Cut to the bone.

Literally!

On Wednesday 11th of March, Heli happened to have driven past the block on her way home. Unbeknownst to us, an excavator had been delivered and the site scrape had been started!

Yesterday (Thursday), the scrape had been completed, and by 8am the excavator had been loaded and was on it's way. What remained was the outline of the house, which is all of a sudden all-too-real and very very big! Mathematically, the house occupies 34% of the size of the block. However, it feels, quite viscerally actually, much bigger. I'm sure it will look even bigger when the slab has been poured, which should be finished within three weeks.

The remnants of a cow bone was also unearthed in the site cut (hence the title of this post).

Now that the build has actually (officially, when the site cut completed, on the Thursday) started, the level of excitement has certainly increased! Now can actually see and touch stuff!

Once the excavator had gone, the other two trucks that were waiting did their thing. The first of which dropped off the porta-loo, and second then put the fence in place and the crossover protection.

Happy days.

Full Electrical, Entertainment & Sound, Network and Speedheat Plans

The girls and guys in the electrical section at the World of Style to be passionate, friendly, knowledgeable and in short, utterly fantastic!

We went through a few revisions of the base electrical plan, not too many changes, generally small things, but things that could be changed easily after contract signing and covered by a Post Contract Variation (PCV).

So here are our full electrical plans.

I found others' plans to be particularly useful in planning, so I hope you do too.

Electrical plan - ground floor.

Electrical plan - first floor.

Electrical plan - key!

Network plan - ground floor.

Network plan - first floor.

Entertainment and Sound plan - ground floor.

Entertainment and Sound plan - first floor.

Speedheat plan - ground floor.

Speedheat plan - first floor.

It's shocking!

A few months ago we were told that the relevant necessary people had viewed the block and said that it was all fine.

I argued with PD (unsuccessfully, I might add) about the need for an underground pit. PD gave a number of reasons, most of which were invalid as the above ground power lines were already there (and in the way)! Putting a pit in does not remove the above ground power lines and the risks that they can pose.

So, image my surprise that NOW it's a problem! PD want to talk to Powercor, why, I have no idea. I do not see what they can do.

So, $4600 later, we have a pit. Which Powercor put in ahead of time and looks like this:

Yes, the 30cm odd concrete plate is all we see. I'd asked for it to be inside our property, but that is not permitted (and no one told me). It has to be in the 'road reserve', that's a footpath to us mortals.

Oh, and we get shiny new bits as well!

Three phase power, here we come!

It never rains...

...It pours.

As the old saying goes. It is the excessive storm water discharge rates that the council is worried about. Evidently, the large roof size is capable of catching more rain than is permitted to be discharged into the storm water drainage systems due to fear of flooding said systems.

So the standard solution is to install a retention water tank that acts as a storm surge buffer tank.

More details and information on detention and retention water tanks can be found here.

An exemption may be applied for (which we have done).

We are currently waiting a response from Hobsons Bay council.

Further information will be forthcoming, if not the biblical flood itself!

Power to the people!

After much to-ing and fro-ing back and forth between Powercor, we have finally achieved something that resembles acceptable.

Opting for a three phase supply, Powercor initially offered 40 Amps per phase, three phase. The calcs for the house load came in at 100A, but that was before we added two external air conditioning units, a Sauna heater (40A for that alone!) and the pool equipment provisioning.

I requested 68A per phase, and Powercor offered 63A per phase. I can live with that.

Reach for the sky!

As a follow up to a previous post,  Does size matter? we learned that both our building plans and height exemption have been granted and approved!

The building permit however, has not been issued, as their appears to be some technical matters to sort out. For example, they have requested the flow rates of the storm water discharge, so that they can be checked against the council requirements. A Hydraulic Engineer will need to provide them, and they have been ordered.

So, that withstanding, the building permit should be issued, hopefully soon.

As far as we know, the site start date is still in February. We have asked for an exact date.

Drilling to China!

Today was our second soil test. Porter Davis perform an indicative preliminary soil test before the demolition of a Knock Down and Rebuild job. This allows them to have some idea of prospective costs. However, a second more complete soil test is performed post demolition to establish a better representation of what really lies beneath our feet.

So we drill to China to find out.

As an aside, our block was also being resurveyed on the same day. I took the time to have a quick chat to the guys and I (as they were) quite surprised to find that the area had not been resurveyed since the original 1950's site establishment surveys! This has happened because it is not mandatory to survey a block of land for a single dwelling, however, it IS mandatory to survey if you are subdividing. Our entire area still has a surviving covenant in place that prohibits subdivisions! So no units in our area, which really adds to the tranquillity of the area!

Back to holes. Porter Davis request six holes to be drilled so that they (or really, the engineers who work out the slab designs) get a better overall picture of what is needed. I was surprised to find out that some other builders only request three holes to be drilled.

So, Ennio arrives with his mobile drilling rig (don't we all need one of these?)

There is a small petrol engine on the back of the truck that powers the hydraulics that allow the drilling rig to be tilted into position, raise and lower the drill bit as well as turn it.

The deepest we got was about 1.7m, indicating no rock there, however, from what we can work out, the soil is mostly clay with basalt floating rocks in it. The bigger those rocks, the more costly it will be to remove them.

With the soil attached to the drill, you can see the soil at different depths. Here it is all mostly clay.

If you were not present when this occurred, all you would see are a couple of these on your block.

Ennio was happy for me to video him and his work, so here is the entire process as a video.