Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Jul 20, 2010 10:44 am Hi all, We (OH and I ) went for our color selection last night, and all went well, till we came to brick selection. We have to have a dark brick for the land we are building on and the builder only had 2 dark bricks in the range. First one was Blackheath which we didnt want as we are after black color not brown, and wouldnt go with anything else we wanted so the next step was an upgrade to Victorian blue. We thought No biggy we are happy to upgrade. They then gave us the price for the upgrade and it came in around $6500 OMG I nearly had a fit. I expected $1000 or $2000 but $6500. Just want to know is this normal for a brick upgraded price????? What have others paid for there upgrade????? My OH is going to price both the bricks today to see what difference they are and see if the builder is taking us for a long ride off a short pier!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Looking forward to your responses Cheers Janet Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 2Jul 20, 2010 10:56 am Sounds about right if it's the brick I'm thinking. Is it the Boral one? I think Victorian Blue is around a Cat 6 upgrade for most builders, so that price seems ballpark. We went for a Cat 3 brick and our upgrade price was $2 113 but for Cat 6 it was around 6k. I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Terrence Malick Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 3Jul 20, 2010 11:11 am Thanks Joles, Its such a mine field out there that its hard to tell whats right and wrong. With our builder we where a cat 1 and the Vic blue is a cat 3 OH just rang and he has been and priced them and if it was us buying them we would have had to pay an extra $700 NOT $6000 so looks like we will be in too see builder. You would imagine he can get them cheaper than what we can so it seems he was hoping to get a markup profit af around $5000. Hmmm will be interesting to see where this ends up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cheers Janet Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 4Jul 20, 2010 11:46 am Janet, It does sound right. What you do need to remember is that every builder is given different pricing from likes of Boral and PGH. Whilst the retail price may not be as high as the builder's upgrade it could be certainly costing them that much to upgrade your bricks. To give you an example we picked Leura from Boral which would cost an additional $2268. After our colour selection and a few issues with Leura we wanted to swap to another brick which we knew had a cheaper retail price than Leura. However our builder was not able to get them at the retail price and it was going to cost another $1000 on top of the upgrade cost. We also confirmed with Boral that builder's pricing for the new brick was higher than they pay for Leura. Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 5Jul 20, 2010 3:11 pm Just out of interest, how do they categorise bricks? Good luck, would be interesting to hear what you builder says. I can't imagine they would be willing to negotiate though. Best of luck Dear J.K. Rowling, Your books are entirely unrealistic. I mean, a ginger kid with two friends? Sincerely, Anonymous Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 6Jul 20, 2010 4:34 pm I have no idea how they catagorise bricks... But our 32sq house cost $1700 to upgrade bricks from Selkirk "Muskat Haze" to Boral "Mocha" Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 7Jul 20, 2010 4:38 pm The categories are done by the ingredients I think. It's nothing to do with the quality, they're all pretty much the same. But some ingredients are more expensive than others and that dictates the cost. This is my understanding of it, but I'm not 100% sure and happy to be corrected by someone who does actually know. I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Terrence Malick Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 8Jul 20, 2010 4:42 pm We didn't bother upgrading ours, the only bricks we liked were the standard ones. But if I had the choice of grey bricks, which we didn't, I would have paid $6500. You just can't put a price on prettiness Dear J.K. Rowling, Your books are entirely unrealistic. I mean, a ginger kid with two friends? Sincerely, Anonymous Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 9Jul 20, 2010 6:21 pm Hi everyone and thanks for your replies I am waiting on OH to come home after being at the builders so I will update as I know more. ROFL @ little misses your right you cant put a price on prettiness but unfortunatly it's prob not the brick I would have choosen given the choice but there is covernents on the land tha state that building must be of a dark color. (you would think with 7 acres almost in the middle of nowhere it wouldnt matter but apparently it does ) Cheers Janet Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 10Jul 20, 2010 6:42 pm Do they mean no light coloured bricks, like the Austral Nougat brick? But may allow various Browns and Reds. Perhaps you could ask for examples or clarification on what they constitute as a dark brick Dear J.K. Rowling, Your books are entirely unrealistic. I mean, a ginger kid with two friends? Sincerely, Anonymous Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 11Jul 20, 2010 6:53 pm My upgraded bricks (couldn't tell you what category they were off the top of my head) for a 42 square double storey were $7500.....and worth every cent! Henley - Wilshire Mk 3 ... I love my house!! Site start: 4th Feb 09 Handover: 10th Sep 09 Blog: http://stormygirlscastle.blogspot.com/ Build Thread: viewtopic.php?t=7166 Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 12Jul 20, 2010 8:04 pm Well OH aka Hubby is home with good news He spoke to builder and told him he had priced the bricks himself and could get them for 1/2 the price he had quoted us on which turns out the same price the builder gets them for!!!!!!!! Builder first of all blamed the color consultant and said she got the price wrong Which is crap because they worked it our between them while we sat outside office and watched!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then explained the pricing it all to Hubby and between them figured out it is in fact only $3000 upgrade. We are happy with that and will most prob proceed with that price. So I think it proves that sometimes its worth questioning the builder over these things. I also think it helps that my Hubby is a tradie himself so has a bit of an idea on how it all works. Thank you every one for your imput. Cheers Janet Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 13Jul 20, 2010 10:51 pm Hi Janet, Good to hear you got it sorted to a reasonable figure, we had brick choice issues very early on and after a bit of investigation and chatting to a number of suppliers and the builders upper management, in the general sense most builders categorize bricks based on their individual contract with the supplier, the popularity, availability and any additional difficulty in laying, type of brick and materials. To break it down, firstly contractual obligations for us Places has a specific contractual agreement with Austral, so Boral, PGH were completely off the cards which was one of the issues we encountered. Popularity - If a brick is popular with the builders customer, the more they buy the greater the volume discount they can get from the supplier. Hence why you'll get different colours and finishes from the same ranges appearing in different categories. Availability -If the supplier has loads on hand, or has a very high turnover and plentiful supply of materials then costs are lower and its easy for them to guarantee supply to the builder. Type and materials - Specific types of bricks that aren't the usual mainstream pressed, eg multiple side color glazed, sandstock etc etc take more time and materials and more processes to make hence they attract a higher cost, the same as any that are getting hard to produce say the particular clay supply is starting to run low so more and more variation is occurring, tends to lead to discontinuation of lines. Also of note here is that sometimes things like with Austral where they discontinued several lines as they chose to decommission a furnace rather than repair it meant they dropped a number of ranges, which in turn lead to shortages and an increase in price. Difficulty in laying and waste. Any brick type that takes a brick layer longer to place due to its uneven shape, or need to spend extra trime to ensure good blending in a glazed surface means the builder has to pay more for a better brickie to do the job so they don't get unhappy customers (in theory at least ). Its one reason why most volume builders dont allow sandstock or other non uniform bricks as they require more skill and time to get right. Also when you look at glazed bricks or any brick with a coloured finish, these tend to show damage much more easily than those that just use the natural clay colour, hence in terms of face bricks there can be a substantial amount of increase in waste per pallet, or it may require a different or more time consuming way of finishing. Just look at what Cazoraz went through with their Nougat bricks in chips and cleaning. Then you have to add the builders profit they add to everything. So basically to sum up, the reason why there seems to be little rhyme or reason to builders brick categories is that no one single factor determines it, its the multiple factors that vary continuously along with how they effect one another which determines it. At the end of the day, it isn't necessarily JUST the material cost which is changing in the eyes of the builder. Our Build - Places Fairhaven 23+ - https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=28045 Our Landscaping - Belial's Backyard - https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=45375 Re: Does this sound right cost of upgrade bricks 14Jul 21, 2010 10:21 pm Stormy My upgraded bricks (couldn't tell you what category they were off the top of my head) for a 42 square double storey were $7500.....and worth every cent! I wish I had your commitment lol. We're going for a Cat 3 brick at around $1,5-2,000 Land Deposit - 18/12/2009 Became a land Baron - 21/12/2010 Site Start - 27/1/2011 All moved in!! They using concrete or timber sleepers? Timber or steel uprights? Any drainage behind sleeper? 3 5900 Hi We have a road close to our place and only an old flimsy wooden fence between us and the Neighbour closest to the road. Any ideas on a sound proof modular fence. Like… 0 7479 Grate, thank you! RexChan if thats the reason i could sleep well without thinking about additional cost. But 1st i'll need to read about NRV cleaning/replaing stuff. I… 7 31169 |