KDR - Allcastle Homes Grandworth 45 MK2

Oh! I think i drive pass L's new home everyday, you know that, I look at L's house everytime when i wait for the traffic light, as we just paid $995 site inspection fee, still worried about their reputation and workmanship.

you have to do it yourself and find your own concreter
, AC won't do it.

It's been smooth sailing for us and during the build process I never on site and saw the house until April now. I engaged houespect to do the inspection. I did the build process and communication over emails.

Thank you L, I am thinking about housepect as well, never know they will follow up the construction as well.
They must be pretty good on finding issues, as we are quite like John snow know nothing.

thanks L, did your landscaper do everything including paving driveway, or landscaper for gardening - concreter for driveway?

with ACH, you do get a final OC at completion so you can do the landscape how you want after handover. but you need to budget it out with at least 50k.

we still waiting for our appliances to all be installed only got HWS, and oven right now. AC and Stovetop is still awaiting install.

Thanks for sharing Miao, I am in the very early stage of building Grandworth 38.7, just got site assessment done this Tuesday ( soil test and surveying).

After reading your threads, we found we didn't budget for stormwater Hydraulic ( we are in ryde flood zone), external plumbing, and power connection. it looks like someone paid 60K for the underground water tank...hope we won't need that, as we have a stormwater drainage easement on the right side of our land. there are also two pits on the street, might be easier for us to drain stormwater.

We are living in a Fort like house built in 1940, concrete and rebar, durable but it is only one storey and the size is too small, not so good for a growing family.

Could you please share me your landscaper and concreter contact detials ( for the driveway) if you find a good one? thank you very much！

power connection is about $1500, we got the ACH plumber to do the stormwater and pit, and that was another 3k. i would suggest you pre-plan your electricals. especially the NBN connection from street to house. because without a conduct from outside to inside where you want the termination point, NBN will install at the closest point to the outside box I believe or the garage.

also don't get their clipsal starhub, it's a waste of money and almost impossible to add stuff into later. we just got all out network points terminated to wall plates in the upstairs linen.

Thank you for sharing the price Miao, that is great to see we won't go far beyond our budget, I am just wondering if you are also in the flood zone, not sure if stormwater drainage and hydraulic plan/drainage are the same thing, your option on this will be appreciated

I spent nearly a half day to read through all the posting in this thread. you and L discussed a lot about terminated - not quite sure what is that... from my point of view, it looks like ACH will install a switch, and all cables will run from this swtich to all the rooms ? and we need to make sure the cable is actually connected?

Just watch out on all this soon to be obsolete cabling stuff. WiFi with 5G and we're into a new world.

that's the thing i'm talking about, whatever you do don't get the switch they provide, you won't be able to upgrade it. How do you normally connect to the internet if it's with wifi, then i suggest at least two network points, one upstairs and one downstairs in a central location, so you can later put in wireless access points. the 38.7 is still a pretty big house depending on where you are going to place your router wifi will be very patchy. word of advice on outdooor camera points, put them on the groundfloor as first floor is too high up and you won't get much of a view.

the standard garage is also fairly short, we decided to extend it by 1m into the media room. and that is still pretty small. the Landcruiser just fits. and garage door we increased it to 2.35m. these should be free.

Thank you Miao, we will have NBN HFC very soon, it looks like they will have to install a box outside the garage - and then the terminate point will be in the garage...

But I will definitely raise this up in our next meeting with them, as we prefer the middle centre of the house..

For the garage, I am on the opposite, we will change it to a 3*5.5 single garage, reason being we have a 10 feet( 3 Meter) stormwater drainage easement on the right side our land. we will probably use the easement as our carport and turn the garage to a storage room....

ah ok, yeah the 5.5m is a bit short for us, we we increased it to 6.5m.

just ask them to put in a lead-in from side of house to future NBN point, it's about $240, just make sure they have a drawstring. you can either put it in the upstairs linen, or downstairs understair.

LC is pretty big, you definitely need a bigger garage. our tender will be ready in this week, I will ask them to add the NBN point in : )

lots of things to worry about afterwards - by the way Miao, did you find your own hydraulic & stormwater engineer or ACH will provide this service for a charge?

the plumber they used wrote us a quote. but yeah they don't find anyone for you.

I see, I just did some research about the hydraulic plan, it looks like OSD ( water tank for rainwater) is the most important part. wish this will be exempted. our land size is around 607 sqm, 35% is around 210 sqm, Grandworth ground floor is around 187 sqm, leaves us 23 sqm driveway to avoid OSD...

i'm fairly sure the garage space is not counted in the ratio, check with your council, because it's not liveable space.

Thank you Miao, just got a call from ACH to request flood report from local council.

no doubt our site cost will jet up

it might just be you won't be able to use waffle pod, and it had to be raised. pretty common in the ryde area.

figure and toe crossed... the flood level report will take Ryde council 10 working days....