Tuesday 12 February 2013

Plans Submitted To Council

The hydraulics plan came back today. The engineer did a great job and suggested a relocation of the water tank to minimise the visible pipes on the external walls.

To help speed things along, the engineer proactively provided plans for both viable locations for the water tank.

We approved the hydraulics plan by email and the builder submitted the plans to council today (12/2/2013).

Great work, thanks hydraulics engineer and builder!

The site will have four 450*450mm stormwater pits, two 300*300mm surcharge pits, a gattic trench grate at the bottom of the driveway, and an 8*1*1m absorption trench.

Rain

PS. Below is an indication of what happened to my fitness regime, and diet during the early negotiations with the various builders. Yes, I’m blaming the bulk of that upwards spike on new home builder #1. Smile
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Tuesday 5 February 2013

Site Cut

The site was cut on 6/2/2013. The builder will now arrange for the retaining wall construction.

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We are waiting for the hydraulics plan before the builder can submit the plans to council. This is proving to be an unforeseen delay.

Saturday 2 February 2013

Giving an old cork board another life

This post has nothing to do with the house build. We had an arts and crafts Saturday to take our minds off the house build.

We were about to throw the below cork pin board out and decided that it might make for a nice project with our 9-year old (she loves arts n craft).

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Jay painted the frames in Solver Cave (white with a grey tinge).

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Fabric, that the DW was going to use to create matching skirts for her and the 9-year old, was glued and then stapled along the edges onto the cork board.

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The end product. Good for use again.
(and, as an added benefit, nobody will be making matching skirts from this…jks)

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Friday 1 February 2013

Non Artists Impression

The house should look something like the below images when done. Note: Images were created using Microsoft paint by a person with no artistic ability or patience and may bear no resemblance to the end result at all.Smile

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The images above show the facade, back and right-hand side of the house. The missing left-hand side has a couple of stacker doors for indoor-outdoor flow. I will create this image now-now (i.e. at some random point in the future)...

More floods and little progress with the build

The demolition took 5 working days to complete. It was done between 16/01/2013 and 23/01/2013. Our demolition guy took a day off to go to Melbourne for the Tough Mudder event.

If he waited until one day after the demolition he could have had the event on our site!

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Queensland had another massive flood. Our thoughts are with those people that have been affected.

In appreciation for putting up with our demolition works, the LW made some nice hampers and delivered them to our neighbours .

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A post-demolition soil test was carried out on Monday (21/01/2013). We received the results the next Tuesday (29/01/2013). It was a bit of a shock as the slab indication came back as p-class i.e. the worst kind of soil <unhappy> (the pre-demolition soil test indicated an m-class slab). The test was labelled ‘preliminary’ as the demolition was still in progress and access to the site was limited.

The engineering guidance, based on the preliminary soil test, came back today (1/2/2013). The worst case scenario, as advised by our builder, is that an additional 24 piers would be required (taking the total number of piers to 54). A worst case pier depth would mean an extra $3,750. Phew, not too bad, and much better than expected…

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Our builder, completely unprompted, commissioned another soil test (these guys are pretty thorough). We walked around the site today (1/2/2013) and noticed some vehicle tracks and loose dirt. The 3rd soil test must have been done! Crossing fingers (i.e. ‘holding thumbs’ in my culture) for a good result.

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It looks like our plans will be going to council next Monday (4/2/2013) or Tuesday (5/2/2013). Approval is expected within 10 working days (~19/2/2013). The site cut is likely to take place in parallel.