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! 

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).

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.

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 :)