The BigM will be conducting a site inspection over the next couple or days and then ordering the materials to start our build!!
It's been a really exhausting process so far, hopefully the build will be less painful! fingers crossed!
Gosh, it looks like we may finally be finished with all the pre-construction processes. The council has approved the building plans and building permits have been issued (we think).
The BigM will be conducting a site inspection over the next couple or days and then ordering the materials to start our build!! It's been a really exhausting process so far, hopefully the build will be less painful! fingers crossed!
0 Comments
After some further corrections, our colour schedule, electrical and building plans have all signed off!! yes, the air condensor unit was finally put where it's supposed to go! hooray!
We've been advised there's a variation that will be sent to us for sign off... It better be a zero cost variation, as we haven't requested any changes to any plans other than to correct their mistakes! Building permit has been applied for so hopefully this means we have lift off very soon!! Fingers crossed NO MORE ISSUES! Today we were sent our updated "Final" electrical plans. All the mistakes are still there, in fact I think the Big M electrical team have now followed the lead of the estimating team in creating more errors. The air conditioning unit, fridge powerpoint, staircase wall are all still WRONG!
I really don't know how else we can explain to them or how many times we can point out their mistakes to them! Help!! At the rate these guys are going, we won't start building until 2015!! Big builders..................... I'm suspecting that maybe the Big M aren't making enough profit and that every dollar is really starting to count.
After submitting the unconditional approval letter (from our bank) to the Big M by the deadline of the end of August, they then came back and said they needed more evidence. So then they asked for the signed loan documents, which took a few days but finally arrived and were signed, and sent to Big M. This was going to be a few days into September but we were advised that would be fine. Then we received YET ANOTHER EMAIL asking for more information (breakdown of the loan) followed by a request to provide our bank statement to them. HONESTLY, WHY TELL US THAT UNCONDITIONAL APPROVAL IS THE LETTER FROM THE BANK AND THEN WHEN WE PROVIDE THIS YOU RUN US AROUND IN CIRCLES AND ASK FOR MORE AND MORE INFORMATION. QUIT PLAYING GAMES AND WASTING OUR TIME, YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD US FROM THE START THAT YOU NEEDED ALL OF THAT INFORMATION AS UNCONDITIONAL APPROVAL!!! YOU AS A COMPANY ARE THE EXPERTS!! Gosh, asking for our bank statement, these people may as well ask me for my pin number while they're at it!! I don't trust a company like this with my bank information. Just when we thought there was some light at the end of the tunnel... MY GOODNESS THIS NEVER ENDS!! I think the BigM are just stalling and just trying to buy themselves time and give themselves opportunity to penalise us for base price extension and earn a nifty few thousand dollars. Be very very careful with this mob everyone. Some shady business going on there. Word of advice for anyone building a new home and they notice that Simonds Homes are building next to them, make sure you install temporary fencing straight away and also surveillance camera (somehow).
The council have been very helpful in chasing the issue with the rock on our land, they called Simonds about the rock but Simonds have flat out denied it was them even though they are the only builder building in that section!! So unfortunately nothing can be done and we are left with a damn meteorite sitting on our land. For prospective home builders, if you want a builder who is responsible and willing to take responsibility for anything, think very hard before you choose Simonds. We went by our land to check whether simonds homes had bothered to remove the rock or if they ignored us and just left it there. extremely annoyed to find that it's still there!!
On a positive note, the light pole has been repaired by the power company. Although this was because we raised it with the council and the power company. The issue with the rock and also the light pole have both been reported to the local council as we don't want the council thinking that it was us who damaged the infrastructure and also want them to be aware of inappropriate littering.
I also gave the builder a call to advise them of the debris they have left on my land and was advised I will get a call back in the next day or so to let me know when the debris will be removed. hopefully this will be sorted ASAP. In the meantime, we will be looking at getting some temporary fencing installed around our block so we can avoid having trucks drive through our block and debris left for us. We took a drive to see our land today, just to see that everything was still in order and the land was clear, ready for the commencement of our build. What we found when we got to the land was appalling.
Since the settlement of the land and the commencement of builds in the adjoining/surrounding lots, the builders of those lots have trespassed on our land and damaged the infrastructure on the nature strip (street light) as well as DUMPING A LARGE ROCK AND LEAVING RUBBISH ON OUR LAND. I'm sorry but if you have dug up rocks on the land YOU are building on, then you are also responsible for CLEARING THE ROCK AND NOT LEAVING RUBBISH. YOU DO NOT LEAVE THE ROCK AND RUBBISH ON THE NEIGHBOURING PROPERTY AND MAKE IT THEIR PROBLEM TO GET RID OF. YOU ALSO DO NOT HAVE YOUR BUILDING MACHINERY DRIVE ALL OVER THEIR LAND AND DAMAGE COUNCIL PROPERTY. NOT HAPPY SIMONDS HOMES!!! Let's hope Simonds homes will do the right thing and remove the rock that clearly came from one of their blocks of land. There is no way they can blame us and deny that the rock is from their builds as they are the only builder building on that land at the moment and not to mention ROCKS DO NOT GROW ON TOP OF FLAT LAND, it gets dumped there by irresponsible builders. Unbelievable!! The Big M recently submitted our landscaping plan to the developers of our estate for review and approval. It was then returned saying that we needed to add more plants on the boundaries of our property.
The landscaping guidelines from the estate are quite unclear, it specifies that the minimum requirements for the landscaping is 2 x 2m trees in the front of the property, which we had done. We contacted our estate manager, who was absolutely no help at all and really had no interest in listening to us or answering our questions, she simply palmed us off to the architects. We called the architects just to get clarification on what exactly was required, funny thing was that they didn't even seem to be confident in what they wanted. We explained that we cannot plant trees/hedges on both sides of the property since the drive way was very close to the fence on one side and the roots of the trees/hedges would eventually grow to damage and weaken our slab. The response was that we only need to plan things on one side of the boundary. Plan was updated and resubmitted to the builder to pass to the developer. Fingers crossed it gets approved. Lesson for those designing a garden - spend some time researching the trees/plants you would like to have in your garden, especially paying close attention to the roots and how wide they grow. You don't want a plant that has really wide roots which will end up weakening your slab. Finally Beaumont decided to call us back after leaving us a voicemail and then not returning our calls after that. Following our tiles appointment, the BigM had emailed through the latest plans to the team at Beaumont and there were a few areas where the selection of the tiles needed updating. Beaumont updated the selections sheet based on selections in the wet areas of the house and sent through the updated selections sheet for review which had a minor increase in costs (minor but still frustrating that the costs keep going up). We were not sure whether they had also updated the diagrams in the selection sheet, so have requested those be sent through for review as well. Hopefully they will send this through so we can approve the updates and keep progressing.
|
AuthorJust two bee's building a hive Archives
March 2015
Categories |