Plantation Maya 4 in Warner Qld

I've been reading these forums since we decided to build - so much useful info, especially for us newbs.

So far we've got land (south facing, 15x30 at Warner in Qld), and have selected a plan from a builder (Maya 4 from Plantation).

Here it is sited on our land


It's surprisingly hard to find a layout suitable for a south facing lot! I didn't want any bedrooms to be on the west side of the house, and minimal windows to the west. The large alfresco and adjoining living/dining area put this design to the top of the list. The only issue with the layout is a lack of storage. I hope to amend this by extending the garage and shrinking the alfresco a little:


We'll need to build to the boundary, so hopefully the costs involved won't be too excessive.

Insulation of R1.5 in walls and R3.5 the ceiling is standard, however I would like sarking / anticon under the colorbond roof. The salesman was adamant that it was not necessary as there would be whirlybirds to remove heat and condensation. He event went so far as to say sarking could be bad because water from a leak might collect in the foil and crash through the ceiling all at once. I am skeptical of this ever happening.

I plan on doing the following after handover:

• driveway
• air conditioning
• solar power
• fans / better lighting
• flooring (vinyl plank, no carpets)
• tv antenna
• landscaping
• security screens

I hope to do all the data and phone cabling in the house, I'm not sure if they will let me. Maybe my best is to get the electrician to put some conduit in for us.

There's quite a ways to go, I haven't even gotten my final tender from the salesman yet (although I have placed a deposit to avoid the $2k price rise that occurred this Monday). I'm still even playing with other builder's plans to see if I can make something suitable (and cheaper!).

Hey pnit, nice plan. Anything happened with your build?

I agree that the layout suits the block and an extra metre as you mentioned might work well if still complies with private open space rules (may be none anyway). Bench and bins ... they need a bit of space suited to garage. Good luck and let us know what that costs.

Leonardo_23

Hi guys!

We went in for our tender presentation last Friday. I thought I had budgeted enough for extra site costs as I knew we there was an 80% chance of H1 soil. I thought wrong.

We do have H1. But there was also more slope than anticipated, necessitating in extra cut and fill. And the fill can't go over the easement, so I needed to have a small retaining wall at the back - which also resulted in a drop edge beam. And the neighbour's lot is lower than ours, so another beam on the side....

*sigh. $11k over budget in the first 5 minutes of the presentation. Oh well, it is what it is.

I think the worst part about this is I invested so much time looking for smart designs that will reduce energy costs (eaves, location of windows etc), only to lose my northern eaves because of my rear easement. At least I received $900 credit.

I used sweet home 3d to simulate sun position during the year and it turns out that during the hottest months the sun is actually parallel to and directly above my north wall and will not actually beam directly into my (tiny) bedroom window. At least I got lucky there.

The tender presentation went surprisingly well. I was going to do the driveway myself, but our presenter gave us a very competitive price that included termite protection and a builders warranty.

Here is my updated (and hopefully final) plan:



Changes:

• Lengthened garage
• Extra linen storage near garage entry
• Moved fridge space (wife wants a french door fridge later)
• Extended shower in ensuite (thanks to MalinViktoria on this thread
• Window between vanity mirrors in ensuite

Inclusions:

• Slab to alfresco
• Slab to porch
• Carpet and laminate floors (I wanted vinyl throughout but the builder is so competitive on price and the site costs put me on a very tight budget)
• Stone benchtops in kitchen and bathrooms
• Glass splashback (my wife didn't get the memo about site costs
  )
• Bedsheets for window coverings (see site costs)

I have 2 weeks until my colour appointment. Any body have any budget conscious ideas for the facade? My covenant requires the use of different materials so I figured I would just render the front columns. Pretty much like the builder's mockup.

Good stuff pnit, looks fine

Full speed ahead and good luck

Leonardo_23

Looking good. We built with PH - quite happy with result.

Came in on time and under budget.

Changes looks great, shame about the site costs though!

Have you got an external door in the laundry?

Looking forward to another house going up in Warner.
May i ask what division you purchased in?

Also have you considered doing your own retaining walls? It might be cheaper. Plant and the big M can be a bit expensive when it comes to this.
Might decrease your costs a bit.

No doors or windows on that side of the house as it is built to boundary. We only have a 15m frontage and our house is 25cm too large to fit without building to the boundary. It would have been nice to be able to put aircon / gas bottles on both sides of the house, but only having 1.5m clearance to the fences would have been awful.




We purchased a lot in The Reserve, Edgewater. We might be able to see the water from our alfresco if we get lucky (doubtful though)

We only need a small retaining wall built - maybe 40cm?? I've yet to get some quotes (thanks for reminding me!) but I was led to believe that PH's quote of $1.5k is much lower than their usual, and may only come in a bit more expensive than getting an external contractor to do it. I really like the idea of PH being responsible for the site prep so it's covered under warranty.

Any further progress?

Yes, progress.

We've completed our colour selections and electrical and are currently just twiddling thumbs until the land is registered. It was supposed to happen in September, then end of October... Should be soon - I visited the site on the weekend and saw that I have 3 neighbours with slabs. The DHA get their land first, then us civilians so it shouldn't be long now.

There was a slight issue with Plantation about getting our own electrician on site. The electrical upgrades are ridiculously priced - but Plantation were quite adamant that they would not allow any other contractors on site. I ended up settling this by talking to my original salesman, who talked to the construction manager for North Brisbane, who talked to who knows who else (admin I guess). Following this my next post-contract variation stated a $1000 provisional cost for any damage caused on site by my electrician. Caveat to this is we are just doing a rough in and not actually terminating any cables.

With the current Brisbane heat (ughhh) I've been rethinking my longstanding position on waiting one summer before installing any air-conditioning. I know we'll eventually get it, but the issue has always been ducting or split, and if split, where will we put the compressors. One person suggested I can mount a compressor on the roof to avoid having one near my alfresco (not totally sold on that idea). I'm planning to ask some professionals this week for their opinions. Any ideas are welcome

Almost forgot - we did make one final change to the main bedroom / ensuite:



This layout allows us to have a bigger shower and gives us a large wall to hang a tv and / or art. I've asked them to place an extra noggin on the wall for hanging a tv. Any auxiliary electronics can also be kept in the robe wired through the wall quite easily. The WIR is slightly smaller, but the hanging space is about the same. We've asked them to leave out the shelving so we can do our own - it shouldn't be too difficult as now the WIR is a regular shape.

The wait is a killer.

We're in brisbane too and this past weekend was awful. We are also questioning whether we made the right decision to exclude air con. However we've chosen a solar passive design to suit the orientation of our corner block, so hopefully it won't be too bad.

Let's see your colour selections!

I've been pretty slack with posting as work and life and actual building have gotten in the way.

I'll go through with a quick timeline of events.

Jan 14 - Slab. There was a long delay till our frame could be delivered. So we spent a few weekends inspecting the slab with the kids - figuring out who's room is where and what sized alfresco furniture we could fit.

Feb 26 - Frame. I planned to take the telescope out to view stars from my living room but the weather didn't agree with me. The alfresco feels huge, and we remembered why we fell in love with large stacker doors.

March 8 - Roof. The 25 degree pitch results in a roof much higher than I expected. I could fit another whole living room in there! Anticon was there, as well as all the relevant ducts and whirlybirds.

March 10 - Glass. Windows and external doors! We forgot to add privacy glass to the bathroom .

March 11 - Electrical. I met the builder's electrician at the site so I could move a few things. No hassles.

March 13-15 - More electrical. I had my electrician add extra power and lights. He makes me feel like I went a bit overboard as we used up quite a bit of wire and I'm quite big on layering lights. eg. In the theatre I'm having 2 wall lights, 2 downlights, a switched lamp socket and (maybe) a light fan. I also ran data cables (everywhere!) and speaker cables for tvs and the alfresco. While I had control of the site I decided to insulate the internal bedroom walls with earthwool acoustic batts. Hopefully the plasterers don't rip them out.

March 16 - Bricks and Batts. The brickies work quickly! In one day the managed to do a bit less than half the house.

March 17 - Plasterer is supposed to come in today. Fingers crossed the won't find offense with my batts. The supervisor saw them and just told me to push in the edges, and I asked one of the insulation tradies and he told me they seem fine. I guess I'll drive by the site later to check the scrap pile to see if the pulled any out.

I can add images later if anyone is interested...

I'd love to see some images of how it's all coming together

We're building plantation in Brisbane too (Springfield) so keen to hear your thoughts!

Hi pnit! We're with Plantation too, but at the opposite end of SEQ to you - in Ormeau The Maya was our original design, but I wanted to flip the front so that the garage was in the south corner of our lot and the alfresco stayed in the north corner...But when I did that, we ended up with a kink in the hallway (so when you walked in the entrance you were looking at a wall, not down the length of the house) That was an absolute dealbreaker for my husband, so we had to go back to the drawing board, and ended up choosing a Bronte 4 - again, we flipped the front and then flipped the whole plan to make the best use of the block orientation. Our site scrape happened last week and setout is scheduled for tomorrow

With the glass in the bathroom, we did remember that but *didn't* remember the front door side light. So we will probably put film over it. It's not too expensive and probably less hassle than replacing the glass later?

Looking forward to watching your progress

I think it's about $34 to get enough film from Bunnings to cover a bathroom window. Or we could get it professionally done for around $200. The funny thing is I remembered the ensuite and front door, I just happened to forget the largest of the windows we wanted private.

I was really surprised it wasn't included to be honest. I actually thought it should be something that's a requirement for bathrooms but it's apparently not. I just had a panic and had to go back to check both bathroom and ensuite and laundry half-glazed door were all obscure - luckily they were, whew! So the only window that isn't obscured is the front door and sidelights.

Have been looking at the progress of your Maya 4. We are building the same in Noosa. It has taken a while since we signed contracts back at the end of November last year. Plus we have a large covenant to adhere to and a month long of wet weather. Finally a month ago they started. Putting in the ingrained water take and earthworks. The slab is finished, the frame is up as well as guttering. The roof is ready to go up. We saw it today. Our land was 715 but because of the covenant restrictions and the size of the building envelope we had to flip the house so that the garage was on the left but it has worked out well as two sides of our land back onto bush so we only have a house one side. All the living areas are facing bush. We had to lose the 4th bedroom because of easements. Everything else stays the same. We have been waiting a fair while but things look like they are moving quicker as the build is already a month behind. We are getting Plantation to do everything except the air con. The upgrades we have is the cooker and a wider island bench. We would have liked more re the stacker doors but like everything else (cost). So will be following your thread with interest.