Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Aug 24, 2015 2:02 pm My builder advised me that they needed to dig deeper than planned to reach solid ground for the foundations for my house. He couldn't tell me how much it would be, but said that the extra depth was around 500mm. I've just received the invoice, and it's for about $10k ... which sounds like a lot of concrete to me. Does this sound reasonable? TIA, J. Re: Extra concrete 2Aug 24, 2015 2:24 pm Depends how many piers it needs, how wide and how deep they were. Concrete itself can be had for about $180ish per m3 .. but you have to take into account the machines to bore the holes, the pump to pump the concrete the labour to do all this... would need more info on exactly what was done to really comment Re: Extra concrete 3Aug 24, 2015 2:30 pm This depends on the nature of the footing. If it just means piers to 0.5m deeper, then it sounds a fair bit. But if it's the depths of beams under a raft slab, $10k for an extra 500mm across the whole slab isn't bad. It sounds like your situation is somewhere between these two though. Re: Extra concrete 4Aug 24, 2015 3:21 pm OK, sounds like it's not total rubbish then. We're building on a slope(*) and only half of the house is on a slab ... so it's a small slab, but yes, it's for extra depth to the beams rather than extra depth to piers. Thanks guys. (*) I kinda expected to get hit for extra concrete, and I'd certainly rather pay than find that half of the house is slowly migrating down the slope. To my understanding early saw cuts are to control shrinkage cracks, so doing them now would be pointless. Control joints may reduce ugly cracking during periods of soil… 3 9862 |