Waiting, waiting, waiting......

Nothing has happened for the last 10 days.
The roof trusses were delivered on the 18th, but they have been made with wrong timber…aaaaagghhhh!
We are finally getting the new ones tomorrow.
This is the layout of the house.

Part 4

11/04/08 The first delivery of the pre-fab. timber frame is here. The timber is Laserframe H2 (MGP10), from Carter Holt Harvey (www.chhwoodproducts.com.au).

14/04/08 Erection in progress... Sorry, but that's the word for it! Ground floor.

And now the first floor:

Part 3

Catching up with the blog!....

14/03/08 Crushed rock, form work, termite spray, plastic membrane almost completed.

18/03/08 Waffle pods, steel mesh & reo are in place, ready for the pour.

19/03/08 The Big Day! All the guys are here, ready for action. Perfect Melbourne weather!

Part 2

To sum up the design, here are the main features:

• concrete slab on waffle pods (P class soil)
• Blueframe treated timber (called H2 or T2)
  
• Hebel Power panels 75mm (ground floor)
• Polystyrene panels 75mm (first floor)
• PVC double glazed windows with Argon gas & Low-e treatment
• Colorbond roof
• For the garage, we will use concrete blocks as a cost saving measure!

By Christmas 2007, we had decided on the Builder, almost received the Permit, and approval from the bank.

The builder took possession of the site on the 4^th February.

We then received a call from him saying that the sewerage pipe from the front property was going right thru our block! Shock, horror!

We experienced frustration and anger for days. No one would take responsibility: the previous owner, the surveyor and the Council. Our Solicitor got involved, but to no avail. We learned that there are two documents that anyone contemplating the purchase of a subdivided block should be familiar with.

One is the Property plan, which is part of the Section 32 documents, but more importantly the Property Service plan which is issued by the Water Company. This is the one that shows precisely where all existing pipes are located on the block.

At the time of subdivision, the Owner was told to divert the storm water pipe; she did not have to divert the sewerage pipe…

No recourse, we had to get the pipe moved over, at our cost.

Another issue arose soon after that. The electricity provider imposed upon us what they call “group metering”. Because of the small area of common property, we had to group both meters.

This meant the existing overhead cable feeding the existing house had to be run underground.

Once again, we had to cover the cost.

Finally, all services to the property where laid out in the trench, and excavations could start.

One of the requests from the Structural Engineer, was to have 6 piers under the slab of the garage, near the fence: Ø600, 2400 deep… A lot of concrete went into theses!

I should have placed a tape measure down the hole: it is difficult to realize how deep the holes are on the photo .

In the beginning... (Part 1)

Work has finally begun, after many months of frustration…

However, before we start with a regular account of the construction process, we need to go back a few months, and describe the first steps of the adventure.

Following the sale of our extensively renovated house in March 2007, we were looking for a block that could be subdivided, with an existing house rightly positioned on the block. This proved to be a very difficult task, as we were not the only ones with this idea in mind!

Eventually, we purchased a small block (510m² ) East of Melbourne, in July 2007. The original block had been subdivided in 2004. The front block has a small house on it. The rear block, the one we bought, has a “battle-axe” configuration. There is a small section of common property, about 6m of driveway.

It was our understanding that the block was “ready” for building. We were wrong, but more of that later.

After many attempts to come up with an efficient design that would fit into the small envelope the Council has imposed to us, we engaged the services of a drafting company to draw up the plans for the permit.

Even though we gave them very detailed & efficient concept drawings in Autocad, it took longer than expected to get the drawings ready. Many silly mistakes were made.

We were not impressed with their services.

Our original design was for a steel frame and Hebel power panels for the external cladding. This “unorthodox” building method didn’t help in getting the drawings in time!

In the meantime, we began the hunt for a builder who would be prepared to use different materials than timber and bricks. For a while we though we might do it as “Owner builders” and engage the services of a project manager. But we found that the financial advantage was not that great, and it would have meant a lot more time spent on site and not actually working to pay the bills!

We settled for a “small” builder who was highly recommended to us.

The steel frame option was dropped due to the extra $5000 premium compared to building with treated timber (H2 or Blueframe).