dont get to see full brick much these days. looks good. But geez thats a lot of concrete
Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16551Oct 16, 2023 1:10 pm looks like the side of the house, where there will be a fence. Looking at the layout of that section of roof, its there or actually at the front on your ACTUAL facade. Sometimes they need to put a pipe in. You might be able to have them remove it and indemnify them against any water damage, but that would be silly considering the discharge right above it. Your btter option is working with them to have it as camouflaged as possible rather than arguing about the location. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16554Feb 14, 2024 7:37 pm jirskyr Wanted to add my 2c Located in Georges River Council and we are "potentially flood affected" on the 10.7 S7A since 2019. However not a flood control lot (important!). We originally engaged Clarendon in 2020 but they didn't want to develop a stormwater plan and wouldn't explain to us why - basically dropped us like we were hot, prior to tender. Went to Wisdom July 2021, tender accepted Sep 2021 and signed the contract Nov 2021. Their products are good, people generally nice. I told Wisdom upfront that Clarendon had some stormwater issue and that Wisdom needed to do their due diligence to ensure they would not have the same issue - they checked it out and said it was OK for them. Our selections are delayed due to COVID re-opening (could not get access to their Canvas Quarter until Feb 2022, i.e. 3 months after contract) but we get all our selections done June 2022. First sign of trouble - we ask to consult on adding a pool when making our selections in Feb (first possible opportunity), and Wisdom dutifully get their pool people to draw up a plan, then 6 weeks later their hydraulic engineer tells us we can't have a pool due to hard / soft absorption interference. Waste of time! Second sign of trouble - hydraulic planning comes back June 2022 with requirement for sewer and stormwater peg-outs. I complain that I could have had these done months ago if Wisdom had their act together, as it's now 9 months since we accepted tender. Hydraulics plan finalised August 2022, they want us to put a retaining wall in the middle of the backyard, as we have a 4 x 10 m reserve within our fence line. We argue against this but advised it's the only way to meet stormwater requirements. We say OK and CDC goes in October 2022. We are now 13 months since tender and nervous about price hikes. Wisdom go quiet approaching Christmas and I chase them up for the CDC result, which by now should be academic. All goes to hell week before Christmas 2022 - project has failed CDC. The CSR does not know why and the certifiers are hard to get feedback from. CSR resigns in Feb 2022. We end up having to wait until end 01/Mar/23 (4.5 months since CDC submission) to speak to someone at Wisdom to move the project forward. Turns out Wisdom's certifier has outright rejected CDC due to 10.7: "Flood control lot? No. However land has been idenfied... in the Flood Study as being potentially flood affected. Council has not yet completed... risk management plan..." So they go to council to get the plan levels, and then say the potential flood levels (from Council) are beyond their scope to approve, and the engineer won't sign us off as not requiring S3.5 of the SEPP. I push back several times but the certifiers won't budge. The point of contention remains - 10.7 says we are not a flood control lot and SEPP S3.5 only applies to flood control lots: "development under this code must not be carried out on any part of a flood control lot". It would appear that GRC are spooking the certifiers by making reference to a flood study, even though they have not finalised a Flood Plan and not changed flood controls for the lot. It's become de facto DA and they are theoretically introducing soft flood controls on properties in advance of actually formally changing controls or finalising their flood plans. I can imagine this becoming a broader issue for Sydney development in light of all the flooding in 2021-2022, that anyone fingered in a flood model will no longer be able to obtain CDC if the certifier insists on routing decisions back to council. I complain that Wisdom should have known all of this at the tender stage, and I think it's embarrassing that they don't know if their projects will pass CDC or not prior to submission. By extension, any property potentially identified in the GRC flood study (there are hundreds of lots in each ward) cannot go via CDC and Wisdom would not appear to know this. They tried to explain it was their certifiers and somewhat out of their control, but I maintain any of their vendors are their own responsibility. I work in Project Management (different industry) and I cannot help but reflect back on my own profession when dealing with volume builders. The delays occur because of what we call "siloing", i.e. each department operates within their own silo and nobody pulls the overall project together or advocates properly for the client's final goal (building the house). I would be crucified for this in my line of work. They are all nice people at Wisdom but there is a significant lack of urgency as they eat away at your fixed-price period. Now they are talking about making a base-price adjustment due to time elapsed, even though I clearly documented the entire project and 80% of the time cost is Wisdom's own process. To consider they didn't even achieve CDC submission until 13 months after tender is, I think, embarrassing. I am going to ask for permission to use a private certifier and see if we can get a second opinion on CDC. I want to avoid DA at all costs as I am spectacularly unimpressed with GRC employees and they are supposed to be my local representatives, i.e. I pay their rates. PS: anecdotal I know, but it has never gone remotely close to flooding in our block since we moved in 8 years ago. Makes you wonder what these computer models are worth if we have record annual rainfall and record single rain events past 2 years, but we don't see any flooding as predicted by the model. Of course they need to attempt to model risks prior to implementing control changes, but I complained to Council that the data being used in the GRC Flood Study comes from 2012-2014, with computer (only) revisions in 2016 and 2019, i.e. no real-world data in the 5 years up to publishing the study, and no new real-world data since (including the major rainfalls these past few years). oh by the way, 2023 update - we gave up on the build, forfeited the deposit and sold the house. Costs were no longer feasible once a DA was required with suspended slab - KDRBs are starting to struggle to be cost-effective (their entire purpose). House sold with limited effort and we got more than our reserve, so the deposit loss was luckily wiped by the sale. Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16555Apr 05, 2024 9:17 pm Mish018 We went Empire Oak in Kitchen with Turbine Grey Caeasarstone, Powder Room Empire Oak with Raw Concrete, Laundry is Antico Oak with raw concrete and vanities in bathrooms Antico Oak with Fresh Concrete. We only have a small splash back on either side of our fixed Widow and Timpelle quoted 4K to put Caesarstone there. We told them not to bother, thought that was a rip off. How do you find empire oak is it very fingerprinty? Re: Building with Wisdom Homes 16556May 19, 2024 3:37 pm Hi guys,
We building with wisdom home, we chose the garage facade. Has anyone chose the same facade and was forced to have a box gutter? This was not in the plans? It’s smack bang in the middle. What’s the point of paying for a nice facade when they have this? Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Can someone please offer some advice? Im DESPERATE. Because I'm completely and utterly exhausted. How long are variations taking with other companies at the moment? We… 0 19474 In fairness nobody gave a crap about the ACCC and the gag clauses continued in the pro forma templates of a few other builders after the ACCC took on Wisdom, and more… 19 75109 Hi Everyone, I am exploring builder in NSW and received a very tempting quote from Wisdom home for their momentum series. I just want to know experience of building… 0 9824 |