Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jan 13, 2014 9:16 am Hello Newbie here so please bear with me. We are building in Hallett Cove and of course understand that without having the full information noone is able to say yes or no but I am really just after opinions. When we negotiated our contract with the builder we did negotiate quite hard and received some very good discounting. During the process we made it clear that we did not want to have any nasty surprises for any allowances and asked if we could ensure that they were as realistic as possible and in actual fact with some allowances we firmed up actuals where possible (i.e aircon, carpets etc) before signing. We have had our footings report back and there has been a big increase on the allowances. The allowance for the footings was $34,000 which in the Reps view was very realistic and of course if we came across rock then we could not account for that at the allowance stage (fair enough). The $34,000 did not include earthworks as we are to carry these out at our cost so therefore the land will already be prepared. We are building a 2 story house and it is quite big, size overall is 400 M2 so again I do not know whether these figures are good, bad or ugly! Anyhow we did not find rock, which was good news we thought however there has been a big increase in the price of the steel required going from $7,500 to $16,181 over 100% and then the Corrosion Protection going from $3,500 to $7,749 again over 100% increase. So now the variation is around an extra $13,000, the previous land owner had actually had an Engineer Report carried out around 3 years ago but did not go ahead with the build, we did supply our Rep with this report at the start. So just wondered if based on the info provided it is possible to say whether these costs are fair or perhaps a bit over? I am not against paying for things if they need to be done but my fear is that the discounts that were provided are being clawed back in other ways. Thanks guys. TL Re: Are these footing costs high? 3Jan 14, 2014 1:38 pm Hi timbo Well the slab is included in the base build price so essentially yes $43,000 just for the footings! The corrosion is based on being close to the coast (around 600 meters away) so there are extra measures that they must take by law to meet certain build standard requirements it seems. Re: Are these footing costs high? 4Jan 14, 2014 2:17 pm Its hard to say... Are you able to see the soil report? I built in Kapunda 9 or 10 years ago and the site costs came back at a whopping $33,500 for a single storey 24sq home - on a flat block. The soil we were told was highly reactive black soil and needed really deep piering. I had my site costs estimated at $7k, so needless to say I was shocked! What seemed like a nice, easy, flat building site turned out to be a nightmare. Once I spoke to the neighbours, in the area they all told a similar tale - really high site costs. That didnt include rock removal (there was none luckily) or the soil removal - which was about another $4k on top of that. Having said that, this build in Mt Barker has come in at $16k - still roughly a smiliar sized house, still on a flat block - but the soil isnt reactive. Just a bit of the typical Adelaide clay. Poles apart! Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66299 Slab: 16/6/14 Frame: 4/7/14 Roof: 22/7/14 Lock Up: 20/8/14 Fixing: 26/8/14 PCI: 9/10/14 Handover: 20/10/14 Re: Are these footing costs high? 5Jan 14, 2014 2:40 pm I just had a quick squiz at our contract, for a two-storey ~380sqm (including balconies etc) house on a block with about 800mm fall from one side to the other, our fixed-price slab-costs (up to H1 class but I don't know what they actually poured) was $37500. The provisional cost estimates were about $5k in drop-edge beam (ended-up being $8k) and about $4k in spoilage removal (accurate). So ours is about $47k. Independent assessor/inspector saw nothing unusual in any of our contract costs, so while ours may be on the high side of normal they're within what you'd call "normal" (well so I'm told). Now I've just double-checked and that does include stormwater drainage & a couple of relatively minor items ... but they're not itemised, they're all bundled-in together. So I'm going to pull a number out of my backside & say that the footings themselves were probably around $35k-$40k in all of that. Re: Are these footing costs high? 6Jan 14, 2014 8:15 pm TedLuigi Hi timbo Well the slab is included in the base build price so essentially yes $43,000 just for the footings! The corrosion is based on being close to the coast (around 600 meters away) so there are extra measures that they must take by law to meet certain build standard requirements it seems. < Ok Im a owner builder who has learnt a lot from this site so time to share some of what i know The picture above ( I hope is my footings for a appox 150 Sq meter lower level floor of the house I built http://www.flickr.com/photos/114384644@N02/11944975236/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/114384644@N02/11944393913/ This is the footings after the concrete was poured... The footings had rather large Cross beams and over 4 meter pierrs (6 off) at the front http://www.flickr.com/photos/114384644@N02/11944537314/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/114384644@N02/11944518544/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/114384644@N02/11944897666/ As u can see it was not a easy site and total cost was 28000 footings and slab all the earth works Yes builders I see all the time on this site just ripp money off people who they realise know no better Even when rock is found look around get a quote of people even very large 15 tonne drouts are only 250 an hour thats only 2000 a day and they can do a hell off a lot in a day Re: Are these footing costs high? 8Jan 29, 2014 11:02 am As an owner builder I would have died at this. We had a fair slope on our block and had to bring in around the 1400 M3 of fill (150 truck loads plus the 30 ton excavator) which had to be compacted. The house pad was a reasonable size. The house with pergola and garage is about the 55sq mark. After this we put down 18 x 600mm piers. Most of these went down about the 3 metre mark. We had a waffle pod slab on top of all this. The total for the earthworks, supplying all the rio and waffle pods and for the concretor to lay the slab came to approx $43000. So I must agree with Timbo43 about how much some builders take advantage at certain points in a build. Settlement 1/2/12 New Shed 23/3/12 Slab poured 27/3/12 Frame complete 4/5/12 Roof complete 1/6/12 LOCKUP 29/6/12 Our new build blog http://kareenhillsownerbuild.blogspot.com/ yep sounds good make the footing bigger to to allow for the pipe in the middle 3 7247 PM me your email. I have a build excavation calculator you can use based on your plans to double check what your builder is telling you. Cheers Simeon 1 10169 I've dug some footings to embed a post anchor into. My holes are around 450mm deep which I'll put a 200mm stirrup into. The bottom of these holes seem firm enough. … 0 3288 |