Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Feb 08, 2010 10:10 pm I have a few questions in preparation for our final inspection. 1) One of our stained timber frame windows had a five cm long chunk missing where there was a knot in the wood. That has just been puttied over with some matching putty, and we notice the difference between the real wood and the putty. Won't the real wood shrink a little over time, leaving the putty proud of the wood surface? Have others succeeded in having their window replaced for such a fault? 2) The weather proof seals in our rosewood stained bifold doors are white (!) and have been installed so that they are higher than the timber of the door. Hence they are very noticeable and rather ugly. Other bifold doors that I've seen use a darker seal which is mounted so that it is not proud of the door frame. Has anyone else had such a poor installation and if so where they able to get it fixed by the builder? 3) We asked for deadlocks on all the external doors. They have fitted a deadlock to the bifold doors that is able to be defeated by simply unlatching the locks on the doors and folding it - the door simply slides out from the deadlock. Do others have a lock fitted that would prevent someone opening the door from the inside without a key? It rather makes a mockery of having paid extra for deadlocks throughout the house. 4) The man hold cover is made from a section of a door, so has no real rigidity along two of its edges. Is this, assuming they haven't replaced it since I was last inside, acceptable? 5) How picky can one be about the paint work? Have I paid for perfection? If not, do I ignore small imperfections, bumps, runs and so on? I assume that where repair patches can be seen, I can get the builders to repaint the whole surface so that it is no longer visible, judging by what I've read in other people's threads. How demanding were you with the quality of the painting? 6) The external floodlights are mounted much lower than we expected, and will shine in our eyes as we walk along the paths. The contract only specifies that they are not to be installed less than 1800 mm above the floor height and I'm almost 1.9 m tall. We increased our ceiling height to 2740 mm so there is plenty of room for the floodlights to be mounted higher on the wall. What would you do? Ask them to be moved? Roll with it and pay an electrician to move them to a more sensible height? Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Final inspection questions 2Feb 09, 2010 9:24 am Not sure about your other questions but our painter (we got in our own) was a perfectionist. He said that you shouldnt accept anything less than that. We have no bumps, no thin patches, and he filled in every single dent and hole before commencing. He is even coming back after we move in to repair any damage caused by move. Re: Final inspection questions 3Feb 09, 2010 10:21 am Wow. Sounds like you've found a wonderful painter, EKT! Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Final inspection questions 4Feb 09, 2010 11:25 am 1- I would not accept this and make them replace with a 100% quality frame not a damaged one. 2- I guess if no colour stated in your contract you can ask but cross your fingers. (whats displayed?) 3- If you specified deadlocks and its in your contract you should have deadlocks and nothing less. 4- I wouldnt accept wheres your manhole cover?? You didnt pay for a scrap of wood. 5- I am going to point out EVERY little dot dent scratch reflection I can see, you are right you paid top dollar do the job properly! 6- They should be 2m from the ground Re: Final inspection questions 5Feb 09, 2010 7:56 pm I have some questions too! 1) They haven't put the fence up yet in most areas (inspection Thu!). Nearly the whole way on one side, some just at the front before crossover on the other except this side has our neighbour who tried to serve us when then fence went down (LONG story) and is threatening to take us to court to get the rest put back up. I've asked a couple of times and it's still not up. Can we actually delay the PC payment for this? Because I don't know how they can get us to inspect it if there is no fence - it's kind of important so I've heard.... 2) Our spa pump isn't in so it can't be used - once again can we delay PC payment for this as it's not practically complete? 3) The joins of our cornices have cracks in most rooms - will they fix this or is it too little? It's just a crack but very noticable against the white paint. 4) There are some small chips in the plaster in the rooms that had tiles/cupboards put in. Will they patch them? They are small but there's a few and it's going to be a big pain patching up and sanding back after handover. Re: Final inspection questions 6Feb 09, 2010 9:29 pm Thanks, Kateypink, for your thoughts. I'll see how we go tomorrow. Just over 14 hours to go. Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Final inspection questions 11Feb 11, 2010 12:09 pm Thanks for your questions EKT and Ari. We are basically happy. My DW went to the H3nley display houses just before and checked out some of our questions. For example, she found that the weather seal on the bifold doors was the same colour and installed the same way as ours. We found some paint issues that will be addressed, and a few other little things such as loose towel rails. A junction box, that we asked to be installed in the ceiling, was installed internally, on a bedroom wall. (It would have been clearer if we had asked for it to be installed in the roof cavity, I guess.) The handover rep said that he would check the documentation and see what he could do. Kevin, of New Home Inspections, attended and indicated that he was quite happy with the overall quality. He did pick up a scratched window that we had missed. The big problem is that the cavity for the oven is not the correct dimension - someone appears to have misunderstood Miele's installation brochure. We have yet to hear how quickly they are able to deal with that. Once H3nley receives Kevin's report, which has promised to have sent by Friday, we will receive a settlement date. Can't wait for the date!!! We need some certainty. More later - I'm still stymied by my work computer's hard drive having gone down with a blown power supply and it will be another 8 hours before I'm back online properly. In the meantime, I have to go to work. Overall, we are quite happy with how the house is. Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Final inspection questions 13Feb 12, 2010 8:24 am kateypink Sound pretty good. Dont know about the oven thing eekk! Good luck for a quick settlement date! Thanks, kateypink. I hadn't picked up on this until our handover manager asked us as he thought it looked small. And I was so proud of myself for realising, earlier, that an incorrect sized pipe had been run through the wall and roof cavity for our air conditioning. How the proud do fall! Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Final inspection questions 14Feb 12, 2010 8:50 am Re issues 1 and 3: We have some minor imperfections in our window frames (nail holes and the like) filled and they certainly don't jump out at us. We did however, have some issues with acid damage to most of our timber window and door frames (over-zealous brick cleaning ), and our builder simply got the manufacturer to replace the affected parts of the frame. They could have been sanded smooth, but the likelihood of further deterioration over time was our concern. With a 5cm scar, I guess the location would determine whether I'd want the piece of timber replaced or not. If it's somewhere that's not very noticeable, I don't think I'd worry. Your bifolds should have keyed bolts to stop them being opened from inside when deadlocked. There should be bolts top and bottom on every second leaf, and the bottom drop bolts should have a keyhole like this: If your door manufacturer doesn't provide them as standard you can always have some fitted later on. By the way, your paintwork should be free of runs and bumpy bits - have a read of your specifications; it should explain what's acceptable. I know ours did..... Re: Final inspection questions 15Feb 12, 2010 9:50 am Thanks, kek. Indeed, the bottom sliding bolts on the bifold doors must have been replaced by ones with locks between when we last were inside the house and our official inspection. Just like the ones in your photo! We had slid the original ones up and opened the doors despite the deadlock, totally defeating the purpose of having a deadlock. We will see how the repairs to the wood turn out. The knot hole in the window frame is still noticeable despite their attempt at a repair. They will darken the paint on the putty, and if that helps, good. Otherwise... Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Final inspection questions 16Feb 12, 2010 10:28 am You must have put a second photo up. Many thanks - it is very clear! Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! Re: Final inspection questions 17Feb 14, 2010 6:38 pm I've just read through the report from our independent inspector. (The Kevin that all who have read through this forum know about.) I'm so glad that we got him to inspect. It was money very well worthwhile having spent! I checked for seals between the bifold doors and assumed, because they had been installed, that all was okay. They didn't install the seals on the top or bottom! All up, he picked up on 31 points, some relatively minor that we could live with, some that have to be fixed. A couple were ones that I pointed out to the [st,h]andover man who claimed that they could be repaired, but Kevin provides reasons why the damaged item must be replaced. We should be given our settlement date now that the independent inspector's report is in the builder's hands. I'll let you all know how quickly Henley think that they are able to rectify the problems in their handiwork. Pfiff Finally making progress again, with a clothesline (yippee) and some much needed little things being attended to over the holidays. 40 C on New Year's eve? We love our a/c! i would suggest nothing is unreasonable for PCI. we did all sorts, including checking the hot water, checking all the GPO's had power, testing that the showers were… 9 98548 The significant date is when receive final payment invoice Check that section of contract Bit of fluff by builders prior to that 1 15835 Hi, I am approaching end of the build. My final invoice will be given to me soon to pay. Some context before I ask my question. 1. My builder wont do the landscaping or… 0 3826 |