We have a portable toilet, an empty cage, a pile of rocks, and some concrete circles :)
We had a call from our Client Liason Executive with a pretty substantial problem. She said that their surveyor had failed to detect that we had overhead power (uhh, I'd think it's a no brainer, really!) so because the new government regulations specify that they're trying to eliminate overhead power lines, we have to pay extra for underground power as it wasn't even put in the house price - they just assumed that the underground power had been organised on our block.
In case you've never built a house before, you're expected to have power to the block (and overhead power lines is not classified as power anymore because of occ. health and safety apparently - even though they installed a temporary overhead powerline to eliminate the problem ... go figure!) They installed this overhead temporary line so that we didn't have a delay - so that is great of them, but because of their surveyor's f*** up, because he didn't have a brain that day, we will find out how much the underground power is going to cost in approx a month ... it has been estimated at approx $2k by the CLE that called us, who admits that she really has no idea ... but someone apparently "in the know" as they are in the industry has indicated to our Covert Inspector, Uncle John, that it could be a bit more than that.
Either way, my husband is now sooking the way that he did when we were told that the slab was potentially a P class ... it isn't pretty. Great.
So anyway, at least they're still trying to plod along. In around a month we'll find out the quote, then they'll get it done, and then three months in to the build (estimate) we will have underground power and will be able to proceed as normal. And we will be one of two houses in the estate with underground power. Yay no yucky cable to my beautiful house.
Any other builder would have stopped work. So for this, despite the added cost due to the doofus that didn't look properly for his payment in the first instance, we're thrilled that it's not affecting our build time-wise as that (as hubby puts it) could cost us quite a bit more in mortgage payments. Ra ra ra.
This week they have poured the concrete pillars for our slab down into the ground at the front and the back of the house.
They have also requested on three separate occasions that we do another Contract Variation due to things that they've picked up now... and we've also had to re-sign our contract drawings another time.
They have started to cause considerable stress to my husband as now he's talking about payments etc (I admittedly have my head in the sand for good reason!)
We have also named the house "The Taj" so that when we're explaining to people what we've been doing, we can say "we're just heading to the Taj" rather than "we're just heading to the block" because it's not a block anymore.
Mid-week we had a call from our Site Supervisor, and he said that on Wednesday we will have a slab, and by Friday, the frame will be started, so this time next week we will have some more productive pics than the dirt with concrete circles... (at first the kids said "someone's dumped concrete on the block")
So this time next week, it will look MASSIVE. We've tried to visualise it in our mind, we're sort of thinking it will be the same size length wise as our current house, but add on the extra width for the extra garage, and then add on the top storey - and that's about right.
Bloody Hell!
No comments:
Post a Comment