[WeeklySummary.004] Week 4 (23/08/2007 - 29/08/2007)

Achievements:
1.Finished frames for ground floor on 24/08/2007 (Fri)
2.Gravels poured on front entrance to fix muddy surface on 28/08/2007 (Tue)

Unplanned expenses:
None

Issues:
One of the frames damaged

[PropertyInfo.013] How Insulation Works

Thanks to information provided by Arthur/Yak_Chat from homeone.com.au forum, there is this web site from Solartex which provides detail information about how insulation works, different types of insulations and other information.

What I like most about the web site is this diagram (as shown below) which shows the rating of different materials. Have a look yourself and I believe you will find it very helpful as well...

[BlogSite.019] Interesting "Referring URLs" from search engines

I mentioned in this post about sitemeter reports on 8/8. In the past few weeks, I found the "By Referrings" report the most interesting as it tells you where people came from.

From all those "Referring URLs" I am most interested in those from search engines. Which shows what your visitors were looking for when the search engines listed your site as one of the answers. So far I have found the following ones from Google and Yahoo:

• Search for "back yard excavation costs gosford" from www.google.com


• Search for "australia downlight fire" from www.google.co.uk


• Search for "building concepts with foam waffle pods" from www.google.com.au


• Search for "raked joint photo" from www.google.com


• Search for "keeping daily weather data" from www.google.com


• Search for "2007 model 2 storey house plan" from ph.search.yahoo.com


• Search for "house building from ground up" from uk.search.yahoo.com

If you have setup some report for your blog, you can check how did your visitors found your site as well. Have a look at the referrings URLs reports and search for URLs from search engines, you might get some interesting ones!

[BlogSite.018] Celebration for over 2,000 hits in 3 months!

On 26/6, we have our first celebration for getting 500 hits in first month.
On 27/7,we have our celebration for over 1,000 hits in 2 months (Note about another 500 hits for the second month, similar to first month).
Today, I am proud to announce that the number of hits in our third month has doubled, and we have now over 2,000 hits in 3 months!

Thanks again for the support!!

[Progress.040] Gravels done, some windows delivered

This morning around 8 am, I saw this big truck parked in front of our site.

At the back of the truck there was this bulldozer. Wow, that's a lot of equipment, must be doing some major earth work or something! Right? Wrong!

Actually, they are here just for this pile of gravels - which was unloaded from another truck earlier this morning (P.S. with the 2 big sausages still there). Yes, I am not kidding! It must have took them more than 30 min to reverse the truck, remove/unlock all the chains and security locks around the bulldozer, start it, and drive it down... What an overkill! Just give me a shovel and I should be able to finish that within 20 min!

When I revisited our site around 8:30pm, this is what it looked like. Hopefully no more muddy entrance. We finally have some "real" progress for this week...

There were also some windows been delivered. It's quite dark and I couldn't work out the dimension from this distance and where is this window suppose to be installed. Also not sure if the colour is correct. Will get wife to check on the colour, I am hopeless with colours...

There are a few other windows inside the house, will have a clearer view tomorrow morning...

[WeeklySummary.003] Week 3 (16/08/2007 - 22/08/2007)

Achievements:
Finished drainage work (except sewage) on 18/08/2007 (Sat)

Unplanned expenses:
Extra tiger tails

Issues:
1. One of the frames damaged
2. Muddy entrance

[Progress.039] Two big sausages and a little possum

When I walked past our site tonight, I couldn't believe my eyes. I was expecting some gravels at the entrance or at least some progress with the 1st floor frames as it was a beautiful sunny day. As shown below, our builder just left 2 big sausages and the frames remained untouched. Do you call this gravel? And would you expect this to fix our muddy entrance??!!

And they even wrote their name on it! What the !@#^%$^&@#%$ who's going to steal your ugly fat crap? If you want to prove that you have done some work, why don't you clean up the site and remove all the rubbish?

Later on my jog, I saw something cute that somehow calm me down a bit. This little possum was sitting on the wire looking at me. Hope my camera flash didn't scare him/her.

The weather forecast was sunny days for the whole week, I hope there will be some "real" progress tomorrow...

[Progress.038] More tiger tails, and a few other stuffs

The rain has been on and off for the past few days, so there wasn't much progress today, except the tiger tails.
As requested by the site supervisor, we added some more tiger tails today, another unplanned expense... There used to be 6 (3 pairs) of them, now we have extra 8, total of 14 installed as 7 pairs...

The entrance was very muddy, we discussed with site supervisor and he agreed to order some gravels very soon. There's another site building with Masterton near our area, they have lots of gravels in the entrance and it looks much better than ours.

I think these boards are the flooring boards for 1st floor. With the yellow tongue thing they can be joined together easily.

This is a closer look of the beams to support the flooring boards.

This is the right hand site of the house, can vaguely see the windows spaces at the back. They might look the same to you but we are already matching it against our drawings and start seeing the shapes of each area been created like a big LEGO puzzle. And yes, how can I forget the damaged frame for the front bay window...

This one is the other side, for the areas behind garage.

A closer look of the seweage pipe, looks ok to me, but wife quite concern about the status about the pipe below. Hopefully after the gravels added it will be much better.

A closer look of the steel beams. There are about 8 of them, don't know why we need so many of them.

I think the 8 (4 pairs) of them shown here with 2 big screws are the stand for supporting the beams. But if there are 8 steel beams, and 4 pairs of stands, how are the other 4 going to be supported?? By timber frames?

Saw this bottle on the ground, labelled as "Iplex Pink Priming Fluid". Found this web page talking about "Iplex priming fluid must always be used when making solvent weld joints. It is generally coloured pink for identification although clear is also available." I read it a few times but still don't quite understand what is it talking about...

[Progress.037] Frames for ground floor done

Got some photos from yesterday here.
When I walked past our site yesterday morning, a truck just unloaded some bright orange coloured steel beams. There were 2 trades person on site working on the frames.

When I visited it again last night, I found the pipe that was suppose to allow rain waters to flow out to the road was blocked by mud. Have to ask our builder to clean it up.

Good to see they finally moved all the timbers inside.

Have a closer look at the beams, looks quite strong... What surprised me is the steel mesh... Not the grey one, the grey one is the fence, it's the yellow one I am talking about. They are the left overs from the slab, and it's all rusted...Are we sure this thing is strong enough to be used as part of our slabs??

This is part of the bay window at the front for our ground floor. Did you notice something unusual?

Yes, the damaged frame I mentioned in previous post. Isn't it very obvious? Even a 5 years old can see that it's damaged, then why is it still been used??!! Will talk to our builder to get it fixed...

The other side of ground floor. It's very dark and the other areas are not very clear. Will try to get better photos during day time next time...

I think the frames for ground floor is done. It looks more like a house now, can't wait to see they finish all the frames...

[Progress.036] One of the frames damaged

This post should actually be placed before [Progress.035]...

I took some much clearer photos this morning.


If you look closely at the last photo in the post [Progress.034], you might notice a damaged frame. This is a closer look of the damage, will raise that as an issue to the builder.

[Progress.035] More materials delivered, pathway blocked

I was quite surprised to see more materials been delivered tonight. What's even shocking is, they just leave all the materials piled at the front, with the gate open and blocked the pathway. Our neighbour wasn't happy about that...

This is from the front view.

This is from the side, you can see how bad it blocked the pathway.

Lucky there's a light at the front corner, otherwise people might get hurt when walking past our site at night.

Not very happy about this! Will contact the builder tomorrow morning and lodge a complaint. They better get it fixed before the neighbours complaint to the council...

[Progress.034] Frames Delivered

My family told me some timber stuffs were delivered, so I took my camera with me during my jogging. As shown below, the frames are here!

It's quite dark and the photos weren't quite clear, might try to get better ones tomorrow morning.

I think there should be more to come as what I saw doesn't seem to be enough for a 2 storey house. Will have a clearer view tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately it started to rain, wonder when will they start setting up all the frames...

[Progress.033] Some materials delivered

This afternoon, I noticed some mud left on the road when I drove past the site. As shown below, some smart guy decided to deliver some materials on this raining day and left a few muddy tracks on the road.

This closer look shows they parked the truck very close to the sewage pipe - hope the pipe below is still ok.

The following photos are the materials been delivered. Don't know what it is.

I checked the Internet, Oldfields is "a major manufacturer of aluminium scaffolding and mobile towers". So I think these stuffs should be related to the scaffolding or something to do with the frames.

This is the other pile of posts been delivered at the same time.

Hopefully this means we can have our frames very soon!!!

[PropertyInfo.012] Property Guide from domain.com.au

In case you are not aware, today I found some free property guides from this web site on domain.com.au. There are property guides for Sydney and Melbourne for both 2006 and 2007. There's also a "Essential Guide to Buying and Selling Property".

This is the figure for our suburb - Epping.

The "Essential Guide to Buying and Selling Property" includes some check lists for buyers, sellers which you might find handy.

[Others.013] The other house at Eastwood almost finished their frames!

I mentioned the other day about a house at Eastwood also built by our builder, which was also in slab stage when we were there on 6/8. The following 2 photos were taken on that day from my mobile.


When we were there this afternoon, we were quite surprise to see all the frames almost finished. (Note: for those viewers like me who like to browse through the content and only focus on photos, this is not my house, hope I didn't confuse you...)

I wish our framing stage can be that quick as well! Only bad thing is, we have to arrange for another payment after frames done...

Don't know how the other builders arrange their payment and different construction stages. I think our builder is quite smart by getting the first few stages done quite quickly and shifting most of the payments to the early stages. In that way, customers would be quite impressed and they can get the first few payments paid early.

Although they claim that in every stage, they have to finish all the required work "before" they receive the payment. I strongly doubt that, I think at the frame stage, the amount of money paid should have already covered their cost. After that, we are actually paying for the next stage...

[WeeklySummary.002] Week 2 (9/8/2007 - 15/8/2007)

This is the second weekly summary, will remove the "Raining days" as we can get better records directly from Bureau of Meteorology, as mentioned in this post.

Achievements:
Finished concrete slab on 11/08/2007 (Sat)

Unplanned expenses:
None

Issues:
No new issue.
Informed by our builder not to worry about the position of concrete pier in Alfresco as mentioned in previous weekly summary. When the post are been built, it will be setup in the correct location.

[Progress.032] Drainage work completed!

Should have done this post yesterday, but was too busy with other stuffs...

This is what our site looks like yesterday afternoon, compared with the first 2 photos from previous post and you will see the differences. The small pipe near the gate, marked with some tape was where the sewage pipe is located.


This photo from the right hand side of the slab shows a few extra drainage pipes for the rain water been installed. I think they will later be connected to the down pipes.


This photo from the left hand side shows even more pipes. I think the 4 marked with dark colored tape are for the powder room. Those extra ones on the left hand side must be for the down pipe or the water tank connection.


We are quite happy to see all soils been removed and the 2 small concrete stuffs at the front path also removed.

The weather is not that stable and we have very heavy rain for the whole day today. The weather forecast for next week wasn't that good either, seems to be raining everyday. Hope it stops for a few days for our frame installation...

[Progress.031] Work for drainage pipe started!

Every time I start winging on my blog, the next day there will be activity happening on our construction site. Ha, ha! It must be magic, or my blog must be indeed really powerful/influential...

When I walked past our site around 7:50am this morning, there were a few trucks parked outside. A few trades person were digging holes and there were long plastic pipes everywhere.

When I drove past the site again around 3pm, I can see some of the pipes already connected. Looks like this long one shown in the photo below is for the rain water.


They even drive the excavator machine on to the slab, the slab must be quite strong!

Looks like we are getting rubber pipes for the main water connection, not sure if that's a good idea...

The excavator was cleaning the site, all those muds around the area were all gone...

I was told the pipe at the left was for the sewage,and today they will only connect it up to the boundary. Later, some other trades person will look after the connection from here to the main sewage pipe somewhere at the front of the house.

When I was there around 5pm, the excavator was gone and they are working on the drainage pipe for the powder room. They are working really hard! All other drainage pipes for rain water are done and covered.

Will visit the site again tomorrow morning, hope all the drainage pipe work can be finished today...