Porter Davis homes

Hi Mel,

It's great to hear that you were so happy with your trip to Hopetoun. Choosing your selections is definitely one of the more creative, fun parts of the building process. You have posted some great picts on your blog. Keep up the good work! Cheers, Jess.

Hi George,

To help answer your question, Porter Davis, and most major builders, will only use their own subcontractors and trades to work on your home. This guarantees safety, quality control, our workmanship, minimises delays & damage and lots of other risks that will impact the build of your home.

But what we have done in the past is let the client install their timber floors after settlement. This means we won't install the skirtings and that you need to do them later once the flooring is down. If you do go down this path, be aware that you'll need to have your skirts cut and painted separately. We don't cut to size and leave the skirting onsite as MDF shrinks.

I hope this helps you out, let me know if you have any more questions or you can give you CSA a call and they'll answer any of your questions. Cheers, Jess

Hi,

I am constructing a house with PD & I am having the site start in coming week.

Could you guys with experience in building houses, please advise me whether it is necessary to cut the grass of the block. It is mentioned on the contract document before work begins, it is required to cut the grass. If we ask the builder to carry it out any idea on the charges.

In additionally, is it mandatory to place a board with the name & the address of the block. By the way I have purchased the block seperately & given the construction to PD.

My block is quite large 750sqm & would PD mind if some hard rubbish is placed on a corner of the block, as recently one of the neighbours had placed some hard rubbish on my block.

Looking forward to hear from you guys soon.

Cheers...

I got house & land package that made all that stuff go away. I believe that in your case you need to have a clear block for them to scrape. From memory you can't pile it either as its an OH&S hazard.

Hi everyone,
Went to tender yesterday.
A little shocked with my site costs, but now looking forward to going to my colour selection app in 2 wks.
Just a tip for peoples we were originally going to build the cremorne 35 & after visiting one on site we realised the bedrooms were quite sml! So we went to the display one 42!
Make sure u try & see what u r building if u are going smaller than the display. Made a huge difference & for the extra 16k we now have decent sized bedrooms.

Mel

Has anyone used chatsworth facade from PD?

We are currently at fix stage building a Cremorne 42 with Porter Davis and we are extremely disappointed with them regarding our bricks.
Not only are the single level walls (Garage and Rumpus) extremely patchy, but the top and bottom floors are a different colour.









What makes the whole thing worse is the blame game that is now going on. Porter Davis is trying to blame Boral and Boral are blaming moisture in the bricks, which is complete nonsense, is half my house going to change colour every time it rains? Even if Boral did mix up the batches during delivery why didn't the Porter Davis bricklayers stop when they realised the variation in colour and why did construction continue despite the problem? Now if it is to be re-bricked the garage roof needs to come back off. It has been 3 weeks since I raised the issue, Porter Davis were conveniently ignoring it and not mentioning it before I was forced to raise it. The only solution that has been proposed is dying the bricks, which only lasts 25 years and is grossly inadequate. Despite telling them repeatedly that we do not want the bricks dyed, we want a permanent solution, they are still pressuring us to take the dye option.

I am at the point where I will soon be seeking legal advice as Porter Davis are treating us like idiots and insinuating we are being unreasonable for expecting a permanent solution to a problem we had no part in causing. In essence I feel like Boral and Porter Davis have stuffed up and are now expecting us to suffer the financial consequences due to their incompetence. I am appalled by the way we are being treated and at the way Porter Davis have effectively ruined our perfect block of land with this eyesore. We have done the right thing and paid our invoices up to the final one so it is a real shame that Porter Davis have not reciprocated by providing adequate solutions to such a significant problem.

A very disappointed Porter Davis customer, who feels they have wasted an extremely large amount of money.

that looks very disapointing, good luck with getting it redone. Dying the bricks must be cheaper for PD than to fix the job properly, but to me that would also be unacceptable.

Look i'm sorry,but those bricks are an eye-sore IMOP,
A builder will try to get out of anything as cheaply as they can,but with your house they need to have a really good look at themselves & how this represents them.

Very badly indeed

If they do not redo the brick work,because really there is bits & pieces all over that are disgraceful,get legal advise,i would do that right now.

You share good work,bad work people tend to shout from the roof tops,alot of people view these threads,

"Very good advertising"

Fallen apple that is disgraceful. I'd be demanding that they render the whole house.

Fallen apple, Ohhh not good, hopefully they do something to fix it.

Question for all u pd people building with them! Did anyone get the floorboards? (well floating floor?) I am looking at getting the taste oak ones! Do they wear well?
Any flooring advice would be great
Thks mel

Fallen apple, that is shocking .... and the blame game .... sad to hear this. It looks like you have to be very lucky to get things going good with them.

Gosh ! that's a big f up ! We are planning to go with PD but now it's got me worried.

This case seems to be repeated in a few threads, which made me wonder if it's an issue with Boral bricks or can it happen with Austral bricks too ?
Fallen_Apple .. did you upgrade the bricks or were they standard ?

Hi Homeone readers,

I am building Wembley 35 with PD & my site start will be on tomorrow (12th Oct), fingers crossed hope everything would be fine.

Just thought of having some feedback from people who have passed my stage.

- Any idea how many weeks would it generally take to complete the slab stage.

- Is it require to make the first progressive payment at the begining or the end of the slab stage.

- Is it require to present at the site on the very first day.

- Generally what is the mode of contacting the SS (Call/SMS/Email), I used t contact the CSC through emails & have encountered that would be great as there is a way to track everything. what about with SS?

- At which stage do you think it would be better to have an independant inspector & if possible could you please recommend me a company or a person for independant inspections, as I have seen on the forum that most of the time PD would listen to the inspectors than we do complain on matters.

Looking forward to hear from you guys & thanks for your feedbacks in advance..

Cheers....

Hi Roshi,

You will have to make 1st progress payment after the slab is laid, i.e. at the end of slab stage.

You don't have to be present at anytime at all, in fact I think your SS will be delighted if you are not anywhere around the construction site at all at any time. I don't normally go onsite when there are workers there, but I do check the progress of the work daily & the moment I see anything not done properly, I contact the SS & CSC.

I contact the SS through email, I usually email him & cc the CSC. I also follow up with phone call/text message.

I did frame & pre-plaster inspection & the next one is at completion. It's up to you of how many inspections you want to do, but I recommend at least 3 inspections. I'm using New Home Inspections to do the inspections & so far they have been great.

It maybe a problem with the brick mix but surely the brickies have some sort of clue about what they are putting up,well you would think so

Hi all,

Thanks for your support! I'll keep you posted on what happens from here.

The bricks were an upgrade, Pearl Grey Velour, Category 3.

I am only hearing silence from Porter Davis at this point, but I will be happy to share my experience with all, if they ever reply.

The bricks were delivered in two lots over a month apart which was unnecessary as our house only takes up 25% of the block. I think that might have been part of the problem. Plus we had to wait 5 weeks while they tried to find brick layers, which Porter Davis claimed as a delay out of their control, so much for the 30 week guarantee.

Although Porter Davis were very good at the start, before they had our money, things have gone downhill rapidly.

That's not good enough.....why havent they considered rendering it for you?

couldn't agree more .... once you put a deposit down things change...
hope something comes out of this good for you.

I've been withholding progress payments until they fix those things that need to be fixed. I usually email the Accounts department, SS & CSC to inform them that I'm not paying because I consider the stage is not completed yet. I also attach photos of those things that I think are not completed yet for the stage.

Currently I'm withholding payment for Lock Up Stage because of broken roof ridge capping.