Porter Davis homes

OOoh, those blinds are great! Great idea thanks...

Belle10, your house looks great. Is that Brown Terrain or glenfern brick?

Everyone else seems to be doing well... How are the blocks after this torrential Melbourne rain? We are suppose to have slab pour on Thursday / Friday but we now have a pool at our garage! Hope they fix the drainage... lol...

Great ajd, can't wait to see yours take shape and check out your colour scheme in action. Won't be long, I can't believe how quick it has gone - week 15 it is for us now, unbelievable!

Hopefully that pool of water drains away pretty quickly. Our rental property had rain dripping in the windows on Saturday - not great!!! Can't wait to move. So close but yet so far!

I am glad I am not the only one that thought the recommended supplier was expensive. I'd been getting quotes to fit all of our house through other suppliers, they were coming in between $8 - $9k. B!rk quoted me over $17k.

Question for those at slab stage. Did your SS contact you prior to the site start?

Backpocket, we were contacted by the slab supervisor. He has been fantastic. Called me to tell me where we are at 3 or so times now... (in a week!)... He is the most friendliest person ever....

I have spoken with my SS but on another matter. I believe he will call before going to frames.... He said he would.

Hi back pocket
He didn't we contacted him:)

Hi guys,
it is late on a Tuesday evening and I thought I would share this with all of you building with porter davis. we are in the frame stage and was reluctant to post this but I felt you should know.
we chose them as the sales person in their west office was amazing and kind. but that is where the great experience ended.from there every step of the way has been a struggle to say the least

1) they have terrible internal communications: ...e.g at our electrical appointment they got the package wrong, the color we chose is out of stock....and WE had to let our BC know...they never tell you!

2) follow up : unless you tell them there is a mistake they don't know: e.g in a redraft of some plans they "forgot" to look at the building to land ratio...we picked this up. it would have cost us a fortune, if we did not notice

3) attention to detail : : as of this morning our Site Supervisor informed us that the Base pour supervisor had "new plans" but he has the "old plans". this has resulted in a wrong frame being constructed as opposed for the base.
Our BC also did not notice that the council had stamped the wrong permit building plans....again we had to inform them

4) they have got the name of the street on our invoice, contract, letters etc wrong so many times, even the bank is getting angry.

we have spoken to our BC and all we get is a "sorry, please trust us and we promise this wont happen again"

but now after today' experience, I am very worried on how our dream home will look and stay in tact...

this is only a few errors I have written, the list is endless!

have a great night, as from now till settlement WE WONT be sleeping much!

cheerios!

Awful to hear, you have my full sympathy. My build started in a very similar way, and I think we felt much the same.

I'd suggest switching to written communication only at this stage, and that you keep a detailed checklist of issues (both current and resolved) so that nobody loses track of what's going on. For a long time I was sending my issues list to my SS and BC every week or two with requests for updates so things didn't get lost. So keep updating that list and make sure you send it through to them regularly.

You're dead right too - communication between departments at PD is awful, but I think that might be common to most big builders. This issue with different plans being used comes up quite a bit, and can cause huge problems. How big were the framing mistakes, and have they identified a solution yet?

When it comes to basic errors on invoices, here's a thought - tell them point-blank that you'll only pay bills that are actually addressed to you correctly. Let their accounts person know too. If they want their progress payments, make them pay attention to what they put on the invoice. Seems reasonable to me that you'd only pay the bill that relates to your actual address.

If need be get in touch with management. I had to do this, and while it wasn't pleasant (or easy) it did improve a couple of things. If nothing else it gave me access to people who could make decisions without taking a month to respond.

Ultimately though the quality of your house will come down to your level of persistence. The more you focus on quality control, the better the outcome will be. It's unfair, and frustrating, but necessary. I would definitely get an independent inspector too, and make a point of being onsite with them at each stage.

On the bright side, when you get towards the end of the process you will have a very good idea of where things went right, and where they went wrong, and you'll know that you've reduced the number of problems significantly.

Plus, I've heard at the end of this process they give you a house.

I suspect we haven't got that far yet so only time will tell, but that does sound awful MumNick.. Hope it can be resolved fairly soon. I don't know whether it is different in the East, but we don't seem to be having any communication issues ATM.

Building_Darnley - what do you mean by produce disconnection?

Yup ajd78 we are in a rental round the corner i go up twice a day too before or after work:-)