Happy new year!
It's great to finally see our frame beginning to go up! It's really quite strange to see the rooms and spaces we have envisioned for so long take shape.....
Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Caddens penrith 121Jan 19, 2014 8:37 am Happy new year! It's great to finally see our frame beginning to go up! It's really quite strange to see the rooms and spaces we have envisioned for so long take shape..... Re: Caddens penrith 122Jan 22, 2014 5:43 pm Kiwifire From the caddens / Penrith DCP; 'On front to back slopes, rear boundary retaining walls should be a maximum 1.8 metres in height and retain a maximum cut of 1.5 metres in height, provided that there is a minimum one (1) metre wide terrace between the face of the wall and the fence line'. I'm hoping whom ever we chose to do our landscaping will complete our retaining walls, although we don't think well have anything over 500mm so i may even have a crack myself Does the underlined mean that the fence that is built on top of the retaining wall on the diagonal behind us is wrong? Re: Caddens penrith 123Jan 27, 2014 8:06 pm Hi All, We are looking to purchase land in Caddens during the next release which is supposed to be Feb this year. Looks like land prices have increased considerably since the first stage! You guys are lucky and smart for getting in early This land release is mostly the lots centering around the park and look to have quite a slope. Hard to say as we can't get up there to have a proper look and apparently all the info regarding the lots are given to you on the day you can purchase (so no time to really look/assess). Just wondering if any of you have any experience with building on lots that have 1-2m fall??? And how much this increased the site costs? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. It's very exciting to see all of the houses going up already. Looks like it will be a beautiful place to live. Hopefully we can join you all if this release is not to $$$$$. Re: Caddens penrith 124Jan 28, 2014 10:44 am AngeBaz Hi All, We are looking to purchase land in Caddens during the next release which is supposed to be Feb this year. Looks like land prices have increased considerably since the first stage! You guys are lucky and smart for getting in early This land release is mostly the lots centering around the park and look to have quite a slope. Hard to say as we can't get up there to have a proper look and apparently all the info regarding the lots are given to you on the day you can purchase (so no time to really look/assess). Just wondering if any of you have any experience with building on lots that have 1-2m fall??? And how much this increased the site costs? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. It's very exciting to see all of the houses going up already. Looks like it will be a beautiful place to live. Hopefully we can join you all if this release is not to $$$$$. Hay, yes, our block at Caddens as a slope of 1.4 and it has been a nightmare as we were told originally it was going to be retained and benched. Basically costs that are increased it site costs are cut & fill, drop edge beam, piering, retaining walls (if required) - additional problems that occurred was that our house design was not suitable for the block and driveway grade which meant our plans house design needed to change and we had to build a split level home. At the time this was heartbreaking but now we are much happier. This obviously increased build materials aswell as our roof line needed to stay the same heights so the front of our house as 3m ceilings and the rest has 2.6. The garage door & front door also increased in size as the ceiling height in those parts of the house was 3m. - This was optional but just made sense. Hope this helps! Re: Caddens penrith 125Jan 28, 2014 3:35 pm Thanks so much for your reply Ashleigh! Do you mind me asking how much costs increased by? Like $10k or even $50k? I'm glad you are happy with the outcome. I wouldnt mind a split level home, just don't know if we will be able to afford to build if the slope is going to add $30k, for example, to the build. Re: Caddens penrith 126Jan 28, 2014 8:11 pm AngeBaz Hi All, We are looking to purchase land in Caddens during the next release which is supposed to be Feb this year. Looks like land prices have increased considerably since the first stage! You guys are lucky and smart for getting in early This land release is mostly the lots centering around the park and look to have quite a slope. Hard to say as we can't get up there to have a proper look and apparently all the info regarding the lots are given to you on the day you can purchase (so no time to really look/assess). Just wondering if any of you have any experience with building on lots that have 1-2m fall??? And how much this increased the site costs? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. It's very exciting to see all of the houses going up already. Looks like it will be a beautiful place to live. Hopefully we can join you all if this release is not to $$$$$. Hi, Most blocks in caddens have a slope, ours for example was 3.5m. But whilst we didnt have alot of fill, because we were pretty much on the natural land we have more 'rock' when doing excavation... which depending on your landscaping plans can be costly... We visited (numerous times) all builders in every display village within 50km of penrith until we found our builder. Sites costs can be expensive unless you choose the right builder. Our builder said that most places will have a small amount of fall included in their basic site costs. Ours for example was 0.5m of cut and 0.5m of fill... meaning that we needed to pay additional site costs for the extra 3.0m of fall. The cost of the additional site costs should not exceed $5-7,000 per meter of fall, any builder who tells you otherwise is going to be ripping you off, unless you're getting a really good deal in some other part of your quote. So for us our additional site costs were $15,000 for 3.5m of slope across the whole block ofland (this includes the drop edge beams etc... when splitting the house into 2 levels). We had our hearts set on a macdonald jones design but were laughed out of their office in jordan springs. He tried telling us we needed to add another $50-100k to our 'budget' if we were to build with them. a few months later we built with someone else for a lot less than his supposed price estimate, and we feel we got a much better result with very few issues during the build. Later on we found out that the team from jordan springs just didn't want to build on a more 'difficult' block...they wanted nice flat blocks... Because all the macdonald jones houses being built in caddens now are apparantly being done by a mac jones team from elsewhere in sydney. Dont worry about finding a builder who 'specialises' in building on sloping blocks, because any decet builder will be able to accomodate their designs or your design for your block... as soon as they say otherwise its a warning sign of potential issues down the track. To be honest the blocks up the top near the park will be nice in terms of their view, but you will pay for it comparison to what we paid for our stage; but they are mostly fill so just be cautious of additional piering... you may only have a certain allowance in your quote and they may need deeper piering in order to construct the house. I've heard they are quite large blocks too... but 1-2m of fall is not a huge slope at all. we have almost double that... i guess we were lucky to find such a good builder. Our house is not 'cheap' by any means.. but many of the larger builders are deceptive and you end up paying a lot more for extras (like $150+ for an extra down light to be fitted, or almost $2000 for a bloody front door upgrade). Also... everyone is reading that online DCP document for Caddens, but it can't be taken as gospel because its from back in 2006... So this means you don't HAVE to have 2.6m high ceilings... sure it would be nice... but its not neccessary if you go through council - we didn't want the high ceilings and got through council find with 2.45m ceilings. Re: Caddens penrith 127Jan 29, 2014 9:46 am AngeBaz Thanks so much for your reply Ashleigh! Do you mind me asking how much costs increased by? Like $10k or even $50k? I'm glad you are happy with the outcome. I wouldnt mind a split level home, just don't know if we will be able to afford to build if the slope is going to add $30k, for example, to the build. No worries Ange. I like to respond to these things because my partner and I got burnt a few times with not knowing what to expect.. I just had a look at my tender and these are things that have impacted us. Retaining wall to contain the cut - Unsure at this stage access is going to be our issue. We should of arrange this somehow before the build. Will let you know later though so you have an idea. We need to retain about 800mm though to give you an idea of the cut. We required 33m2 of drop edge bean to contain it also so that charge was $14,850 Removing the excess dirt $2,500 (this charge would of been there anyway) Adding steps to the house making it split level plus the steps down to the garage and ceiling change $8,760 Based on these 3 things plus the retaining wall I would estimate about $40,000.00 - the other problem is they usually quote these with a PA (price on application) which means if they hit rock or something they can try charge you extra. I agree with the lady who commented before me. Do not worry about seeing someone that specialises in sloping blocks or what not because a good builder can do it regardless. If I could just make one suggestion, it would be to not think that the price on your tender is going to be the final price.. Along the way we have picked up a few extra unexpected costs and every time we get one, we feel gutted which is silly because it should be expected. My other suggestion is, we are building a 28 square home, if you would like to save costs somewhere and it is practical building a smaller house would also save costs. If you go to a "good" builder, once you get the site plans of the block you want the builder can estimate in your tender basically what the site costs will be but I guess you can't get these details yet if they wait until the day of sale to hand them out. I really hope this helps. Re: Caddens penrith 128Jan 29, 2014 1:17 pm ashleigh907 I agree with the lady who commented before me. Do not worry about seeing someone that specialises in sloping blocks or what not because a good builder can do it regardless. i aint no lady - im a man man Re: Caddens penrith 129Jan 29, 2014 1:23 pm amc_1984 ashleigh907 I agree with the lady who commented before me. Do not worry about seeing someone that specialises in sloping blocks or what not because a good builder can do it regardless. i aint no lady - im a man man Haha, I didn't really know sorry. I think coz I can't imagine my husband on a blog I just didn't think about it haha. Re: Caddens penrith 130Jan 29, 2014 3:35 pm SheridanBenjamin Kiwifire From the caddens / Penrith DCP; 'On front to back slopes, rear boundary retaining walls should be a maximum 1.8 metres in height and retain a maximum cut of 1.5 metres in height, provided that there is a minimum one (1) metre wide terrace between the face of the wall and the fence line'. I'm hoping whom ever we chose to do our landscaping will complete our retaining walls, although we don't think well have anything over 500mm so i may even have a crack myself Does the underlined mean that the fence that is built on top of the retaining wall on the diagonal behind us is wrong? I have no idea, not being a structural engineer, what I do know though is there are exemptions to certain developments listed on the Penrith council website & retaining walls are one of them . Re: Caddens penrith 133Feb 04, 2014 10:58 am BOOM NEW LAND RELEASED TODAY!!! OUR LAND SIZE IS NOW 60K more hahaha. STAGE 1 and 2 picked up nice price. Building the Sierra MDJ in Caddens Land exchanged 29/4/13 Pre Colour App 31/5/13 Land Settled 31/5/13 Full Colour App 11/6/13 Contracts signed 7/7/13 http://mdjseirrabyreyneandbec.blogspot.com.au/ Re: Caddens penrith 134Feb 05, 2014 7:30 am Yay we got a block in the Feb release! Expensive compared to previous releases but I guess it's just going to keep on going up so thought we better jump in now. Caddens is still significantly cheaper than Mulgoa Rise and Jordan Springs. Now the fun job of going through the tender process with the builder! Any advice of things to watch out for during a tender? Looking forward to building but have heard some horror stories though so am a but scared Re: Caddens penrith 135Feb 05, 2014 11:37 am AngeBaz Yay we got a block in the Feb release! Expensive compared to previous releases but I guess it's just going to keep on going up so thought we better jump in now. Caddens is still significantly cheaper than Mulgoa Rise and Jordan Springs. Now the fun job of going through the tender process with the builder! Any advice of things to watch out for during a tender? Looking forward to building but have heard some horror stories though so am a but scared Congrats! So happy for you. It really is an interesting process. The only advice I have is, if the tender says $300,000 chances are, it will cost you more by the end. There are extra things that you many not anticipate. To name a few that we came across; * Council Bond - $500 (refundable after the build and council has inspected) * Crossover Inspection - $126 (payable to council) * Landscape Plan - $600 (we had to pay for this because our builder doesn't do it and we didn't know what council would accept) * Council Conditions (that you have to complete before you can get your occupancy cert) - $800 (roughly, we need to actually do the two things the want first) * $759.00 to a sewer inspector to test the zone of influence our house would have on the sewer (luckily, the zone of influence wasn't an issue, however if it was, the charge was an additional $2150.00 * Builder's Variations (that we didn't expect to do but either felt the home needed it or just really, really wanted it) - $8,000 (obviously this is case by case, this isn't everyone) Goodluck though and please keep me updated Re: Caddens penrith 136Feb 06, 2014 4:12 pm Hi Im new to the area (Braeburn street) you all would have noticed yet another blue frame go up im sure. Re: Caddens penrith 137Feb 07, 2014 3:02 pm Plans signed, now waiting on the bank. Good news with the latest land release being $100k more than we paid for our block. Re: Caddens penrith 138Feb 07, 2014 6:57 pm Roof completed today, pretty happy with how quickly things are happening atm. Re: Caddens penrith 139Feb 10, 2014 12:47 pm AngeBaz Thanks so much for your reply Ashleigh! Do you mind me asking how much costs increased by? Like $10k or even $50k? I'm glad you are happy with the outcome. I wouldnt mind a split level home, just don't know if we will be able to afford to build if the slope is going to add $30k, for example, to the build. Our block is quite long and had a fall of 7m from back to front. Only 1.5 across the building platform though. We had to drop our garage, to comply with the regulation for the driveway gradient, but the rest stayed on the same level. Though we did require a drop edge beam. I think all up the extra costs for us were $10,000 to $15,000. However our contract specified no extra charges for soil removal and any extra piers. So depending on your builder the extra costs could add up, eg: some builders charge by the truck / ton over a certain amount of soil removal. Re: Caddens penrith 140Feb 10, 2014 3:22 pm Thanks for the info SheridanBenjamin It's helpful to be able to watch out for all the extra costs like dirt removal etc. We have chosen our house design and are now waiting for them to site it on the block etc. Will be interesting to see if site costs increase. We have a diagonal slope from the front left corner to the back right corner of the block. We are on Hickson Circuit. Not sure what the fall is calculated at though. It only looks like a slight slope to me but I guess I don't have a builders eye. Hehe! |