Site Works continues - Preparing the Pad...

Once the site is prepared and when I say prepared, I mean the holes are dug for the Septic Tanks, Storm Water Drains and Leach Drains and the they must be placed in and covered over again..


Then the pad must be levelled for the concrete to be poured on. But, before the concrete goes on, you need sand and lots of it. Now the pad is made approximately 2.5 meters larger than your actual house, and this is covered in sand and compacted.

We were very lucky actually, to not end up with fine white sand, we ended up with a firmer sand that didn't blow away in the wind and when you walked on it you didn't sink. It must have had some percentage of clay in the mix.. It was fabulous, and when building on red dirt it blends in much better than white or yellow sand.


The rocks are taken away, the sand is delivered and compacted and then it's ready for the Grano. This all takes about 3+ weeks, and costs about as much as a deposit on a house. But our site work contractor was fabulous, he did a great job and I would highly recommend him. If you want his details please e-mail.


Apart from rocks, we had a mountain of soil left over and had it spread out all over our block. Our site works contractor spread it out perfectly, building up our driveway and even considering our pool in the future, made a pathway for the bobcat to travel down along side our house to prevent any damage to our garden or veranda.. Brilliant!

Rocks are Gone!



No Diving!!
Yes, it does look huge, but it will get smaller..

Site Works.. Rocks Rocks and more rocks

Site Works is a necessary evil in building a house. But, how evil it is, really depends on where you build and what you build on.. 
Well we have Rocks, and plenty of them. To the point where we wondered if it would ever end.. Before we can even prepare for our pad we had to deal with our endless supply of Rock!!

The rock breaker starting on our pool.

There was so much that we eventually had to pay to have them removed. An unexpected expense to add to our budget. $3000. approx. But nothing that was going to cripple us and it was at least something that was our decision.

First Post - The Beginning

Hi,


My Partner and I looked at buying a home, building a new one, renovating an older house, hell we thought all options at one point or another. But, it came down to the fact that we couldn't afford to build new home anymore, and buying a decent home that wasn't ten years old was out of our 'financially comfortable' budget. Renovating became too expensive when the real estate market went into outer space. So we decided to try and Owner Build. 


Owner Building, a feat, that at times seems virtually impossible, but as we all know with house prices as they are there are not many options for young couples who don't want a half million dollar mortgage, but would still like a 'nice house.' 


It's taken us a little over 3 years to get to this point. 


2 years of arguments over the house plans
3 months of indecisiveness
1 set of double storey house plans
1 set of one storey house plans
1 Architect
1 Draftsman
Tape Measures and Spray paint
A forest worth of House Magazines
6 months of impatient toe-tapping whilst our plans were at the Council
and Banks... need I say more!!. 


Sigh... But it is finally happening.. 


We decided on our Site Works Contractor, and for $5000 extra to dig our pool, we got things started. Yes, I said a Pool, not even an option we could have considered before this.


The Rock Breaker was delivered and Construction started on the 21st March 2011.

I am eager to get some pictures up for now, so in my next posts I will put more information about our quotes and budgets, etc.