Building the Simonds Cleland 233 in SA

Making some great progress can’t thank kaylies dad enough for loading and dumping all our excess soil at one of their yards it’s taken 2 whole days so far and we will be back out there tomorrow to finish it off!
We are so happy with how it’s looking though the driveway on the left side is going to be perfectly flat and very easy access to the shed down the back and then the RH side will have a nice elevated look where the house will be sitting 😍 Hopefully have some footings by the end of the week...

Yeah that is lucky you have someone 'in the family' to do it for you. We had our excess soil removed this week, and now just waiting on the bill! .

How much do you reckon it would have cost if you were paying someone else?

Those trucks driving around on your block would have also compacted the soil nicely too! Good luck progressing towards the slab. What is your contract completion date?

We are very thankful with cutting the block ourselves we have saved $7000 as that’s what Simonds wanted to do it and if our calculations are correct there is around 300 to 350 ton of excess soil 😳 so it’s normally about $30 a ton so saving another $10,000 or so ! It’s so deceiving tho we really weren’t expecting that much soil !
And yeah we spent the day today watering down it all and driving back and forward with the truck haha
Im hoping we will be in around July 🤞🏻
How about you guys where are you building 😁

We are building in regional Victoria (Ballarat) ourselves, and I thought because our block had virtually no cut that we wouldn’t have to worry about soil removal. But forgot about the excess from when they dig out the beams for the raft slab design. I think someone said we had 80 tonnes maybe?

We are waiting on our roof now, and are due in by early September from memory.

Awesome how exciting!! Yeah that sounds about right I think we will have about the same come out again or maybe even another 150 ton when they do the footings 😳 is only dirt was worth money haha

3 full days and 400 ton later we finally have a nice flat clean block ready for our slab 😍

We have a toilet and 4 new pegs!! Any idea what the new 4 pegs are for ? Points to measure from?

The 4 corners of the building’s footprint?

Yeah I’m hoping that’s not the outline of the slab? As it seems way too big and not square to the block 🤔

We have trenches! Looks like it’s going to be a busy couple weeks

Cool a raft slab, I didn’t think Simonds would actually do those? Hey one good opportunity you have in these early stages is to take heaps of photos of all beams and keep photographing as they progress with steel, membrane etc all the way through to pour. Not that you expect issues later on, but it’s great to have all the records showing everything in detail.

We are also doing this during our frame stages too. In addition I am planning on spending the time soon to measure out all our studs and noggings to help locate them more easily in the future. I did regret not doing this on our last build. Photos obviously help a bit with this too.

Just wanted to ask also, when the plumbers lay all your service pipes are they going to half destroy all those lovely looking soil pads? We had our plumbing first, then the concrete crew did the raft slab setup. Having said that it probably doesn’t really matter which way around they do it though.

We ended up with only one pipe slightly in wrong spot by maybe 50mm, so not too bad overall. But I did notice before the pour the plumber does a final check and we did have a couple tweaked before concrete. I would also keep a close eye on the pipe locations before they pour just in case you pick up something obvious.

Thanks for the advice I’ll make sure I’ll get plenty of photos , I showed my mates that do footings and they were really impressed also on how earth footings are done so we are happy
I’m not sure what that kind of slab means that you mentioned??
We will go back out tonight and get more updates maybe they have started the plumbing hoping for slab pour next week!

I guess that’s stage 1 complete hoping for a slab early next week 🤞🏻

Undefloors done

Looking good. Seeing as you are able to get to the site easily, I would ask the builder for both the slab and plumbing set-out plans. This way you can do a basic check of things like the engineering specs for beam depth and widths etc. Also allows you to pick out any obvious service pipe location issues before they pour.

Looks like all your horizontal pipes have been lagged, just make sure before the pour all the termite protection is applied to all pipe penetrations.

My approach is to take heaps of photos, ask questions if something doesn't look correct. New houses are big investments and end of the day we as owners need to take an active interest in the whole building process. Looks like you are already doing that, so you should be fine I'd reckon.

Thanks for the tips been taking plenty of pics etc and a vid following the pipes for future references too , also got all that data 👏 hopefully they have done the mesh and plastic I’ll head out there tonight for a looksy luckily Kaylie does underfloor inspections etc at work for the council

Now that we are at the construction stage (slab being poured tomorrow 😁) I think it’s now safe to share our final house plan and elevations as I don’t think we will be making anymore changes 🤔 Although there’s a couple we would like to change like a cavity slider to the WIR and maybe raise the internal doors to upgraded higher ones (too late now and not really worth it) but overall we are extremely happy with everything for our first house and build 😍

Slab ready 😎

Was a little eager today to watch the slab get poured so took a RDO 😅 got out there early and they had allready made great progress can’t wait to be able to walk on it 👏
More updates soon