Porter Davis homes

Thanks Naama, I asked our BC but I just got her standard response, it will be discussed at tender. This would be fine if we weren't planning to have a site start for a long time but we are due to start in April so I wanted to have it done sooner rather than later.

If you know a sparky I suggest you ask them for advice. I'm kind of lost with all the info online...

I made a new entry about the tender appointment, any advise or suggestions you may have are greatly appreciated.

http://buildingmontague21.blogspot.com. ... tment.html

Oh yeah, a new estate is THE BEST!!! we pay a lot extra for building in an established are. our lot was bought somewhere in the the 1940s and no house was built on it so the infrastructure that you have for your lot, we need to make sure that we have it, who knows? I think I'll contact my bc and ask her how we can find out. btw, the tender wasn't with our bc, was with a special tender person... all sorts of OHS payments to direct trafic and overhead electricity hazard things, it's not great lol.
You're lucky you had a good sc, ours did not go over anything with all, all he told us was that we need a check survey, that's it! which is why we needed the tender, we only got it because I asked my bc when is the point in which we talk about windows and doors, I bet she was confused.
If you're doing an access home then no, after Wos you go straight to contract, I reckon if you have any other changes you want to do you can just email them to your bc.

good luck!!!

we applied for ours months prior to even beginning and the hoops we jumped through were enormous. I hope you guys can get this sorted asap. Just a heads up they can cost anywhere from 2-10k were u aware of that?

Luckily enough for us, after all the running around we discovered our neighbors got one put in a year prior that we could leverage off.. phew

HI Naama,

Without even reading you blog yet, the section about OHS, traffic management and overhead lines caught my eye.
I was actually telling Nikil the other day about this and this is certainly something to watch out for at tender.

We were expecting the 50k of site costs, sure, however the make up of this was not right and very misleading. Question everything and get the tender rep to explain word for word what some of these items mean.

At our tender we picked up almost $10K of excessive charges that DID NOT APPLY TO US.

First item was traffic management, now i don't know about you but our street is quiet and there is just no possible way they would require lollipop men to monitor the roads for deliveries that take less than 20mins. We called our council and also had them confirm that this was not in fact a requirement of our council... We had PD remove this charge of about $3K straight away as they didn't have a leg to stand on. They did however make a note in the contract that if any fines were enforced we would be liable. It never happened! It just goes to show how much research they do in your area... none!

The second item was the overhead lines. On the document is stated overhead lines within 5m of delivery, and we could see quite clearly that this was not the case. We outlined the drawings at tender with our rep who also couldn't answer the question. She removed herself from the room and came back to say " oh yeah sorry this will not apply to you" bang!!!! $6500 removed!

Hopefully this is enough notice for others to really check this part of the KDR tender doc, it seem everything in these documents is almost standard until you question it.

our tender was disgusting, we left feeling so ripped off as we just knew what they were doing.

As bad as it obviously is that they were trying to charge you for stuff that you didn't need or didn't apply to you, at least you hopefully saved a fair bit of money from what you were expecting to have to pay?

So far I haven't seen any of that sort of stuff thankfully, it'd be a bit of a stretch to try and claim most of it in a new estate anyway.

I think I've already stated this upthread. We had to apply to Jemena. Their policy to "Connect Underground Electricity Supply" is to perform the connection within 20 business days from the time they accept your application. However, they rejected our initial application as they needed more info (in particular, a detailed drawing detailing where the pit should go) so it took more like 6 weeks if I remember correctly. I've googled Powercor and come up with this:
https://www.powercor.com.au/media/2505/ ... n-form.pdf I *think* that's the application paperwork and it says allow 3 months! Good luck.

So I had my first pre-visit to WoS on the weekend, it was my wife's second.

The Good
We did get a lot of stuff picked out (kitchen colours, bathroom tiles) and agreed on pretty much everything in this category.
In most areas we seemed to be happy with the stuff that was included or in our upgrade packs.
Our sales consultant apparently included 2 electrical packs in our quote, so we'll get a bit of money back there, plus the allowance that he put in should be more than enough according to the consultant we talked to.

The Bad
We both find it really hard to figure out what the front of an entire house or a roof will look like from a tiny square sample. And when the woman from that area pointed out it looks fairly different on an angle (not to mention enclosed in some plastic protection in the case of the colourbond) that didn't help matters much. Same thing with trying to figure out if a particular floor covering goes with a carpet.
Some staff were really helpful and knowledgeable, others not so much...

The Ugly
The lack of a system for waiting for a consultant in each area is really annoying. We had a couple of occasions where we were waiting for a while, then someone grabbed the consultant as soon as they were finished with another customer and we had to keep waiting.
The lack of clarity in some sections about how much it would cost for an upgrade. Some areas such as electrical were actually pretty good with this but others like carpet were just terrible. I get that they can't tell you exactly what it's going to cost for the entire house, but surely on a square metre basis they could say well it costs x amount but you've got this level included so you get a rebate for y amount. Plus somehow they could tell you the cost of the upgrade for underlay but not for carpet? Also telling me I'll find out the cost at contract rather than at the WoS appointment is a load of rubbish, I want to rock up at contract knowing that all I have to do is check they've got everything in there, not worrying about whether or not I can afford it.

Despite my annoyance at some of the stuff it was actually a pretty good/useful day. I feel like we got a lot done and we'll have a lot less decisions to make when it comes to our appointment, hopefully one more visit up there before the appointment will be enough to get us properly prepared.

We also went to Ikea this morning to have a look at their options for fitting out the walk in wardrobe, it's looking like we should be able to get a pretty complete system for about 2k which I'm guessing is going to be a hell of a lot cheaper than what is available through Porter Davis.

So a pretty productive weekend!