[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.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.054] Change of NSW Premier and Council Zoning

First of all, congratulation to Barry O'Farrell our new Premier for NSW. Hope the North West Rail Link, which has been promised since 1998 can be finished in the near future as planned.


Picture: Jeff Herbert Source: The Australian

For the Labor, on top of all those countless money wasting mistakes they had made, to focus on connecting the 2 existing lines of Parramatta and Epping is really dumb. Compared with those residents in North West suburbs who have no rail-way and only over-congested roads, connecting Parramatta and Epping will only benefit a very small number of people and probably save them 10-15 min of travel time, isn't that really obvious?? No wonder Labor would loose the election so badly...

The other change is the zoning changes. During an open house inspection in one of the house in our area a few weeks ago, a neighbour mentioned council zoning has changed. Lots of area used to be "2B" and allows construction of single dwelling or duplex (Dual Occupancies), has all been changed to "R2" and that will only allow "single dwelling houses".

Quickly checked our council's web site and indeed noticed new Draft LEP and DCP been announced (see this link), this document about Zoning also provides some high level information.

Not sure about your council, at least in Parramatta council, it's definitely more difficult to build duplexes or townhouses. Wonder if that could have any impact to the house prices.

If any of you are thinking/planning of building new houses, make sure you keep yourself up to date with all the latest council regulation/zoning changes!

[PropertyInfo.008] Hope your council is not on the list...

Thanks to devank, there's this article called "NSW councils warned on processing time" dated 17/7 from theage.com.au which talks about how bad some councils can be with DA approvals.

Some information from the article:

• the slowest councils for determining development applications are Leichhardt, which takes an average 185 days, Strathfield (158 days), Canterbury (152 days), Ashfield (130 days) and Botany Bay (115 days).


• Eight councils took more than 100 days on average to deal with applications worth less than $100,000. Leichhardt topped the list again at 142 days, followed by Walgett (133 days), Oberon (127 days) and Auburn (124 days).


• some councils lost nine out of 10 court cases concerning DAs.


• Ku-ring-gai had the worst record, with 90 per cent of appeals against its decisions upheld in the Land and Environment Court. Close behind was Baulkham Hills (89 per cent upheld), Blue Mountains (85 per cent) and Wingecarribee (83 per cent).


• Not surprisingly, Ku-ring-gai council also had the highest reported legal costs - $1 million in 2005-06 - followed by Baulkham Hills ($989,994), North Sydney ($893,838), Pittwater ($875,446) and Leichhardt ($751,605).

[Progress.008] Are We There Yet?

Weather
It has been pouring like hell in the past 2 days. The weather forcast for the long weekend doesn't look good either. Yes, we need more rain, but how can I start my construction in such bad weather? Hopefully before my construction starts, we got enough water and the rain stops...

Report Required for Tree Removal
Council wants us to find an arborist to write a tree report before they could approve the tree removal. Still struggling on this, as we don't want to spend $500+ to be told that the tree is healthy...

Are we there yet?
Still working hard on the drawings and tender, already picked up a few mistakes:

The ensuite door was changed to sliding instead of hinged, but the drawing wasn't updated.

The space reserved for dish washer under kitchen benchtop was moved to cater for sink position, but the power point still remain in original location.

They added extra robe door in one of the bedrooms as requested to fully utilise the space. But from the drawings, it shows that the newly added right hand side door will hit the room door when both opened.

Felt like dealing with IBx, our outsourced partner at work. You paid them money for service, but you still have to double check what they did...

They even put in a note on all drawings: "It is the responsibility of the owner to ensure that the layout and all special inclusions are correct".

Just received the "plain English" contract yesterday. Looks like need to spend another week on this document...

[Progress.007] Final Tender received, tree removal sort of approved...

Finally received our final "Contract Tender" and "Construction Set" drawings today via email. Will spend the whole week going through all items, figures and drawing details. According to A**** from our builder once contract signed, they can start construction within 2 to 3 weeks. Hopefully everything will be sorted out before end of June...

Council was on site to check the sick tree with bracket fungus and big mushroom this afternoon. Looks like they are ok with the tree removal, only problem is, our DA was approved with the condition of some tree protection clauses. Now that we want to remove the sick tree, we need to put in an amendment to the DA and wait for approval... This is a bit ridiculous, we were told to put in a tree removal application, now there's another application, extra $ to pay and possibly even longer delay as well.....

[Progress.005] Water pipe fixed, trees pruned

The pipe connecting to main tap was finally fixed yesterday morning and the hole also been filled up. I contacted Sydney Water to find out the cost for the emergency service, and was surprised to be told it's free. Sounds too good to be true. Will call again tomorrow to re-confirm...

Photo of hole filled up:



Philip from Tall Timber Tree Services was here this morning to prune the 2 big trees. As shown below, they did a pretty good job.

Before:


After:


After spending almost $1000 on this pruning work, Philip told us they found some "bracket Fungus" and big mushrooms on the taller, white colour, blue gum tree at the right hand side. They reckon that tree is very sick, and will die and probably collapse in 6 to 12 months time. Don't know what the hell is that, Philips said it's quite common for gum trees to attract those fungus during dry weather, and as they grow inside the trunk, when it's been discovered it's normally too late and almost impossible to remove or kill it.

We are quite shocked and don't want to worry about the huge tree might collapse during the construction. Philip said it would cost at least another $2000 to remove the whole tree, sugar, another unexpected surprise... Will get a few more quotes from others... We also contacted council to confirm these details, quickly lodged a tree removal application, and another long, painful wait for council decision. Hopefully all these will be over before the construction starts...

Photo of Philip's huge machine behind the truck: