It's been a while since we updated this blog and since then a number of things have occurred including the base and frame of the house! It is now day 68! Once the process began the progress was fairly quick but unfortunately not without issues.
The concrete slab was completed late January/early February and the frame commenced on the February 5th. It took about 2 weeks for the bulk of the frame (ground and first floor) to be completed.
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| Site preparation |
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| Waffle pods and reinforce mesh |
Concrete slab with free standing meter box
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| Frames |
The site supervisor (SS) that we had been assigned came on board from the frame stage. The base stage was handled by another person. We only discovered this when we contacted the SS regarding the concrete footings and was referred to the base stage person.
Issues
Concrete footings
The first issue involved some concrete footings that were dug up during the excavation process. We were unable to contact the demolisher and the footings needed to be removed asap for work to continue so we ended up having to pay Metricon $300 remove them.
The second issue, which we were very unhappy about, involved the distance of the concrete slab on the south side of the house relative to the neighbour's fence. We had requested on several occasions leading up to and including the contract signing day that the house/garage be built as close as possible to the neighbour's fence. Metricon insisted on a 150mm gap between the house and fence and so we were eventually resigned to this gap. To our dismay, the gap is in fact 500mm! We now have 500mm of useless space that we will need to seal off to prevent external access. Furthermore, while this may seem like a trivial distance it may actually impact on the construction of the crossover and impinge on the 2.5m distance set by the council relative to the tree on the nature strip.
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| Nature strip tree (right hand side)! |
A possible further issue, which we are investigating, is the relocation of the storm water drain on the kerb. It has now been moved from it's original position in line with south side fence line towards our future crossover.
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| Original storm water drain (left hand kerb) |
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| New storm water drain |
We had arrange to meet with the SS to inspect the site after the frame stage. One of us made special arrangements to leave work in order to do this as we felt it was important for both of us to be there to meet the SS in person. Unfortunately, on the day the SS was held up at another site and this meeting did not eventuate. He did give us permission to inspect the site ourselves and it was at this time that we discovered the second issue above. We contacted the SS via phone the day after to discuss. Unfortunately, he was in transit and we were at work and so the discussion was brief and some issues remained unresolved. We did learn from the SS that we were supposed to have had a meeting at the base stage. We must have missed the fine print somewhere because we were not aware of this. Furthermore, we had previously (early February) attempted to contact the base stage person but did not receive a return call.
We sent an email to our building support co-ordinator (BSC) this weekend to express our concerns and to ask for her help with resolving the crossover/driveway issue.
We haven't spoken to the SS about the storm water drain yet. It's something we will have to follow up asap.
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