JG King modified Heywood - Landscaping

Mhm, not sure... mine are all done by email.

Yep it's normal. We never got a deposit invoice but got the deposit and base invoices combined after the slab was laid.

Frame invoice was fine.

We got our lockup invoice on Xmas eve with the usual 7 days to pay despite both our bank and the builder taking 2 weeks leave. Our bank did the valuation when the holidays ended but only part paid the invoice as the bricks whilst onsite, weren't laid. The bank took off $8k or $9k. Turns out JGK had a special condition in our contact that defined lockup as not requiring bricks but plaster. So JGK were in the right but they never complained about the missing money.

We got the fit out invoice a few weeks later but waited about 2 weeks before we sent it to the bank because we just didn't believe they were fully at the fit out stage when they issued it. The finance people in Melbourne only called once to query the invoice and we said our bank was on it (they weren't). When we did pay fit out we included the missing money for the bricks from the earlier stage. That was early feb at that point.

For me, the 7 day terms are more of a guide - there was no suggestion they would stop work if you hadn't paid on time. I even asked my SS about it and he said he didn't care about money and rarely ever got told to stop work due to non-payment.

My view is that the 7 day terms is to give you a hurry-up and isn't really practical given the actual time it takes for the mail, valuations, transfers etc.

Yeah we got snail mail for all our invoices too. Very impractical really.
We actually received our liquidated damages cheque in the mail today yay! Only 1 month after hand over i was expecting longer. But after all ive heard the finance department in melbourne is ridiculous!

I thought they took it off the final invoice, that's what our contract says.

So no one ever copped the 15% interest on late payments?

So far accounts seem pretty useless, our invoice says that there are no post contract variations, there is (garage step down) and they used method B for the payment schedule, when we had the contract varied to method A. This and our admin has been chasing them for almost three weeks to send it to us. She updated us this morning saying that she was still reminding them and then it turned up this afternoon, sent 3 days ago.

All the screw piles except the handful that are meant to be in footing trenches went in today. We could see that they had put a couple of those in before pulling them out again. We're not sure if the trenches were meant to be dug before today or not. Seems silly to have them come back another day just to do a few more but we also figure they couldn't have dug them before the set out was done yesterday. I thought the whole site cut seemed to be on a bit of an angle and now that the piles are in it's clear that it is.


Lots of pink drawings everywhere!

Oh, I think I got your question. I received all my invoices by email, I forwarded them to my broker, who passed them to the bank, and then a day later I would ring the bank, and then within 2 days they paid the invoice. I had a 7 day rule, but I have never gone over it yet, so I don't know about the interest... but tbh I doubt my builder would charge me it anyways.

From what Nico is saying it doesn't sound like jg king will either. If it wasn't for the snail mail eating up so much of the time the 7 days would be easy. We sent it straight off to our broker asap today. However I only found it on my way to school pickup so by the time I got home, scanned it, sent it to hubby to sign as well it was probably 4.30. So I don't expect it made it to the bank today, the odds of it being paid by Tuesday are buckleys and none. It doesn't sound like we have anything to worry about though.

Yeah, I think if you deliberately refused to pay, or like it was weeks without payment they would enforce it, but I think if they know you are trying to pay they wouldn't be too worried. Don't stress too much..

We get snail mail copy but also get emailed copy. It's metricon only department that has a clue!!!

I really wouldn't stress about late payment fees because you'll be fine. We were purposely late with one of ours at brick stage and spoke to our ss who said its fine and he wouldnt stop work for that as he knows its coming. I think its just in extreme circumstances and 7 days is just a formality not so much a rule.
Regarding your site cut being on an angle is that wrong?

Yeah but no major drama, I think they probably just have to fix it up a bit as they go. Some of the north side row of screw piles under the garage ended up outside the cut area and the row across the back of the garage aren't parallel with the step up. The screw piles are correct, they were done after the set out and I watched them use string lines. When the cut was done they didn't have much to go by so it's just on a bit of a kink. It's not so critical in other areas of the house because they cut plenty of space around.

The fact that they cut the north for a retaining wall and it should have been the south is more of an issue. Not something that can't be sorted though.

We were hoping they might have come back to dig the trenches today so that they can finish the screw piles on Monday but no luck. We were spoilt with a Saturday start so now we're expecting too much . We'll have to call Monday to bring up the north cut issue and see what is happening with the scheduling next week.

Screw pile guys we're back on site again this morning. They were using a big screw bit to dig holes this time. No idea why! We need trenches not holes . They also had some shorter extension pieces on the truck so some of the piles must have needed a bit more added.

I popped back just as the rain finally got here and they were gone, looks like they're finished as nothing was left behind. There are now blue markings where they were digging, I suspect there are screw piles under the ground so they can did the trenches on top?? It's forecast to be very wet tomorrow so I'm going to try not to visit until Wednesday , we'll see how that goes.

So it didn't rain here until 4pm yesterday so we did pop down for a quick look about 6pm last night and by then we had a couple of swimming pools!



Unfortunately no work was done while it was dry yesterday and I assume there will be none done today. We've have had heavy drizzle all morning so it won't be drying out.

Meanwhile we got an email to inform us that our toilets have been discontinued. We have been offered the Porcher Cygnet, which is the current standard, I'm not a fan of its curves so we had negotiated to keep the old standard that was around when we signed. We've been to Reece this morning to check out other options and there just isn't the perfect toilet!

I've narrowed it to two options:

- Stick with what they have offered, it's reasonably comfortable, a good height, and has an ok (not great) bowl shape for cleaning purposes.



- or ask for a price on the Caroma Forma. It will be significantly more but I consider getting the toilets right very important so I'm not too worried about that side of it. The toilet we did have was more expensive than the new standard but i suspect we would only get the allowance of the current one. The caroma is rimless and has a great bowl shape, no poo catching shelves anywhere! It's a much nicer looking toilet (to me anyway), but it's big negative is that it is too tall for my little legs and only comes in one height .


So do I just stick with the standard for comfort or put up with having to have a step in the toilet like a toddler?? Thoughts??

Definitely go with comfort. Isnt it funny how much importance we need to put on a toliet but ultimately we are going to use it multiple times a day.

I wish I had thought this much about my toilet, I just went with builder's standard.. hope I like it!!!

I think go for comfort. The only thought I have about toilets is I don't want any areas on the outside where dust can go... our current toilet is very round, and has screws.. that gunk gets into.

I think you'd have to go with the one you can sit on over the easier to clean one unfortunately lol

We upgraded to 'back to wall' toilets, and the trades botched the installation of all of them.
We were left with about a 20mm gap behind - would have been impossible to clean and looked ridiculous.
We suggested tiling the wall up to the top of the cistern as a compromise and expeditious solution; instead tiler, plasterer, painter, and plumber all had to re-work the fitting. Was months after handover before they some of them were corrected.

I never thought I'd need to tell the builder/plumber how toilets are supposed to be installed.

We are getting the porcher and I thought it was nice. It's a back-to-wall and has got soft close lids and concealed water inlet. The later I had never seen before until I notice the plumbing rough in had placed the toilet water stops basically inside where the cistern will be.

The porcher is ok but compared to what we had originally and to all the others at Reece it just doesn't float my boat . To my eyes it's the ugly duckling of the back to wall toilets, I like clean, straight lines!

I have asked for a price on the Caroma, it was comfortable except for the height issue which can be fixed with a step for that once a day when you need your feet flat on the floor, it was great for hubby's height. They are also checking on the availability of the AXA Uno which we believe is the standard allure upgrade option but they didn't have it on display at Reece. I'm sure there is one in the colour room that we can go see again. It's a nice looking toilet, and it's 10mm lower than the cygnet but it is more expensive (retail prices) than the Caroma which seems silly when the Caroma is a much more advanced toilet.