A standard shed is not allowed to be lived in. That is not a council being awkward about it, it is a building classification, and it is settled when the building is designed rather than after it is up. If anyone is going to sleep in the building, it has to be built as a Class 1a dwelling from the start. Here is what the Class 1a shed requirements actually cover, and when the decision has to be made.
Class 10a and Class 1a are two different buildings
Under the National Construction Code, a shed, a private garage or a carport is a Class 10a building, which the Code calls non-habitable. A Class 1a building is a dwelling, meaning a detached house or one of a group of attached dwellings. A shed home is simply a Class 1a building that happens to be made of steel.
The Code also says a building is classified by the purpose it is designed, constructed or adapted to be used for. So it is not the cladding, the roof shape or the look of the thing that decides it. It is what the building is for, and whether it was built to the standard that purpose demands. You can read the classifications in full in the National Construction Code, published by the Australian Building Codes Board.
That distinction matters because the two are not a small step apart. A Class 10a shed has to stand up and keep the rain out. A Class 1a dwelling has to do that and a good deal more.
The Class 1a shed requirements a normal shed does not meet
Most people picture the fit-out: a kitchen, a bathroom, some insulation and a floor covering. The fit-out is the visible part, but the Class 1a shed requirements start well below it. Broadly, a dwelling has to deal with all of the following.
- Structure. The slab, the footings and the frame are engineered for a dwelling rather than for storage.
- Weatherproofing and damp. The walls, roof and floor have to keep water out and stop damp rising through the slab, which a storage shed is not usually detailed for.
- Light and ventilation. Habitable rooms need natural light and ventilation, so the window and door layout is driven by the rooms inside rather than by what suits the frame.
- Ceiling height. Habitable rooms have a minimum height under the Code, and it is not always what a shed design gives you.
- Facilities. A kitchen, a shower or bath, a basin, a toilet and laundry facilities, connected to water and to sewer or an approved on-site system.
- Fire safety. Smoke alarms, and fire separation where the building sits close to a boundary or to another dwelling.
- Energy efficiency. A dwelling has to meet the energy efficiency provisions of the Code. A shed built for storage does not, which is why a building designed as a shed is rarely close.
- Bushfire and flood. Where the land is mapped for either, the construction standard changes again.
The detail behind each of those is set by the Code and by your council, and some of it varies between states. What we can tell you is which parts of the list affect the building itself, because that is the part we design and supply.
Approval to build and permission to live there are separate questions
Classification is the building side of it. Planning is the other side, and it is the one that stops more projects than the Code does. Your council’s planning rules decide whether a second dwelling is allowed on your block at all, and that depends on the zone, the size of the lot and what is already on it. A block can be perfectly capable of carrying a Class 1a building and still not be permitted a second dwelling.
Worth sorting out in that order, too. There is no point engineering a dwelling for a block that will not be allowed one. Once the planning question has an answer, the approval itself runs either as complying development or as a full development application, and our guide to council approval for sheds goes through how that part works.
The cheapest time to decide is before anything is engineered
Everything on the list above is ordinary to build into a shed that was designed as a dwelling. Almost all of it is expensive to add to one that was not.
The slab is the clearest example. A dwelling slab is detailed differently, and the plumbing and the conduit go in before the concrete does. Once it is poured, adding them means cutting it up. The frame is the same story: the openings, the heights and the loads are worked out once, at design, and changing them later is a redesign rather than a variation.
So the question we would rather hear early is a simple one. Is anyone going to live in this building, now or later? Even a maybe is useful, because it changes what we allow for.
What about converting a shed you already have
It can be done, and plenty of people do it. It is just a bigger job than it looks, because the existing building has to be brought up to the Class 1a standard and then certified at that standard. Everything in the list still applies, and you are working around a structure that was not set out for it.
If that is where you are, start with the honest version of the question in our post on whether you can live in a shed, then get a certifier to look at the building before you spend anything on it. What drives the cost of a conversion is how far the existing shed sits from the standard, and that is not something anyone can guess from a photo.
Ask the question before the shed is drawn
The Class 1a shed requirements are not a hurdle so much as a different brief. Tell us at the start that the building is going to be lived in, and it gets designed as a dwelling, engineered as a dwelling and approved as one. Leave it until later and the same outcome costs considerably more.
We have been supplying sheds, garages, cabins and granny flats from our South Nowra yard since 1987, and every building we supply is fully certified for your area. Have a look at our cabins and granny flats, then contact one of our helpful team members today and we will work through what your block will allow.
