Browse Forums Building A New House 1 May 09, 2015 10:44 am Hi Everyone, We are building our first home in Woodville west SA. Our block is 386sqm and irregular shaped , so we are doing a custom plan to fit the block. Our land settlement was done in February. We signed up with Fairmont homes on 29th March. We have had signed up with Sekisui house in last year but they winded up SA operations in February and we ended up choosing Fairmont as the builder. Fairmont is doing the engineering drawings now. Site survey and soil testing was done by Sekisui already so we have provided the same to Fairmont. We are hoping Fairmont to get the drawings and footing estimate ready by next week. Here is our home plan. http://s280.photobucket.com/user/tomjoos/media/DSC_1432_zpsh6wmunzb.jpg.html Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 2May 09, 2015 12:33 pm Hi Tomjoos! I've subscribed to follow your build. You signed to fairmont the day after us so it will be interesting to see if we progress similarly. You're already ahead though as Fairmont ignored our soil report from Sekisui and someone is coming out on Monday to do soil testing! Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 3May 10, 2015 10:35 pm Hey, we just signed with fairmont today, looking forward to following your progress, we are subject to sale of our home so won't be starting any building till closer to the end of.the year, we are also in SA, all the best with your build! Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 4May 10, 2015 11:34 pm Thank you Bobbin and Heather. Fairmont ignored our soil report as well, but they did the test again two weeks back . Hopefully they will come back with a fixed footing and drawings soon. Sekisui was much faster , they finished the soil test , site survey and drawings in 4 weeks , but with Fairmont its been six weeks already and yet to hear from them. Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 5May 11, 2015 7:42 am Hopefully you hear something soon , the footings make me nervous! Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 6May 11, 2015 10:54 am They did your soil test 2 weeks ago! That annoys me a bit given we signed up at the same time! We have a situation where we will be able to apply for finance easily up until the end of June, but then my DH is dropping a few days at work until early September, which means that if we don't apply for finance before then we may have to wait until late September to apply for finance, likely delaying our build starting until the new year! I also have to say I was NOT impressed with them stamping a big red stamp saying we knew that no further changes could be made over our signatures to make it look like we had signed that statement, after the contract signing. Our salesperson did not make it clear that no further changes could be made and we missed the small statement to that effect on page 5 of some document.. Haven't been impressed with the admin stage so far. Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 7May 11, 2015 12:17 pm Hi @bobbin we saw the same thing but that is in relation to structural things like moving walls, doors roof height etc bit cosmetic things, we made sure we had our quote water tight with all upgrades included in the quite before. We went through 4 requotes before we were happy to sign, we are very happy with our floorplan but some cosmetic changes can be made at selections. What were you unhappy with in your plan? You did know.that you could change things before signing up? Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 8May 11, 2015 12:28 pm It is the kitchen. It is a change of mind really, but we just were not aware there would be no further changes after signing on. With Sekisui it was a completely different process and we saw final plans before signing a contract, so we were able to make changes right up until the final plans were signed off on. Whereas with Fairmont, the plan we have is nowhere near final as there were handwritten amendments that had not been implemented on the day we signed. I believed we would have until we signed off on final plans to make amendments. The change requires a change to a window so it is structural and needs to be done before council application is sent in. Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 9May 11, 2015 12:46 pm Oh right, we had made one more change on the day we signed to the wall size next to our fridge but she had drawn this change on and had a separate sheet of paper that noted that final change so we didn't face a cost etc, we made heaps of changes to the plan before signing up so we're glad to of had that opportunity, maybe it comes đown to the sales person you get also, our lady has been great Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 10May 11, 2015 1:18 pm @Bobbin I think you need to speak to the sales person asap about this. In Sekisui everything was handled by the sales person till final plans and FCR is ready but in Fairmont everything is done from their HO. Sales consultant do not have much role after sign up. We also signed up the papers as you soon after the sign up with Fairmont and we were surprised to see that nothing can be changed from that point. But we have had done all changes before sign up. We received a second set of documents two weeks back . It was the consent form to authorize Fairmont to represent us in council. There were forms to specify the roof , gutters, winfow frames , brick and facade render colours. There is a tool in Fairmont website to visulalize facades with different options. But not all the roof tile and brick colours in FM specification is not available in the tool. We were not happy with that and spoke to our consultant but he assured that our selections can be changed later. Once they finish engineering drawings it would be very difficult to get something changed . So better speak to the consultant before they proceed further. Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 11May 11, 2015 2:26 pm Yeah, I tried to go and see my salesperson yesterday to get it sorted. I didn't know they changed display villages every month! I went to Evanston gardens and the salesperson was actually filling in at Seaford! I went home and called him - got voicemail. Am going to try again soon. Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 12May 11, 2015 11:53 pm We received the footing construction report and footing variation to the contract today. Fixed footing is now 16470 (including 550 for resurvey, pegs are gone when the fencing done). Initial allowance was 18000. The footing estimate done by the consultant seems to be right. We are signing the variation and will post tomorrow. Now only the engineering drawings are pending to get things into council for approval. Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 13May 12, 2015 10:11 am Awesome Tomjoos! Great to see the variation was in your favour! After soil tests with Sekisui our footings went up $10,000! My plans are sorted so I won't hijack your thread anymore! Did they say how long it would take to get the final plans? Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 14May 12, 2015 11:50 am Hey tomjoos where abouts are you building? the footings are scarey I really hope our sales lady over estimated!! Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 16May 12, 2015 12:11 pm Is that st clair? I hope our footings comes in as low as yours! How big is the house you are building, We will be building the baxter (modified) by fairmont homes Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 17May 12, 2015 1:35 pm Its not St clair , but close . May be 2-3 kms. So we can hope that the soil strength would be similar. Total size including porch is 223.51. House 172.36 Garage 47.68 Porch 3.47 Ours is a custom plan . Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 18May 12, 2015 4:17 pm Sounds great! A nice up and coming area! Looking forward to following your build Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 19May 19, 2015 8:58 am Update : Received the final drawings on last friday along with forms for neighbour's consent for building in the boundary. Once we provide the neighbour consent form and signed drawings Fairmont will go to council. We were asked to book appointments with direct interiors ,supreme kitchens, and clipsal ,austral/pgh bricks for selection. We visited pgh and austral on Saturday. We didn't like like the anything from pgh standard range. Liked grange from austral std range . Also liked muscat grey in upgrade range which will cost 800 extra. There are really good colours in their upgrade ranges but really expensive for us. Booked an appointment with austral on 30th may. They will help to choose matching gutter, facia and roog tiles. Brick colours appear to be really different from how they look in brochures or visualisation tool. Re: First build in SA Woodville West - with Fairmont Homes 20May 19, 2015 1:31 pm Agreed they are different on the visualiser, we were thinking the same as you. We like the grange from standard but decided to make our sales lady put in a group two upgrade for muscat grey and Brighton lite mortar in our final quote. We are waiting on final plans and then we will make appts too. We can't do final selections until our land settles which is in October and we have to sell our house aswell. Hi I live in a 100yr old semi and my neighbour added an additional floor last yr and our architect has advised that we can knock down our semi and build a free-standing… 0 37601 Hi All It has been a few weeks since my last update. The build has been progressing well. No major issues to report. The scaffolding was dropped today, gyprock will be… 96 356674 It might be a bit darker in the mornings but the light is still light, so you should be getting it. 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