Porter Davis homes

Yes ours came with locks and keys

We went 106 days over contract and got no present

We also had a delay after slab pour which we didn't actually mind as it gave it more time to cure.

We were told we'd get one but he left it at the office and he'd drop it by the week after, guess he forgot!

Yes they come with locks

Our plaster has been hung and had first coat in 2 days. Outside eaves have also been lined and the front of the balcony is nearly done. Found a few errors over the weekend; pantry door wrong height and 2 bulkheads missing. Concrete on front porch also draining toward front door. Apparently most things being fixed today and cornice going up. Apparently cabinets should arrive any day now.

Constant errors. Feel like we are the project managers. PD happy to fix them but they just don’t seem to pick up all these issues. Lucky we only live 400m away and are checking progress almost daily.

Not sure I’d build w them again but then I guess all volume builders are probably the same. Darbecca did actually say we are getting a very well built house

I hadn’t noticed. Will check;)
The lock on the sliding doors from our bedroom doesn’t work so will need to follow that up......again 😖

I guess it all depends on the Site Supervisor, we haven't had too many of those kinds of issues (thankfully). We only live just over 1km from our build and it certainly makes it easier to keep an eye on issues and report them to the SS. Darbecca have been invaluable, if only for peace of mind.

Hi does anyone have the internal door privacy locks? The one that you can unlock with a pin. Just wondering if they can be locked from the outside? I remember being able to do this in our old house, but the new home care guy reckons you can only lock it from the inside. It automatically unlocks if you try to lock it from the outside.

We have the ones with the pins and they can only be locked from the inside

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So things are ticking along with our build. Tiling has been done. Electrical done. Plumbers were there today. Its looking really good with minimal issues.

I will say I was disappointed today there, some holes in the walls, all dirty etc from tradies. It was all freshly painted only a few weeks ago. Some tradies are great, and then some honestly just don't care. Of course these will all get fixed but it just seems unnecessary.

I'm hearing you loud and clear. We are at about the same stage. Electrical done, tiles done, plumbing fit off in the next few days, and the exact same thing. The electricians cut some holes in the wrong places and the waterproofers put a sticker on the architrave that has ripped off the paint, lots of unnecessary damage. Must be so tedious for the painters.

We have our tender appointment in a few days, and have also been presented with the same 3 options.
From what research we can find, all three are panned online, talk about choosing the lesser of 3 evils.

What I find concerning is how many posts I've seen in this thread where building surveyor is confused with building inspector. Not the same thing.

That aside, has anyone here found one of the three above to be preferred in a surveyor role?

I'm building with Porter Davis in Queensland and we weren't even given a choice, though Checkpoint are who we were given by default.

The surveyors role should be pretty smooth sailing if you are building within council regulations.

We used DJM. They provided inspection reports when I asked for them. Apparently not many people have had the same response.

Hey all,

A quick update of our build-

We were contacted by our Site Supervisor on the July 31st to advise that Framing Stage had been completed. We were pretty excited as we're close to day 100 of a 308 day build and it's been pretty slow going. An unusually wet winter here in Geelong has apparently been to blame. Another story for another time...

Trusting in the information that our SS provided us, we paid the invoice and arranged Darbecca to complete an independent inspection.

Upon arrival onsite for our independent inspection we found up to half a dozen carpenters still installing roof trusses! Darbecca walked off site and told us to re-book our inspection when works had actually been completed.

As you can imagine we were devastated.

I attempted to contact our SS, leaving both voice and text messages for which he finally replied to at the end of the day after which we had forwarded the Darbecca cancellation fee invoice. He wasn't very apologetic and blamed the sub-contracting carpenters for not telling him the truth about actual completion. I would have thought that a visual inspection or drive by inspection would have been completed before actually advising us and sending the Framing Stage invoice.

Anyhow, a week later we've finally had the Framing Stage somewhat "officially" completed and our independent inspection completed. Further disappointment as the report came back with 42 pages of defects! Everything from out of plumb doorways, to walls being in place where only bulkheads are supposed to be, to roof trusses missing, to voids not being framed up, framing hanging over the slab to the slab having not being vibrated enough, even having steel reinforcements exposed in the edges slab and having damaged window & door frames due to them being left out in the elements for nearly 3 months.

We forwarded the report to Porter Davis and have asked for all items to be rectified ASAP. We are yet to have a response however today we received notification via email from our Building Co-Ordinator (which grammatically did not make any sense at all) that they were working with Darbecca to have the cancellation invoice paid. Nothing about rectification works.

I'm wondering if there are any other forums members out there going though similar experiences with Porter Davis?

this is quite normal with PD (though abnormal for the customers), you should have hold the control by not paying the invoice for the unfinished job or jobs done with defects.. learn it the hardway.... nevertheless, you now need to work along with your SS and constantly follow up to get the issues rectified asap.. the nature of build process is such that any advancement on the construction may mask the earlier problems.. the key here is to get the high priority structural defects to get corrected asap...Darbecaa sometimes put silly defects in the report which you can put in lower priority... so in summary work with your SS and show the urgency and held him accountable.. if nothing works, you may have to escalate..

That is horrifying. Our experience has been nothing like that, we have generally had a pretty good run so far and we are about 170 days into the job. It seems to me that the quality and timeliness of the build depends heavily on the SS. I would be making a serious complaint about the Site Supervisor to senior management and asking for a competent SS to be assigned to the job. Not much respect for the dream going on there.

Hi,

Had an interesting chat with our SS today. He advised us that in future all independent inspections eg. Darbecca etc can incur a 7 day delay to the build. Personally, it hasn't swayed our decision to continue using them, but will add up if you have a tight timeline. Just thought we'd share this on the forum.

That’s true they have it in the contracts now