Screw piers galore

This week we also got some screw piers put into where the slab is going to go. They literally screw into the ground (at natural ground level) and provide stability for the slab. Not very exciting to some, but for us, awesome!

In other news, J had a call from the site supervisor today to say that the concreters have been delayed a couple of days so unfortunately we aren't getting a slab on Monday 5th October. Not happy Jan!

Plumbing Palaver Sorted!

How funny is this?

Once the Coral plumber discovered that we were looking at other plumbers to do the job (that he should have done in the first place!) he suddenly 'remembered' certain things that Coral was already paying him to do and dropped the price by $1200! Seriously, I am not in love with tradies at the moment - bunch of crooks!

Anyhoo......even though the other plumbers would have been cheaper, we decided to go with the Coral guy because we think that it will be easier in the end. Meaning that we only need one inspection from the council (instead of 2) and we know who to go back to if things go wrong. Didn't want to go with him, out of principle, but thought it would be easier in the end.

So, the plumbing went ahead as planned on Wednesday (30th Sept). Crossing our fingers that we don't have any other major oversights in the contract. Honestly you try to ask all of the right questions......

Here are some pics of the pretty plumbing (if you are into that sort of thing!)

The very expensive ($600) and ugly (but essential) first flush diverters on the water tank - they keep out all of the dust and yukky stuff when it rains.

This is the pipe that caused us so much grief!

Pretty cool because now we can see where our kitchen and bathrooms are going to be. Yipee!

I knew it was too good to be true!

We received a call today from the plumber who told us that we are not going to have water hooked up to our house unless we pay about an extra $3000. Typical......I knew things were going too well and that it couldn't last!

Apparently our contract says that Coral will hook up our water tank and HSTP to the house, but not to the water mains supply. Who has a house contract that doesn't hook up water - WE DO!!!

This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of and can't believe we are just finding out now! WTF!!!! I am not sure what to do because the price that we have been quoted by the plumber seems expensive. Unfortunately we have to make the decision by Wednesday whether we are going to get the Coral plumber to do the work for us or get someone else in because it will cost us more if the plumber needs to make a second trip.

Anyway, just needed a bit of a rant. I am sure it will all sort itself out in the wash :)

Lucky us.....again

I just thought I'd share some more good news. Spoke to Beaumont Tiles today. They are doing our wet area tiles and since we didn't choose much that was within the Coral Homes range we were told to expect a quote for the extra charges.

We did our selection back in early July and we were told that the selection would be sent to head office and we should receive a quote in a few weeks. I have chased them up a couple of times and was told on Saturday (26th Sept) that the purchase order for our tiles had been made. The guy told me that as we had not received a quote we would not be being charged any extra for our selection.

Yay!! Another win for us! Keep 'em coming.....

Tanks and HSTP installation

We were due to have our water tank and HSTP installed this Friday 25th Sept. Because we live on acreage and don't have full pressure town water we need special tanks to cope with this. The water tank is 31,500 litres and is what they call a trickle feed town water system. This means that the only place in the house with full pressure town water is the kitchen sink. The rest of the taps are run off the tank water and topped up overnight by the trickle feed. The HSTP (home sewerage treatment plant) treats all of our waste and sprays the effluent on our land which is a good way of watering our plants.

Anyhoo.....on Thursday J received a call telling him that if they hit rock it was going to cost us $190 per hour to use a rock breaker. Almost all of the blocks in the street have hit rock. The guy next door to us had to pay for 7 hours of rock breaking. So we decided that J better take the day off work to make sure they didn't rip us off. We weren't prepared to pay for their lunch breaks etc. and J wanted to make sure that they really did hit rock if they were going to charge us.

In the morning the truck rocked up with the excavator and rock breaker on board. The guy starts digging the holes for the tanks and hits shale but no rock. Luckily for us this means no extra charges, but I am not convinced I would be telling the same story if J hadn't been on site.....

Then the truck showed up with the tanks. The water tank went in first. It is in 2 bits because it is so big and sealed together with bondcrete.

Then in went the HSTP.


The the excavator dug the trenches for the effluent hoses that will water our plants.

A water truck arrived that afternoon to half fill the tanks with water so that they don't start to float.

All in all I think we have been very lucky. We didn't hit rock so no extra charges and we had a good operator so our tanks are sunk the lowest in the whole street. The HSTP is pretty much flush with the ground and the water tank is only high enough so that the pumps and pipes are just out of the ground (these will be installed later so they don't get nicked!).

Lighting dramas

Well, we went to Beacon lighting on Monday (21st Sept) after work because we heard that they had a sale on and we were hoping to save money on the light fixtures we had chosen. When we got there we were told by the very sweet sales girl that the entire range of lights that we had chosen, the ones that we had based our entire colour scheme on, had been discontinued.

J and I were a bit stunned and unsure what to do. We wanted antique brass fittings, which is kind of a dull browny brushed brass look. There are a number of light fittings in this style but unfortunately most of them are designed for old colonial style homes and are therefore old fashioned looking. The lights that we had originally chosen were quite a modern style and they were a good price, about $15-$30 per fitting. The only other lights in the store that we remotely liked were $130 upwards per fitting. You can probably see our problem now......

We discussed our problem with Jaymee-Lee (the very sweet sales girl) who suggested that the best way would be to do the entire lighting selection again. Anyway, after a couple of hours and a couple of arguements (thankfully no tears) we had redone our lighting plan with quite a few modifications from the orginal plan. We have reduced the amount of ceiling fans (about $250 each) to save some money and cover the cost of the expensive brushed brass fittings. We have left bedrooms 2, 3 and 4 with a simple lightbulb in the ceiling (no fixture) as we couldn't find any we liked in the store. This means that we can do a DIY light fixture later - more things to do after handover!

Anyway, we received the quote back by the end of the week and thankfully we came in just under budget. I still preferred the old plan, but I reckon once the lights are in the ceiling we will never look at them again - except to clean them. Just a little hiccup on the road to building a house......

Surveyor pegs to mark out where the house is going to be

J and I went to the block on Thursday (24th Sept) and saw that some surveyors had visited and put little white pegs in the ground where the house is going to be. It was very exciting as we could see the front verandah and where the front door was going to be, and the lovely sunroom was all marked out too.

After a couple of minutes we both started to freak out. IT LOOKS SO SMALL!!!! I am guessing this is because the house has no depth at the moment and when you are walking around the pegs it seems to take no time at all. We have since chatted to a number of people who have built and they all say that when you build you will go through stages where the house looks small, then big, then small, then big again. So we got over ourselves and got excited again. YIPEE!!! We have house pegs, nah nah nah nah nah nah nah!!!!!

Now here is a picture of some white pegs in the ground that we are very excited about, but don't expect anyone else to be. This is Willow and me standing at the front door .....