Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Feb 27, 2016 9:39 am Hi,
We have purchased a block in Redland Bay and building with Simonds. Looking at signing contracts next week. I have a few issues with earthworks though and some advise from other members would be useful. Our block has a large slope at the front and after that a slight slope from back to front and right to left. The large slope at the front did no concern us when we purchased the block as it finished before the front of the house. So here is the rather long story of where we are at with site works. Originally we were told by Simonds that in our tender meeting we would discuss earth works but when that meeting came around the survey was not back and they did not mention anything. It was only later when we started to think about landscape that we asked for the site plans and found they were doing a cut of about 1m at the back and filling the front. They are going to put in a retaining wall at the front right of the house that extends to the edge of the house pad. The excess dirt left on site and sloped up towards the boundary. I asked for quote to get all dirt removed and to level out the back yard and side to which I was told it would be very expensive and we are better to look for someone else to do this work. Many phone calls later and I finally get some companies willing to quote on the job. Simonds has quote as about 5K to cut the pad and leave the soil sloped to boundary. next quote comes back at 11k to do the yard AFTER Simonds has done the pad. I have asked many questions like why to we need to cut so much to fill only a small portion at the front and I am told this is needed because the driveway cannot have a slope or more than 5 in 1 ant there is no way around this at all. I get one final quote for around 5k to do the lot that is cut the yard and remove all excess soil to the level the builder has asked for. The other issue we are going to have with this plan is all of the retaining walls we will have to install. When we purchased this block it looked straight forward. I even sent the block details so Simonds to look over and let us know how it looked before the settlement date. After I get all this information I go back to Simonds and they start saying it is easier for them to do the site work for just the house that they have seen people try and get it done themselves cheaper and it ending up costing more in the long run. I asked about the soil they are going to leave at site sloped out the back and the chance of heavy rain flooding the place and they say it could be an issue and as soon as we move in we should get landscaping done as they are not responsible for this after hand over. They did agree it will be a large amount of soil so a large slope from the excess dirt. Any suggestions would be appreciated. We have accepted there is probably no way around not doing retaining walls at our boundary but I think we are better getting the site level before building commences. We are going out to the the block again today so I will take some photos to attach and I will add the site plan if anyone is interested. Re: Building Simonds -Como (Vanstone Way Redland Bay) 2Feb 27, 2016 10:16 am Hi I'm also with Simonds. Originally we had a block that had a huge retaining wall smack bang in the middle of the block, it was concrete retaining wall. Anywho long story short we bought another block in a completely different area because the slab was going to be $40000 Building Simonds -Como (Vanstone Way Redland Bay) 3Feb 28, 2016 1:02 am Yes get your site level first. Hire your own earth moving contractor if you like. We had a slope of 1 metre from front down to back. We couldn't find a builder that would level our block. They all wanted to do a cut and fill where our house would end up down in a hole (like all our neighbours). We ended up doing our own earthworks and retaining first. Glad we did. Our slab was more expensive though We had to get extra mesh/reo, thickened slab and piers. The alternative was to get the soil compacted and a compaction certificate. That was too hard ... No one seemed to want to do it. We feel we did the right thing. Happy with our lovely flat block where our driveway is level into house. Neighbour drives down a lot below kerb level and so are his front windows ... That seems depressing to us. We built with Simonds too. We had our block earthworks levelled well before we decided to build with them. go upvc window frames ensure insulation under colorbond. not just sarking, lighter color roof also not sure if you have seen this viewtopic.php?t=5823 last couple of pages… 4 110564 Even if it's not being sub-divided and you want to keep it as Torrens title, you will still need to talk to a town planner or Council themselves, to see if they will allow… 1 11035 |