Erosion

Quick update to show how much sand has washed away in the last few weeks of heavy rainfall. The concrete on the edge of the pavers would have been sitting on sand when it was layed, there's now about an 100mm gap. If this continues it will start washing away the sand beneath the pavers and our driveway will collapse.

You can see where the river of water has flowed down the driveway instead of into the soakwell as it's intended.

Practical Completion Inspection

We had our PCI today and we decided to use an independent inspector. We spent about 2 hours on site going over all the little details. We will get a report and the builders will have to sort it all out.

Some of the bigger problems: drain to soak wells is nowhere near downpipe. It was raining when we started the inspection, you could see the water eroding the sand next to the driveway paving.

This downpipe isn't plumb, but even if it was, it wouldn't line up with the drain so same problem as above. Also the render still hasn't been cleaned from the mess the grano guys made.

Although it will eventually be covered by our bamboo flooring, the slab next to full height windows needs to be filled in. Not all the way, there needs to be a cavity for drainage if water ever makes it under the window frame.

This door has been hung the wrong way! I only realised when I opened it from the hallway and reached my hand in for the light switch. I couldn't feel a switch and realised it was on the other side of the door. How stupid, I thought and went to check the wiring plan. Seems the wiring is fine, but the door is supposed to swing inward toward the hall and be hinged on the other side.

If we left it this way, we could potentially be banging it into car bumpers depending on how far in we parked. Apparently the entire frame is the wrong type as it can only fit one way due to the step down into the garage. What a mess.

Here's one I've known about for awhile. When the plumber was fitting the drains that run to the soak wells he managed to knock out a big chunk of the footing for the feature wall. The wall isn't load bearing and it's tied to the main wall, but it's effectively hanging in mid-air.

I won't bore you with all the other little chips, cracks and scratches. We've been told they usually allow 2 weeks to sort out problems after PCI, but considering their recent pace I find that very hard to believe.

So close

Another month gone, and no end in sight. After we had lockup at the end of January we were told 8-10 weeks until PCI (Practical Completion Inspection) and then handover. That would have put us at the end of April, right around the time we were due to move out of our rental. Obviously that's been and gone, we're living with Jenni's parents and all our stuff is stored between the pergola here and Travis' garage.

There really hasn't been that much to do, but weeks pass without anyone setting foot on site. It's been really disappointing and we're just about over it. Anyway here's the update: the water meter was finally fixed on the 18th of May but the paving didn't get done until the 11th of June.

Dodgy plumbing by the entry has been hidden by careful paving as I had hoped. We're also happy with the color match of the cheap concrete pavers to the grey render. We'd really like to have the driveway done with washed aggregate concrete but the quotes were too high and we barely got any credit for deleting these pavers so we'll stick with them for now.

The painters did some work on the outside on the 30th of May, though I'm not terribly happy about the color match or lack thereof. The paint was specified as Deep Ocean, but since the render came out darker the downpipes & meter box don't match.

The painter tried to tell me something about too many tints and too dark already (once again, broken English) but I'm pretty sure he's just trying to bullshit me. I can't see a reason why they couldn't take a sample of the render and get a proper computerised color match. It's not so bad in low light or shadow, but in the sun it's quite obvious.

This is just stupid, why bother painting a pipe that's obviously broken (has been for a few weeks) and waiting to be repaired?

They cut the tiles, fixed up the cabinet and finally got the rangehood in. Managed to shoot this one through the glass, hence the funny reflections. Granite bench tops look great in real life, they have glass/mirror shards that sparkle in the sunlight, photo's don't do it justice.

Hopefully we'll be having an inspection next week, but I can already see a bunch of little stuff that needs to be fixed up, so who knows how long before we're in.