PH Eclipse Q1 - Brisbane build

Hi all, I’ve been following these forums for a while now, time to dive in.

A brief intro....

We have finally committed to pulling down our Brisbane 1960’s 3 bed workers cottage, nothing to write home about & way too much work to renovate to what we want, and building a new home.
We have settled on a Plantation Homes Eclipse Q1 (Coastal Facade) with modifications. So far PH have been great in dealing with our changes (e.g. removed theatre room and re-designing WIR’s, yes now 2!, laundry, study ,powder room/etc). The price has gone up and up but we expected that and it is still way less than a custom design/build company that we wasted 6 months with (a whole other story....)

We are now only a couple of weeks away from signing the contract have a few questions.....this is our first build.....please be gentle.....

1. We feel we are getting pushed into the signing the contract with PH telling us that all outstanding item costs will be handled via “Post Contract Variations” Is this OK or should we insist that as much costing as possible (I understand that some things can only occur later) be documented in the original contract?

2. For those of you that have built with colorbond roofing, did you install sarking (silvery foil) under the c’bond as PH don’t and advise that it’s not needed?

3. For those out there that supplied their own cooking/kitchen equipment, did your builder install them during the build or did you have to wait till handover and have an installer come back and do it later?

Thanks for any advice.

Phill B.

Congrats on the decision to build!



My advice would be to get everything you can into the contract before you sign the dotted line. At this stage you have all the negotiation power and by ensuring it's all in the contract you've got control of the budget and it will keep the bank happy. Post contract variations should only be for things that you change your mind on - I don't know about PH, but many project builders charge like a wounded bull for any changes after the contract is signed.



Colorbond on both my builds. In QLD every little bit to improve the energy efficiency of your house the better. The below data sheet from Bradford shows that sarking can have a major impact on heat radiation both in and out of your roof. http://www.bradfordinsulation.com.au/Br ... 9d290c.pdf



My experience has been, if it hasn't been supplied by the builder, they don't want anything to do with it, so that they can't be held liable for any warranty claims .

Where in Brisbane are you building? We've been through a similar process of knock-down & rebuild in Wavell Heights (northside). We also flirted with the idea of an architect-designed house but the costs were prohibitive. We settled on a (significantly) modified design from Adenbrook. First build for us also so I'm sure I'll make plenty of mistakes. Enjoy the process I say, otherwise you may end up hating the house before it is even finished.

Thanks for the responses.



We're building in Sherwood, low side. We did get a bit of flood water on our property but no real damage. This has actually benefited us by allowing the max height to go up from the standard 8.5m to 9.5m. The house goes next week, cut in half and trucked away!

Ah... an architect designed home, file under “seemed like a good idea at the time”. We talked to 3 architects to start with, ruled out 2 who wanted $80k+ just for design & the third wasn't really interested in out 'small' project. Next step was a custom design/home builder. We engaged them (paid a few thousand dollars for the privilege) told them our budget which they were fine with, worked through a design only to have them come back 30% over the agreed budget. We then spent the next 4 months trying to scale back the design to get it within budget until it so far away from what we wanted we cut our losses and went looking for another design.
At this stage we were pretty dejected with the whole process. We stumbled across Plantation Homes via a friend of a friend who has just had house finished by them and had a good experience. We want ground floor living, sleeping, everything but wanted the upper floor for guests and future resale and the Eclipse was the answer, albeit modified which PH has done.

I am also following this forum for a while and this is my first post.

We are also thinking to build with Plantation (Henley) and advised by the sales person that we might hear the noise of rainfall on the roof if we go with colorbond roof and suggested to use tiles. He wasnt pushing us but advised us that colorbond will be noisy compared to tiles over the roof.

Still in the initial stage and havent decided the builder yet.

Congratulations on finding a builder to build your home, sounds like you have been on quite a journey already. I would put as much into the tender as you can before you sign the contract. Our PCV's have blown out of the water which we are having to pay ourselves as not included in the bank loan. I think it would be difficult for us to borrow more money as the bank have lent on both debts, the land and home construction, and not on our end debt, which will be reduced when we sell our existing home. Based on both debts, we have no room to borrow more money. Thankfully we have savings to cover our PCV's.

Do you have savings to cover any PVC's? If not, have you got your finance organised yet? Check your maximum borrowing capacity so if you do get PVC's then you know if you have the capacity to apply to the bank to cover it.

Thanks Onewheel,

Yes, it has been an interesting journey so far. We’ve hit some resistance from the contract presenter who isn’t happy with us demanding a full and detailed tender with an accurate final contract cost. Finance is in place, but again, a fully spec’d contract will confirm we are still working within our budget. As for the few PCV’s that will occur (I’m a realist) we have a contingency stashed away to cover these.
This issue will be sorted out early this week. If not, easy, we walk away from them and find something else to build....maybe even owner build…

Hi Phill

We are just about to start construction with Plantation Homes on northside of Brisbane. This our third time building. We're building the Retreat 20m Q1 with ALOT of modifications. In fact - we loved the Eclipse kitchen sooo much that we pulled the retreat kitchen out of the plans and replaced it with the Eclipse kitchen, so the kitchen now faces out over the back yard and where the staircase in your Eclipse is, well that's now a storage room on our plans - huge amounts of drafting to get it all to fit together.

We racked up 9 New Home Proposals and we are onto our 1st post contract variation. We got almost all of our extras put in the new home proposals as we wanted to see what we were up for.

We are going colorbond roof, and are going with sarking. Have read a lot of debate re this and we decided to go with it.

We are also providing some of our kitchen appliances (we are providing 2 x 60cm ovens and induction cooktop). Plantation wouldn't allow us to provide and them install (unlike some other builders). Plantation are doing the fully integrated dishwasher (as we had big issues with them providing the laminated cupboard door if we installed after handover, and they are also doing our rangehood, as again we had big issues if we did it after handover because of the glass splashback - just easier if they did those things).

Hope this helps!
Bel

Thanks Bel for your reply, helps a whole lot!

I was starting to think that I was getting a bit nit-picky about the costing and getting the contract correct but reading you story, no I’m just being thorough. We are only up to NHP #3 and our contract presenter isn’t real interested in updating it again before she wants us to sign the contract. Any changes will be done via a post contract variation. This scares the hell out of me as I’ve read the contract conditions regarding variations, one being if the owner wants a variation the builder can refuse without giving reason, i.e. I need to lock in everything that’s important to our fit-out/finishes now and have PH agree to it.

Anyway, Our Eclipse. We liked the downstairs master suite so that’s the main reason for going with PH and the Eclipse. Alterations - We removed the theatre room and put in a hall to the garage, a shower/powder room, a bigger laundry and another WIR, one for me and one for her. Also added 1.2m to the garage width. Added a server room, accessed from the garage and takes up some of the area of the study. I'm a designer/draftsman so I drew everything up I wanted including the entire kitchen layout, and sent it back to them only to have my computer sketches incorporated into 'their' drawings - one way of getting exactly what I want!

We approached the kitchen the same way as yourselves, we ditched all their appliances and spec’d it with all our own stuff including the kitchen sinks (they’ve let us supply them for both kitchen and pantry). They will install our range hood as it’s built into the overheads, but they weren’t going to do anything else. Our dishwashers are two P&F dish draws either side of the sink with integrated cabinet fronts. Now that I know that they will install them, I’ll insist they do ours as well. We also mirrored/rotated the layout so the ‘splashback’ is an outside window, and our pantry has an extra cupboard/bench for a microwave cubby hole.

We are also going with sarking, everyone I’ve actually talked to said we’d be mad not to install it especially here in Brisbane.

Quick rendered image of the kitchen, ignore flooring, colours will be similar - we think.....

Overall, PH have let us do just about anything we want regarding layout and specifying equipment/etc. It’s just now getting down the final stage before signing that the pressure’s on to get going with it.

Good luck with your build, and keep us informed of any issues – good, bad or just interesting!


Phill B.

We are also building with Plantation. In regards to the post contract variations here is some tips from me:
Your electrical & colour selections get processed as post contract variations if they exceed Plantation's estimated line items. Best to up the $ estimates for them in your contract so that you don't need to go back to the bank later on.

Some suggestions on where to add extra $ to your contract on top of PH's allocation for:
- Tiles (To cover floor to ceiling etc). We added $3k and only spent $1200 of that which I was quite surprised about!
- Carpet (we added an additional $3k and used $2k of that)
- Supply as much as your own electrical fittings as possible (Downlights, pendants, fans, Exhaust/lights etc). Don't be detered by their "We don't install fans supplied by clients". They don't, but their electrical supplier does & you can just pay them on site with no 30% mark up. The fans and downlights PH supply are cheap & nasty and 4 times the price.
We chose a lot of our lights & fans ahead of time and just watched for the sales and I ended up spending $1400 for $3000 worth of lights. And they look ten times better than what PH could supply. There are some great sales out there. Also try Mica Lighting online as well they are great.

Good tips, thanks. I understand that final colour selection and electrical items will come after contract signing and that we price in a large enough allowance for them. What we are struggling with is getting PH to include/exclude big ticket items now e.g. flooring. The price to get it done after handover is over $10K cheaper for us to do it. When we told PH this there response was not to worry about it, just leave it in the contract for now and remove it via a PCV later.

Our big worry is that an owner requested variation does not have to be agreed to by the builder and the builder doesn’t even have to give a reason why. Would a builder agree to drop an item that will cost them $10k in clear profit?

I never thought about it in regards to PH not allowing us to remove things after contract, because you are right, they told us to put everything in the NHP we could think of, and then we could take them out if we wanted. But in saying that we did do that via NHP's, maybe that's why we got up to NHP9 (!). There were a few things we had in our contract that we have removed via the post contract variation. An example was going from a 90mm cove cornice (in our contract as an upgrade) back down to the standard 75mm (we changed our mind in colour selection so it was a deduction on our post contract variation). Also, we upgraded a fair bit in our colour selection, so when we got the post contract variation with all the upgraded colour selection prices, we just asked to have the things we weren't prepared to pay for taken out of the post contract variation, which they did, before we signed the amended post contract variation. We have had dealings with a number of staff and some have been just terrible re customer service, help and assistance, but our most latest point of contact is Paula and she has been really fabulous. She is our pre-site administrator. We too queried a lot of prices, and on some of the items ie our ovens and cooktop, we could get them ALOT cheaper and when we asked why their price was so high, they just said that that was their price and we could get our own stuff and put in after handover, which is what we have done (except for the dishwasher and rangehood which opened up another can of worms if we did that after handover!).

Hi, sorry to go a bit off-topic, but did you do that render image yourself?

We a building a Retreat Vogue Q1 with Plantation and while we've finished colour selection I'd love to see our kitchen - I have no imagination and am questioning our choices!

Yep – my render work. I’m pretty luck that I have access to some AutoDesk products that I can play around with.

My better half and I have sat down in front of the PC and changed the colours and lighting to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t. I’ve also done the same thing for the bathroom and laundry. It’s given us a narrow range of colours and finishes that we like prior to our colour selection meeting.

Hi Bel,

Do you have an image of your retreat with the eclipse kitchen in it? I love the retreat but I found the kitchen looking at a wall the only disappointing part. But that sounds like a great idea. Any also how much extra that costs for those modifications?

Hi Bel,

Do you have an image of your retreat with the eclipse kitchen in it? I love the retreat but I found the kitchen looking at a wall the only disappointing part. But that sounds like a great idea. Any also how much extra that costs for those modifications?

First of all, I love your plan - I was so interested I googled it to see the floorplan and facade! Lovely and HUGE! When you upgraded the facade, does that include all the features in the picture like the stacked stone, etc?

Secondly...can anyone tell me what the heck sarking is?! It's too late for us to have it now as we are in council, but we don't have it, and I didn't even know it existed so I didn't ask for it! This is what our roof inclusions are:

Roof Covering & Frame Work:
Roof Pitch – 22.5 Degrees
Roof - Colorbond custom orb sheets
Roof - PVC down pipes to stormwater system
Roof - Colorbond rainwater fixtures
Cyclone rods to roof
600mm lined eaves
Framework – Engineered treated pine frames
Framework – Engineered treated pine trusses

Insulation:
Insulation to external walls
Insulation – Sisalation and anticon insulation to roof

Can anyone shed some light? lol!

Hi Chasie1,

I will attempt to post a plan of it... I haven't posted a pic before (!).

It is the retreat Q1 20m and we pulled the kitchen and theatre out of it, and replaced it with the Eclipse kitchen and theatre (the staircase in the Eclipse is now our 'store' room. We also halved the retreat laundry, and replaced it with the Trinity powder room.

I too disliked the fact that when in the kitchen you looked at the theatre wall. Now we're looking straight out to the back yard and standing at the island bench, you can look straight into the theatre and watch the telly (hehe)!

If you go onto the plantation homes website and look at the pictures of the Eclipse, you will get the idea of what our kitchen will look like. We have put a door on the pantry though (the Eclipse has an open pantry).

http://i1308.photobucket.com/albums/s615/belandchris/FLOORPLAN_zps03e40618.jpg