Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 21Oct 07, 2013 11:34 am I think its rather ironic that the 'designer facade' == a facade that has had no input from a designer, but yes that is the basic designer facade, when it came to the facade options pricing we like you decided there were much better places to spend the money on. The porch however was extended and a support post added, this was to comply with covenant requirement for a 3m^2 porch and for the same reason the front door was set back. Your bedroom fan can be specified during your clipsal interview either as clipsal supplied or owner supplied (we used clipsal for most rooms and a owner supplied fan in bedroom), and if you want recessed ceiling lights you may also want to consider getting your own lights and specifying them as owner supplied, its cheaper and you get a better choice.. I can thoroughly recommend 11W LEDs, just watch out for the 'installation charge' sting.... but its still cheaper than the standard charge for these types of lights! We took the solar 'free' PV system out of the contract and got a $2500 credit then had a 5kW PV system installed by a third party, total cost was $7500 as opposed to nearly $11,000 for a comparable system from coral... plus we got an SMA inverter... and a lot of trouble with the solar company we used! ALL cupboards have shelves as standard, including the small closet next to bathroom, which means its bugger all use for putting your broom and vacuum cleaner in... I can see a point in the future where Ill be knocking some of those shelves out! We put our TV in the family area, not quite got into the 'media room' thing, we did set up the media room so it can be used as a media room in the future, but it will probably just become a library/quiet lounge. Ill take some pictures of the dishwasher for you later, frankly its really low on our list of importance so I've not bothered to look yet. Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 23Oct 08, 2013 6:11 am bgkdavis bgkdavis 7) Between frame and the dry lining going in consider things like shelving, wall mounted TVs and network cabling, for the sake of putting a couple of extra pieces of timber in the frame and drilling a few cable routing holes you can make life a lot easier in the future. Just a quick question. Did you put in the extra timber, or did you get the builders to do it? Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 24Oct 08, 2013 6:38 am Have a chat with your carpenter while hes putting up the frame. If your going to buy a TV wall mount then probably a good idea to do it now, that way you will know the ideal distance between screws, then, as your frame goes up look at the area where you intend to mount the TV and see if the studs are in a good position to be used to mount the TV, your chances are basically 50/50 they will be OK. For our TV mounting point in the family room the studs were half a pitch out which would have meant we could not easily mount to the wall so we had the carpenter put in two dummy studs between the actual studs from floor level to the Noggins. NB if your not familiar with the terminology, studs = vertical 'posts', Noggins = horizontal spacer pieces halfway up wall between studs Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 25Oct 08, 2013 8:14 am bgkdavis - Thanks so much for the dishwasher pic. I'm pleased to see it does in fact have a hidden element. Coral quoted us 8k for a 5kw solar power system. Needless to say we are not upgrading to 5kw. But we are going 3kw and sometime in the future we will upgrade to 5kw. Apparently we can upgrade from 3kw to 5 kw but not 1.5 - 5kw. We are however getting 18 solar panels instead of the 6 that is included. We aren't really into the media room thing either but DH has a lot of memorabilia and that is the room we'll keep all that stuff in along with one of the TV's. It will be a kid free zone and us adults will retreat to that room once the kids are in bed. I'm writing down all your tips so I have them ready to go when we go to our clipspec appointment (if we ever get the contracts done ). From what DH said we don't get light fittings is that correct? I think we'll def be looking into getting all our lights just not sure when. I'm sure DH has a plan though. Our covenant wants our house set back 6 metres but we are applying for a 4.5mt set back to give us a little more room from the back of the house to the fence line. Sukarabikun - Thanks for the links. Do you know I've been looking everywhere for a picture like that? I could not find one anywhere. I really like the portico. Building with Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 Building Photos : http://s758.photobucket.com/user/zultbe ... 32%20Build Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 26Oct 08, 2013 8:36 am bgkdavis - thanks for that. I guess we will be off to buy our TV mounts shortly. Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 27Oct 08, 2013 9:02 am Porsche bgkdavis - Thanks so much for the dishwasher pic. I'm pleased to see it does in fact have a hidden element. Coral quoted us 8k for a 5kw solar power system. Needless to say we are not upgrading to 5kw. But we are going 3kw and sometime in the future we will upgrade to 5kw. Apparently we can upgrade from 3kw to 5 kw but not 1.5 - 5kw. We are however getting 18 solar panels instead of the 6 that is included. We aren't really into the media room thing either but DH has a lot of memorabilia and that is the room we'll keep all that stuff in along with one of the TV's. It will be a kid free zone and us adults will retreat to that room once the kids are in bed. I'm writing down all your tips so I have them ready to go when we go to our clipspec appointment (if we ever get the contracts done ). From what DH said we don't get light fittings is that correct? I think we'll def be looking into getting all our lights just not sure when. I'm sure DH has a plan though. Our covenant wants our house set back 6 metres but we are applying for a 4.5mt set back to give us a little more room from the back of the house to the fence line. Sukarabikun - Thanks for the links. Do you know I've been looking everywhere for a picture like that? I could not find one anywhere. I really like the portico. Corals quote of $8k for a 5kW solar system is the upgrade quote from the 'free' 1.5kW to 5kW, when you factor in the $2.5K rebate you get for removing the 1.5kW system then it totals $10.5K for a 5kW system Your standard electrical quotation is fine if you want to use a lighting plan that dates back to the 1950's as it probably only includes 1 baton light fitting per room/area, which Ill bet you will not want....this is where the clipsepc appointment comes in, during which they will upsell you better fittings, but I strongly recommend that before the clipspec appointment you take a visit to a decent lighting shop and get some prices.... I can highly recommend Martec Infinity LED lights.... just two of these are all you need for the media room, we have 3 over the dining area, 4 over the family area, 2 on patio 1 in kitchen (supplemented by 3 narrow beam lights over central counter)... I was really concerned with using so few down lights, but it was plenty, each light is only 11W if you want they can be fitted with dimmers, unlike CFC lights there is no warm up time, and they have a projected life per globe of 20,000 hours (probably last 20 years) However, here is the sting.... for each baton fitting you remove from the quote they will credit you $54 (yay), but for each light you supply they will charge you $68 to fit it (wtf!!!), BUT, since each light costs you $40 its still cheaper than the $160 Clipsal will charge you for supply and fit a similar light For the fans we used clipsal with fan lights in bedrooms, and we supplied a martec wraptor fan for main bedroom... note the clipsal fanlights have CFC bulbs which are slow to warm up!, we also supplied our own outdoor lights and wall mounted bedside lights. Another thing is clipsal has nothing to do with data wiring, you will have another company try and sell you data wiring, but I did my own, and just used the data contractor to supply the NBN connection Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 28Oct 08, 2013 7:13 pm Porsche, No worries. Finally we have chosen a compromise between the Soffit level portico and the "Designer" facade. The space under roof is quite similar as portico but with just one pillar instead of two. Then the price decreased from 2800 to about 1500, which is good for our budget. Please see below: http://s903.photobucket.com/user/sukarabikun/media/FloorPlanNoosa279_zpsdaf30ecf.jpg.html Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 29Oct 08, 2013 7:29 pm Bkgdavis, Very happy to find some valuable information about downlights. We got an allowance for 30 but now I'm thinking a bit different after your comment. For me dimmable downlights are number 1 in my upgrade choice. I cannot imagine the house with just 1 bulb in each room. Thanks again. Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 30Oct 24, 2013 8:37 pm Could someone please tell the price of the Hastings facade for the Casuarina houses? It wasn't available on our original noosa 26, but don't know the cost for the casuarinas. Thanks Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 31Oct 25, 2013 9:25 am Casuarinaforus - the best person to ask would be your sales consultant. When we asked ours he gave us prices for all of the facades we were interested in. From memory (and I'm talking July 2011, when we asked, so don't quote me) I believe it was about 14-17K. It was roughly double the price of our Hastings Portico for which we paid $6,750. Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 32Oct 25, 2013 10:40 am Casuarinaforus Could someone please tell the price of the Hastings facade for the Casuarina houses? It wasn't available on our original noosa 26, but don't know the cost for the casuarinas. Thanks Hastings on a Casuarina was $15,980 back in April Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 33Oct 25, 2013 1:40 pm Tiger-eye I have asked for pricings & brick sign about 2 weeks ago, in but haven't received it yet Our office was thrown into disarray with the departure of office manager, so I sent my kids part time nanny (awesome young lady) over to them & she started working there last week. Hopefully she can sort it all out. Doesn't help that I'm so impatient to know everything lol. Thanks guys Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 34Oct 25, 2013 1:44 pm Oh another question do they charge to install the fans & exhaust fans? We are supplying all our own as I like Martec better than clipsal Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 35Oct 25, 2013 2:17 pm yes they charge for installation of all owner supplied item, we replaced the master bedroom fan with a martec wraptor, exhaust fans are extra as well. At this stage you dont really need to be bothered about fans, once the plans are drawn up yu will get the clipsal interview, just make sure you have a few K in your budget to cover this... we had $1,000 added to our quotation to cover clipssal costs and it wasnt enough... and that was with us supplying our own lights and fan Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 36Oct 25, 2013 7:11 pm here are some prices for fans and installation for a...... -clipsal supplied and installed fan $329 -clipsal supplied and installed fan with light $365 -install owner supplied fan with light $147 We went with the clipsal fans throughout, but installed a martec wraptor fan/light ($285) in the master bedroom costing us $432 in total Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 37Nov 25, 2013 2:52 am Thanks for that bgkdavis, I have asked for prices & am waiting... Some prices I get, some I dont lol. BTW love how your house turned out! We had Martec fans throughout old house & love them. So want to get them again. Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 38Nov 26, 2013 8:50 am Hi Everyone It's been a while since I updated this and only because there has been nothing to update. We were waiting on the 2nd tender to come back with the amendments we wanted and it took 5 weeks to get back to us. Dh and I are not impressed with Coral Homes and there lack of a) communication and b) their lack of urgency to do anything . If it wasn't for the fact that this is the house we want then we were going to go to another builder. We even went and approached 3 other builders. This experience so far has not been pleasant and has left a sour taste in our mouths. In total it's been 4 months from when we paid our deposit to receiving the 2nd tender and that IMO is pretty slack. There was no communication from the SC at all until DH sent a rather pointed email. You don't mind waiting for things as long as there is great communication between the SC and yourselves. The fact that we keep being told "such and such weeks" and then having to wait another week or 2 without any communication is pretty poor customer service. Is it really that hard to pick up a phone and say 'Hi Porsche I'm still waiting on the tender costing's to come back and I've been chasing it up blah blah blah'. Tell us a load of hogwash for all we care but make contact! I know we are not the only customers to have had dramas with Coral. There are 4 other people who are having the very same issues. We have however signed a contract (hoping it's not a huge mistake ) and chosen our tiles. We are choosing all our colours this week. We finally got the 'M' class for our soil (which it should have been in the first place) so saw a great reduction in the over all $$$. So with the savings, we have added a Soffit, driveway, alfresco slab & soffit slab. Even though we liked the 'Elliott' portico we can't have the portico be any further forward than the front of the media room. Which is why the soffit is better for us. The engineers have already made all our eves 450 rather than the 600 they usually are because of the rear boundary. There were some things missing off of the contract which will be made as 'variations'. So hopefully they don't stuff it up. Building with Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 Building Photos : http://s758.photobucket.com/user/zultbe ... 32%20Build Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 39Dec 31, 2013 11:25 pm Kameko Hi Porsche, Nice to see another Coral Home thread. We are building the Longreach and have used Boral Blue Rio as our brick choice, which is defiantly not in the standard range. I do have the brick range for Coral somewhere around in my email if you PM me your email I can forward that on to you. I look forward to following your build. Would you be kind enough to also e-mail it to me? I would love to check out the range also. Currently deciding on which coral home to go with. We like a few Re: Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 40Apr 13, 2014 10:03 am Hi Everyone Well we finally have some progress . We got our start date as the 11th March. So earth works started and then the following week plumbing was done and the slab was layed. We lost 3 days due to the rain but the frame went up in 2 days with 1 minor hiccup which was fixed the very next day. Last week the roof tiles went on and also all the solar panes and house wrap insulation. The roof insulation is sitting in the roof cavity waiting to be installed and all our windows and the front door have been delivered and are sitting in the garage. The brick layer rang Friday and he's starting Easter Saturday. So far things have been running smoothly (touch wood). It pays to speak to your tradies directly as we were able to have our retaining wall dug out with the drot while he was doing our earth works and we just paid him directly. We also changed our mortar from "natural' (which is standard) to off white via the bricklayer paying him directly as well. So I'll start uploading some pics to photo bucket and I'll add the link to my sig. The tradies have been excellent to deal with so far and really are a credit to Coral. Building with Coral Homes - Casuarina 32 Building Photos : http://s758.photobucket.com/user/zultbe ... 32%20Build Ask the council if there is a chance of getting build over easement exemption. Sometimes easements are unused and 24cm is not all that much. Good luck. And yes any builder… 2 13769 In Qld it is a requirement that a builder must have a cost breakdown, for building a home to the same specification, with the same inclusions and the same finish. So ask… 1 1801 Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74701 |