[Others.058] Leaking caused by neighbour's construction work

It rained quite heavily for the whole week in Sydney last week, and in the weekend we went to a friend's house for lunch. Their neighbour at the back, who's land is at a higher level was building a 2 storey house.

Other than the non-stop annoying noise and dust, our friend mentioned about this leaking under their house during rainy days which only started after the builder installed an underground water tank between the 2 houses. And the photo below is what it looks like, you can clearly see water running from certain area while other parts were completely dry.


Suggest them to take some photos/videos and report to the council asap - specially before the construction work finished and the council issued the OC. Obviously it has to be somehow fixed and would be quite concerned if the water could cause any damage to my friend's house. Things like this would surely brought some delay or extra cost to any construction work.

[Others.057] The Original Reverse Clock

Saw this strange "reverse clock" the other day. Quite interesting and took me a few seconds to get used to it. Checked the net and I think you can get one for around $130. Quite expensive actually, in my opinion but it's fun if you have school age kids.

[Others.056] Burst water pipe

One of our neighbor's water pipe burst right under their driveway the other day. The whole street suffered lost of water pressure and few hours later, completely out of water. The water pressure from the damaged pipe was so strong that it cracked and pushed the driveway up a few cm higher than the footpath level, some of the footpath also damaged.


Annoyingly, it took Sydney Waters about 3 hours to send someone on site. After some investigation, they digged a big hole on their driveway.


Have a quick chat with the guys and they said this is the smallest 4 inch pipe, and start talking about another incident where an 8 inch pipe burst, how much damage it caused.... We finally got our water after about 6 hours later.


Other than having the water back, What we were more concerned about is how are they going to fix the damaged driveway?

The next morning noticed the hole has been filled up like this... Also noticed a few yellow marks been sprayed on the footpath and other areas where the concrete were cracked.


At first we thought is that it? The driveway will be left in such an ugly condition?

Then last week, council parked a caravan at the front. Next day they started working on the driveway. They were quite careful, only did one half, wait for it to dry before working on the other half.


After a few days work. It's now a brand-new driveway and footpath also fixed too!

What our landscaper told us before is correct. If your driveway was damaged due to burst pipe or whatever reason, the council will only replace it with basic concrete. So if any of you thinking of extending your beautiful driveway paving all the way to the road might want to think again... Better off saving that for the back yard?

[Others.055] the incredible (house construction) project

Took this photo from my old iPhone 3GS, so it's a bit unclear, but you should get the idea.... It's for some sort of computer software project, but still matches what could happen during any construction project. And I am sure whoever built a house before would quite agree with this.

One of the point is, sometimes even the customer can't clearly explain what they want. How would you expect the result to be correct after the message been passed over through so many people and documented in different ways.

So make sure you double check and triple check every diagram, every line in the contract, take a lot of pictures, ask a lot of dumb/silly questions - yes it can be a bit embarrassing, but it's really rewarding if this can clarify if every parties involved are talking about the same thing!

Whatever the sales person told you - specially while he/she show you around - write it down and make sure it's correctly and clearly covered in the contract. Whatever promise/agreement you were told/made doesn't count unless it's written down in the contract!