boundary when there is another dwelling immediately next door.
When the wall is clearly a party wall on the title then the correct data entry for a NatHERS rating is Neighbour.
This is based on the assumption that NatHERS zones in the adjoining dwellings are separated by a shared wall assembly.
When there is a 'Double Wall' arrangement where each dwelling has independent wall assemblies fully within the title boundary and with a gap between, then the structure next door becomes a shade screen.