Brisbane's City Plan flood overlay maps them separately: river and creek or waterway flooding sit in their own planning areas, and overland flow has a planning area of its own. Overland flow is about how stormwater drains across land, and it is a separate question from flooding near Moolabin Creek. In 2025 council refused a Moorooka subdivision on overland flow grounds although that lot had not flooded in 1974, 2011 or 2022. A dry history does not settle the question; the overlay mapping for your lot does.

Any new house on the new lot will need an AS 2870 site classification before its slab and footings can be designed. Before that, check the City Plan overlays, especially overland flow, because the 2025 refusal of a Moorooka double-block subdivision turned on that risk. Ask your town planner when the application needs soil data. We can then drill and classify each proposed building area so your engineer has what they need.

The overlay affects approval rather than how we test. City Plan 2014 has a Traditional building character overlay with neighbourhood character and local character significance sub-categories, and work such as raising, building under or extending a character house often needs approval under it. The soil classification supports the engineering for that work. For the former war-workers estate, check the current overlay status in City Plan, as a proposed heritage listing did not proceed.

The former estate's houses were standardised lightweight homes, and many are now raised or built under rather than replaced. Raising adds new stumps or footings, so the engineer needs a site class for the ground beneath them, from A through to E or P depending on how much the soil moves with moisture. Our testing sits near where those new footings will go, and the report goes to your engineer. Approval is a separate track: raising and building under a character house can need approval under City Plan's Traditional building character overlay, so check that early.

Usually it needs a different kind of investigation. The Nathan-Salisbury-Moorooka neighbourhood plan provides for taller buildings on some land along the future Cross River Rail route, so confirm your lot's precinct in City Plan. An AS 2870 site classification describes how house-site soil reacts to moisture, while a multi-storey project needs geotechnical drilling beyond a house classification, scoped by its engineer. Geotechnical drilling is one of our services; send us the engineer's brief and we will tell you whether it suits us. Check the precinct rules in City Plan too.

Moorooka is not uniform. Moolabin Creek, a tributary of Rocky Water Holes Creek, runs through the suburb, and in January 2011 an area north of the station and the Clapham rail yard flooded. Lots on that lower ground and lots on the higher streets can present different conditions, which is why the classification is made from your own lot rather than a suburb average. Check the City Plan flood overlay for your address too, because it shapes the design brief your engineer works to.

Lot size does not change what we measure. Whether the block holds an existing cottage or is being cleared for a rebuild, the site classification still rests on borehole samples and bearing tests taken near the proposed footing area. On a dense street that matters, because a neighbouring unit block or duplex is no substitute for testing the soil under your own new footings. Send us a site sketch showing the existing house and the planned work, and we will scope the testing around it.