Plumbing

30 September 2013

We were in full swing now! The plumbers arrived on site 6 days after excavating. I was surprised by how far they had to dig down for the plumbing! My once smooth, level block, was now all dug up again! We were yet again blessed by the universe as no rock was hit during the plumbing phase. The tradies said we were very lucky as they hit rock on the neighbour's block behind us. As far as I could tell, the plumbing all looked good.

Next thing to happen was the peiring on 3rd October 2013. I had worked night shift the night before, but was too excited not to watch the peiring. So after a few hours sleep I was back down at the block. The drilling rig was pretty cool to watch, but after the first few holes I was starting to get pretty tired. It turned out they drilled 38 holes, and I watched all this take place over 5 hours standing in the sun. Needless to say I got a suntan. It was particularly important that I was out there, as our contract only allowed for 50 lineal meters of peiring and anything over that would incur extra cost. After the peirs were all drilled, I went on site with the tradey and we measured the peirs together. It turned out that we went over our quoted amount by 12.3 lineal meters. This costed an extra $1k, but it was better to have sturdy peirs as that's what holds up our house! We had been pretty lucky so far with the excavating, that the extra cost didn't worry us. Had we have hit rock, we could have been up for thousands extra.

Turning soil

24th September 2013

On 22nd September I received a phone call from the SS informing me that excavation would occur on 24th September. He also stated that we would have about 30 tonne of excess soil on our block after the cut and fill to get rid of.! I was shocked by this as our land is relatively flat, being retained already by the developer. I had forgotten that the contract stated that excess soil is to be removed by the owner. I guess I didn't think too much about it previously as I didn't think we would have any excess. The SS said the grass had grown a lot and mowing it might help.

So up I ran to the back shed and pulled out our lawn mower and my dads lawn mower. We loaded them in the back of days Nissan and drove down to the block. We mowed the entire 560sqm. It looked superb after it had been mowed, and was the neatest block in the street!

On 24th I went out and watched the excavation. I had arranged for a local company to take away the excess soil which was a lot cheaper than what MJH would do it for. It turned out that our mowing really helped and only 1 truck load was required to be taken away, which was 13 tonne. We were stoked as it only costs $220. It took 1 hour for our block to be excavated. I thought that was very quick. We didn't hit any rock to our relief as that would again be extra. The universe was on our side :)

Red Pegs

20 September 2013

As we counted down week after week we had not heard when progress on our build would start. After the 4th week I began to look back through the contract to see if we get paid by the builder for holding us up. Funnily enough, there are no fees for the builder for holding up the customer, only fees for the customer holding up the builder, ironic. The 20th September would see the 20th working day since being placed on the construction list. I hadnt heard anything, so went for a drive out to the block, and to my surprise we had 4 red pegs in the corners of our block! YES  we had started!, I've never been so happy to see red piece of wood before. Surely enough, later that day I recieved a text message from MJH to inform me they had started.