Slight Sloping Block in Craigieburn

Hi Guys,

I have a block of land in Craigieburn. It has a 1.4m slope over the entire block.

I was wondering if anybody could give an approx estimation of the cost that the escavation will be?

The block adjoining mine have commenced building. Do you think that speaking to the builder building next door will give the best approx of the escavation costs. Hopefully there are not many rocks.

Any useful comments would be greatly appreciated.

Hi cutajarp,

There's no way to give you a ballpark figure as there's so many variables particular to each block.

Maybe get a soil test done and get a few different builders to give you a quote. That will give you an idea. Maybe speak to your neighbours but again, each block is different.

Beware the massive underquote, they will get the money from you in the end. No-one likes a $$$$ surprise during the cut.

To avoid this, make sure you get fixed site costs in your contract so you are protected. A lot of builders will fix costs but exclude rock removal. Not sure of the rock situation where you are.

Just be aware that 1.4m will not be considered a slight slope by most builders. Most of the majors only allow 300mm before they sting you.

I am no expert in this area and I'm sure other members can help you out a lot more than me. Just sharing what I have learnt on our journey. We have 3m over the block and 2m over the building area.

Good luck,

Jo

10k per metre drop with M-class slab. I had 2 metres in Greenvale and copped about 20k. This included the side retaining walls and agi pipe for drainage. If you have H class or worse, then expect more.

we built in craigieburn. our block had about a 1 - 1.5 mt fall. we had our site costs fixed into our contract - came to about $10K. We added in a $6K provisional rock removal into the contract (think that's what they called it) should there be a lot of rock. In the end no rock and that $6K was credited back to us.
can't remember our slab class.

Thanks everyone for your advice.

Hi Rose,

I think the slab class around most of Craigieburn is H.

What builder did you end up building with? Where you happy with the overall quality of the builders work & their inclusions?

Rose72 - which builder did you go with if you don't mind me asking, becoz my block has a slope of 1.5m and we are anticipating 10K site costs (hopefully) but 20K is going to kill us!

We have 1.5 M slope with M class and it is going to cost us about 18k at box hill south area

Eeek that's a lot! I assume ours will be in that price range too

Thx for the info tho.

cutajarp & newbie_builder: we built with Metricon. Overall we're happy.

Sorry Rose I don't know who ***** is!

We had a 1.5m or so slope over our block and had about 9k of site costs, most of which were for connections. It really depends on how much slope is over the actual building platform and which way it runs. We only needed a small retaining wall at the front corner.

sorry i forgot the name couldn't be seen - M3tr1c0n

9K! that sounds more like it hehe. Well we have a big tree so we need some root barriers too!

Do builders monitor the forums? how come we aren't allowed to type their proper names? lol

Im sure the root barriers will be a few $$$'s...

Most builders names will show up on the forum. There are one or two that will be starred **** out due to past issues. Some builders certainly do monitor the forum - just make sure to keep posts factual and non-defamatory and we wont have more builders resorting to these measures!

I hope NBG don't stumble upon this forum!

I wish I paid more attention to these site costs BEFORE I bought the land!

thx for all your help!

Fixed site costs are only offered for up to 300mm of fall because after that you can't use a standard slab... so that's when the price goes through the roof. If they have to start digging or filling, that's when it starts getting expensive. Especially if you are in a rocky area!