Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Porter Davis - soil test - site fee's 5Oct 03, 2018 2:30 pm adje MyFirst MrsWes Hello fellow house builders. A total novice housebuilder and forum poster here. Advice or reasurance please. Building a Madison 40 on land with a fall of less than 1.2 m. At house selection the consultant guesstimated $38000 for site fee's but said she expected it to be less. We are off for our tender appointment this friday and tried to find out the results of the soil test and expected site costs before our appointment. Unsuccessfuly, but the BC did say that the land has been classed as a "P" for problem and may come in a little over our expected cost. Is it normal for the information to be withheld? Are PD to be trusted regarding site fee's or are they making a huge profit? Do we have any other option, as in second opinion? The shine has gone off for me and I wont be signing anything this Friday as I take a while to process and need to be sure of my decision. Still considering not using a bulk builder, or even changing builders. We are only $2,000 in and dont need to start building for 12 months. Thanks in anticipation, Mark and Diane. My experience is P site is not the issue I'm more concern with the actual Soil class. The soil is the one that will give you stress depending what slab was chosen. Eg. if its H1 or H2 clay then if you have waffle slab , you will have to maintain your house post build. P site could be due to KDR or tress around etc etc... I'm building the 1st time too. I didn't understand this at the start. ie. I should have been more concern with the soil class as oppose to the P site. However it does look like Volume builders uses P site as and excuse to add piers like crazy and then up your site costs. Thanks MyFirst for your response. Our soil is S in the 3 drill tests and they state the only reason for P is the existing dwelling. Yy concern is your last point, that they will use P site to add piers like crazy for the fixed cost and then remove them post the demolition tests, hence making a tidy sum. Has anyone experienced type of behaviour with any volume builders? It is standard the moment you knock down rebuild, automatically becomes P site. My small builder also said the same thing. Another friend also same experience with another small builder. On top of S soil and flat land.... Your site cost should be pretty sweet. I'm sure since is KDR site they want to add a few piers. Since during demo. they would dig a lot of soil to get to the old house footings. Three options 1 Ask the liquidator 2 Find another PD customer and ask the source of their report 3 Pay for new report 3 12334 We were lucky in that our old house was so small (86 square metres) compared to the new house, they were able to take enough readings around the old backyard house before… 8 37139 Hi Building Expert, Thank you for the feedback, much appreciated, there is also a code of conduct for building surveyors which they need to follow as well. I am looking… 4 3663 |