Boral Blackheath: UPDATE 7: Page 5 - Clean bricks

Hopefully that means you will get a response from PD very soon. A similar thing happened to us, we were told that our rep was having a meeting with his boss on the Monday and that he would get back to us on the Monday, however, on the Thursday following, my girlfriend went past the house and saw our rep there with a couple of other guys, an hour later I got the call to say that all the bricks were poorly done and the next step was to work out how to resolve it, so with a bit of luck, you will have a response within days, I have my fingers crossed for you

Hi Wizard and Fallen_Apple,

I understand you've had some issues with the brick work in your builds. Wizard, I am glad your CSA has helped you resolve this and I hope your re-bricking goes well. Fallen_Apple, have you had an update from your CSA regarding your brick job? If you want to send me a private message with your name, address of your build, and phone number I'll see what I can do to get things moving for you. Cheers, Jess.

Thanks Jess, I am assuming you work or represent PD? What made you make yourself known on H1? It’s good to see PD actively working with people on H1 with their issues, don’t know of any other builders doing the same.

The other builders should take note.........EB, are you reading this ?

Hi Wizard,

Yes you're quite right, I'm representing PD here on Homeone and doing what I can to help out and answer people's questions. This forum is pretty easy going and also generates some great discussions, so it good to be involved. I'm glad I'm being helpful!
Cheers, Jess.

Well it just goes to show why PD win so many awards, great customer service, beautiful homes and now somewhere for people to interact directly with PD, it’s a great initiative, keep it up PD and in particular you Jess

So our bricks have been cleaned... what an improvement. Here are some photos comparing the first job to the new one.

The photo on the left is the first job, the photo on the right is the new one.











As you can see, it is a vast improvement. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who offered their opinions and words of support while dealing with this issue, it made it so much easier.

Just so glad that it went your way in the end-even if it was such a hard time initially!

Definitely better - gotta love the blackheaths (no bias there ) .............
but just 1 question : how is it that they had to use a row of 1/2 bricks under the window sill (1st set pics) ?

The whole saga really took the excitement out of our build, even now we aren’t as excited about the whole process as we were at the beginning, I think that now we just want to get in and are praying we don’t have to deal with any more issues



I’m not sure about the ½ bricks, I have noticed a number of houses like that. The first time round they just spaced the mortar to make up the span, I guess the right way of doing it is to use a ½ brick. I really don’t know, it just seems that a number of our windows are positioned in such a way that it doesn’t quite work out with full bricks. If anyone knows why this is done, I would love to know

WOw that is a huge difference, well done to you for sticking your guns

I don't know why builders do that.
Did you change the dimensions of your windows ? What does the display home look like ? I might be right off base here but to me it seems lazy work/calculations, whatever you want to call it.........

I know you've had enough with the bricking issue & you're probably OVER IT ( ) but if you've got a little more stamina, I'd look inot that & see if something can be done about it . Afterall, you didn't have 1/2 bricks the 1st time 'round

I insisted with my CSR, that I didn't want that look, after having seen it on my DB's new home. .......I distinctly remember her response : that EB don't do 1/2 bricks
Maybe I was just lucky that ours turned out OK

I will definitely look into it, to be honest I don't mind it too much, it looks better than an inch thick mortar joint, which is what we had the first time round. I have a copy of the standards, I’ll check it out

Hi:
I face the same problem too, My privite inspection said my bricks work done like "a piece of **** so PD provides one of them:
A. Redone bricks work
B. Render the whole house(they said cost them 7,000)
If I got a compensation,I might go for B,but they didn't mention that,so my feeling just like if you go for B,like I upgrade your house is for you.Don't like the feeling at all.

Hi Wizard, not sure if you're still on this page - I know it's been years - How did you end up going with the brickwork? We were thinking of going with Blackheath (Boral) but have seen some houses that look like the mortar is staining from them. Is your brickwork still ok?

Hi TaraDog, initially, we had some staining on parts of our mortar, PD came back and fixed all this. 5 years on, we have no staining. The only comment I will make about the brick is one our second bricklayer made, he told us when laying them that these bricks are not square which makes them difficult to lay straight. If you look closely at our bricks, the mortar is a little uneven, but that seems to be because most of the bricks are bowed. Having said that though, we used to know a bricklayer who said that a good bricklayer won't have any problems and that our final result still has many imperfections. It is what it is and at the end of the day, it's not terrible so we are happy.

Thanks so much for the information. I love the Blackheath and don't expect anything to be perfect. I was wondering the same as you mentioned - that mostly an inexperienced bricklayer could be the problem. Some of the homes we have seen with the Blackheath look amazing. Your later photos of your brickwork looked fantastic.