The Contour Survey

We expect the contour survey and soil tests to be performed within the next fortnight. I’ve described the purpose of the soil tests in an earlier post.

The contour survey is conducted to provide a detailed plan describing the layout of the land including the property boundary dimensions, service connection points, visible man made improvements, spot heights, and changes of grade. It shows how even the ground is and where and what the slope is across the site. This information (combined with the soil tests) is required to work out the cut and fill work required to provide a suitable surface for the slab to rest on.

Desperados Under The Eaves

I couldn’t help the nod to the late, great Warren Zevon with the title of this Blog entry. Unfortunately what follows is a little more prosaic than the musings of an alcoholic rock star at one his lowest moments holed up in a Hollywood motel with no money to pay the bill.

Eaves are not included in the base price of the major project builders. This is probably to keep the base price as low as possible. However, it must also be said that eaves may be a little unfashionable in some quarters.

So what is the value of eaves ?


Well apart from providing refuge from the rain when one is outside, they can also play a key role in keeping energy costs down. Direct sun can generate the same heat as a single bar radiator over each square metre of a surface. Shading windows is the best way to reduce the impact of the sun, as glass is usually the greatest source of heat entering a house. 

The heat is then trapped inside the house due to the glasshouse effect. The glass house effect occurs because the radiant heat from the sun passes through glass and is absorbed by the surfaces inside, which then re-radiate it. Re-radiated heat has a longer wavelength and cannot pass back out through the glass as easily. This trapping of radiant heat is desirable in winter but must be avoided in summer.

Eaves are probably the cost effective method of managing the effects of the sun on the northern side of a house. They will shade the windows from the sun when it is higher in the sky during the summer. Conversely during the winter the sun is able to shine directly on the windows because is lower in the sky and not blocked by the eaves.

What Missing from the Base Price ?

Unfortunately there is no easy way to conduct a comparison of builder’s prices. The base price of the house is your starting point. But what does the base price cover ? The best guide is the Builder’s list of inclusions. Sadly each builder’s inclusions’ list is different. Although many included items are standard between builders, some are not. Examples non-standard inclusions are the flooring, brick infills, remote operation of garage door, ceiling height, type of façade, building on a boundary, tiled skirting in wet areas, locks to external doors and flyscreens to windows. There are even examples that an included item is not in the list of inclusions. 

Is it possible to build a house for the base price if you make no changes to the house design, accept the builder’s list of inclusions (and consequently exclusions) ? The short answer is NO. The reason is “site costs’. These are the costs associated with preparing your land for building and ensuring your house’s foundations are suitable given the stability and type of the soil to be built on. Because site costs vary from property to property they cannot be included in the standard base price of a house. Indeed the builder must engage surveyors, soil testers, and engineers to determine precisely determine the site costs. For this reason they require the customer to pay a preliminary deposit to cover the costs incurred.

Our Very Own Streetlight

I went on my weekly pilgrimage to Solsbury Field this afternoon. I was surprised to find that a streetlight had been erected on the centre of the frontage of Lot 30. Perhaps it hadn’t been shown on the engineering drawings or perhaps I missed it. It certainly came as a complete (although not unwelcome) surprise. I guess it makes sense given our land sits at the top of a T-intersection.

Winter Solstice

It is the Winter Solstice here in the southern hemisphere tomorrow. As if to mark the occasion we had our coldest morning of the year in Melbourne. The thermometer had dropped to a chilly 4.1 degrees at 8am this morning. Whilst this would be of no particular consequence for many who live closer to the poles, for us this is “character building” weather. On the plus side, the hours of daylight will now steadily increase over the coming months. This, at least in theory, will provide a greater opportunity for our building works to be undertaken.

The Solstice phenomenon occurs because the Earth's axis of rotation is not perpendicular to its orbital plane but currently makes an angle of about 23.44°. As a consequence, for half the year the Northern Hemisphere is inclined toward the Sun while for the other half year it is the Southern Hemisphere that is better positioned. The times during the year when the inclination of Earth's rotational axis has maximum effect are the two solstices.

6 Star Energy Rating

New homes built in Victoria need to comply with the 6 Star Energy Standard set out in the National Construction Code. This means it is compulsory for new houses to have:

6 Star energy rating for the building fabric, and
A rainwater tank for toilet flushing or a solar hot water system, and
Water efficient shower heads and tapware.

A 6 star energy efficiency rating for the building fabric applies to the roof, walls, floor and windows. It requires the house to have a high level of thermal energy performance and will therefore require lower levels of heating and cooling to be comfortable in winter and summer.

In Australia the average Energy Rating for an existing house is 2 stars. The average energy use for heating and cooling in a 2 star house is 360MJ/m2 vs 120MJ/m2 for a 6 star dwelling.

You can achieve 6 stars a variety of ways. Most likely increased insulation to roof and/or walls will be required. Improved glazing may not be necessary if other elements are good – e.g. Orientation, Insulation, and Appropriate Shading – however, many homes may require double glazing or solar improved glazing to achieve 6 stars.

Builders often refer to the 6 star energy rating in their list of inclusions. It is important to look carefully at the wording. Some say “6 Star rating to all orientations”. Others will say “6 Star rating to optimal orientation”. I think in the latter case that you can assume that there will be additional costs associated with achieving the 6 star rating. The problem here is that the builder incurs costs in having the plan and location assessed for its energy rating and will wait until you have paid a deposit before arranging an assessment.

Concrete

You can tell by the long shadows that the picture below was taken late in the day (4:30pm today to be exact). Our crossover has now been poured. It looks as though it was their last one of the day on Friday. The boxing is still in place. The crossover for Lot 31 is yet to be poured and the footpath stops about halfway across our frontage.

At the northern end of Red Brush Rd where the crossovers were complete last week there have been earthworks to level out the nature strips and land lots. I believe this will need to be done on our lot before the site survey can be undertaken.

The Balwyn Display

It is always helpful to inspect a display home when considering a particular house plan. Unfortunately, there were no display homes for the Kiama. In the case of the Balwyn 196 we visited the display home located at Clyde North. The photograph below was taken from the Family area looking into the Kitchen.

Of course, the display home always features upgrade items not included in the base price. For example, in the kitchen the stove/cooktop is standard but the retractable rangehood with overhead cupboards is an upgrade. The glass splashback is standard but the push to open mechanism for the cupboards is an upgrade. 20mm stone benchtops are standard but the 300mm overhang and the waterfall are upgrades.

The Balwyn 196

Orbit Homes are a small project builder owned and operated by brothers Craig and Paul Millson. They build around 350 homes a year in Victoria and Queensland. The Orbit Homes plan we liked was the Balwyn 196. It is slightly smaller than the Kiama at 21sq vs 22.6sq. Along with the 3 bedrooms there is a Multi-Purpose room which again could be used as a Study or TV room. It is possible to accommodate a larger shower in the en suite by moving it to the location of the wash basin in the standard plan. In turn the wash-basin replaces the WC and the WC is moved to the location of the shower in the standard plan.

With the Balwyn it is possible to achieve the ideal orientation with the both living areas and the garage on the north side. Also all the bedrooms can be located to the south.

The Kiama 226

Fairhaven homes are a small project builder based in Berwick, an outer South Eastern Suburb of Melbourne. They have around 30 house designs to choose from. The particular plan that took our eye was the Kiama 226. This house has 3 reasonably sized bedrooms, and an additional Rumpus room which could be a study or TV room. By swapping the WC and the shower in the en suite it is possible to accommodate a larger shower. Another feature of the design is the Walk In pantry.

The drawback with the Kiama plan was that the house orientation would be a tradeoff. Either the living areas or the garage could be located on the north side but not both. The living areas are probably win out so the garage would have to be located on the Southern side providing less protection from the summer sun and exposing the front windows to the headlights of cars approaching from Solsbury Crescent.

The Eliminations

As stated in an earlier post, there is a distinct cost advantage in going with a project builder. Another benefit to using a project builder is that the house design work has been done for you. All you need to do is select from their plans and tweak as necessary. However there are still quite a few project builders to choose from in Melbourne. So using their websites as the primary tool we went through a process of elimination. We found in general that the larger project builders were either Inflexible (Wouldn’t remove Garage Step-down), Pricey or surprisingly didn’t have much of a small house range. Although Carlisle have addressed the latter earlier this year with the launch of their Easy Living range, there appear to be some strings attached.

We finally narrowed it down to a short list of two of the smaller project builders - Orbit Homes and Fairhaven Homes.

That's Not A Project

As Crocodile Dundee might say : “That’s Not a Project. This is a Project”. I’m talking about our little house building project compared to construction/re-development of the Large Hadron Collider. Although it does seem as though both projects operate on similar timescales and are both subject to unforeseen delays. But why am I bringing up the Large Hadron Collider ? Well it’s been in the news of late. Having finally proved the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson in July 2012, it’s back after almost 2 years offline. And, of course it is bigger and better than before. “Engineers hope to gradually increase the beams’ energy to 13 trillion electronvolts: double what it was during the LHC’s first operating run.

I also watched the documentary “Particle Fever” TV last week and was quite taken with the story of the LHCs first run.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/?ref_=nv_sr_1

The Crossover

It’s now Queen’s Birthday weekend. Took a quick trip to Keysborough to check on progress. The drainage works now appear to be complete. The trenches in front of the blocks have now been filled in. They’ve made a start on the footpaths and crossovers. Some at the Church Rd end are already complete.

As you can see from the photo of Lot 30 they have placed metal on the left hand side for our crossover. We asked to have it moved from the right side to the left side so we could position the garage on the left hand side. We now can see that they intend to fulfil that request.