A Siting for Sore Eyes

I wish I could upload a copy of our siting - this is basically what we've been waiting for, for 4 weeks - the tender and site costs are based around the siting and reports.

We knew that our site costs would be quite expensive, but they came in at basically what was estimated so we were prepared.

So, our sites costs will cover the following:

• Class M slab (standard inclusion)
• Water tank at back of house - will be moved to side and smaller water tank provided to comply with estate guidelines (no extra cost)
• Step up onto porch (extra cost)
• Step down into garage 340mm (extra cost)
• Step down to study and home theatre (extra cost)
• Higher ceilings to front of house - we basically have a split in the front of our home because the front is so steep
• Cut to front of home to comply with driveway angle standards/guidelines (will be used to fill at back, however extra costs to export excess dirt)
• Steps to laundry (extra cost)
• Because of the curved kerb and steepness of the front, they will need two concrete pourers (extra cost)
• Drop edge beams around the home (extra cost)

They hit rock within the standard/included range so piering should not be a problem, other than if the rock becomes more shallow when they begin construction and they need to excavate - this means additional costs too.

Other than the steepness at the front of the house, the land is pretty good!

Revising the tender over the weekend, we've decided to increase our electrical budget also - I still think that we've grossly underestimated the cost of electricals though, so I can't wait to get stuck into our electrical appointment! Oh, and timber look garage sectional door was a must - we forgot to add this but that's been included now :)

Hopefully signing off land and revised tender this week, or early next week. I will include a list of all our upgrades once we've signed off on the revised tender.

See you again soon!

Cx

Hey, Big Tender!

It's been almost a month now since I was last on here...just shows how slowly things are moving I think, but we're getting there.

Really not much has happened, we've been [not so] patiently awaiting our tender presentation at Wisdom head office. In the meantime, we've been looking around at other builders and designs considering getting another tender to compare costs with. We both quite clearly have our hearts set on this one, so we haven't really come to a decision on another builder or another design either way!

The tender took around 4 weeks to prepare - this included contour reports, bore hole reports, soil testing, etc, plus a siting of our chosen home on the land and then putting together the cost estimate and tender itself.

On Wednesday we had our tender presentation at the Wisdom Homes head office. The lady that presented this to us we both thought was fantastic - she was able to answer our questions, and if she was unable to, she made a note of what we required and promised to get back to us. So she was very straight forward and gave us the information which we required - which if you've gone through this before, is quite refreshing!

The site costs ended up being a little bit more than expected, but close enough to what we had estimated and provisioned for so we were extremely relieved to hear it!

My only real problems with the tender were:

• I had specifically asked for the tender to be written in compliance with not only the Council Guidelines, but also the Estate Guidelines which were attached - this what not done, and I had to correct things like roof pitch, water tank size and placement, etc
• I had asked about putting the application through CDC instead of council for a 10 day turnaround for approval, and was told this was a completely different tender and they required a Section 149 Certificate - to which we replied that we asked about it and wasn't informed we had to have the tender made specifically for it, and the latter was indeed supplied by us
• They used an older house layout to what we had been looking at - which, much to my partners amusement, I had a huge freak out about but is just a minor fix anyway, phew.

After the tender presentation, we've gone back to have a think about what things we want to keep/remove/add to our tender. It's now Friday (two days later) and we've been in constant communication with our presenter and have ironed out all the amendments we want made to the tender, and we should receive the revised tender by the end of next week!

It's a little exciting - once we sign off on the tender, all the plans will start being put together and we'll get to pick colours, carpets, tiles, bricks, lighting, landscaping, etc.

We actually haven't signed off on our land yet - so we're hoping to get that sorted next week before we sign the tender...haha oh dear.

Cx