DRAIN LAYERS

24th March 2009

We're off n running now. This morning the drain layers came thru with their fair share of drama due to lack of preparation and never having seen the site before.

I think they were expecting a greenfield site where the drain & sewer connections were constructed last week and just waiting to be connected too.

Instead the sewer connection was a 50 year old earthenware fitting full of crushed rock and 3m deep beside the neighbours brick wall.

In contrast the drain connection was too shallow?

Apart from all that they were done by early afternoon as the electrical connection guys came in and did their thing.

SITE CUT

The day after our permit arrived in the post our block has had its topsoil stripped and is ready for the plumbers. A few more concrete floaters surfaced but nothing too bad.

THE BUILDING PERMIT

Friday 13th March 2009 - At long last we have a building permit.

I tell you this date was going to unlucky for someone if this permit didn't come through.

SITE PREPARATION

We suspected the demolition of the previous dwelling several years ago wasn’t entirely thorough so after locating a substantial concrete footing we enlisted the help of our friends at Adept Drainage http://www.adeptdrainage.com.au/index.html
who ended up pulling out about 20 tonnes of concrete from the rear of the site. (Apparently from a previous owners attempt to build a unit minus a permit).

BUILDER SELECTION

We looked at several builders and settled on a company called New Dimension Homes (Vic) http://www.newdimension.com.au/
as they fell into the ‘project builder’ category as far as price but also allowed us to design the layout ourselves.
A lot of project builders say they’ll accommodate design changes but you quickly realize their list of allowable changes are limited. Not only that but their pre-prepared floor plans are very general and don’t take into account specific site and orientation requirements.
A great source of information and advice was the forum http://forum.homeone.com.au/index.php

SOLD

We heard about the block being for sale on the Thursday, had a look at it during my lunch hour on Friday and bought it 1 hour before auction on Saturday. (The auction was going to clash with the footy)

If you look closely you'll see it came complete with a small Geelong supporter

FLOOR PLANS

North is up the page