Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Mar 28, 2008 10:36 pm Hi everyone,
After reading the forum and lots of blogs I figured I'd get involved. I'm building with PD and the house is the Hamilton 29. My problem at the moment is that I was promised a March site start - I was advised it would probably be mid March. Things had gone okay up until I signed the contract. To make a long story short PD made a mistake on the tender document with a window change I made and I missed it and signed the thing anyway. This was after two sketched plans and various meetings all outlining what I wanted. As it goes I was charged $450 even though all the evidence pointed to the mistake being theirs. A lesson learned I guess. This meant I was sent out a new set of revised drawings to sign which I did and sent back - I didn't get them until the 20th of March. After talking to my CSR I asked about the site start and she said that site start simply meant that the file is handed to their construction people and work will start 2.5 weeks after that. This makes the start in mid April. I asked how this can be when I was promised a start in March. I was told that it may have something to do with the variation or a hold up on the building permit which as yet no one seems to know if it has arrived. I checked my tender and it has a construction start of no later than March 31st. So regardless of what PD thinks site start means the contract is pretty clear - March 31st at the latest. There is nothing in the HIA contract about variations affecting construction start and the building permit is shown as being required 30 days before construction. Obviously the communication is very bad as I don't even know if they have it - they don't return emails or calls. If the permit is late it actually says that I can back out of the contract. The only clause I can think of that may have caused a problem is that proof of finance is required 30 days before constuction - I gave it only 2 weeks ago after I told it was no big deal and that they just needed it before construction. My question is did anybody else experience PD stalling the start date like this and what were the reasons. I feel a bit like I'm being played the fool. The funny thing is that even though I'm told the file has been given to constuction the 24/7 site still shows the building contract as pending and administration incomplete. Is it just me or is this site useless? Thanks P.S. sorry if I sound like a winger - I've just been messed around alot. Re: PD Delaying construction start - any advice? 2Mar 29, 2008 1:09 am Hi Mozzie
I am building the Hamilton 34, I just had a look at your blog and I have certainly experienced many similar issues to you with the administration side of things. Our site start was supposed to be Dec 31st, we caused a bit of delay by not having our demolition complete until 15th Jan (although PD were on holidays until the 14th), after that we had issues with boundaries which had not been picked up by PD from the survey done in November. Once these were sorted out it still took nearly a month to start, we also had them saying they had the permit and then they didn't. My honest advice is sadly that you will not be able get anything to happen faster than they are going to do it (my opinion). You probably know this already from your experiences so far! To make you feel a bit better, even though we have only been in the construction phase for two and a half weeks they have been working hard on site and things have been moving quickly even with rain. Re: PD Delaying construction start - any advice? 3Mar 29, 2008 8:17 am dancelisah,
Did you get any increased costs due to the delays? Mozzie, Even though the start date is delayed, is the finish date the same? Cheers, Casa Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: PD Delaying construction start - any advice? 4Mar 29, 2008 8:56 am Casa
No we were lucky not to have to pay any extra, the topic of "the house price will increase" was certainly brought up many times but the majority of the delay was because PD had not read the survey so they could not really justify it. In Mozzie's case it sounds like just general messing around before the start so I am sure they will not be charged anything for that. Mozzie Out of interest how many days does your contract say? I remember trying to calculate the weeks quite a long time after I signed the contact and thought "wow this is WAY over 20 weeks". Re: PD Delaying construction start - any advice? 5Mar 29, 2008 12:02 pm Thanks for the replies,
My contract shows 185 days including 10 days of inclement wheather and 56 holidays. You are right - this is 25 weeks. I'm not sure how this works as they kept saying 20 weeks - in fact the sales people said it would be more like 16 weeks. The '20 weeks' apparently starts from the first day of excavation which is why I'm concerned with the starting date. Lets face it, no one wants to pay and extra 4 or 5 weeks rent if they aren't expecting to. Re: PD Delaying construction start - any advice? 6Mar 29, 2008 12:17 pm Mine says 198 days plus the 10 for bad weather. I am not worried too much I have a feeling they will be quite quick. We just drove past before and they were working on the Waffle Pod, on a Saturday in the rain! That was good to see and very unexpected. Fingers crossed for your site start to happen soon. Re: PD Delaying construction start - any advice? 7Mar 29, 2008 1:09 pm Mozzie Thanks for the replies, My contract shows 185 days including 10 days of inclement wheather and 56 holidays. You are right - this is 25 weeks. I'm not sure how this works as they kept saying 20 weeks - in fact the sales people said it would be more like 16 weeks. The '20 weeks' apparently starts from the first day of excavation which is why I'm concerned with the starting date. Lets face it, no one wants to pay and extra 4 or 5 weeks rent if they aren't expecting to. We're building the Hamilton 34 as well and our contract allows 27 weeks from memory. The 20 weeks starts from when they cut the site and is only guaranteed if you make no structural changes ie. buy it stock standard. The extra time they add will depend on what changes you make. If you build over Christmas, which we did, they add another 4 weeks to that to allow for the holidays. Our customer service rep explained all this to us, it's a shame yours didn't. Regardless of all that, apparently they do average 16 weeks but allow the extra as a safety net. Our site was cut just before Christmas, our slab was down mid Jan and we are passed lock up stage with our cabinetry installed last week so it does move quickly. Hope that makes you feel a little better. A question. Im in Queensland and building a new home. We managed to reach practical completion 6 weeks ago but we haven't heard any date for handover yet. Who should we… 0 5800 Versaloc is a mortarless besser block system that still needs a properly engineered footing. If you just do a 400x200 footing it will fail in time. At 17m long you need it… 1 15677 We are about to commence a new build I and Iām reading about defects along the way. My question is should we employ a independent building inspector to come in and… 0 5237 |