Porter Davis homes

Glad to hear the positive feedback about the after care service, hope it stays that way by the time our build is completed.

Drove by after work today and found out they have installed the electricity meter. Woo hoo
Besides that, not much has happened last few days. Hope activities will pick up in the next few days, I was advised slab is scheduled for mid next week.

Hi MA2531
You were lucky.
My 3 month app was good and the chap was nice (at the time of the meeting). I photographed everything and he showed me a few things I I didn't know about cleaning some parts of the house.
After a week of flurry, everything stopped and 2 months later I was still chasing them up for updates and bookings to complete the work.
I wasn't happy about this at all. A month after the 3 month inspection the maintained guy was arguing that some of the items on the list were construction issues and I had to contact the SS. We were getting the run around and I had to "lose it" before I got some actions.
Def wasn't impressed with the 3 month inspection process, but the workers themselves were professional and did great work.
Will see how we go at the 12 month mark...
regards
Mike

Hurrah!

I received a call today from a very lovely lady at the Narre Warren Porter Davis office who advised me that we have been assigned a building coordinator! HURRAH! He will be in contact with me by the end of the week to arrange our tender appointment!

All moving pretty fast now, our land doesn't settle for a little while but I guess it is good to get it all squared away!

Great news, exciting stuff. My advice is research, research, research in preparation for all the meetings. We have Contract in 3 days.....

Thanks!

We have done a lot of research, been into Hopetoun and National Tiles quite a few times and we have picked our selections for a few things. I asked our sales guy for lists of colours etc in display home locations and he emailed them to me yesterday so we can go and check out bricks and render combos etc. Not many display homes have the Cat 1 brickwork on them which is a bit of a pain! But I have emailed Boral to see if they can point me in the direction of a house with Brushwood bricks - unless someone from Team PD could help me here?

You can try contacting Boral directly and they may be able to give you a list of homes that have been built with that brick. That was the case with Austral Bricks for us, they were quite happy to provide a list of properties, some are under construction so you can get out and get a better view....the ones where people have moved in we try not to stay for too long staring at their home!

I contacted them a few days ago but haven't heard anything yet, will give them a few more days before I push a little more! I drove through a new estate a few weeks ago and was staring at homes, I felt rather awkward!!!

We visited the boral "showroom" (whatever the outdoor equivalent of a showroom is ) and they gave us lists of houses built with the bricks we liked on the spot.

We had our 3 month inspection on Monday, and it went well. I guess the test will be whether the work gets done. The inspector was friendly and thorough. He picked up a few issues that we hadn't noticed, and responded reasonably to all of our concerns.

There were no major issues. The "big" ones I can remember off the top of my hear include a couple of internal doors that don't latch shut, and a few external locks that aren't quite lined up properly. We have been missing some keys since settlement (which we were remiss in not following up sooner, but we had all the important ones ). A few cracks to be patched up, and a couple of loose downlights, and the pressure release pipe on the HWS isn't pointing in the right direction so when the system overheats (as it often does on hot, sunny days) hot water sprays everywhere, instead of nicely running down the pipe

Fingers crossed everything will be taken care of quickly and drama-free

That's good. Was it done exactly 3 months after handover? For my case, time has been 3 months but even the initial handover things hasn't been fixed. Actually there's still quite a few outstanding. I don't know when we should be having 3 months inspection?

I mentioned a few days ago, in case you haven't seen the forum for "Things you Forget" - go to page 27 and scroll down to find a full summary of the topic - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=5823&start=520. This document saved us and gave us some great ideas.
One of my favourite ideas was recessing the back bi-fold doors into the floor a little so that you don't have a lip to trip over - $135 to do for us.

Caesarstone Benchtops - We did our colours this week and PD are moving away from Caesarstone to Essa Stone. They are very nice and a good selection of colours in Category 1. Apparently it has up to 95% natural quatz, where Caesarstone has 80%.
For those looking at Osprey, there is a near identical one called Crystal Chalk

Here are 3 of the samples, there is at least another one but someone was using it at the time.

This first image shows the Crystal Chalk

Hi tamugrg
I understood from your latest post on Feb 1, that things were under control and that you were pleased with the follow-up plans that PD had in place. If this is not the case, could you please private message me with your concerns and I will have this rectified ASAP. Regards, Helen

Hi ftdt7882
I will enquire about this and get back to you ASAP.
Cheers
Helen

well... 8 (Working) days in total and they have practically completed bricking the ground floor except for a minor section. THis is really exciting now that the house is taking shape..

For anyone who is interested, the bricks I chose are the Melbourne Hawksburn brick with off-white,rolled mortar with the windows in Woodland grey.

I know I mentioned this earlier but now that the ground floor is completed, there are full walls to see the bricks properly... they haven't been washed yet tho.

Ah yes, I have seen that thread! I got some useful things out of it (like a powerpoint on the island kitchen bench!!) but I missed the bit about the bi-fold doors, I may have looked at it before it was added (I've read so much, my mind is like mush!!) hahaha

That bi-fold recessing is a great idea, I will add that to my list!

Thanks, Helen!

I love the colour of your bricks, very nice! Are they slimmer bricks than a standard brick?

Hi ftdt7882,
Have checked this out for you and it would appear contacting Boral is your best option. We don't have many homes built with Brushwood bricks and Boral is very good at being able to let you know the houses in your local area where you can view certain styles of bricks.
Cheers, Helen

Yes, I upgraded to the 50mm brick instead of the standard 76mm