Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Mar 14, 2014 6:04 am Hi all, this is my first post after following blog for the last 6 months, when we got plenty of good information for our new house that is about to be built. I do have a question on the shocker of additional site costs we got this week from the builder, conveniently just before the contract. We're going with fixed price contract, where we asked for inclusion of H type slab in the base price and the soil test has indeed come back as H. Block of land is a developed flat block of land (500mm drop). After engineering was done the following costs crept in and we're not sure if we're being ripped off: 1. Provide engineering designed piering and waffle pod rib thickening to slab - $1554 2. Provide expansion couplers to drainage and stormwater joints - $1736 3. Provide temporary safety fence to frount boundary, steel posts to balcony ILO timber, adjustment to driveway exposed aggregate allowance - $1160 4. Provide field gully RHS with dedicated stormwater line to street - $792 They have also added the following as a result of engineering: 1. Provide Engineering designed steel portal frames to Alfresco - $3548 All together additional $9k of costs. We did ask numerous times if any additional costs are expected if we provisioned for H in the contract and soil comes back as H and were told the only cost is $300 for temporary fence. Mind you we don't have a balcony, so don't even know what they are referring to and we didn't ask for any adjustment or changes for exposed aggregate driveway as we're already payin $4360 for it. We have part of the alfresco under the upper floor, which apparently requires steel frames, and I would potentially accept that cost only if they'd use galvanized steel, which they said they wont (just painted) as according to them "all steel is painted as it's enclosed in bulkheads or cladding". Would you be so kind to comment on that? Re: Justification of additional site and engineering costs? 2Mar 14, 2014 10:52 am there is no such thing a h class anymore. it is h1 or h2. you need to read what steel and concrete depth was already included. often h1 is included but h2 requires thicker steel. if your soil report shows a bit of fill/fall, often piers are required (or perhaps you are building right next to an easement). at $1554, i would guess you have at least 5 piers and the classification is h2 with SL92 mesh, n12 or n16 bars and 12 trench mesh. engineering would not have anything to do with your drainage. not sure why they have come back with this. temporary fencing may not have already been included. steel posts to balcony, well, i would have thought that could have been determined earlier. not sure on the adjustment to the exposed agg. sounds like they under estimated it. stormwater should have already been included. all in all, this is what frustrates me in the building game. I loose so much work to cheaper builders who come in $10,000 cheaper but this happens everytime and i would have been much cheaper in the end. "I never learned a thing until I finished school" - Unknown "You can get anything accomplished, If you don't mind who gets the credit" - Ned Hay Re: Justification of additional site and engineering costs? 3Mar 14, 2014 11:31 am Classification H1 with SL82 mesh and N12 bars. Comment on balcony is ridiculous as we don't even have balcony And yes I entirely agree with you, we were underquoted so they got our business through the door, knowing fully it will get more expensive towards the end, when the cost of going somewhere else would be more than paying additional costs to them Our standard double-glazed window is tested to achieve, Rw 34, and can be glazed to suit Rw 39. The price is good too... 3 9472 Assuming you've modelled the TB8, TB10, TB12, TB2 & J1 joists/LVLs there, it appears as per drawing to me. There maybe should be an additional J1 between TB10 and T12 if… 3 31816 Thanks for all replies. I just noticed now the pictures I added to post right on top of page were wrong. I attached pictures showing "current" and my "suggested" floor… 9 14635 |