Plaster & Scaffold

Considering that we were only on site with the supervisor on Friday and he was talking about booking plaster and for the scaffold to come down this week, I was very surprised (and happy) to receive an email from him first thing this morning with a few photo's attached.

Scaffold is down and plaster is on (at least downstairs from what I can see);

What a difference a few sheets of plaster can make to the look of the inside.
Can't wait to get up there now and have a look at the layout and see how big the rooms feel :)

Things are improving.

Went up to site this morning to meet the site supervisor and see the rectification of the items I was unhappy with from the last visit and getting the group building manager involved.

I'm happy to say that after re-working the eaves a 5th time, they are now straight at last.

Insulation has also been reworked and looks a lot tidier and the damaged window on the games room had already been removed in anticipation of the replacement being fitted this afternoon.

Looks like we've had the render applied to the front of the house as well.

There's still a few items outstanding to complete the lockup stage (replace ensuite window and replace the metal capping on the theatre room projections - as well as adding splits to fill the gaps in the capping), but once these are done things should move forward quite quickly.

Plaster is scheduled to start next week as well as the scaffolding coming down and then knocking down the garage and rebuilding with the new bricks so that everything matches colour wise.

Getting the group building manager involved again has had another positive effect on the build. I just hope that things don't slip again once we get past the external.

Much happier :)

Lockup Update

After the Group Building Manager attended site late last week to assess all of the issues that I had highlighted in the previous blog post, I got a phone call from him this morning to tell me that he agreed with the issues and poor quality of work and that things are now going to improve very quickly. He said that from now on he would be attending site occasionally to perform his own checks on what's being done as well as staying in the email chain so that he can see what's being discussed with regards to issues, quality etc.

To start with the eaves were being re-adjusted today. They are also going to be pulling out each window and re-installing the side and bottom rubber seals in to the grooves as intended. Windows in certain locations will also be raised 3-5mm to allow more clearance for the seals that don't have enough room. Damaged windows will be replaced.

CSR Bradford will also be re-attending site to re-insulate the home where necessary and hopefully replace any dirty/damaged insulation.

It's nice to hear positive news and that we're on the same page, but it's a shame that it's taken so much effort to get obvious issues addressed correctly. Fingers crossed with the Group Building Manager onboard that things will go a lot smoother and workmanship quality will no longer be an issue.

Lockup Rectification and pre-plaster checks

I've been very happy with the communication from the site supervisor over the last week and have been informed that a few of the outstanding issues externally have been resolved and that they will move forward with plastering the internal walls next Tuesday as the remaining items will not have any effect on the plastering. I agreed to this, but informed them that I would be attending the house to check both the rectifications and the state of the insulation before plastering.

Window sills and seals
I've been told the gaps in the window sills have been filled and the seals straightened/adjusted. The new mortar work hasn't been cleaned yet, so I expect the seals around the new mortar to not be in a final state.

There's still a visible crack in the mortar on the left hand side of this window. 

(2 bricks up).

Gap on the edge of the seal. 

Seal not under the window. 

Seal not under the window.  

Seal not under the window.  

Window to the ensuite damaged/bent.

While I'm willing to forgive the seals on the windows that have had recent mortar repairs, there's no excuse for the others that are out of place.

Eaves

The eaves have been redone for a 3rd time as they weren't straight the last 2 times. It's still not straight. I don't understand why it isn't all set at the same height around the whole house. Either at the brick level or above the mortar level. There's a good 10mm difference between the height of the eaves in the following 2 photos. It varies between these 2 settings all the way around.

Mortar level.

Brick level.

The fact that after a 3rd attempting at levelling them and they're still not straight makes me think that either the roof isn't level, the bricks aren't level throughout or the windows are all set at different heights.

Insulation

I told the supervisor that I would be inspecting the insulation before the plaster goes on early next week as I wanted to make sure that the issues identified in the independent inspection have been resolved before moving forward and installing the plaster board.

It appears that nothing has been done, there are still sections of insulation missing, massive gaps in the roof space and insulation that has just been rolled across the noggins in the ceiling rather than cut to size and placed in the gaps. My understanding from reading the standards is that insulation should completely fill all gaps and fully expand in to the space it occupies - no vacant space. Clearly the insulation fitted does not comply to the relevant standards. I've also been told that this was done by CSR Bradford (the people who make the insulation). Surely they would know better than to think this was acceptable?

I assume that where there are cables in a gap, this is an intentional gap for a light fitting or fan noggin. The problem is that there's so many gaps it's difficult to tell which ones should be there and which ones shouldn't. If it was all neat and tidy and complete, with gaps only where lights are going then it would be obvious that they were for lighting.

Apologies for the number of photos;

Independent inspections have previously highlighted that ALL gaps must be filled in all walls - no exception as that is what I'm paying for and that all ceiling insulation MUST be installed correctly - i.e. cut to the correct size and inserted in each section of the ceiling space with no gaps around the edges. Clearly neither of these instructions have been met.

Now there's still a possibility that the roof insulation will be rectified either by the guys doing the plastering or by someone going in to the roof after the plaster has been installed, but what are the chances of that?

Needless to say I will be hiring a thermal camera and using it at one of the inspections prior to handover to check that there is no difference in temperature within any of the walls or ceiling space which would indicate a lack of insulation. BuildingExpert from the http://forum.homeone.com.au forums has an informative post on this here - http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=75832&hilit=thermal+camera

It seems that not all Porter Davis builds are equal. Here's the insulation installed in another Rochford build that I found on the homeone forums;

This other build also appears to have a perfectly level eave line around the house proving it is possible when done right;

Blog

The point of this blog was originally intended to be a way for our families to be able to see the progress of our dream house build (and how well it was going), but now it seems to have become more of a tool to track all of the problems that we are having with the build and how the builder is dealing with them - and there's been a never ending list of problems.

Another visit to the site, another day of disappointment

After failing our second lockup inspection on Wednesday and being told that the eaves had already been fixed, we thought we'd take a trip up over the weekend and see the difference.

We aren't at all happy with what we saw and aren't even sure if it's been fixed or not. The eaves still float up and down around the house and aren't level at all;

I also discovered a damaged window which I don't remember seeing before;

I had a closer look at the gaps and cracks in the mortar identified during the inspection;

We still can't get over the issues with the brickwork. Considering that Porter Davis have already had to tear down all the brickwork for the house and start again from scratch, we assumed that the brickwork would have been double checked (even triple checked by upper management if need be) before inspection to ensure that everything was perfect second time around - sadly that wasn't the case.

The issues identified during inspection were all glaringly obvious. Anyone could have spotted them prior to inspection if they had only looked. It just proves to me that no one from Porter Davis is checking the accuracy or quality of the work done on the house.

They couldn't even be bothered to fit the window seals correctly. How the person who left these in this state thinks that this is acceptable is just beyond me! This is just one of many window seals around the upper floor that aren't installed correctly;

We just can't believe how many issues we seem to be having with this build. Why is it such a problem to get anything right first time? Porter Davis must build hundreds of houses a year, is everyone else building with Porter Davis having these same quality/workmanship issues at every stage of the build or are we just the unlucky ones? Is it wrong to expect that something is done right for once or meets the relevant standards or even resembles the quality that we were shown in the brochures/show homes when selecting Porter Davis? After 10 months of this, we both now agree that if Porter Davis offered us our money back and cleared the site, we'd walk away and start again with someone else tomorrow - it's been that bad. We can't see an end in sight and being only 50% of the way through, we have potentially another 10 months of this unless something changes in the way that Porter Davis work or perform their internal assessments/inspections - which at present seem to be non-existent.

On the up side, we now have a fence on one side of the house as the neighbours are due to move in soon. It's changed the look of the garden and shown us exactly how much space we're going to have - definitely enough room for a pool in the future;

From the external garage wall;

And from the back fence;

Lockup stage inspection - Take 2

It's been over 4 months since the house failed the original lockup inspection, so I was keen to see exactly what improvement had been made over the inspection which eventually led to all of the brickwork and sisalation being taken down and redone from scratch due to not being up to standard.

Brickwork
While the brickwork is infinitely better than the previous brickwork, there are still a few minor issues that need addressing. There are cracks in the mortar and pits/holes in the mortar work under the rubber seals of the windows. The brickwork also doesn't appear to have been cleaned that well and there is still traces of mortar that need to be cleaned away.

Eaves
Probably about 40% of the eaves are out of line. The eaves doesn't follow the same course of brickwork all around the house and floats up and down.

Flashing
Metal flashing that has been attached to the wall doesn't appear to actually sit over the brickwork that it is supposed to cover and instead we have a nice big gap between the two.

Insulation

The insulation in the roof hasn't been cut to size or shape in most of the areas its been applied. It looks like whole sheets have just been laid across the top, rather than cut in to sections and fitted in to each gap as it should be.

I am surprised at the issues that were highlighted. All of these issues were very obvious and stuck out like a sore thumb when walking around. It just highlights to me that the work being done on the house still isn't being checked. These are simple things that really should have been picked up and resolved before inspection.