The Livingston is No More

The first house that we seriously looked at when assessing house designs is no more. Porter Davis have retired the Livingston and have introduced the Lamont in its place. The Lamont is remarkably similar to the Livingston. It is approximately the same size and has an almost identical layout with a few tweaks :

• The size of the family area has been increased.
• The robe from Bed 2 no longer encroaches into the lounge
• The Linen Cupboard has been replaced by the Bed 2 robe
• The number of bulkheads has dropped from 5 to 1.
• The portico in the Lamont is much smaller
• The width of the master bedroom has been reduced slightly
• The bench space in the kitchen has been reduced to accommodate re-siting of the refrigerator.
• The linen cupboard has been moved to the laundry to occupy the space where the refrigerator was.

Overall, I think these design changes are an improvement. The best news for Porter Davis customers is that the base price has been reduced. We watched with interest as the base price of the Livingston increased from $161,900 in December 2014 to $164,900 in July 2015. The current base price of the Lamont is currently $154,900.

It must have been a pain to have to modify the display homes. But that appears to be what they have done.

Building Contract Signed

We have now signed a ‘fixed price’ building contract with Orbit Homes for the construction of the Balwyn 196 on our block on Red Brush Drive, Keysborough. However, as anyone familiar with contracts for residential construction in Australia will tell you, there really is no such thing as a fixed price contract if the term is taken literally. First of all there are variations. I am hoping there will be no need for us to request any variations. Hopefully we have thought through what we need the builder to provide and what we will arrange to installed after the build is complete. Orbit Homes charge a $1,000 penalty for each variation now the contract is signed. That is quite an incentive to keep variations initiated by us to minimum.

However, the building surveyor or builder may require a variation and the builder is permitted to charge for this variation and this charge may include  a 20% markup. Standard clauses in the contract allow for price increases under the following circumstances :

• Increase in taxes
• Provisional Items
• Prime Cost Items
• Interest on Overdue Payments
• The need for a Boundary Survey

In our case there are no provisional or prime cost items in the contract. We believe the other items in the list are unlikely to apply. There are also liquidated damages payable for delays. If building completion takes longer than is allowed for in the contract then the owner is entitled to liquidated damages as specified in the contract.

The Slab Design

Unfortunately, the ‘P’ class site classification means that the standard ‘M’ Class slab will not be sufficient to meet the foundation requirements of our house. So what are the issues that need to be addressed in the slab design ?. As noted in the Soil Test report the slab must account for a differential settlement of the fill. Uniform settlement, typically does not result in damage to the supported structure.  However it is a problem if a part of the foundation settles while another part does not, which is what is meant by the term, “differential settlement”.  A foundation that has settled unevenly across the area of soil which supports it, has settled differentially.  This can result in bending and deflection of the house and much unhappiness.

In our case, two slab design decisions have been taken to address the risk of differential settlement. Firstly the slab has been upgraded from an ‘M’ class to an ‘H1’ class. Additionally, the Porch and Alfresco have been incorporated into the slab. Another issue for the engineer designing the slab was the drainage easement located on the north boundary of our property. In our site plan, the outer wall of our garage is located on this boundary. To ensure there is no load applied to the assets within the easement the engineer has provided for three piers which will pass through the 2.2m of fill to the clay based soil beneath.

Council Certifies Compliance

Yesterday, we received a letter from the conveyancer. It states : “We have been advised by the Vendor’s Solicitor today that the Certificate of Compliance was issued by the council yesterday and they expect to lodge all documents at the Land Titles Office by 20 August, 2015. We shall advise you immediately we receive advice that the Plan of Subdivision has been approved.”

I understand that the titles office takes about 15 working days to register the titles. The expected date for titles is therefore September 10 with settlement to follow on September 24.

The Dreaded "P" Site Classification

We have just received the contract from the builder, which includes a copy of the Soil Test report (Geotechnical Site Investigation). Our site has been classified as ‘P’ due to the depth of fill. From the three bore holes they drilled fill was encountered to a depth of 2000mm, 2200mm and 2100mm respectively.

The report states that “If certification is provided to confirm that the filling is compacted as per AS 3798 specifications to “controlled fill” standard as per AS 2870, then an engineer designed waffle footing system suitable for this site’s reactivity may be appropriate for an articulated brick veneer dwelling.

The waffle footing system may bear directly onto the compacted filling and shall be designed to account for a differential settlement of the fill by an Engineer experienced with the design of ‘rigid’ waffle footings.”

A couple of weeks after this Soil Test report was prepared, I supplied the builder with a copy of the document from the developer certifying that the fill was controlled in accordance with the standards.

Elsewhere in the soil report it is stated that “For the encountered soil profile and normal seasonable moisture conditions, we estimate that the characteristic surface movements to be less than 20mm”.  My interpretation of this is that the fill is classified as “S” (slightly reactive).

50th Post !!

I started this blog on the 26th of April this year and after three and a half months have now reached the 50 post milestone. I must admit I thought we’d be further progressed in our building journey than has been the case. We paid a holding deposit on the land on December 3, 2014 with the hope that Solsbury Field would be the exception and the optimistic prediction of the agent of titles in March/April would be realised. Alas it is now the 9th of August and we are still waiting to find out when settlement will be on our little block.

We paid our preliminary deposit with Orbit Homes on the 31st of January. That has given us a great deal of time to undertake research and think through our requirements and priorities. We breezed through colour selection but came to a dead halt because we were unable to finalise the building contract. It is not prudent to sign a building contract until you have a fixed total cost. This is not possible until the site costs, including the foundation costs are known. These can’t be determined until the contour survey and the Soil Test results are in. Usually this is at the conclusion of the development civil works. Those works now appear to be complete and I hoping that over the next 50 posts there will be substantive progress.

Fenced off and Finished ?

I arrived at Solsbury today to find access was fenced off. It seemed to me that the development work was either compete or close to completion. However, I was unable to scrutinise things closely due to the lack of access. I could see that the roads were sealed and the street signs were in place.

A couple of weeks ago, we received a letter from the real estate agent that listed each subdivided lot and the corresponding street number assigned to it. The letter also stated that the developer had advised that settlement was now expected in mid to late August.

Around the same time we supplied a copy of the developer’s compaction report to Orbit to assist with the determination of the foundation requirements for our house. We’ve now been informed that the engineering analysis has been undertaken and slab design is complete. We are expecting to receive a building contract with fixed site costs this week.