PLACES HOMES general information thread

First thanks mm77 for creating this thread.

We are building the Drysdale 30 design in the Ridge Estate, Doreen which is in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

We opted for the Escape bonus promotion of the colourbond roofing to house and garage and the Jetmaster fireplace.

The land is expected to title in February, a 2 month delay from the original date of December which we anticipated given the extremely wet winter and spring we've just experienced.

We've received our sales quotation and will be meeting with our sales consulant in January to proceed through next steps with selections and design changes we've requested.

The floorplan of the Drysdale ideally suits our block which has a northern orientation to the rear and the positioning of the bedrooms and garage on the eastern side fitted in neatly with recommendations for passive cooling and heating and the location of the crossover, so we didn't need to reverse the layout.

I can't fault our dealings with Places so far and a large part of that is due to our sales consultant JD who is fantastic and a real credit to the company. With regards to site costs, we are fully aware that this offer is conditional on the fall of the site not exceeding 500mm and we're confident that our site falls within this tolerance and definitely under 1 metre of fall. We learned about reading topography maps, finished surface levels and how to calculate the fall of land after we were misled by our land estate agent about another block we were considering in the Promenade Estate in Doreen. We were told it had a 1 metre fall but upon sending the site map to our previous builder found out it was actually over 3 metres which added considerably to site costs.

Better to learn yourself than to rely on someone else so we were careful in our deliberations before selecting our block, particularly as we had assumed that rock removal was the highest cost for site preparation. That was until JD informed us when we first visited the Williams Landing display that landfill incurs the highest cost, so the flatter your block the less your site costs.

We're very keen to incorporate as many sustainable design features that we can afford and key to that for us is the design and orientation of the home on the site. Everything else like solar panels, solar hot water, insulation etc is the icing on the cake but if the fundamentals aren't right from the outset then we won't realise the full environmental benefits and cost effectiveness of those enhancements.

It's been quite an education for myself in that I never considered myself "green" and when we initially set out to build our second house we were thinking like most people that bigger is better and were dazzled by the various display homes from builders with all their upgraded finishes. After countless visits to display villages we began to see through all the glitz and glamour and started to notice how dark they all were even with the lights on! and how deceptively small the main living areas were with one popular builder as they enlarged the alfresco living space which looks great on display but in the depths of a Melbourne winter, exactly how much time would we be spending in that space?

We decided that we have an opportunity to build a home that hopefully makes a statement about how we want to live responsibly and not wastefully so we're going to go for it.

Steely Dan

We also have a fall on our block of around 2m and are expecting to have to pay around 16k on top of their 'no site costs'. We were quoted 26k with another builder so overall happy to be paying less.