5,000+ views!

Today, our blog reached 5,000 views!

I cannot believe that we have had so many views and repeat readers for such a personal event in our lives.

Thank you to all that have contributed so far and we look forward to sharing the rest of our building journey with you.

Here are some statistics on the performance of our blog over the last year:

• Post total views

• Page views by Countries

• Page views 

Pre-slab plumbing and electrical progressing...

Quick update. It seems that they have progressed well with the pre-slab plumbing and electrical work in the last two days. 

Few photos below. 

Site scrape photos

Last week, I ended up concentrating too much on the height of the slab instead of the works that had been done on our block.

We went out again today and took some photos. Enjoy! 

Alfresco area:

Front cut depth:

Shot from the back alfresco side:

Examples of homes with flat driveways

After finding out that our home's Floor Level (FL) had been dropped to match that of the footpath. I decided to go have a look through some new estates at homes with flat driveways.

Here are a couple photos I took:

Brother's site visit

I mentioned a few weeks back that my brother and his fiancé are also building their first home. As I was visiting my parents in Bendigo for the weekend I decided to go on site and check out his build so far.

I was VERY impressed with the quality of work on his slab. JG have really done a top notch job. Here are some photos I took of his site. He is right across a reserve park, providing stunning view.

P.S This is going to be a metal frame house.

Slab height issue - Update

This morning at 8:50 am I got a call from my Building Coordinator. She wasn't kidding about making it her first priority. She pretty much put everything else on hold until we came to a solution for this issue. For that I am grateful! 

Here is a summary of what I was told:

• House was dropped by 200 mm as the original drawings did not have a Term Bench Mark (TBM) for the road. After the land titled and the second soil test this information was given to the builder and they automatically dropped the house level to align with the street height (100 mm higher as opposed to 300 mm higher). 
• There is a note on the drawing that the site needs to be scrapped to a minimum of 9.6 RL in order to remove surface vegetation and provide a level building platform. 
• The slab is 385 mm high so 9.6 RL + 0.385 = 9.985 RL which was the level used for the house floor
• The only way for the house level to be raised would have been to use fill under the slab. This is not ideal and I really did not want to go down that path.

So given the situation our best way forward was to do the following:

1. Raise the portico level and reduce the step down to 63 mm to match the garage. This means that the fall from the footpath will only be about 0.018 which is equivalent to 1.8 cm. 
2. Keep the remainder of the house levels as is.

Even though this is not ideal and we would have liked the house to site higher, unfortunately given our land contour the way Porter Davis has set-out the house is the best regarding a solid foundation. Adding compacted fill would have been silly on highly reactive soil IMO.

I made it very clear that the lack of communication to this change is disappointing and that it should have been made apparent to us through a Building Variation (BV). 

A massive thank you to all three members involved in today's discussions for a quick reaction to my concerns and fast turn around for a response and potential solution(s).

Site works halt 3 days into the build... We're off to a good start!

Many of the followers and regular visitors of this blog would know that our site works officially commenced exactly three days ago. You might also have noticed that after looking at our cut site that I had a bit of a hunch that something was not right. Well.. I was right.

After checking our final construction drawings yesterday I noticed that the floor level has been dropped by 200 mm from our contract drawings. This set off some alarms and I immediately proceeded to email my building coordinator and text my slab supervisor.

Unfortunately, that's all I could as it was after hours and that meant another sleepless night caused by our build. Being human, questions start to arise. Did I read the drawings correctly? Why did I miss this? Why did they do/miss this? etc...

This morning I waited anxiously for an email or phone call. That didn't happen. I wasn't going to wait as I knew I didn't have much time to react.

Finally, I managed to get through to my slab supervisor and building coordinator. After explaining the situation, they both agreed that they needed to look into this further and have called a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. Attendees will be our BC, SS and one more member in charge of siting and floor level designs at the PD Keilor office. Luckily, we all agreed that works will be stopped until this is rectified. I was very assertive about this as they had deviated from our contract drawings without any Building Variation (BV).

Since the site has been cut already, there are really only a few options that I can think of to rectify this (if they agree):

1. Fill, compact and raise the platform for the slab
2. Increase the thickness and in turn the height of the concrete floors

I would really appreciate some feedback of which would be the better solution of the two. Please comment or PM me if you can help. 

Thanks for reading and sorry about the essay!

Yet another surprise! Hopefully not too serious...

After reviewing our floor levels today I noticed that Porter Davis has reduced the total house level by 200 mm between our contract and final construction drawings. We missed this when we were checking our construction drawings. We were also not informed of this change at any point!

Here is a comparison of the two drawings. Hoping to have an answer for this first thing tomorrow morning.

Site cut complete

Hi All,

Went out (again!) today to have a look at the block and found that the site has been cut. I am a little concerned about the height of the garage floor to the footpath so I have posted my question on the homeone forum hoping that someone with the expertise can help me understand our drawings better.

My current understanding is that the garage floor should be ~40mm higher than the footpath.

http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=75949

Here are some more photos:

Phone call with our slab supervisor

After heading out to our site yesterday and seeing that they had begun works, I decided to make a call to our Slab Supervisor.

Being used to the lack of communication from previous PD staff I have dealt with (our first Building Co-ordinator) I was expecting a short conversation and to be 'snubbed off'. Boy was I wrong!

He (Slab supervisor) was very helpful and took as much time as required to answer all my questions and concerns. Here are some of the questions/concerns I had and the answers I was given:

1. Foundation quality of work: I was assured that he has selection of contractors that he has worked with closely before and only accepts high quality of work from them. He also explained that the slab built by PD uses almost 9 tonne of steel instead of the minimum requirement of 6 tonne for a similar build to mine. 

2. Slab heave: He told me that he has had lots of experience with slab heave (even with his personal property) and that he believes that there are many factors to the cause of this. The factors he raised were site drainage (tick!), quality of foundation work (tick!) and correct design of slab including reinforcement amount (tick!). He has ensured me that all pre-cautions will be taken to build a high quality foundation for our home with correct site drainage. 

3. Slab pour date/pre-pour inspection: He was more than happy for me to pass his details to our Independent Inspector (Darbecca) for them to co-ordinate the pre-pour inspection without me being a 'messenger boy'. The slab pour date is expected on 03/03/2015.

I must say, I was quite impressed and relieved after this conversation. Of course I couldn't note down the entire ~30mins phone call but the above points cover the most important topics. 

Here's hoping that all goes well with our foundation work and slab pour. After all, it is the most important part of the house.

Official Site Start

It's official! The count down begins...

Went to have a look at the block again today and to my surprise there was a truck and excavator working away at it.

It's a huge difference between the progress we saw during all the paperwork stages. They really don't muck around once they go to site! I  really hope that's the case for the rest of it.

I've started a countdown of 168 days. I know this isn't very accurate but hey it's exciting times for us and anything to track progress is a good addition.

Only disappointing part is that I still haven't received a call from the Slab Supervisor. I guess there is still time between now and pre-pour but will need to arrange our Independent Inspector to come out.

Thanks for reading :)

Facebook group for Merrifield residents.

Last week a homeone forum member pointed out that a private Facebook group had been created for residents of Merrifield Estate.

Be sure to check it out if you (or plan to) live in the area. I'm sure this page will become busier and full of useful information as the residents at Merrifield start to move in.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/MerrifieldMelbourne/

Furniture shopping

After seeing that Porter Davis has started works on our house we decided to do some furniture shopping due to all the excitement!

Here are some photos of the preferences we have. Our tiles are a light grey with a stone look to them. So we stuck to light wooden furniture and greys. Since our house will have lots of grey in it we will add some colour with some nice paintings and colourful ornaments.

We have a fence. It begins!

Even though are excitement over a temporary fence might seem silly, to us it is a massive achievement!

It's great to finally see them starting works on our home to be. All the paper work, meetings, countless emails and headaches have finally brought us to this point. We know it's still a long road ahead full of issues and surprises but we will take it all as it comes and hope that we have a positive outcome which will be our first home.

Thanks for everyone's support so far and look forward to sharing the building journey with you all.

Here are some photos of the block as it stands. Also added a photo of my brother and his fiance who are also building their first home. My brother being the family comedian he is, sent a re-enactment of our photo back to us. First photo is us :)

Appliance LPG compatibility confirmed!

A few posts back I shared the email I sent to Porter Davis regarding our appliances and their compatibility with LPG.

They have responded to the information I gave them and confirmed that all our appliances are in fact compatible to be used with LPG or Natural Gas. This is great news for us as it means we don't have to change our appliances nor wait for our natural gas supply to get our Certificate of Occupancy. 

Here is a screen shot of the Building Variation (BV) PD sent us for this change. Total cost is $233 and we still need to supply our own gas tanks before handover. 

  

I requested that they advise where the bottles will be located and was told that this is for the client to decide. So with that in mind, I did my research and sent the following back. 

I used the following link for information regarding the exclusion zones for any ignition source, door, window etc... This allowed me to select a suitable location. Hopefully Porter Davis concur with this.

http://www.elgas.com.au/blog/388-lpg-gas-bottle-cylinder-placement-guide 

Thanks for reading :) 

We have a tree! Construction is yet to start though...

Went out to have a look at the block today hoping that something has happened. Nothing. Not even a fence :(

Anyway, I was half expecting this to be the case.

I did notice that the council has planted a tree in our front nature strip. Can anyone help me identify it? Here are so photos: