"Weepguard Brick Vent" available in Bunnings

Happy New Year every one!



Saw this "Weepguard Brick Vent" available in Bunning's catalog, this is certainly much better than the Weephole vermin I used. But it's not cheap and not sure if can be done by D-I-Y. It would be also be an extra cost if you want your brick layers to install one of this nicely in every weep hole - so make sure you double check with the builder about the extra cost plus the quantity of this Weepguard you need to order.

[Progress.067] Thanks to brick layers for lowering the arch in front of the porch

It was raining again on Wednesday (07/11) afternoon when I drove past our site. As shown below (photo from my mobile) I noticed the curve board previously been used for the front porch arch was back under the arch again. Why? I thought they already finished the front porch ages ago??

Spoke with wife and she said she noticed the brick layers removed the whole arch in the morning when she drove past, and she already spoke with the brick layers about that. When the brick layers were finishing their work, they noticed the front porch arch was too high and part of the arch will be blocked by the eaves when it's been installed. That's why they removed the arch and re-do it again.

I quickly searched through my old photos, and found the following 2 for comparison. The first one was taken on Sunday (04/11) from camera, the second one was taken on Thursday (08/11) from my mobile.


By using the garage door (vertical ones on lower left hand side) as reference, you can count the bricks and clearly see that the arch has been dropped 2 bricks lower. Really appreciate the brick layers for picking this up now, otherwise this would be really difficult to fix when the roof & eaves were all done.

[Progress.066] Windows sills done

It started to rain again yesterday and when I as on site late afternoon, I noticed the front windows on 1st floor were finished, even the windows sills were done as well. But as shown below, the windows sills for front bay windows on ground floor still wasn't finished yet.

This one is from the back of the house, quite happy to see the last alfresco post finally finished. Even the windows sills for the bay windows at the back were also done.

This one is the kitchen window, again windows sills done.

When I checked again this afternoon, all the front windows sills for the front bay windows also finished. Looks like they will be on schedule to finish all brick work in the next few days!

[Progress.065] Brick work almost done, new issue with alfresco drain pipe

It has been raining for the last few days and we even have a wild thunderstorm last night. The brick work was almost finished, if we can only have a few days without rain... Well, the rain did stop today, but today is Sunday! We need a non-raining week day to continue the brick work. Hopefully everything will be finished this week as they said -- as usual, only if weather permits...

As shown below, we only have very little work left at the front, see if you can pick it up from this photo.

This is a closer look, yes, it's the top part of the front middle window. Also, if you look at the right hand side, the windows sill also wasn't finished. Actually, all windows sills weren't done yet. There's also some brick work left in garage and the last alfresco post.

Talking about the alfresco post, we had a chat with one of the brick layers on Friday. He mentioned the reason for delaying the last alfresco post was because they have to wait for the concrete footing to be fixed -- and it has been done. They will finish the last post once the rain stops... Based on this, I start comparing all the previous photos for that area this weekend and found a new problem -- a drainage pipe on the ground for connecting down pipe from the last alfresco post was missing!

The first photo below was taken on 15/9 when the frame was half done. You can see the drain pipe right next to the concrete footing/piere highlighted in red.

The second photo was on 20/10 with brick work half done, the pipe was still there.

The next one on 30/10, the pipe disappeared! And you can see a few bricks been half buried next to the concrete footing. May be this is the "fix" the brick layer mentioned --- the original concrete piere probably wasn't in the right place and they need to dig a bit extra side wise, put in the concrete, and then support it with some bricks. That's probably why the pipe was removed -- to give way to the concrete pier.

This is another photo taken on 2/11 (Friday). The way they place the bricks around the footing doesn't look quite nice to me. And since they removed the drain pipe, hope the underground underground wasn't affected, and I wonder how are they going to connect it back??

The last photo was taken today, I found this poor little fellow been dumped under one of the scaffoldings --- yes, this is the drain pipe that's been removed. I can recognise it as it has this special cut on the top. From the length looks like the builder will need to dig quite deep (around 250-400mm ?) to connect it back (or replace with a new one?). Well, as long as it's fix, I don't really care how are they going to do it...

As it took me a while to scan through so many photos during this incident, I was discussing with wife about the idea of using our video camera instead of digital (photo) camera to record all the things happening at our site.

Main reason is, with digital camera you can only take photos of a small area at a time and it's almost impossible to cover every angle. Also sometimes it can be a bit difficult to identify which area was the photo taken (try to compare 10 close up photos of bricks or frames...).

With video camera, as long as you don't move too fast, you can sort of "scan" through the whole area, wall by wall, windows by windows, frame by frame. Only issue I can think of, is with digital cameras you can use the flash lights during night time, it can be a bit difficult for video cameras at night or during poor light condition... Any way, will give that a try next time if possible.

[Progress.063] Letter full of jargons

I mentioned about the shocking extra charge our builder asked the other day, we received a letter full of jargons, basically saying how more than 50% of the $89xx we paid were already spent and the quote was for the other half and shows some figures explaining why we need to pay extra $890... We will be meeting the supervisor sometime next week, will wait and see how he is going to explain it. But looks like we don't have any knowledge to fight against all those jargons they used. See how it goes...

[Progress.055] Brick work - finished front bay window, back bay window half done

As shown in photo below, after 7 days of brick work, we finally have an area fully finished for ground floor - the front bay window.

Even half of the bay window at the back was done as well!

We are progressing slowly, keep moving forward everyday! Can't wait to see the whole house covered in bricks!

[Progress.053] Brick work continued - 3 sets of photos and 2 new issues

I have been very busy for the whole week. So this post will cover a lot more details/photos than usual.

#1/3 - First Set - 03 Oct (Wed)
The first set of photos are from 3/10 (Wed), after the long weekend, on Wed morning we noticed more bricks been delivered, almost blocked the front gate.

They have finished the right hand side of the house up to about half the windows height on last Friday.

This one viewed from inside the bay windows at the front. They attached a small metal thing every few bricks so that they can later nail it to the timber frames.

When I returned on Wed night, they have finished all the walls surrounding the kitchen. The wall also stopped at the same height as previous work, they probably need the scaffolding to be setup before they can continue to work on higher levels.

I saw this thing called "Alcor Aluminium Dampcourse" which they installed at the bottom of the 2nd row of bricks on every walls. Not sure whether it's for water proofing, protection against termits/white ants or something else.

#2/3 - Second Set - 04 Oct (Thu)
The next set of photos were taken on 4/10 (Thu). We both took a day off and visited our tile supplier, chose some tiles and hopefully will get the quote within a week. When we returned in the afternoon, the garage wall at the left hand side of the house was also finished up to the same height.

We also saw this steel beam been delivered. During the drawing phase, we were quite worried about my wife's shocking driving skill, so we decided to upgrade from the standard 2 single garage doors (with a brick post in the middle) to the wide double garage door. I think this beam will be installed on top of the garage door to support the bricks above it.

This one taken outside the kitchen, the meals room windows has been raised as requested. Hopefully when the air con been installed, it won't be that obvious when looking from inside. Please don't make this mistake like us -- never install your air con right under the window, it would be quite noisy and it won't look good when viewed from inside the house.

This is a closer look of the wall, please pay attention to the bottom of the wall, see if you can pick up something unusual.

This one from the other side of the garage wall, again have a look at the first row of bricks at the bottom.

Now, the answer to why I asked you to pay attention to the bottom bricks in the previous photos... Well, almost... Look at the bricks in the photo below, the left hand side ones are done on Wed and the right hand side ones are done on Thu. Can you see the difference in the mortar colour? Left hand sides are in white but the right hand sides are in grey! Look at the bottom bricks in previous photos carefully again, they were done last Friday with white mortat, and all bricks above are done on the day photo taken also have grey mortar.

The photo below is a closer look of the bottom row of bricks from front of garage wall, you can see it's a lot more obvious compared to previous ones. We thought they might have used the wrong cement/mortar, quickly checked all the packages left on site but they were all marked as "off-white" colour as we requested.

We were all in panic mode straight away, as this means all the brick work done on Thu have to be knocked down and restart again... We were also thinking about contacting the supervisor straight way and put a sign on the brick wall to ask the brick layers to stop the work the next day morning...

So did we complaint to the supervisor about this? No, we didn't... After we calmed down a bit and had some discussion, we think it's because the brick work was just done during the day and it's probably not fully dried yet. Instead of jumping up and down and lodge a complaint -- which might humiliate ourselves, we decided to wait until next morning and double check with the brick layers...

Early next morning (5/10 Fri), we spoke with the brick layers and confirmed our assumption. We carefully checked the mortar colour of the garage wall again and were very happy to see they all turned into white colour after been left over night. The brick layers also told us the mortar colour would be even more white after a few weeks... What a relief!

No wonder there's always so many arguments between owners and trades person/builders, there's indeed a huge gap between both sides regarding the knowledge/understanding of the building process...

#3/3 - Last Set - 06 Oct (Sat)
The last set of photos were taken this afternoon. If you compare with the photos in the 2nd set above, you can see that they have finished the other side of garage wall and the two posts for the front porch. The only 2 areas left without brick coverage for ground floor will be the 2 bay windows: one at the front and one at the back. It's looking better everyday!!

This one taken from the front of the porch. The main entrance door frame has been installed as well during the frame stage.

This photo shows the smaller beams been delivered this week. I believe they will be installed above all the windows to support the bricks. We paid extra for this, as we like the traditional look of having a few bricks above all windows.

Most project homes provide lots of large windows which extends the height up to the ceiling. They claimed that this will brighten up the house and it's good for you. Well, yes and no. My understanding is, too many windows actually hurts your BASIX score and they actually do it like this to save the cost of brick laying plus the steel beams above the windows as the labour cost for windows are a lot cheaper than brick laying. So, if your BASIX score wasn't that good, you might want to consider removing some windows or reduce the height of the windows and add some bricks on top like us...

2 new issues
Unfortunately, I need to mention 2 new issues I picked up today... First, about the right hand side supporting steel beams in garage as shown below, can you see any problem from the photo below?

This is a closer look at the bottom/base part of the beam... Still can't see anything unusual?

Some of you might notice it, for those who don't, it would be much more obvious by making a comparison with the "correct" one from the other side... The following photo is from the left hand side. Did you get it now? Yes, the right hand side steel beam was not bolted to the ground, what a #^@%$!@$ mistake! And as the brick layers already put some bricks on it, I wonder how are they going to fix it...

The next issue is about the bricks, we have been quite happy with the brick work so far, until this happened... Have a look at the bricks in the photo below:

Don't know where did that came from, but the 2nd brick from the 3rd row in the photo above is definitely not in the same colour as any of the other over thousands of bricks we have seen so far... As it should be located somewhere behind one of the pipes for water tank system, it might not be that obvious unless you carefully checked every wall like we did.

Yes, I know we are very fussy as this is definitely quite minor compared to the first issue. But we all need to grab every opportunity to increase our negotiation power against the builder, if you know what I mean... Again, don't know how are they going to fix it...

The brick laying stage takes a few weeks and it's quite promising to see new walls been built every day. Hope you enjoy this extremely long post and I will definitely let you know if there's any update! Cheers!

[ColourSelection.001] External Colour Summary, Bricks and Roof Tiles

We finally have some lovely sunshine in the past 2 days after a few weeks of rains.

As our excavation won't start until mid/late July, I will start posting other details about our house.

First, is the external colour summary submitted to council as shown below.


To make it clearer, I will add some details. Starting with the bricks.

The bricks we are using is "POA" from PGH. A few photos shown below:



Also have a few photos of existing houses built with "POA" bricks provided by PGH as shown below.



The roof tiles we are using is "Moral Monarch French Terracotta" in "Slate Grey" colour. The diagram below from Boral Terracotta brochure shows what it looks like. Just change the colour to "Slate Grey", not the orange one as shown below.