Missing Pegs = $720!!!

I got an email Thursday from BB said that the pegs are missing on my lot, and offered a $720 deal to redo the land survey by BB. Gosh, that's a rob! I'm not paying that! So We grabbed a shovel and went to our land on Fri morning to dig. After searching the pegs based on the pics we took before, it turns out that where the pegs should be were temporary fenced inside the houses (which are under construction) next to our lot. It is inappropriate to dig without my neighbours permit since the pegs we shared are inside their fence at that time. 

When we was trying to contact council to get this problem fixed, we heard some one was talking in the house right-hand next to our land. We went inside and found 2 workers and asked for the contact No. of their site supervisor. Well, how lucky we are! And lucky again, their site supervisor is really really nice and made us stick around so he could meet us on the land 4 hours later, furthermore, he said he would like to help us to find our pegs. As he promised, in the afternoon, he and another person showed up. They took their tools to dig the pegs out for us really hard, and helped us to find 2 pegs in the front. It turns out that the pegs are not missing! They are just buried under some mud! Ughhhhhh~BB is so lazy and can't be bothered to dig at all! 

Since our rear pegs on one side is other's permanent fence already, so we got 3 pegs. We took a bottle of spray paint to mark out the pegs as pic showed below. Hope that BB can accept this result. If they don't, we're going to dig the hell out and locate our last peg, which would save us $720!!!

I can't believe my eyes!

Today we went to our land just for a regular check out, and to guarantee there is no rock or any other rubbish dumped on our site by some irresponsible site supervisors (which happened before). When we got there, OMG, there is a tap! We got a tap on our site! How exciting!!!!

I don't know why we got a tap so early since we have not signed on our final drawings and I believe our building plan haven not been logged in council yet. We will call BB tomorrow to find out what is happening. Anyway, I love my tap, lolz~

By the way, I love the tree in front of my land, beautiful green colour and swing in the wind (:

Display House-Attenborough 3500

I decide to show you some photos of displayed Attenborough 3500 which is bigger than ours 3200.

Got developer approval!!!

Actually, we got our developer approval last Friday, just a day after the application being logged. Light speed, isn't it?

Last Sunday we just sat by the table, grabbed every file we signed and checked them on the drawings. It is hard to read the drawings especially this is no where near what we known, we are the 'non-graphic guys', lolz~As a result, it took us 4hs to get 10 pages checked through and marked the incorrect drawings down with red pen. Then we scanned the drawings, send it back to our admin for further modification.

There are more errors than we thought, especially the electrical part. My previous 'marked up electrical plan' is based on the standard floor plan where the crossover is on the left side, but our final drawings is based on our actual land where the driveway crossover is on the right side. Now the whole floor plan is flipped over. When we were checking the final electricity drawings with the previous 'marked up plan', I have to flipped the paper over to understand the right direction and make sure every powerpoint, switch, light point, TV point etc. stay where they should be. God, that gives me a sore neck!

Hope that we could hear from our admin soon so that we could log our application in council earlier.

To Anonymous

To Anonymous: 

Mostly u are not able to negotiate on price, but hey, why don't u give it a try. If u succeed, u save money! I know some ppl negotiated on the fixed site costs by using other company's free quote, and they succeeded. For example, Burbank quotes u 8000 AUD for fixed site costs, and u got Simonds or Metricon free site costs' quotes previously which are 2000 lower. Using this as a bargaining tool to ask them redo the fixed site costs, and Burbank may lower the price. However, for the colour selection, I don't think you are able to bargain. Cuz they got a specific department calculating the price for each item for different houses. The colour selection people just give your advice on colour/style. The prices are calculated by the calculation department and they communicate via computer so you can get the price within the colour selection day.

About the time length, I'd say 1 year. Typically in Burbank, pre-consulting/pre-contract (fixed site costs)------contract singing------land titled------soil test------colour selection------drawing------construction------move in. Drawing would take u months to be done, I know someone wait about 5 months to make the drawings to be done correctly. Be prepared and push your admin frequently.

Finally got our house's drawings

New year new beginning, apparently our house's 2011 starts with the drawings. There were 3 small changes we requested in late 2010. We were lucky that we have not been charged any fees for those minor changes after the date of contract signing. Due to the changes we requested, the emails back and forth, the messages passed between different departments in Burbank, we have to wait longer time to get our drawings done. So guys, you better prepare everything before the colour selection to save your own time.

After a week hearing nothing from Burbank, we got an email today which is attached with our drawings and some answers for our previous email. Yeah! A big step! We are approaching to the actual construction. In the email, our admin says Burbank has already applied the building plan to the developer and will be approved in 10 business days. The application does not mean that we can not alter the drawings. We will have time to look through carefully, mark down the items they drew incorrectly and request further modification. 

There are 10 pages of the drawings. All the legend, notes and elevation, urghhhhhh~ Though it gives me a headache right now, I have to read through and cross check with my colour selections, electricity plan and contracts to make sure everything is right. Another thing is, our lovely admin kindly reminded that I haven't pick any tiles/carpet for my storage room under the staircase in the email and I can do it now without being charged 500AUD. OMG, can u imagine if I did not find this out and ended with a concrete floor in my storage room just besides to the hall way??!!! That's nightmare! Apparently me and my colour selection manager totally forgot about this during the colour selection.

Also, there are some good news. We found that our rainwater tank is a slimline model instead of standard one on the drawings. I'm not sure whether everyone build with Burbank will get a slimline rainwater tank. If you don't know, you better ask your admin. As suggested on the drawings, my backyard is over 110 sqm2 excluding the alfresco, oh I just love it!!! The clothes line (included in the promotion package) is 1.2m * 2.2m ground mounted, which is larger than I thought, nice, more clothes one time! The letterbox (included in the promotion package) is 0.88m height * 0.385m width, which is similar to the picture below, except mine will be in charcoal colour to matching our dark bricks colour. It looks like a lovely letterbox (: