Slab? No just a sixa for today thanks!

The slab should be here, but alas it is not, slab was due yesterday but because of he high winds on Tuesday and Wednesday they could not get the foam and mesh down.

So they just got the gravel and the timber mold for the slab done:


Today they got the mesh and foam down:

Spoke to our SS and he said we should have a slab by tomorrow night.(Figures crossed the weather holds up).

Work commences

Just a quick post to show a couple of photos of proof that it is all happening.

Pipes installed, looking from front left of block.


Porta-loo, rubbish cage and a pile of gravel which I guess is for the slab, also a keen eye will pickup the taps including the purple one for recycled water.



Power to the people!

Its now our bit of dirt!

We had settlement of the land last Tuesday. All went as per plan and now we officially have a mortgage to pay(or half a one).

Now for the fun part. Received a call from PD with news of a site start for Tuesday next week. Oh yeah!

One week later they will pour the slab and I will drink one ;)
Hopefully lots of photos coming soon

Fear of the unknown

Good news is that we now have our Tender and Contract appointments booked on the 3rd Nov and 26th Nov respectively. Bad news is they wont tell us the site costs over the phone and we have to wait for the tender appointment to find out so they can "explain the breakdown of what the site costs are made out of." I can understand why they do this as the sites costs can be a large part of the overall build and can vary a lot. This is where the fear c0mes in, if the site costs blow out to 15 or 20k we will seriously need to cut back on some of our modifications (I will post these soon) maybe even losing the alfresco which to me was the main reason of getting the house (along with the rumpus room that opens onto the alfresco) .

The worst thing I did after seeing that there was some clay that came up from the holes that were drilled by the Porter Davis soil engineers was look up building on clay soil. Yep the information I found was all doom and gloom. Clay is one of the worst soils to build on because it expands and contracts with the weather, obviously not good for the foundations of the house.

I have included a link to a quick video that gives some basic information about building on different soil types. (It is American but i guess they have dirt as well :) )
Soil Video Click Here - /www.hgtvpro.com

Anyway figures crossed, no need to loose any sleep over it, just may have to think of some options before we go the tender appointment for if the site costs do blow out.

The Hole

Some action from the block... we found three holes just like this one which hopefully means the builders have been able to get onto the block and do the soil survey.

We have been waiting for 8 weeks for the developer to let Porter onto the block which we were told would only be when the land is ready to title. Now with any luck we will get the figure for the site costs that wont blow us away. We were unable to get Porter to fix the site costs as the block did not meet their criteria which of course they wouldn't tell what the criteria is.

With an estimate from the Porter Davis Sales Rep we budgeted 10k for sites costs as the block has less than 700mm of fall(fingers crossed).