Thursday, March 24, 2011

Communication is great!

"Communication is great." That is what the latest email from the director of the builder said. A little ironic that we are getting good communication now that the house is well over schedule and I am sending them constant updates as to what is happening on the block.

This email came after an email from me where I went through some points I was concerned with after the electricians and plumbers had started their fit off.

The first point was that there was only one cut out in splashback for a power point whereas we had specified two.


I had been told that the splashback was to be measured early this week.

The next concern was that the painting hadn't had a quality check. This was answered by the fact that painting wasn't finished and they would be back to clean up.

The plumber also seemed to have installed the wrong tap in the kitchen. We were hoping for an elegant pull out however we have only got a boring mixer. Apparently this tap is just a placeholder and will be replaced.

Further to the kitchen tap it looks like the toilets may be wrong we ordered BTW toilets which means Back To Wall. This ensures that there is no gap behind the toilet and gives them a cleaner look. We seem to have the right toilets bit not the BTW variety.

The final concern and probably the biggest was the quality of the brickwork. Since the brickwork had been cleaned it became obvious that there were serious issues with the quality of the brickwork. Particularly around the alfresco where our friends would sit around looking in detail at the workmanship.

Yesterday two bricks were on site and I had a chance to chat to them. Apparently it was the worst job either of them had seen. Whoohoo. It looks like one full length of wall from floor level to roof and from garage around the alfresco and to the back will be coming down. They will also be doing a lot of patch work here and there.


This is the start of some brick removal.


All of the sills along this side have been removed.

Apparently all of the repairs and rebuilding the wall will take 3 to 4 days and will not impact the schedule.


That's a lot of sand.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

2 comments:

  1. Hi, you mentioned the brickwork not being right. What do you mean by this? Just wondering so I know to look out for it when we start.
    cheers
    Linda

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  2. Hi Linda, how's the planning going? We found that the first team of brickies were great, not too much mess, straight bricks and straight lines. Then the lone brickie came along. There was mortar smeared everywhere (this should have been our first sign of worry). A good guide is the Victorian Building Commission's guide to Standards and Tolerances which actually takes a table directly out of AS3700 the Australian Masonry code. Check that the mortar widths don't vary by more than 3mm and that the bricks are all within 2mm of where they should be.

    The ugliest part of our house was the internal corners, there was a lot of mortar and not enough brick. Even with the Burwood Blue bricks and the raked mortar (which helps to disguise brickie errors) ours still looked really bad. I will try to post some photos if I get a chance.

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