Building at Hawkstowe

Jas 'n' Rach · Sep 28, 2008 10:13 pm

Hi guys,

Just an update. We spent the day browsing through the 'Cosham Showroom' which do all the colour selections for H3nley.

We now have a pretty good idea of our external colours...Austral 'Maize' bricks, with a cream/light brown render to the 1st floor, and darker brown render to the balcony and porch.

We are going with the 'Urban facade' on our Palladian home. It looks as though there are quite a lot of similar houses in the estate so I hope we don't look too much like the rest. The covenents in the estate sure do restrict the choices for all of us, but I guess it helps to keep the standards high.

We have our official colours appointment on Tuesday night and still waiting on those damn site costs!

Snake · Sep 29, 2008 8:38 am

Jas 'n' Rach

The covenents in the estate sure do restrict the choices for all of us, but I guess it helps to keep the standards high.

It does keep the standards high, but I also think it makes the landscape all the same. The Palladian is very nice, good choice

joaninhac · Oct 01, 2008 4:13 pm

Jas 'n' Rach

Due to the angle of repose (45 degrees for clay soils), any building within 7.093m of that pipe needs to be further reinforced with screw piles etc. In other words, if I build within 8.3m (7.093 + 1.16) of the rear boundary I need screw piles.

Hi There,

We are also in Hawkstowe before on the other side of the creek and built with 'H'... site costs were 15k all up..
The reason your costs are so high are due to the screw piles... we too were going to build closer to the boundary as we wanted to have a bigger garage however as the block next door has an easement pipe running on the boundary we would need to reinforce it also with screw piles and it wasn't going to be cheap, therefore we chose not to do it!

We were told that the reason for the screw piles was that if there was ever any problems with the easement pipe along the boundary in which they would need to dig a trench few meters deep to repair the pipe, the screw piles would act as a reinforcement for our house and prevent any sort of collapse or damage due to it being so close to the easement... i guess it's for your own good to have the screw piles but if money is a problem then you may need to look at another house design that isn't so close to the boundary.

hope this helps and welcome to Hawkstowe

joaninhac · Oct 01, 2008 4:15 pm

We also built the Palladian just different facade... Good luck with it!

Daffy Duck · Oct 01, 2008 5:55 pm

It would be interesting to see what the builder is charging for each screw pile.

My garage is on the boundary where there is an easement and the charge through my custom builder for the screw piles is $160 for every 1 meter in depth per pile (ie a 2 meter deep screw pile is $320)

The volume builder I had a quote from worked out something over $400 for each meter of depth!

Jas 'n' Rach · Oct 02, 2008 1:00 pm

joaninhac

We also built the Palladian just different facade... Good luck with it!

THanks!

We love the Palladian...it is perfect for our block (quite a wide, but short house) which will give us a bigger backyard...and has all the rooms that we required. Just waiting on finance approval so we can get started! Have my fingers crossed waiting for my site costs quote!

Jas 'n' Rach · Oct 03, 2008 9:21 pm

Colours appointment completed (I hope to get a chance to update the blog over the weekend!), now just waiting for tender.

Jas 'n' Rach · Feb 27, 2009 12:16 pm

I have been off the forum for a while- we got to tender a couple of times- once with Sim0nds and once with H3nley.

We didn't proceed with either due to massive blowouts in costs since our sales quote. H3nley due to 47k site costs (they said they don't build waffle pod slabs, and we would need to have screw piles/piers supporting the entire slab! Ridiculous!)

We had listed out block for sale and were resigned to buying a second hand home, it was quite upsetting as we love where our block is (Hawkstowe Parade- overlooking the park) and were looking forward to building our own dream own.

We didn't get a lot of interest in the block over the Christmas/New Year period (we expected that) so we thought we would have one last shot with a builder. So we paid out another $1000 to get PD to do a soil test.

We had our tender appointment on Friday and were thrilled that the site cost quote came to 16k with a waffle pod slab! In fact, our entire 'tender price' came within 10k of our initial sales quote which was a nice surprise.

We have signed the tender, and have our contract appointment 10 March, for an April site start.

We are building the Rowland 35 with PD, and adding on a 'Grand Alfresco' out the back.

We will end up spending more than our initial budget that we started with 12 months ago (it was 260k) but I think we are getting more of a house for our money.

The Rowland design has the master downstairs, along with a study, theatre, living, dining etc, and upstairs it has an additional 4 bedrooms, a tv area for the kids, and ANOTHER study! It will be too big for us in the short term, but we plan to start a family in the next few years and will have room for friends and family from WA to come and visit!

We are so excited to be proceeding after these numerous setbacks/disappointments that we have had with the other builders. We do expect to have some issues with the build, but looking forward to seeing some progress.

I hope to hear from other current/future Hawkstowe residents and look forward to establishing a network of friends in the estate.

Jas

House-To-Be · Feb 27, 2009 12:43 pm

Gee you guys have had a bumpy ride. Congratulations on signing with PD, we've been in our Cremorne for about 2 months and loving it.

The Rowland is a really nice plan, it was released the day we signed for the Cremorne. I went down to the display the next day just to put my mind at ease. I loved the upstairs area for the kids but it was missing the lounge room that I so desperately wanted. We have a Marina going up two doors down from us and they have added the grand alfresco too, it looks good.

Hope that from here on in everything goes smoothly for you both.

kek · Feb 27, 2009 8:27 pm

Glad you found a house you like with costs that aren't extortionate.

April's only a month away, really. You'll be building before you know it!

lisanne · Feb 27, 2009 9:21 pm

Must be a big relief Jas!!

Gadgetman · Feb 28, 2009 6:57 pm

i am building in hawkstowe east as well with PD. $10,000 fix site cost. it actually came in at 9371. which meant we got a few dollars back from what we expected to pay however 27,000 sounds like a rob

Grace16 · Feb 28, 2009 9:54 pm

Well done Jas n Rach!
The Rowland is lovely, I'm sure you'll be very happy.
Gotta be happy with the difference in site costs!