Jg king site costs

I was wondering if anyone has concerns regarding this builder having excessive site costs I have found with our house 9 new builds in the street 2 jg king homes and they are the only ones with piers in the slab Son looking at building in Bannockburn 8 builds started none with piers jg king want to put 53 piers in his slab due to trees on nature strip. Everybody else has trees too but no piers

Some trees years down the track can course big problems with your slab with their roots drying up your soil and causing excessive slab movement which waffle slabs don't like,I personally would want the better structural slab as slab heave and subsidence are extremely common and hard to fix ,read through this forum to find long battles with poor slabs which most home owners never achieving a good result.

Re the slab...why play Russian Roulette?

Who planted the trees, the developer or the council and what type of tree are they?

At the time we built in our estate near Geelong they were one of the higher cost ones and we were one of only a few with piles. They insisted on screw piles because deep fill. We had the level 1 compaction certificate but their engineers didn't care. Other builders were dropping the piles and cost once the certificate was provided. Over the following couple of years, nearly all of the builds ended up having piling. They all seem to follow each other like sheep.

In the end I feel better that we have them, it was a hard cost to swallow at the time though. Compared to some of the numbers I have heard since, their screw pile price seemed reasonable. I was told that was because of the deal they had with their piling company was per pile, not by depth. You would think that would make them dearer to cover themselves, so I'm not sure how much I believe that. By that stage I didn't trust anything that came out of their mouths.

[quote="SaveH2O"]Re the slab...why play Russian Roulette?

Who planted the trees, the developer or the council and what type of tree are they?[/quote

Developer planted trees because he liked them lemon scented gums planted 1metre front the footpath currently 2metres tall can grow to 35metres council refuse to remove them say they are suitable

Lemon scented gums are a fast growing beautiful tree but I would hate the thought of a tall tree known to drop limbs growing on my nature strip. They are already adding considerable cost to your construction and are not suitable.

The reason why I asked whether it was the developer or the council who planted them is because while the council will be around in years to come, the developer may not be. If you can get the council's refusal to remove the trees in writing, my understand is that the council would most probably be liable for any future damage if they are shown to have ignored sound advice for the trees removal.