Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Sep 26, 2011 10:09 am Hi Everyone, I think I may have posted here a few years ago, but I need some advice and you guys always seem to know what you are talking about. My wife and I have a block in the South Beach estate in Fremantle (Perth) and are currently looking to build our dream family home. To cut a long story short, 6 months ago we signed with a builder to build our custom home - subject to the 'clients finance'. The bank will only let us start building once our current house is sold – all fairly standard stuff. However since signing with the builder our life has been turned upside down with the arrival of our first child. Our little man has somewhat forced us to reassess what we want from a home and from life itself. Firstly our design isn’t perfect for kids, and secondly the build cost alone is high - $475k prior to any finishing. Now in any ones world, that’s a lot of money, so we are looking to reduce the total outlay. My question is, does anyone know of any alternative construction methods and associated builders that can build a house in Perth without the ridiculous prices (n.b. our builder is relatively cheap for what we are getting). I’ve seen a company called Great Living Homes, who can build a timber framed upper for a very reasonable price - $330k. What about tilt a panel construction? Is this any cheaper? And are there many builders that do it for the residential market? I’m so sorry if this has been covered many many many times before, but I’m at the end of my tether. I feel like we are getting ripped off over here in WA. Cheers Jono Re: Alternative Construction Methods v Double Brick v Cost 2Sep 27, 2011 11:08 pm Hi Jono, We built a timber framed upper home with Great Living Homes and had handover in February 2011. I believe they now use the "Masterwall" system but we had the timber and ugly blue boards. Our upper storey exterior walls are useless at blocking out any noise, despite them being foil insulated and wall batts installed in the outer and inner walls. The upper floor is creaky in several spots (like creaky loose floor boards) and also considerably warmer in summer- we spend as much time downstairs as possible in the warmer months. We've now moved to a front bedroom to minimise traffic noise coming through the walls. Great Living Homes are good value but their customer service, or lack of, is their downfall. They are also slower at building compared to others. We built the Sovereign Series II, pretty simple "box on a box" design but that took 13 months and really should have been 14-15 months but we pushed them to handover. I believe they're attempting to rectify issues and teething problems experienced from last year. That's good for prospective clients of GLH but was too late for us and the ongoing dramas and anguish we experienced during our build. We are still dealing with ongoing maintenance issues identified 7 months ago. So in summary, if you choose Great Living Homes, proceed with caution. Across the street from us there are 3 townhouses being built with a product similar to Masterwall called EnergyLite. They are fully framed with no bricks. One minute they were concrete slabs and literally the next week they were 2-storey residences. The framed upper appears to go up considerably faster than double brick, are cheaper to erect and apparently have better thermal efficiency. We were the exception having had the blue boards and not the compressed styrofoam panels. So if cost and time constraints are your priority then I suggest you go for alternatives to double brick. Block of two storey townhouses requires painting on the roof. A brick parapet wall separates each unit and extends above the tiled roof. The parapet walls require sealing… 0 3503 Might cheaper to changer your idea of what makes a home, have you considered building a porch? 2 51806 5 10491 |