Porter Davis homes

HI Grime,

We paid for temporary fencing through PD and not once has it ever been locked. In fact things have been repeatedly stolen from our building site and they still have not tried to lock up.

Good luck arguing your point with them. Almost impossible to get them to bend the rules.

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to share a nice story of my experience with PD.
No mistakes with or issues with Tender. A few mistakes with contract ie. spelling of surname, electricals in wrongs spots...actually I think they were it.

Guaranteed site start by August and in the last week of August our house started works.

We had thigns go missing from on site as well but nothing held up the building process whatsoever. In fact, 20 weeks guaranteed completion was in February 2007 and we settled last week!!! We went through the house with a fine tooth comb and my husband and I are very happy. My uncle is an architect and he watched over the whole process with us which made us more comfortable seeing it is our first time building.

Yes there were a few hiccups.
1. Wrong tiles were layed to the bath face and hob... I called PD about it on a Monday and by the wednesday it had been ripped out and tiled correctly
2. During first inspection before settlement noticed a few paint scratches, spilt paint, 1 x blocked shower drain... by settlement which was one week later... they were all attended to.

I have personally had a wonderful experience and I wouldn't hesitate going back to them if were to build again.

We didn't get our land through PD but they were still so helpful. They offered us blanket site cost cover which was a fixed price rather than relying on counting how many rocks were pulled up from the site. We built up in Mernda which is Northern areas and generally considered very rocky. So we were pleased to be offered blanket costs of only $8,000 as I know some people who have reached up to $20,000!!!

I wish everyone out there who have bad experiences with any builder all the best and I hope it all gets sorted out. It should be a lovely experience and not stressful.

For all those with upcoming holidays.. enjoy

joenk8i

yes I would, I would definately recommend them.

The way I see it is an absolutely perfect, no hiccup process is ideal, but highly unlikely to happen. We were greatful for the way our process went and the way that PD handled the situations that they were faced with.

After having a long (& good) discussion with our site manager, there's a wee tip I'd like to pass on.

If building with PD, request your independant building inspection reports to be passed on to you as soon as they've been done (you need to do this through your site supervisor, not the admin person). Otherwise you won't get them till handover...which is too late if you want to review what was wrong & what was done to correct the problems. We'd been considering getting an inspection done ourselves but as we've already paid to have them done through PD, we're waiting to reivew them before making a final decision about getting another one done.

We've nearly finished bricking. The electrical is almost finished & the soundproofing is in. We start plastering next week & should be at lockup by christmas.

So far, so good. I even feel a bit better about the vandalism...apparently the house round the corner (same site supervisor) had $10k worth of damage done to it recently...incl all the copper wiring stripped out of it. Makes our broken windows look tame. Stupid kids.

We caught the vandals!!!!!

We decided to swing past the house tonight...& guess who we caught coming out of the house when we arrived. Three kids who I've seen in the vincinity before (shortly before the 2nd spate of vandalism). Hubby took chase (the kids were on bikes), throwing the odd brick to scare the **** out of them. I waddled at speed afterwards (I'm 39 weeks preggers). It was quite funny, really.

Unfortunately we didn't catch them but our daughter was with us & she recognised them from her school. They're only 11 years old. Grrrrrr. We're going to the school on Monday to find out their details so we can pass them on to police - the police have already said they'll follow it up if we can get their full names. If they have also been involved in the vandalism of the house round the corner (same site manager as is doing ours), I suspect PD will have something to say to the parents as well.

Unfortunately the theft continues, though (& it won't be the silly 11 year olds). Some obnoxious twit (or twits) has stolen the air con unit off the top of our roof. It was there on Thursday at 6.30pm (when we were there) & was gone Friday complete with damage to the wall where they got up. We're seriously considering installing a wireless webcam to catch them in the act.

We have fencing up right round the property...but it doesn't seem to stop them.

we had our sink stolen! who steals sinks?!!!

It doesn't cost us any more, but what it does mean is another one needs to be ordered and more 'unforseen' delays to the construction. (which indirectly adds costs to everyone.. coz time is money...

The same sort of person who steals an air con unit...or half a sliding door (someone suggested it was to replace part of the door they stole from us a couple of months ago)...or towel rails (according to the people down the road)...I mean who bothers to steal towel rails when you can pick them up for less than $20??!




I think it depends a bit on who you're dealing with at PD. Our sales guy was very frank with us that not everything PD can offer is a good price & he strongly recommended us to source some items ourselves as PD simply couldn't do a decent price for them. Our site manager has also been good about letting us do some things ourselves or source them through other companies.

For example, PD weren't going to insulate between the floors but hubby is a sound nazi & really wanted as much insualtion as he could to reduce noise inside - especially round the media room. Our site manager said he wasn't going to do between-floor insualtion as he couldn't add to our order & the plastering was going up the next day...but that if someone happened to go in & install insulation that night before they plastered, he wouldn't remove it - they would just plaster over it. So that's what we did. And we now have accoustic insulation between floors.

Then you get the people who wander round your site looking for anything that isn't nailed down. I was onsite last week re-securing all the doors (how come, when you're at lock up, nothing is actually locked up & you can still get into the house??!) after a friend drove past & noticed someone had tried to remove our nice wooden windows...again...even though they're already installed & plastered round (so they damaged the plaster as well). While I was inside, a couple with a baby walked past. I noticed the woman standing outside the site & my friend went out to tell her to leave as she was on private property. Said woman then started yelling in Cantonese at someone & it was then we realised her husband was brazenly walking round the house, despite it being obvious someone was onsite. My friend's hubby went out & told him to leave but he wouldn't go. He claimed he was looking at the house plan. He was actually looking to see if there was anything on the property worth taking (eg wood, bricks, etc) & absolutely refused to leave until my friend's hubby got quite insistant.

Our neighbours-to-be are having trouble with people dumping rubbish on the site. They have a skip outside (we don't...PD seem to use sack-type things instead) & our neighbour-to-be was saying that the other day some nice member of the community dumped a whole lot of soiled baby nappies on the building site, among other things. Yuck.