Builder soak well...how important?

Dear All,

I know this might have been asked earlier, but I need to hear from experienced house owner to make a decision..feeling depressed .
When we signed the 1st contract with builder, we opted for doing soak wells privately. Now it's time to sign the final contract, but builder said the site requires engineered soak wells ($6k) (Soil type S, footing S6, Wind N1, no sand pad required). When we objected, they said they could allow us to do it through independent contractor, but it won't be in the building contract. So any damage happens to the house in future relating soakwell, they won't take liability.
So all the owners who are building in Perth, can you confirm if your building company took the soakwell out of your building contract when you wanted to do your own soak well.
The salesman says that those who are doing soak wells independently do not understand their contract and their builder won't be responsible for fixing the house in future if any structural damage happens to their house related to the soak wells. is this true?
The way builder is explaining things and dealing, it might be possible for them to correlate any structural damage to the house down the line to soakwells blindly and evade responsibility of fixing. Am I assuming right or being paranoid? Should we take the risk putting the soak wells ourselves?

Thanks

If you get the builder do everything related to a build they are responsible for any defects.

Once you start taking responsibility for issues if a defect occurs then the builder will usually argue that it is your work that caused the problem. If the standard of what you do is less than the builder provides you are going to have a hard time arguing that the defect is the builders problem.

Even if the job you do is the same standard you may need to go to a court and pay for expert witnesses, to prove that it wasn't your fault.

Standard practice with most claims is to initially deny liability!

Thanks for the reply Bashworth, that is precisely why now we are feeling a bit skeptical about doing it outside. But does this mean that other owners (probably 80% in Perth) taking this risk on themselves? It feels defeated...

yes it is true.

soak wells was included in our siteworks. our soak wells were bigger than me. They needed a Mini-Excavator to dig the hole and a crane to get in the hole. They had about four guys working

our siteworks was $6,000 including soak wells

You are lucky cupcakes; ours is 19k including soakwells (6k). I would not have complained if it was even 15k.

our land is A class. we kept away from the S class because we were told from the sales guy that it would be $20,000 for siteworks.

Our builder allowed a standard provisional amount of 3500 for soakwells which has now been amended to 5800. The house is fairly large and I have a 9m by 7m freestanding garage and they aall will need stormwater drainage.

While its a lot I think you are over a barrel as others have said as above, if anything goes wrong it is potentially a he said she said situation. The potential saving is not going to be massive for the risk taken on. I will leave this to the builder.

Your costs sound same as ours .... We're sitting at $18k provisional including soak wells. We're in a C2 zone and with clay down below, they can dig the holes and sink the suckers!!

Our last house we did our own soak wells and it was this experienced that made perfect sense to leave them in the contract this time. Some things it is easier to get the builder to do it. If I was building in sand, sand and more sand, no dramas, but throw some clay in and nope, I'll pay good money.

Thanks for the replies, seems going through the builder is the way to go; especially hearing from someone having gone through both the options like Marcia.
Thanks