Garage rear roller door

Our rear garage roller door was finally installed yesterday.

Apparently the installer had been on-site about 4 times before he managed to get it in. Something to do with mounting surface.

Not sure I'm happy about how it's been installed but will have a closer look and discuss with the SS when I see him next.

Basically they have bolted through the plaster into the brick.

Portico weep holes

So whilst we were looking at concreting options for our driveway, pathway and portico we noticed that are weep holes are at the same level as the adjacent concrete in the portico.

Initially, this didn't phase us as we decided to just paint/seal that concrete. It wasn't till further looking into it that we found out that this is actually a defect and the minimum height of weep holes/DPC under a covered area should be 75 mm or approximately one brick course. 

Turns out reducing the step down in the Portico wasn't such a good idea from PD! 

We are in a little bit of a pickle because we can't raise the DPC/weep holes as they will be above the house floor level which is also a defect and definitely will not be touching the concrete base underneath it. 

It seems a lot of houses are being built this way as we have already seen some in our estate and on some other blogs. We might just have to live with this one... We believe that it won't reduce performance as long as we don't block them in any way. 

Joys of building... 

Build issues - List is growing exponentially

So I've been monitoring the build pretty closely since I've been back from overseas and the build issues list that I had initially created is growing and growing.

I went through the house yesterday wall by wall, room by room and the end result is a whopping 65 items that need attention. 33 of those are issues such as paint touch ups, dints, damaged cabinets etc... These items I have flagged as 'PCI' as they will most likely get picked up by PD and I don't want to be micromanaging our SS.

As for the other more urgent issues, well I'm not going to list them all but here are a few that I really didn't pick up before but need attention;

One of the garage door bolts is loose and garage door was banging in the wind

Slider door does not work smoothly and jams halfway. 

And this is the pick of the bunch. One of the walls/skirting in the house is not plumb or straight at all! Yes, I did check every wall, skirting etc... 

I know the first two are an easy fix. The last one though is going to be a big discussion and might cause some delays because the only way I can foresee this being repaired is to rip the plaster and skirting off, straighten the walls/studs, re-plaster and paint sigh... We will just have to wait and see! 

Electrical work

Went through the house on the weekend and saw that all the electrical fit out had been completed. Well not entirely but 95% done. Lots of mistakes unfortunately which will definitely cause more delays. As excited as we are, it's disappointing seeing these silly careless mistakes.

To be fair, this hasn't been checked by our Site Supervisor yet but here is a summary of the mistakes the electricians made (these are not mistakes in the drawings);

• Two external GPO's supposed to be doubles but they installed singles
• One internal power point also supposed to be double but single installed 
• Point for future pendant in wrong location and on the same circuit as future down light point
• Rear garage flood lamp location has only a junction box installed. We paid and opted for a light with sensor to be installed. 

I'm sure these will all go rectified. SS and PD have been good like that. 

Concrete Work planning

Had a family friend who is a concreter meet me out on site yesterday to advise/quote for the work that we want completed.

Basically, we will be doing exposed aggregate to the driveway and pathway to the front door and the rest which is the 1m concrete apron around the house will be coloured concrete. All 100 mm thick.

He suggested we mark out what we wanted done to measure and quote and we did. Here is my VERY rough paint work :P

Progress update - Data, vents, tv wiring etc...

Hi All,

Our heating and cooling vents are going in today. Unfortunately, the bright spark that cut the plaster managed cut the hole a little too big on one of the vents. Let's see how they are going to fix this one.

Other things that happened/happening on site are. Data (Argus), TV pre-wiring, roof panel/gutter repairs etc... Going so fast and getting so close now! 

Fronts taps moved

After multiple emails and phone calls between us and YVW we finally managed to get them to move our taps away from our front door. They initially were going to charge us but the final decision based on timing and location was to move them up to 600 mm without any charge. 

Due to the distance limitations, our only option was to move it to the left (towards garage) so that here is the result. We think it's much better than before! 

Heating unit confirmed

If you are a regular visitor of the Porter Davis topic on the homeone forums, you would have seen the posts about checking the heating unit that was actually installed to your home especially if you had chosen to upgrade to a more efficient unit.

Some have had the standard unit installed even though they had paid for the upgrade. 

We asked our SS this morning and we received the good news that the correct heater has been installed. In fact we have been upgraded from the Brivis MX30i to the HX30i unit which is the highest efficiency model in that range! This was due to our change of appliances to LPG compatible as per this post. LPG Appliances Selected

If you're currently considering heating options check out the below links for some information:

http://www.brivis.com.au/products/heating-ducted-gas/starpro-series 

http://www.brivis.com.au/marketing/brochures/brivis_brochure_gas_ducted_heating.pdf

Update - Painting 'Complete'

Hi All,

Painting was 'completed' last week. The reason I have put it between apostrophes is due to the fact that there are still a few areas that need extra coats, patch ups or repair due to imperfections. Anyway, I have been told that the paint is 80%-90% completed and will be finished after all the fit outs as they always manage to damage the walls and paint.

For that reason we will reserve judgement till PCI.