Porter Davis homes

Balmain Facade on Wembley - This is a picture that I have of an old display house. PD used to build a house called the Cremorne, which they altered to the Wembley, so this picture I found in the sales office at Leopold last year when the Wembley display house was open there:


This is a picture of the Timber posts we are doing for our Alfresco I mentioned above:


Yes, we plan to do the driveway straight after handover. I am just researching this now.

That looks pretty good to me. In regards to alfresco, aren't they supposed to provide brick/hebel pillar?

But I think we have only std alfresco which needs one pillar, and you have grande alfresco which needs two pillars one on each corner.

Our SC removed coloured driveway from our package $3500. She advised us to get exposed aggregate post handover in same price.

Building manager has not yet gotten in touch with me. Outstanding PCI items that yet still need to get fixed.

PD what a joke. The amount of issues I have had is just astonishing. The thing that really annoyed us during our PCI is they fact our BS said we were getting "too picky". Furthermore, he said he went through the list and assured that everything had been done, yet later to discover they haven't and many things were ignored.

To be honest someone wasn't even probably bought out to have look at our loose roof tiles as discussed in our PCI.

Painter for our house has done a terrible job and has ignored our stickers during his "touch up job".

Normally I'm usually the type to complain and complain but it's gotten to the point where we're extremely disappointed with our PD experience. This is a big investment but some don't seem to realise that.

Once again, what a joke.

I'll post something up soon in regards to the other many issues and what people should look carefully look out for.

This is a photo of an Alfresco at the Ambrosia display homes in Cranbourne that just opened at the start of the year. We really like it, so asked for this instead. On the Grand Alfresco we would have had 1 pillar on each corner and then extra 2 pillars - so 4 pillars in total spanning the 10m width. It is just decorative having the 3 timber poles on the corners - 1 pole is structural.

We didn't have the option of driveway as we are a knockdown/rebuild. No landscaping included.

That would look nice with feature timber pillars in alfresco.

We were managed to put together a home and land package on our block. Driveway and flooring pack were included in H&L package.

We are also researching on concrete all around the house, let's say 0.5m wide.
Apperntly there are variations in thickness 80 or 100mm, reinforcement, and base. lot of concreters don't believe in proper base for around the house.

So while we are in middle of refinancing, and BC allocation all this research is on

1m wide around the house is better. Concrete should be 100mm think as a minimum, double reo and road base is a must.

Landscaping is a real cash burner. Literally it’s money in the ground.

Thanks for your advise, will add this in our notes to make sure when getting quotes.

Last time we designed our backyard, ordered all soil from local gardening company. Then hired a landscaping guy on hourly basis to remove all crap and chuck that in skip (pre arranged). He had a dingo with him.

He spread all soil and leveled it. I think we paid him around $500 for whole job.

After that it was weekends work slow and steady. Agree with you it's hard and expensive, with grass, plants, pebbles and all other stuff.

Hi All

Anyone know what's going on with PD?
All the single story Prestige homes have been given a new name and are now Lifestyle. How does this affect inclusions and upgrades/spectra process?

That's very correct. When attended an invite night with PD about a month ago, they mentioned that prestige range won't offer any single story houses, and all single story prestige will be moved to lifestyle range.

PD wants only large double story in prestige range to make it top of the range.

Once they are lifestyle all inclusions for new houses will be from lifestyle range.

Seems like their new marketing strategy.

I note the PD commentary is VERY quick to respond to the positive feedback...

Cheers Mirz
I think it's great, however, only if client has entire product range to upgrade to

Just wondering if someone built a laundry chute with PD? and what's extra cost involved?

We went to Burbank few months ago, almost every double story house they build has a laundry chute

Mirz, we did. Ours was $1910. (laundry chute)

Tai27, that is very disappointing.. I hope you can get it sorted out very soon. I for one would be keen to see any pics or things to look out for. Good luck...

Hi Tai27,
I apologise, I was under the impression that you had been contacted since my last response. I have escalated your concerns to management and requested that you be contacted ASAP.
Regards, Helen

Can anybody help me with the typical PD end-of-build process? We into our Fixing stage now and I'm starting to wonder what the end will be like. What can I expect?

In particular I'm curious about how PCE works, how long between them finishing and getting the keys, what meetings and paperwork is required, and where does the final step happen (the house or their office)?

Is it an easy process, or should I expect my tender appointment all over again. Do they fix all the defects before handing over the keys, or can it turn into a protracted battle to get everything done?

And finally, what should I be on the lookout for... What are some of the PCI glitches people with PD have encountered?


HD

HI GUys,
Im building the drysdale with Eden Brae in Sydney and just found out PD is the sister company. So ive been looking at all the PD options to compare with our drysdale. The home in sydney has the dining and lounge around hte other way. so the dining is near the sliding door. OUr drysdale is 27sq home i love the way the lounge is near the sliding door. So have a couple of questions.

Anyone building the 28 drysdale can you please tell me how wide your lounge area is from wall to the edge of the study nook wall ours is 3760 leaving 1670 from that to the island bench. i just want to know if our configuration will allow a lounge as per the drysdale display home layout

2. how long is the entire dining living room wall - where windows are. ours is 7220

3. what size are the 3 windows in this area? and how far off the ground.

hope that makes sense. Id really appreciate some help. we sign contract on Wednesday so i dont have much time left to sort everything out. and i want to get this layout thing done correctly. so hard trying to decide what to do.

I'm actually building the Drysdale 30, so my measurements might not be quite the same as yours but here goes...

1. Lounge width (from study nook wall) is 3850mm (we took the nook wall out, it obstructed access to the dining area and kitchen in my mind and closed things up too much
2. Dining/living room wall is 8510mm in length.
3. The three windows are 2400, 1200 and 1200mm wide, all are 1500mm tall and are 2162mm above ground (this is the top edge of the windows, so they all line up at the top)

To help with scale, your Drysdale 27 is 21500 in length, our Drysdale 30 is 24120. I can't easily compare width though, since our garage isn't the standard width. Yours isn't quite the same as the Melbourne PD Drysdale either - the WIR and ensuite angles are different, the dining and living rooms are reversed (as you noticed), and the laundry is switched with the bathroom (an interesting thought, and not something that had previously occurred to me).

It's a great design, but I'd suggest you think about a couple of small tweaks. The open-ness of the design can make cooling a challenge so think about putting some doors in to allow you to compartmentalise things a bit. We put one between the rumpus and living/dining area, another onto the ensuite (open ensuites drive me nuts), and in retrospect should have put one on the home theatre room. We took the nook wall out to open the study onto the dining/living area too, as that wall felt quite oppressive in the display. The garage on ours was too narrow in the standard configuration, there was no way two vehicles would actually fit in there unless one was a bicycle so we widened it by almost 2 meters. We also made sure there was a connecting door the house, along with a back rollerdoor on the garage in place of the odd little side door that is on the Eden Brae plans.

There are a few other small tweaks to the Eden Brae Drysdale design when compared to the PD but it's essentially the same house. I have no doubt they can switch the windows around so you have the living area beside the sliding doors (these are stacker doors for us).

Plenty of people in this thread have the Drysdale, so you should be able to pick lots of people's brains for ideas too.

Hope some of this helps. PM me if you're after very specific details and I can try helping.

Thanks so much for the detailed reply lurgen. Really appreciate it and some great points to consider. We have included doorway on ensuite and through to games room

I love the pd drysdale design better than the Eden brae one. The display home photos look amazing. The colour palette is very light and airy.

Thanks ajd78 for sharing, hummm price looks steep to us. Time to say pass on chute

Our flooring gone up by $3k so time to cut down on extra plans, lol.

Will never ever discuss HN quotes or deals in forum again. Lesson learnt hard way.

Today went to checkout land progress, looking good though very muddy due to heavy rains.

All soggy and muddy


Our driveway is left one. Looking promising for Aug/Sep title/settlement.

Mirz, that is a bit of a bummer re your flooring.....
Land is looking good. Aug is only just around the corner!