Final Plans Received And Other Updates

Here’s a few quick updates:

We have just received our final plans from our Metricon CSC, Karen to review and sign.

Our building permit has been applied for and if all goes well we will receive the permit by early next week.

Metricon has also checked our finances to ensure they don’t build the house for us for free.

Over the weekend, we cleaned up the site a bit to remove some overgrown grass and weeds that have grown since the demolition. Our Site Manager was going to complete his pre-build inspection today, so hopefully the site is o.k. for construction to start.

C&K

Final contract plans received by email and other progress updates

Yesterday we received an email from our CSC, Karen, with our final contract plans (pleasant surprise).  It is very exciting to get the plans as we now can review what all the internal elevations (bathrooms, laundry, kitchen etc) will be like.  It is starting to feel more real now that we are getting towards the end of the contract phase.

Last weekend we took the Habitat Group plans from our electrical appointment and walked through the Greenvale Nolan display home to ensure what we have planned on paper will actually work for us.  We found this excercise really valuable as we picked up a few improvements such as relocating switches and powerpoints to better locations. We marked up the electrical plans with the changes and submitted them today.

In other news we have also had the block decontaminated and cleared of any asbestos.  We organised Adrian from Asbestos Audits to come and clean the site and also provide us with an Asbestos Clearance Certificate which Metricon required before any builders could step on site.  Adrian was really efficient and got the site cleared up which thankfully resolves the unwanted setback we had been facing.

C&K

Preliminary contract meeting – our house is flipped

This week we received our preliminary contract and had our preliminary contract meeting with our Sales Consultant, Melissa at the  Metricon Head Office.  After many emails and phone calls, it was also nice to finally meet face to face with our Customer Sales Coordinator, Karen.

Since we received the first version of the preliminary contract plans back on the 16th Jan, there has been a few changes.  The most significant change has been that our floor plan has been flipped so the garage is now on the left hand side (south side) of the property.  This of course has meant that we had to apply to council to get the driveway crossover to be relocated to the south side of the property.  To the council’s credit they turned this request around very quickly and pre-approved the changeover in under 2 days!! Metricon can now proceed with the plans flipped.  Great work.

The reasons for flipping the house include:

• A better design outcome for the proposed building design:- Locating the garage to the south will allow for appropriate positioning of north facing living areas.  In particular, the outdoor alfresco will have a northern aspect. It will also allow for potential building regulations to be easily met with appropriate building design.  However, we will still need to apply for Report and Consent for 3 regulations.
• Visual surveillance along the driveway when reversing the car from the garage:- The current crossover location does not allow for comfortable visual surveillance for traffic approaching from the north end of street due to a sharp bend in the road. Relocation will allow for safer existing.
• Widening of the crossover: – The current crossover is very narrow in width and when we relocate we will seek a wider crossover that meets Council specifications for the relocated crossover for easier entry and exiting.

At the preliminary contract meeting, we made a number of variations (adding, removing and correcting items).  We plan to review the contract further at home over the next few days before signing and see if there is any more opportunity to cut some costs.  It was very exciting to get to this stage.

I am currently creating a floor plan using Microsoft Visio based on our latest plans provided by Metricon and will post it as soon as I finish it.

Both Melissa and Karen have been very helpful in answering our questions and following up on a number of items promptly over the past few weeks and getting us to where we are.  Thanks guys!

Preliminary Contract Plans Received by Email

Today we received our preliminary contract plans by email from Karen, our Customer Support Co-ordinator (CSC). How exciting!!!!

We will go over the plans in detail over the coming days. But one obvious thing we noticed in a glance over of the plans was the missing outdoor room extension. We were notified last year that we couldn’t get the Grand Outdoor Room due to the amount of cut needed out the back, however, we were advised we should be able to get some sort of smaller extension.  I have sent an email back to Karen asking her to clarify this.

Looking at the documents, it seems like we will need to apply for three Rescode Report and Consent items with the council.  We will apply for this ourselves as the owners with the help of our close friend who is a seasoned designer.

C&K