Let the games begin!!!

Well made a drive straight from work 40 minutes drive from Point Cook and it was well worth the drive. Id been anticipating some progress since reading the commencement date had been set for today. Upon arrival I was greeted by the temporary fencing, and on closer inspection a porta loo and rubbish cage! This can only mean the site scrape, piering, piping and slab will come shortly. I cant wait for some real construction to begin after such an anxious wait... its been over 2 months since contract signing and things are finally coming to fruition.



The temporary fencing with porta loo and rubbish cage to the right of it.

Cross over protection. Finally my cross over is going to be protected after the neighbouring builder used it to get access to drop off the bricks and roof tiles to the side of the house.

The street lamp on the opposite side of the street. The tradies were still working inside at 6.30pm too.

Progress!

So I logged into PD 24/7 tonight and to my surprise the progress thermometer has moved passed Administration and is now half way between Commencement and Slab Complete! What a momumentus occassion. Im going to have to do a site visit tomorrow now. =)

Closer Inspection

A closer view of the water tap and meter to be used during the construction phase.

Left rear boundary marking. My area as indicated by the white paint.

View looking along the back fence line, from right rear boundary marker (this is from the perspective of looking at the block from the street) to the left rear boundary marker. Got to love all the rubbish and dirt already there! Plus the neighbour's fencing in the middle of being removed.

View from the right rear boundary marker to the front right boundary marker. Cant really see it through the fencing but its there. Will be a tight fit though as the neighbour has their garage wall and guttering as close to the fence line as possible. The garage guttering pretty much has to sit right on the fence line otherwise its got to be a 1 metre gap. Thats why you will see two neighbours with their garages so close to each other the roof guttering is almost touching. Feel sorry for the brickies doing the second garage, since there is very little space to get in to do a proper job.

Ive also been bouncing around ideas about where Im supposed to be putting my water tank. Im going to put it on the North East corner outside the 3rd bedroom, though wondering if its going to be too much of an eyesore and may reduce the 2.8 metre gap on that side of the house too much to negate the corner for what ever reason. Though I guess this leaves further scope to do something with the back yard as there will be a decently sized area to the rear. Could put future garden, or even a pool if I wanted to be that ostentatious, well Im not quite there just yet. It such a long way before I can think about putting in my water tank so plenty of time to ponder about that.

Water Tap and Meter

Well the latest news with the block is, I have a water tap and meter! This is a good sign, plus the neighbouring builder has removed the pile of bricks on my lot, as well as the fencing on my lot. Should have a property site start in the next week or so.

Meanwhile I received the latest building variation from my Customer Service Officer yesterday and my working drawings! So Ive signed off on the working drawings, though the variation, which is an extra power point was for -$41 which was a mistake, so the CSO is going to send out a new variation which should be +$41, though Ive sent the original back signed off anyway so it should all be in order.

Had the new electrical plans emailed to me and its looking good aside from my request for the outside of the laundry floodlight to be moved to the otherside of the door for greater coverage of the back yard. Will have let them know, as they said theyd changed this in the previous variation but hadnt actually changed it on the electrical plan?

Concrete Blob: DDay 2

In light of the increasingly difficult efforts of my concrete removal towards the end of the previous day I decided larger machinery would be required.
So I went down to the local Europcar and hired a ute for $55 (pretty cheap in my books) and then the tool hire next door and picked up a generator and jack hammer for $140, and the hire guy threw in a 30 metre power cable, bless his soul.



The Hitachi 19kg Jackhammer with point makes light work of the concrete, though most energy is used in holding it up and pulling it out of the broken concrete.

The ute 80% loaded with the concrete. Generator can be seen on the back.

Almost finished clearing the concrete blob.

All in all it was only an extra 3 hours work for me to break the remain concrete up and shovel it into the back of the ute. Once fully loaded the tires on the ute were looking they were about to explode. So it would have to be easy travelling some 14 kms or so to the Werribee dump.

I knew I had to make the dumps 4pm closing deadline as not making it to the dump that day wasnt an option. So I was quite rushed to get the tarpaulin over the top, and luckliy had enough rope to die it down. The last thing I wanted was any of the concrete debris to come flying off the back into another car on the road.

So the weekend was quite productive and Im pretty sure I wouldve saved a lot of money doing it myself than having to rely on the builder doing it and charging me thousands of dollars, though in saying that I was running round the whole weekend coordinating this cleaning effort! Well goes to show if you want to do things on the cheap then youve got to be prepared to spent a bit of your own time sourcing the right tools to do the right job.

Concrete Blob - DDay 1

So I went down to Bunnings Warehouse in Hoppers Crossing on Saturday arvo and bought a few tools, including a garden shovel for less than $15 (absolute bargain!) was on special and did such a great job, and a 3.5kg sledgehammer, handle made from hickory for $35 and some high impact demolition gloves as well as ear muff, safety glasses (dont want to be blinded by any rogue chips).

I took to the concrete and after an hour or so made some decent headway, would have demolished close to half of it before I retired due to the dying light. I got to the thicker part, which consisted of 2 layers since a 2nd concreter added to the first blob. Thus I determined I would not waste anymore of my energy and would have to reply upon some heavier machinery to finish off the job.

Concrete Blob

The wonderful concrete blob my neighbours concrete truck left on the rear of my lot. It was added to by a second neighbouring concrete truck. This occurs because cement trucks have to go back to their yeard clean and empty from any concrete as it will harden inside the truck (its a chemical reaction of course) so they just dump the concrete anywhere they want. Spoke to my solicitor at the conveyancers office and you cant do anything about rubbish which exists on your land prior to settling on it as it is bought and settled "as is". Once you own the land the cost of enforcing the law is usually greater than the removal of the rubbish itself. Thus I am left in a position where I will have to remove this myself. Porter Davis arent going to start on my site unless its clean, so rather than risk delay the construction commencement I decided I would undertake the removal of this myself. Its great exercise too!

The lot as of last week. My neighbour is currently building on the right.

Post Contract Variations

Well havent written in here for a wee while, not too much to report aside from receiving my Post Contract Variations from Porter Davis a couple of Fridays ago and went over it, signed and sent it back last week. Everything was included, except for the power point to the wardrobe for my security panel which I will install once the house is done. I emailed my CSO at PD about this and she will include this in a separate variation, which wont delay the build, and its a heck of a lot easier for me to do this now than add one in at a later date.

Caught up with my friend Claire for Coffee, whos also building at the end of my street. We met up at the Coffee Club in the Point Cook town centre and it was packed full of people! Definitely a good omen for the area. Stage 2 of the shops is due to open later this year with another 40+ specialty stores.

Florey Avenue is where its at