Browse Forums Owner Builder Forum 1 Aug 28, 2008 6:46 pm OK Well now that we (owner Builders) have our own forum I'll transfer my build story here for anyone that it might help.
Transfered from https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.p ... highlight= Hi everyone nice site, (pity I didnt find it about 18 months ago when I first started planning!) Anyways let me tell everone what I'm up to way up here in the Qld Alps! It all started when with this lovely dry weather we have been having all the dirt that is above the city councils sewer line sank about 6", (15mm) which by the way runs directly onder the centre of my house. - side note - My house is a smallish 126.7sqm (13.6 squares) 3 bed champher on brick base - Because the nice red clay sank it took half the stumps with it, So I looked around at getting qoutes for restumping (which was going to be about 12k because it was only 1' (300mm) of the ground at the lowest and about 3' (900mm) at the highest) so I asked appox. what it would be to take it up another storey (16k) so guess what I did! So I sat down and sketched up a basic plan of what I wanted and went to the draftsman to have them drawn up properly (one of the good things was that I had already gotten a surveyor out to find the boundry lines cause its on an odd shaped corner block (597sqm triangle shaped block). Got a soil test done (it got classed a P because of the existing house but the soil itself is H). Once I had the prelims (worked out that it's going to be a 290.3sqm (31.2squares) house). I took them to the council to see what other paperwork would be required, which is as follows; Draftsmans plans ($2200 for plans with $150 per variation) Soil Test ($300) (both required to go to the Engineer) Engineers plans ($1K plus $1200 per variation) Engineers Certificate (AKA Form 15) Approval for building over sewerline (from the council due to the main culprit!) ($183) Siteing discretion ($315 because A square house cant fit on a triangle block and still be 6m (20')) plumbing permit ($525) Owner Builder permit So as you can see to kick this all of it wasn't that much of a kick in the pocket.... for what I was expecting (did have a few hick-ups and several delays. the main one being, that my engineer first gave me 3 months to have my plans done, it blow out to 9-10 months. Then they had to go back to the draftsman to get both sets of plans to match for council). But other than that the paperwork side of it was easy (and only stressful because I wanted to start). So I got approval October 07 (11 months after I had decided to start this project off). because it was so close to the end of the year I couldn't get the restumppers to lift the house till Jan 08 Now the house is up, most of the steel bearers have been put in place and the deck has been leveled ready for the footings. And I hit the second hic-up with the tradies, (the first being a slight miscomunication with who was doing the steel work but that got fixed) now the problem is that the stacks that hold the house up at the moment aren't in the right places of the concreater to do the footings so I've (with the concreater) had to go to the engineer to see if the concreater can't put in the foots for the posts and put the posts in to support the house, then dig the rest of the footings and pin the posts after and still have the engineer sign it all off. but I'm waiting on a response from him, which is delaying everthing even more! as it is with the first hic-up pushing everything out by 2-3 weeks and the rain even more, It's getting frustrating cause I want to get in there and start swinging spanners!!!!! (Breath in, Breath out, pause then kill!!!!) So thats where I'm at now, budget and timeline have both been dumped into file 13, and I'm starting to go bald with frustration! K cya's Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 2Aug 28, 2008 6:50 pm Here are some pics of the house up (sorry had to go to work so missed them doing the lift)
Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ House up Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Deck leveled Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ just slightly crooked (got fixed today) Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ crusher dust has arrived Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ this is what it looks like from next door (It's where I'm staying for a bit .... thanks Tracey! ) Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 3Aug 28, 2008 6:51 pm vanderlay wow....great pics. Looks like a challenging project! you might want to fix up your "img" boxes so your pics all display... Cheers. Thanks V, Here are some more pics. The concreater has marked out the footings, so the house lifters can move the stacks so the footings can be dug. (sorry I cant do an airial photo no other houses to climb on hey Phoenix ) Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 4Aug 28, 2008 6:52 pm Yak_Chat Quote: sorry I cant do an aerial photo no other houses to climb on hey Phoenix ) LOL That is eco friendly paint isn't it? Hate to think you'd be drinking chemically polluted water Steve Hay Yak, Funny you should mention that... It's actually lime dust (from that 30kg bag you see under the house in the pics) apparently its better than paint for marking out things and is eco friendly! Not much else has been happening this week (had to rebook the excavators for monday due to the weather and their timetable but this week is all bright and sunny so its going to rain next week!) The stacks will be moved this week so other than that all is going well just slowly! And everone make sure you put a completion date on any contracts even for any subs that are doing work after handover (ie; landscapers, concreaters, etc) otherwise it will drag out (Wish I had known that little jem a few months earlier!!!!) Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 5Aug 28, 2008 6:52 pm Well Finally these idiots are doing what they where contracted to do!!!! Well not quite (cause they don't want to admit they were wrong or they cant read a simple set of plans and a ruler!?!) but anyway the engineer has allowed them to drill the post holes now instead of moving the stacks to the correct places and digging all the footings first like they were ment to! so thats my rant here are some pics of what they did today.....
they finally leveled the old laundry floor. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ droped off my posts. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ marked out the post holes.(and no Yak this time its not eco frindly paint! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Moved the stacks to the correct spots so that the holes could be drilled! DAH!!!!!! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ and drilled half the holes. (There is 2 holes under each of the silver ramps at the front of the above pic) Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ the holes are about an extra metre deeper then what the plans say, but that is because they had too change what the engineer origanally had planned. Hey at least it's not costing me anymore $$$ (nock on wood). Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Ok enjoy I should have some more pics tomorrow..... Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 6Aug 28, 2008 6:53 pm Yak_Chat Woo Hoo Way cool. Loking good. Brings back a few memories of when I helped my dad restump and lift our QLD in brissy so we had more room underneath to run his business from. Except he did it all himself and used me as the digger - and himself thank goodness. Quote: marked out the post holes.(and no Yak this time its not eco frindly paint! Oooh nasty.... You wouldn;t want to drink that run off water now would you - seeing as the sewage to drinking water treatment plans got scrapped Quote: Quote: marked out the post holes.(and no Yak this time its not eco frindly paint! Oooh nasty.... You wouldn;t want to drink that run off water now would you - seeing as the sewage to drinking water treatment plans got scrapped Haha yeh Yak but there is no worry with me drinking "poo water" as I hate the taste of town water as it is, so I'm putting in a 5000 gal concreat underground tank that will be hooked up to the drink chiller in the kitchen. (Also I'm planning on haveing a tap to change from town to tank for the whole house when the tanks full. That way I can do my bit for the enviro! I was also looking at installing extra solar panels so I can generate most of my own power as well but I'm a little over budget so that can be something I do later!) So here is some pics of some very sexy legs! lol Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ I know it's a bit sad but this is my main project for the year or so! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Yeh didn't notice that my engineer went a little overboard with these stumps (they're 89's) till after they where concreated in, I would have perffered having the smaller 75's but nevermind just means the rooms are a little smaller but should help with insulating the noise from the theatre room. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 7Aug 28, 2008 6:57 pm Michelle I lost concentration on the question…….the photos were to intriguing!!!!! What a project! I’m thinking…..are those steel polls strong enough??? Wow…. Can’t wait to see the final outcome. And….yes of course the polls are strong enough. oznow I've never seen anything like this before~~~ it must be the views... Nah Michelle there is no real qusetion here, just thought I would let everyone out there see this project and the things I've decided to do. Since I couldn't find much on the net about owner builder projects so I thought I would do a bit of a blog without actually doing one, somewhere that I thought would be any easy place to look it up, just so other people wouldn't make the same mistakes as me. I must admit it's really fun when everything is going smoothly, it's just the hicups that make me question what I've gotten myself in for!! lol Oh and I just realised that I havn't put up a copy of my plans so here is what i have at the moment. Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 8Aug 28, 2008 6:58 pm Yak_Chat Cool stuff Draconis. What do you think will be the cost differences - versus building new? And oznow - It's maybe a bit of queensland thing. Because the qld timber houses typicaly can be lifted as a complete house, a single low set house can be made into a high set house with rooms underneath. Sometimes the original house is 1 metre above the ground so lifting them is one option) , or as was the case with my parents place which was about 1.8 meters above ground ( so we dug out enough to put a slab in underneath and make it a more useable space below. Draconis - I'm a tad surprised at the number of posts. Good luck with the project and the water tanks sound great, and great to hear about the project. Steve Hey Steve, Pricings for the work I'm having done can in at about 250-300K but from the quotes I've gotten it's going to be about 150K with me doing a large amount of the build myself and calling in favors from a few mates that need more rum! lol (Good thing I don't have a wife to get upset about the state of the house that I'll be living in! ) If I went for a complete teardown and start from scratch, I would have to look at the added cost of rent for the entire build. While at the moment I'm only looking at being homeless for the short period of time that the house is on stacks. So what I save in rent can go towards more things for the house! Oh and the posts I have 2 on a bearer that supports the deck over the garage then there is one either side of the door to the understairs storage and the rest support the 4 other bearers so ont as many as it looks really. Leif Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 9Aug 28, 2008 7:00 pm Yak_Chat Thanks Leif. Good to hear you've done the sums and evaluated the pros and cons of each option. Cheers Steve Finally!!!! I know it's been a while but I now have footings dug!!!! yay! so here's some lovly pictures of my trenches..... Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ these next photos are from the steel bearer that will hold up the new master bedroom. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ So now all I need is some concrete!! Hello Mister Wagner can you spare me some!..... Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 10Aug 28, 2008 7:00 pm Hi Everyone!
just giving you guys a quick heads up.. Not much more has been sone after the footings got dug cause I'm waiting on the engineer to come out! Have I mentioned I really hate waiting!!!!! Well not much I can do till I have a slab. (Hmm maybe I can start some work on the roof while I wait....) Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 11Aug 28, 2008 7:01 pm Paula Quote: Have I mentioned I really hate waiting!!!!! Dito Hey it's been a week and Paulie (my concreter) is back and now the steel for the footings are done!!!!! Yay! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ The engineer was a 1 3/4 of a hour late today! but he finally came and inspected everything, so now the pouring of the footings is tomorrow YAY!!!! Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 12Aug 28, 2008 7:03 pm Finally some more has been done! as soon as Paul got back I had footings done but then I had to wait for the houses restumpers to get their butts out and take away all of their junk (the stacks, steels etc) and that has only been this week!
So now the bobcat will be in on sat ot finish clearing out the dirt between the footings and hopeflly I can have a slab by next WEEK!!!!! (I know I'm being way to nice about this since it was ment to be finished in March and is now May but no matter how much I'll LIKE to go and beat their heads I wouldn't get anything done if I did!) Any way for all you photo junkies have some picks to look at! these where taken in between concrete trucks (The last one was about an hour late!) Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ And this is wat it looks like now that the junks out of the way! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ well that should do you guys for a bit Hopefully now it's moving AGAIN my next post shouldn't take as long (Fingers crossed ) Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 14Aug 28, 2008 7:04 pm Paula Thanks for the photos!! I'll cross my fingers that it goes a bit quicker for you from now Hey I've got more Piccies (oh and some more works been done today!) Still got to ring the restumpers on Monday and find out why they cant put my last two posts in (it's not as if they are going to be holding anything yet) but they need to be concreted in with the slab!!! anyway have some pics... Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ My dirts going to be gone on Wednesday and that means I can get my retaining walls up so should have pics of that by sunday (fingers crossed) Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 15Aug 28, 2008 7:05 pm Paula Its great to watch your progress, this is the only one of its kind on this forum Dolly22 I'm going to watch this one with interest. Very curious to see the finished product! Looks like it's going well. Yeh Guys/Gals should be highly interesting!! Anyway I've been having a heap of my dirt removed and some Holes dug for the retaining wall posts! Yay!!!! And tomorrow the plumber is coming to put the pipes into the slab and the restumbers "say" they are coming to put the last 2 posts in tomorrow as well but I'll beleive that when it happens! Ok not a big post tonight but every thing is moving again which is good! Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 16Aug 28, 2008 7:07 pm Michelle You have got the best photos!!!!! I can’t wait to see more! Yak_Chat Cool Draconis. Love the nick name of the stumpers Restumblers well so far they are my only stumbling block to an easy build! Glad I could be of service Michelle I will have more in the morning of lots of lovely pipes! lol Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 17Aug 28, 2008 7:07 pm YAY!!!!!! I have My last two posts!!!!
Finally the stumpers have finished.... Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ and I have pipes too!!!!! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ And all of my dirt is gone! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ And my holes for the retaining walls have been dug. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ so now all I need is my slab and it's full steam ahead! Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 18Aug 28, 2008 7:08 pm Michelle ]I guess the garage door isn’t staying. Bit of a hick for the car! Looking great….can’t wait to see the finished results! quote]Michelle Posted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:46 pm Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I guess the garage door isn’t staying. Bit of a hick for the car! Looking great….can’t wait to see the finished results! [/quote] Nah Think I'll leave it and buy a helicopter to get ot work! lol Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 19Aug 28, 2008 7:09 pm Sorry Guys been a bit slack...
But here is what I got up to on sunday! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ And the Steel for my slab turned up on Monday Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Did I mention I'm really happy that all the dirt that was filling up my back... Side yard is gone! Anyways thats whats been happening this week don't Know How much (if any) I'll get done this week cause I'm going to go visit my sister instead! Re: My New...ish house in Toowoomba build story 20Aug 28, 2008 7:10 pm Paula Arent mates great? Michelle I can’t wait to see this project finished. It’s great! Hey Guys just thought I would tell you all whats been happening... T3rmim3sh did there thing on the pipes and the posts Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Had a few hiccups with the engineer with the boxing but they got fixed up this week (Nothing like working under spotlights to get a job finished!) Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ And the slab was poured this morning (I'll take pics as soon as the boys are finished so I'm not in thier way.) But I'ts final at a point that I can start doing something!!! well next weekend when its dry enough that is! Hi, We have a single story MacDonald Jones house, on a waffle pod slab with steel frame. Are we able to build a second story extension? Other info is we are 900mm from… 0 8547 We bought land in Tallawong Schofields NSW size 30m X 12.5m and planning to get double story house build around 350 sqm. We are thinking about having premium inclusions… 0 4122 Thank you so much everyone. This all makes a lot of sense. I guess when you talk to a builder who butters up everything to look very polished, you get to start believing… 7 17916 |