Building with Wisdom Homes

What would you say the main cause is for the angst ?
Wisdom Homes ? in what way ?

Hi,

We are building the Majestic 40 and thinking of upgrading the hot water system. I am interested to know what model people got as standard and what they upgraded to and how much it cost.
I understand that if we want to upgrade the aircon we do that at the aircon appointment but we need to decide now on the hot water system.

Thanks!

Lunar, we got the 27L Rheem unit. It was an extra $385.

You can change your mind any time before the preliminary final variations e.g., we originally had 2x 24L units servicing different rooms but changed that to the 1x 27L after we got the bill for the hydraulics.

Thanks kidsbuggingme,

Your avatar always makes me smile! I keep hoping that you will start a blog.

I'm still not 100% sure of when we can change things without incurring extra costs so I have tried to specify as much as possible - in writing - now.

Of course after I've been to the Home Show tomorrow I'll no doubt get further inspiration....

Sydney-build- To be honest I am not satisfied with them. Not just the troubles in admin we incurred, we have had a few issues in building as well which definitely I can agree on it being an emotional roller coaster . Hope it is all worth it.

Wisdom have not made this a pleasant experience for us at all. So many times they have given us incorrect information and sometimes this has cost us substantially. We have been given incorrect time frames, wrong interpretations of council regulations and many other pieces of misinformation. They pretend to know but often are completely wrong about so many things. I consumed as much information as I could about as many aspects of the build as I could and at times knew more than they did. We have felt very unsupported by them during the whole process. The build itself has also not gone smoothly but we know we are almost at the end and seeing the house take shape has been exciting. Some of the tradies have been great. For example the electrician met my husband on site today to give him advice about the alarm system and data cabling.
I will say that even though our experience has not been a completely positive one, it doesn't mean it will be that way for everyone. My neighbours have both done kdr's, one with Allcastle and one with Clarendon, and their builds were reasonably problem free. We have neighbours down the road building with Huxley and they were well ahead of us earlier in the year but are now well behind us due to weeks where there is no one on site.

Hi Lunar,

We are doing our hot water after handover. We decided to go with a Sanden heat pump after much research. It is going to cost us around the same amount as solar through Wisdom.

http://www.sanden-hot-water.com.au/

Thanks for that gregol02.

I must admit I've not heard of Sanden before, thanks for including the link, I shall go and read up about them.

I was planning on solar for pool heating ( if and when we get a pool) and a larger HWS for the bathrooms.

@gregol02 reading your blog.
Did you add the private building inspector to be allowed onsite in the contract after the frame was up.
we are doing KDR modified impression 37. At the stage about to sign a contract just wondering if we need to add a clause to the contract to allow a private building inspector onsite.
Otherwise wisdom may not allow it.
The hot-water system looks good 2 sanden. We don't have gas so we are going with heavy duty rheem heat pump 2. instead of the solar panel system.

They have to let you have your own inspector, it is the law. There are clauses relating to it in the standard HIA building contract Wisdom use. It is usual to have inspections just before gyprocking and just before handover, but you can have more if you want to. You just need to arrange a time with your site supervisor for your inspector to go on site. After the site inspection the inspector will prepare a report which you pass on to the SS so he can organise to get any defects fixed.

Does the inspector come back and verify that the mentioned defects have been fixed ?

Hi greg thanks for the information
You wouldn't know which section in the standard hia contract it would be in?
Can anyone recommend a building inspector u can pm me directly thanks

Hello fellow Wisdom builders..

Our build has finally started so I have started my own blog: http://majestic45.blogspot.com.au

Not much there yet, but I'll update with plans and slab photos later this weekend.

Please note that no matter what they call it - the Wisdom contract is not a 'standard' HIA (or Fair Trading) contract. (Funnily enough we were told by their sales person that it was "the standard HIA/Fair Trading contract - even though these two documents are not the same thing).
It may be based on one or both of those but there are significant alterations from those documents.
You may want to have a close look at the section headed Builders Conditions.

Hi maybebuilding

We are getting a solicitor to walk throught it
If anyone has signed were u able to add clauses or delete/modify the contract or was it take it or leave it situation
Looking 2 sign in the 2 weeks

Thanks

Sorry, I got the section wrong. It is in the contract but it is under Attachment B, Consumer Building Guide published by th Dept of Fair Trading. The section is titled "Progress Inpections".



It is really up to you if you get the inspector back. You normally have two inspections, one pre-internal linings and one pre-handover. We got our first inspection done after the frame was done as we found some structural issues that we wanted checked before bricking started. We just had our pre-internal linings inspection so our inspector checked that everything was fixed from the first inspection and it was. He found a few minor problems at this inspection and the SS has now advised us he has fixed them all. We trusted our SS but had they been major we would have got our inspector back to verify they were fixed correctly.

The sales person actually used those words when we suggested that clauses that did not apply in our case be taken out of the contract - something along the lines of "We don't make changes to the contract. Basically take it or leave it."

So we left it.

I really should change my user name I guess as I'm sitting in my lovely preowned house that we moved into a couple of months back (so much less stress and we actually ended up with more/better than we were looking at building).

By the way - our solicitor was more looking at legality rather than what was best for us. Until we pressed him on each point that we had concerns over he was basically just saying "Looks pretty much as most builders have." When we asked about each and every item that we had doubts about he actually started to sound more and more doubtful about the paperwork. Not sure if that was refecting badly on our choice of solicitor or builder but, in the end we walked away from it.

Good luck trying to get the contract changed. We found it's pretty much a take it or leave it proposition.
Your mileage may vary.
Wisdom have added many of their own clauses to protect their interests and will not budge on them.

..

I have some positive news to report. We got slabbed last week.

I've updated my blog with more details/pics of the action. It's surreal seeing the construction taking place - there is light at the end of the tunnel (although it's still a long way away).