[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:

[Tips.002] Ask you builder not to fasten/fix the skirting boards if you are installing timber floors latter

Everyone likes to have timber floors in her/his new house. Problem is, project home builders charged a lot for that. So far, we haven't seen many owners installing timber floor with the builder. Most of them just leave the floor as it is, and then install timber/carpet or other floor coverings after hand-over, and that's what we planned to do as well. After a few discussions with some new home owners, we found a common problem - the skirting board.

Project home builders always fasten/nailed the skirting board and have it painted before the hand-over. Unfortunately when the flooring people tried to install the timber floors, the skirting boards need to come off, otherwise the edges under the wall won't be covered properly. And yes, that could easily damage your brand new wall - also don't forget that it's every single wall surrounding the area you are installing timber floors!

Yes, there's another option - to install an extra edging in front of the skirting boards. Well, you then get an extra layer under every surrounding wall. Personally, I don't think that looks good, but it's one possible solution.

We also tried to ask the builder to leave the walls as it is and don't install any skirting board in the whole house. Guess how much credit for that? Less than $350! Yes I am not joking. They charge you arms and legs for any variation, and only give you peanuts if you ask for any credit. That's how these project home builders make money...

Finally, the last option is the recommended one: ask the builder not to fasten/fix the skirting boards. Just use a few nails to "tack" it (tacked skirting). Unfortunately not many builders are willing to do that. Domaine, Clarendon, Bellmarch all said no. Our builder has no problem with that, but even though we have been talking about this since day 1, we made a big mistake - we didn't get it written into the tender!! When we latter discovered this, they want to charge us $400 for that. We fought very hard for it, but as all drawings are done and approved, colour selection also almost done, we can't do much about that.

This is another lesson we learned - try to get everything covered and negotiate the price with the sales at the beginning. When it comes to the colour selection or latter stage, you are already hooked and lost most of your bargain power. The sales are more willing to negotiate as they are trying to get your business.

[Blog Site.005] More organised and user friendly

Made a few changes today during lunch time:
1. Added Google AdSense
2. Added Google Search function - haven't try it yet
3. Updated the title of all posts with a small tag to make it more organised
4. Added "labels" to all posts - you can click on each label and only posts marked with that label will be displayed, I like this idea.

Now, back to work...

[Tips.001] Do you have a hob under your shower screens?

We are currently living in a house not far away from where we are building. It's a duplex and according to Council record, the house was built around 1995.

This house has 2.5 bathrooms. Both bathrooms upstairs have a shower area, but none of them comes with hob under the shower screens. That is, the shower screen was installed directly on top of the flooring tiles. There wasn't any tiled barrier (hob) normally constructed from masonry to divide the shower area.

Since we moved in about 3 years ago, there were some cracks on the wall next to the Main bathroom shower, recently the tile starts to crack as well.

Spoke to some plumbers and tilers, they all said the same thing - shower screens installed directly on top of flooring tiles won't last long and will definitely leak after a few years.

This is one of the reasons we choose our builder, they have tiled hob included in all bathroom shower areas as standard. If you are building a house or renovating, strongly recommend installing a hob for your showers.

Found a few links related to this:
Link #1
Link #2

Photo of Tiled Hob in builder's display home Ground Floor Bathroom


Photo of Tiled Hob in our builder's display home 1st Floor Bathroom

[Progress.004] Main Tap

I took a much clearer photo of the Main tap this morning. As shown below, the red dashed line I added shows where the main pipe is located, right below the Main Tap. The smaller pipe on the right is the copper pipe that connects to our water meter.



Photos of the hole from differeng angle: