Good progress this week, all is done ready for the pouring of the concrete slab on Monday. We did a few drive bys this week, the concrete piers were completed by Tuesday, plumbing Wednesday, and delivery and installation of the waffle pods Thursday and Friday. The guys on-site confirmed the concrete would be poured on Monday.

Front view, garage in front, porch, study, home theatre to the right.

Looking across the step down that divides ground floor into 2 levels

 

Back view with alfresco in front (which won't be part of the slab).

 

Another from view overlooking the entrance, study and home theatre

Finally.... we have a start.

Tuesday 13th July - drove by and still nothing had started. This was 8 days after the supposed: "will start in a week". So I got on the phone again, but they couldn't provide me an answer because everyone was in training. Later in the afternoon, I received a call back with the same old explanations. One of the points made was the time to complete orders can vary depending on the complexity of the order. I asked specifically if there was any issue causing delay with our orders with the response something along this lines of: "I'm not sure, it's done in the ordering department". I don't know why I bother.

5 minutes later, I received a call from our site supervisor. He confirmed he would be on-site on Friday for a start. He seemed like a decent bloke and was happy for us to give him a call anytime. From this point on, we hope we don't have to call head office again. They can improve alot!


Friday 16th July - 4 weeks to the day since the benching was completed, and we have lift-off. A couple of guys were measuring and hammering in the wooden frame.


Saturday 17th July - We dropped past this morning with the family. We had 2 guys with their kids spray painting markers for the pier holes. The kids were doing the spraying (with guidance) which was a little un-settling. But a least dad was concentrating on the plans. They confirmed that the piers were going in on Monday.


It gives us our first sight of how the house will sit on the block. The backyard is to our expectations, but the front of the house looks alot closer to the street then we thought it would. Can't wait to see how high the slab finishes up to see the gradient of our driveway. At the moment it looks short and steep. We can also imagine sitting in the alfresco on a nice winters day with the sun shining in.

An interesting development, our next door neighbours (the site in the background of these pictures) are building with Claredon. In one day, they had their benching, slab frame and pier holes drilled and concreted. While we have been teased for 6 weeks with little progress, our neighbours are in front of us after 1 day.


2 doors up we have a single storey Eden Brae home, which started with their benching and within 5 working days had their concrete slab poured. 2 examples of what can happen in little time.

22 days since benching - still no progress

Yep, 22 calendar days since benching with no further progress. They will have to re-do the fill that has eroded away. You can probably tell, we are getting very frustrated. We just want to see a start! The homes around us are all progressing nicely, with 2 concrete slabs completed last week (on properties benched after ours).

A 2nd email was sent to Wisdom on Tuesday, at least this time we got a response:
"Please be advised that the estimating have 20 working days in which to place all the orders for your house. The benching of the property is generally done in the first 2 weeks & then once the orders are finished your Supervisor is given the file & will start on site. I believe we will be on site in 1 weeks time as per the estimating manager.".

It has been 8 weeks since our plans were approved at council. So why does it take another 3 weeks to submit orders, and another 5 for the orders to be completed?

A sign of hope, the Wisdom Home opposite had 2 blokes on site today hammering in the frame for the slab. This site also has seen no progress for 3 weeks, so it was good to finally see workers on a Wisdom site.

We will be very disappointed if we dont see a start in the upcoming week.

15 days since benching

It's now been 15 days since the site was benched and there has been no signs of further progress (very disappointing). The only thing to change is the graffiti tag on the portaloo. The weather has been great, so there really are no excuses. We don't know what they are waiting for?

What's worse, an email we sent on Tuesday to administration@wisdomhomes.com.au, has not been responded to. It was simply an email asking for a status for when things would kick off. How hard is it for the head office to check into a file and respond back? We get better service from BIGW on a $50 sale!!!

A Huxley home and a Platinum home in the street are moving along nicely (the Huxley looks like they are ready for the pouring of the concrete slab on Monday). Us, and another Wisdom Home in the street have both not moved for over a fortnight.

Our guess is either they have over-committed on jobs and cannot keep up with the demand. Or they took too long to get the orders out.

Rain is forecast for Tuesday, so who knows when we will get a start?

Another week down

We now have a perimeter fence, that must have taken them all of about an hour to put in place. Apparently you need to allocate a week for this, because nothing else has happened. 
Lets hope for some movement next week.

Benching

There was activity in our street Wednesday, we had trucks and tractors lining our street. It was lunch, and the guys had just finished benching another Wisdom home across the road, and at the time had the tractors parked next to our block while conducting some surveying. So I drove past Thursday lunchtime to check out the results, and nothing!!! Not even anyone around. It left us wondering why they didn't do both on the same day?


So we checked again on Friday lunch and they were back, this time in full swing on our block. We dropped in this morning (Saturday) to take some pictures of the end result:

Front view, you would think the block is flat from this view, not so!

Here we have the step down. The top level is benched at 19.50, the bottom level benched at 19.15. This is looking towards the front low side (where the cut is meant to be 0.11 metres). It looks alot more than this, especially the temporary vehicle access. We hope this is far from what the actual driveway will be (the garage floor will finish at 19.80, with the front street at 19.88, so we are expecting a relatively flat driveway.

Looking across to the front high side corner, the natural height of the land measures 20.80. So with the benching at 19.50, we have a 1.3 metre cut which falls away to about a 0.5 metre cut left of picture.We'll need a retaining wall here, but hopefully not 1.3 metres high once the slab and landscaping is done. I'm wondering if the toilet will survive some wandering teenage kids tonight haha! 

This is the back right 0.55 metre fill, looking back towards the front left. The back already falls away to the drain, the fill makes the fall even greater. So we are already thinking about our landscaping options here.

In the background of this picture is another Wisdom home under construction. This site was benched Wednesday and this morning (3 days later) they were drilling the pier holes. Pending weather, there is no reason why ours won't be done next week?

The loo has arrived

Our block sits up on a hill, which can be seen from a road we often travel. And yesterday we spotted objects! A quick u-turn into the estate identified the portaloo had arrived, Wisdom Homes signage, and we think the sediment control fence (in this corner, the land will be filled by 550mm).

We are 6 days (weekdays) into the communicated 5-10 working days for the benching to occur, but last week was virtually a write-off with heavy rain, so we are expecting a slight delay. Fingers crossed for next week after the long weekend.