Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16521Feb 20, 2023 3:43 pm My build has not started yet, it took council 9 months to approve a DA and over two years in total with Wisdom Homes. I asked WHL for the outdoor kitchen, they told me about 1.2m brick wall at the back, I am not sure how they will do it. I cannot DIY this, it's too much and I may make it worse. I asked a few outdoor kitchen supplier, they only install the customized kitchen for you, I need to sort out brick works, electricity and gas etc. nothing is easy. I am very deflated. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16522Feb 20, 2023 3:47 pm Flamingo My build has not started yet, it took council 9 months to approve a DA and over two years in total with Wisdom Homes. I asked WHL for the outdoor kitchen, they told me about 1.2m brick wall at the back, I am not sure how they will do it. I cannot DIY this, it's too much and I may make it worse. I asked a few outdoor kitchen supplier, they only install the customized kitchen for you, I need to sort out brick works, electricity and gas etc. nothing is easy. I am very deflated. Flamingo I have a great guy who I can recommend to build that for you. Just let me know when you are ready and I will PM you his details Cheers Simeon Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16524Feb 22, 2023 9:57 am Ashington Homes Flamingo My build has not started yet, it took council 9 months to approve a DA and over two years in total with Wisdom Homes. I asked WHL for the outdoor kitchen, they told me about 1.2m brick wall at the back, I am not sure how they will do it. I cannot DIY this, it's too much and I may make it worse. I asked a few outdoor kitchen supplier, they only install the customized kitchen for you, I need to sort out brick works, electricity and gas etc. nothing is easy. I am very deflated. Flamingo I have a great guy who I can recommend to build that for you. Just let me know when you are ready and I will PM you his details Cheers Simeon Hi Simeon, thanks again for your help here, I am waiting for the contruction certificate, when should I engage with the person for outdoor kitchen or they can work on the plan, does this person also do driveway, carport and landscaping. due to the flood issue, I have to reduce my garage width, thing about have an extension carport, a good looking carport. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16525Feb 22, 2023 4:48 pm Flamingo Ashington Homes Flamingo My build has not started yet, it took council 9 months to approve a DA and over two years in total with Wisdom Homes. I asked WHL for the outdoor kitchen, they told me about 1.2m brick wall at the back, I am not sure how they will do it. I cannot DIY this, it's too much and I may make it worse. I asked a few outdoor kitchen supplier, they only install the customized kitchen for you, I need to sort out brick works, electricity and gas etc. nothing is easy. I am very deflated. Flamingo I have a great guy who I can recommend to build that for you. Just let me know when you are ready and I will PM you his details Cheers Simeon Hi Simeon, thanks again for your help here, I am waiting for the contruction certificate, when should I engage with the person for outdoor kitchen or they can work on the plan, does this person also do driveway, carport and landscaping. due to the flood issue, I have to reduce my garage width, thing about have an extension carport, a good looking carport. Flamingo Give me a call when you are ready and I will talk you through it. The main thing is to see if you can get your builder to at least install all the services for you ie power, gas, water, sewer and then the rest is easy. I promise you. As I said, when you are ready call me. Cheers Simeon Architectural Homes & Duplexes - specialising in custom designing homes to your budget Get a Free Onsite Consultation Today or send a PM for information, questions or advice. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16526Mar 13, 2023 8:35 pm Wanted to add my 2c Located in Georges River Council and we are "potentially flood affected" on the 10.7 S7A since 2019. However not a flood control lot (important!). We originally engaged Clarendon in 2020 but they didn't want to develop a stormwater plan and wouldn't explain to us why - basically dropped us like we were hot, prior to tender. Went to Wisdom July 2021, tender accepted Sep 2021 and signed the contract Nov 2021. Their products are good, people generally nice. I told Wisdom upfront that Clarendon had some stormwater issue and that Wisdom needed to do their due diligence to ensure they would not have the same issue - they checked it out and said it was OK for them. Our selections are delayed due to COVID re-opening (could not get access to their Canvas Quarter until Feb 2022, i.e. 3 months after contract) but we get all our selections done June 2022. First sign of trouble - we ask to consult on adding a pool when making our selections in Feb (first possible opportunity), and Wisdom dutifully get their pool people to draw up a plan, then 6 weeks later their hydraulic engineer tells us we can't have a pool due to hard / soft absorption interference. Waste of time! Second sign of trouble - hydraulic planning comes back June 2022 with requirement for sewer and stormwater peg-outs. I complain that I could have had these done months ago if Wisdom had their act together, as it's now 9 months since we accepted tender. Hydraulics plan finalised August 2022, they want us to put a retaining wall in the middle of the backyard, as we have a 4 x 10 m reserve within our fence line. We argue against this but advised it's the only way to meet stormwater requirements. We say OK and CDC goes in October 2022. We are now 13 months since tender and nervous about price hikes. Wisdom go quiet approaching Christmas and I chase them up for the CDC result, which by now should be academic. All goes to hell week before Christmas 2022 - project has failed CDC. The CSR does not know why and the certifiers are hard to get feedback from. CSR resigns in Feb 2022. We end up having to wait until end 01/Mar/23 (4.5 months since CDC submission) to speak to someone at Wisdom to move the project forward. Turns out Wisdom's certifier has outright rejected CDC due to 10.7: "Flood control lot? No. However land has been idenfied... in the Flood Study as being potentially flood affected. Council has not yet completed... risk management plan..." So they go to council to get the plan levels, and then say the potential flood levels (from Council) are beyond their scope to approve, and the engineer won't sign us off as not requiring S3.5 of the SEPP. I push back several times but the certifiers won't budge. The point of contention remains - 10.7 says we are not a flood control lot and SEPP S3.5 only applies to flood control lots: "development under this code must not be carried out on any part of a flood control lot". It would appear that GRC are spooking the certifiers by making reference to a flood study, even though they have not finalised a Flood Plan and not changed flood controls for the lot. It's become de facto DA and they are theoretically introducing soft flood controls on properties in advance of actually formally changing controls or finalising their flood plans. I can imagine this becoming a broader issue for Sydney development in light of all the flooding in 2021-2022, that anyone fingered in a flood model will no longer be able to obtain CDC if the certifier insists on routing decisions back to council. I complain that Wisdom should have known all of this at the tender stage, and I think it's embarrassing that they don't know if their projects will pass CDC or not prior to submission. By extension, any property potentially identified in the GRC flood study (there are hundreds of lots in each ward) cannot go via CDC and Wisdom would not appear to know this. They tried to explain it was their certifiers and somewhat out of their control, but I maintain any of their vendors are their own responsibility. I work in Project Management (different industry) and I cannot help but reflect back on my own profession when dealing with volume builders. The delays occur because of what we call "siloing", i.e. each department operates within their own silo and nobody pulls the overall project together or advocates properly for the client's final goal (building the house). I would be crucified for this in my line of work. They are all nice people at Wisdom but there is a significant lack of urgency as they eat away at your fixed-price period. Now they are talking about making a base-price adjustment due to time elapsed, even though I clearly documented the entire project and 80% of the time cost is Wisdom's own process. To consider they didn't even achieve CDC submission until 13 months after tender is, I think, embarrassing. I am going to ask for permission to use a private certifier and see if we can get a second opinion on CDC. I want to avoid DA at all costs as I am spectacularly unimpressed with GRC employees and they are supposed to be my local representatives, i.e. I pay their rates. PS: anecdotal I know, but it has never gone remotely close to flooding in our block since we moved in 8 years ago. Makes you wonder what these computer models are worth if we have record annual rainfall and record single rain events past 2 years, but we don't see any flooding as predicted by the model. Of course they need to attempt to model risks prior to implementing control changes, but I complained to Council that the data being used in the GRC Flood Study comes from 2012-2014, with computer (only) revisions in 2016 and 2019, i.e. no real-world data in the 5 years up to publishing the study, and no new real-world data since (including the major rainfalls these past few years). Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16527Mar 15, 2023 10:29 am Call it what you want, but siloing in domestic housing industry is a result of home owners being down at the bottom of the information/data ladder. LOL, Keep in the dark and fed Bull$!t) here How is this design in terms of liveability Blame the Builders salesman for the way the industry is and clients not paying for professional advice, upfront Heads up your in for a huge $ticker $hock when you raise your ffls/Footings/Slab,etc ... Pity you weren't forewarned and then got 3 builders to quote on the engineering before you signed and handed over a deposit. Goodluck Designer,Engineer (Civil,Const & Envir),Builder,Concrete & Masonry Contract.Struct Repairs Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16529Mar 16, 2023 1:05 pm Congrats AnnaP that's awesome! I am currently in a 'discussion' with Wisdom re our drive through garage. The back roller door is narrower then the front to the point where I couldn't drive my car through. Granted it was narrower on the plan, but come on! We have only had 19 rows of bricks done, so it's not going to be a costly fix, but so far I have been told NO CHANGES by my site supervisor. Esculating now... Nothing is ever easy Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16530Mar 16, 2023 1:06 pm diepiggy Congrats AnnaP that's awesome! I am currently in a 'discussion' with Wisdom re our drive through garage. The back roller door is narrower then the front to the point where I couldn't drive my car through. Granted it was narrower on the plan, but come on! We have only had 19 rows of bricks done, so it's not going to be a costly fix, but so far I have been told NO CHANGES by my site supervisor. Esculating now... Nothing is ever easy Wait, you had the measurements prestart and you didn't bother to check? Rookie mistake. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16531Mar 16, 2023 1:08 pm Yeah, I know. I had issues with the heights which I rectified but I missed the width. On the plan it was very cluttered. Having said that, wtf would you have a different sized door on the front and back? Makes no sense to me Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16533Mar 16, 2023 1:10 pm diepiggy Yeah, I know. I had issues with the heights which I rectified but I missed the width. On the plan it was very cluttered. Having said that, wtf would you have a different sized door on the front and back? Makes no sense to me because they arent the same door. No doubt you have a sectional panel lift at the front and roller at the back. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16535Mar 16, 2023 2:49 pm diepiggy So a door which you can't drive through would be standard when someone asks for a 'drive through garage'? The rear space where these doors would fit are typically narrower due to the design of the homes. Most of the homes aren't designed off the plan to have enough space for a drive through garage. Not only that, not all cars are equally wide. You might be able to fit a Barina through but not a standard Commodore or It might fit a Commodore, but you may own an F150. So when you say I want a drive through garage, there's a bit more to ascertain. Seems both you and the builder missed doing the due diligence to make sure that "drive through" meant the same thing ro both of you. Many people get the rear garage door not necesairly to drive a car through, but enable access for small equipment, like dingos and bobcats etc for landscaping etc. So if you said "drive through" to me, my first question would be "what are you driving through?" which would hav had you looking at measurements. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16537Apr 05, 2023 9:49 am diepiggy Congrats AnnaP that's awesome! I am currently in a 'discussion' with Wisdom re our drive through garage. The back roller door is narrower then the front to the point where I couldn't drive my car through. Granted it was narrower on the plan, but come on! We have only had 19 rows of bricks done, so it's not going to be a costly fix, but so far I have been told NO CHANGES by my site supervisor. Esculating now... Nothing is ever easy Thank you Diggy we are booked for handover tomorrow 6/4/2023!!! Sharing pixs of our home sweet home. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Can someone please offer some advice? Im DESPERATE. Because I'm completely and utterly exhausted. How long are variations taking with other companies at the moment? We… 0 19252 In fairness nobody gave a crap about the ACCC and the gag clauses continued in the pro forma templates of a few other builders after the ACCC took on Wisdom, and more… 19 74775 Hi Everyone, I am exploring builder in NSW and received a very tempting quote from Wisdom home for their momentum series. I just want to know experience of building… 0 9728 |