Can I draw a site plan from an aerial photo?

Yes, as a base, and many site plans start that way. An aerial photo shows what is built on the lot: the house, the sheds, the paths, the pool and the trees. It does not show where the boundaries run, because those come from the land records, and its scale is only as good as the way the photo was taken and fitted to the map. Lay the lot boundaries over the photo, trace what stands, and check the distances that matter with a tape before the plan goes in.

What does an aerial photo get wrong?

Roofs, mostly. From above you see the roof, and the walls sit inside it under the eaves, so a footprint traced from the photo is the roof outline rather than the walls the setbacks are measured from. Tall buildings lean away from the centre of the photo, trees hide sheds and fences, and the photo may be older than the patio someone added since. Map views can also sit slightly off the property lines, which is fine for planning and not for a setback close to the line.

Where do the boundaries come from?

From the land records. The state’s property map holds the lot lines, drawn from the survey plans, and the survey plan itself gives each boundary’s length. A site plan that takes its boundaries from those records and its buildings from the photo puts both on the same base. Where the work sits close to a boundary, the certifier may want the distance confirmed on site or by a surveyor.

Will the certifier accept it?

A certifier reads a site plan for what it shows. It needs the boundaries with their lengths, the buildings already there, the new work at its size with its distance to each boundary, the easements and mains, a north point and a scale. A plan traced from a photo that carries all of those is read like any other. The post on getting a site plan for council covers who else can draw one, and the post on site plans covers what council expects on it.

Reading it for your own lot

RapidSiteplan does this from the address in a minute: the boundaries from the land records over the aerial photo, the house, the sheds and the driveway traced from it, and the overlays and mapped services read for the lot. Place the new work, check the distances that matter on site, and the sheet dimensions every boundary. The concreting and driveways page shows a sheet traced this way, the post on what a site plan costs covers the other ways to get one, and the council pages for every state show what each council maps. Start with the address. The post on site plan software covers what each kind of program does well.

Common questions

Can I draw a site plan from an aerial photo? Yes, as a base. An aerial photo shows the house, the sheds and the paths, but not the boundaries, which come from the land records, and roofs hide the walls under the eaves. Lay the lot boundaries over the photo, trace what is built, then check the key distances on site with a tape.