Frames Nearly Finished

Had a few delays but the last 2-3 days have swung into full gear. Kurmond Homes are about a day away from finishing the timber and the bricks arrive on Monday. In the mean time at home we've moved into the computer room after pulling everything apart and funny enough I actually prefer this room because my PC is in there and I get to watch movie's with my little boy every night.

I've uploaded some pics and put some captions to try and explain them.

House from the front - Balcony showing but some of the roof to still go on.

The size is shown here.

Front window, they're the type that flip up. This is looking into the media room.

That's my new bedroom window up stairs.

Study window.

Front window again, this time looking out.

This is the laundry shoot.

This is me standing in the kitchen looking in to the general lounge room.

Kitchen looking into Rumpus, notice the niche in the wall. Cornerless door still to go on after bricks.

Standing in the lounge room looking out the cornerless door, looking at our huge alfresco.

Looking into kitchen, that's our window and to the left is the pantry.

Looking through the alfresco up to one of the bedrooms

Front Balcony up there. Nice sliding soors.

Bathroom windows.

Rumpus window.

Just outside alfresco looking up to second story. Jordan's room is on the right.

The alfresco is huge, looking into cornerless door.

Rumpus from the back.

Down the other side, this is the drive through garage to the right, you can just see the kitchen window.

Looking upstairs, the window is another bedroom (new bubs) and to the right is the upstairs lounge room.

Jordan's Room

Alfresco from the side and Jordan's room upstairs.

I hand to stand way back to get a shot of the side. Won't be able to do this for much longer.

Another angle.

Another angle of balcony and our bedroom window.

Far away shot from the next street, pic of the back.

Rainy Rain Rain + NMI Number

I guess everyone's blog would have a title like this. February we had 3 sunny days, what does that mean for building a new house.....not much. Jordan Springs has been a little slow for everyone while Penrith cops it's wettest summer in over 10 years. Good news is this week we got 3 days of sunshine, of which one of them I had the builders on site doing some more of my frames. While it's not finished yet I thought I'd share some pictures.

Only other thing that's happened this week is I had Kurmond Homes pop me an email and request that I please contact Endeavour Energy (formerly Integral Energy) on 131 002 and request my NMI Number. Basically this sets you up with an account for your electricity so your electrician can set you up. The NMI number is your National Meter Identifier, the number that goes in your meter so the meter reader can document your usage which links to your account and address. Took me 5 seconds to do it over the phone.

Not much has been happening except lots of Basketball lately with myself coaching in the Sydney Junior pre-season over the past 3 weekends. Pretty stoked though our boys did well and ended up in the highest division after trials.

Hopefully the builders will be back out today doing a bit more, I can see some blue sky outside.

This is the rear rumpus, when the cornerless door is going.

Looking into the rumpus.

Kitchen Window

Home Theatre room at front of the house.

They did the garage wall earlier this week.

Family Fun Day this Sunday

Just a note to let you all know that there is a family fun day this Sunday in Water Gum park. A free BBQ for everyone. Starts at 11am.

I sadly won't be there, I'll be up coaching rep basketball in Manly. Have a good time for those who can attend.

I'll have some updates later today now that our first floor is going up.

Got Wood

We sure do. Our first level frames were delivered today so we're pretty happy about that. We're also pretty stoked as we have about 3-4 days of clear weather forecast so hopefully this helps get things done. We had our electrical connected last week along with water and fibre to the home.

With the frames they deliver the first floor and when it's finished they then deliver the second floor and the truck puts it straight up on top of the second storey. We noticed today that Deon's top level frames had been delivered so there a week or two ahead of us at the moment.

We had a call late last week to in regards to our Alfresco, was a bit odd but we talked i through. Basically the Alfresco is pretty long and needs to support the roof on the west facing side. They had planned to use a timber beam but we would have ended up with a join under the ceiling which sticks out. Kurmond rang me to check if they could use a steel beam there to clean it up. I approved it as I didn't want it to look ugly.

As far as everything's going we're starting to get on track now. We got our first invoice from Kurmond last week and the process to approve it via Westpac was too easy, basically give them a ring and it's all done (When we originally got the forms we just had to fill out a form to be able to do it that way). Westpac will only need to check it when the frame is up, I've been told give them 3 days notice to come out. All the other stages only require an inspection by me.

Now that's approved the money starts getting tougher. I'm lucky as I plan to have my sister move in and rent the house out so she's looking to come early. We're starting to organise the house now so she can do that. Basically we plan to have her in within the month. She's working casually still at the moment but everyday. Hopefully she'll get a full time role soon so she can stay here otherwise I'll have to rent it out, which I don't want to do at the moment because the house needs some repairs in which I don't have the money to fix.

As soon as the frame starts to go up I'll post some more pictures. Have a sunny week. :)

Slab Done

I've had a crazy week but yes I finally have a slab. Penrith is having a very wet start to the year and the rain just wouldn't go away. At the moment I'm marking all the rain days on a calendar and this month we may have had 3 days in otal with no rain what so ever. On Saturday last week the concreters were on site and they basically swept the water off my land with brooms. They then let it dry on Sunday.

On Monday morning before the rain hit they then came and laid black plastic, the foam and rio, ready to poor as the ground was nice and dry now. With the black plastic down it didn't matter if it rained now.

I drove past on Wednesday and the slab was all done. Very happy to see it done. Now the rain won't really effect the rest, we should start to see it all go up from here and frames were actually due to be delivered on Monday (held off obviously) so I'm expecting frames to start sometime next week.

The other bit of news I got was Kerry my customer service lady at Kurmond Homes left this Friday. I haven't heard who will be looking after me customer service wise. I don't like it when people change, you build a relationship with someone and have to start over. I also got a adverse weather variation for the delay from the rain.They only put 3 days down, not bad considering it rained a lot more.

It's good to see some of my friends slabs started to. I noticed on Friday Deon and Ursulas frames were delivered so they must be pretty happy.

Here's some photo's of our big slab.

They covered the garage, probably because it steps down.

Our AC slab.

This is our Alfresco, can't wait to drink my morning coffee out here.

Again Alfresco, looking into Kitchen and Rumpus. This is where our cornerless door is going.

Peering done, Soil Removal Needed

So today I was on deck to witness the peering for our new house. I had 52 peer holes which was amazing. The engineer was on site to check and I was ready to go. The smallest peer was 1.1m, the deepest was 1.7m. All up I ended up with 75.3m (lineal) of peering for our home. My tender allowed 50m2 so for anyone building a large home just be ready for the extra. I'll let you know the cost in the comments when I get that info back from Kurmond Homes.

This added to my soil removal problem to, 50 holes 1.5m deep is a lot of soil. I must admit I have a lot less then others so I feel a bit lucky, but some houses have had none what so ever. A friend of ours built and had 9 truck loads to remove. Kurmond charge $550 a truckload to remove soil so you could imagine the cost.

I've got maybe 3 truckloads to remove and I'm looking around for anyone who can do me a better deal or help me out from the community. If someone is worried about the cost to get rid of it, that's the easy part for me, I have a cousin who works on the weigh bridge at Eastern Creek so I can make that cost go away potentially but I'd need to check with him. It's the bob cat and truck which is the hard part.

I'm guessing 3 truck loads. This is what I have to get rid of.

So far I've got a guy who will do it all for $425 including getting rid of it. I may throw the cousin at it and might be able to shave some more off it. I'm still trying to see if I can do better. The fact I blog about it is also a bonus as I'm sure I'll generate the person a  heap of leads seeing my blog gets over 200 visitors a day now.

A few people mentioned today was this one of those "hidden costs" the builder didn't tell me about. Are you kidding? I've gone over my plans, my contract a million times. I knew this was coming, just how much was the unknown part.

Here's some pictures of the peering.

This shot just how big the slab is. She's a big home.

50+ Peers

Fibre to The Home - Jordan Springs

I thought I'd share some info in regards to Fibre to the Home at Jordan Springs after the info night last week. I was surprised to see so many people on the night with very little understanding of the FTTH network and what they had to do. Saying that this is new for Australia so I can understand the lack of push from builders and the little information available to Lend Lease also. Unless you were brought up around technology it can be hard to.

After receiving this information myself I now need to go back to Sentinel Alarms and have my quote changed. My original variation with them for example included a weatherproof casing for outside the house. A box basically on the outside of the house to put Opticoms ONT in it, basically a modem and backup power type thing. I discovered on the night that Opticom will install one when they come out to connect.

Jordan Springs is a FTTH community so Penrith Councils guidelines need to be followed. You're not allowed to install TV antennas and there's no Telstra or Optus copper cable in the area so connecting a phone at the moment is impossible. If your house is almost finished don't worry. Lend Lease a providing free use of 3G home phones and you're allowed to install an aerial now but you must remove it once the Opticom network is available.

The cost to connect the Opticom equipment is $330. Considering an aerial is $500 and telephone is $295 this is pretty good. The ONT installed by Opticom prepares you for Internet and phone, and comes with perfect free to air TV with no more aerial reception issues. It can also be used for perfect Pay TV.

Basically once it's connected you then ring up the different service providers to get what you want. You can find companies offering both phone and Internet packages, or sign up with a provider for each service you want. At this stage the Internet plans are a bit pricey but I'm assuming by the time Jordan Springs is ready there will be some more options and better pricing. Download limits are the issue at the moment. With a faster connection you will download more, simply by watching higher definition You-Tube videos for example. Saying that if you're just a normal Internet user then download won't be an issue, you can easily get a plan with 10-20gig download which should be enough.

Here's some of the current providers on Opticoms network. Click the links to see more. Exetel have some great prices already for Internet but I know from experience they can have network issues and customer service can be a bit worse. The issue with Internode and iinet (Owned by the same company now) is their uploads count to your download usage. Need to be careful with that type of plan.

-	Name		URL	Services
	Internode		http://www.internode.on.net
	iiNet		http://www.iinet.net.au
	iPrimus		http://www.iprimus.com.au
	Prodial		http://www.prodial.com.au
	Integral Energy		NSW Smart Grid Program
	Exetel		http://www.exetel.com.au
	Fuze Connect		http://www.fuzeconnect.com.au
	Foxtel		http://www.foxtel.com.au

For anyone wondering how to set-up their home, here's my minimum recommendations.

Pretty much these type of devices would be best with a wired connection. (wireless OK but you tend to slow the network down when streaming HD)
Smart TV's, Main Home Computer, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Blue Ray Player, Media Centre PC, Fetch Tv, Foxtel.

These devices could cope with wireless.
Laptops, ipads, Smart Phones, Tablets, Smart Fridges, Wii Console

Minimum Room Ideas

• 1 TV, 2 x Data to each TV point.
• 1 x Data, 1 x Phone to computer study.
• Optional - 1 x Data behind fridge (Future Proof)
• For Bedrooms I've left it, will use wireless connections as I plan not to have kids with gaming consoles in their rooms, just laptops or wireless PC's.
• To future proof install CAT 6 Cable.

* You may need to purchase additional hardware, like a switch or wireless access point in a tow storey home to connect it all like this. I plan to place a switch in my cabinet and star network it out from there.