I'm on the way.. To misery and happiness today...

Well all the bricks have arrived (3 different types of bricks!) the steel lintels and various other pieces, so now we just need to wait from the brickies to turn up.

On the soakwell side of things I have just about given up with it all together. I finally managed to get Ventura Homes to pass onto me the phone number of the guy installing the soakwells. I nice guy, quite happy to chat about what is going on and how it will all go together, he quite put me at ease in terms of how he was going to solve the laundry courtyard issue (appearently its fairly common and the standard solution is to push a thicker pipe then normal under the footings use that as the stormwater pipe.

Frankly I feel much more confident with him telling me it will work and everything is good, then with Ventura ignoring me.

However (there is always a however isnt there), however the stormwater guy (we will call him Ron from this point on, because that is his name) said that he was really hoping to be able to install the soakwells before the bricks arrived due to site access issues. He even informed Ventura Homes of this, even though Ventura Homes as continued to tell me that the soakwells need to be installed after the brickwork. They even let Ron order the soakwells to arrive before the bricks so he could do it. And yet that order got delayed, the soakwells are no where in site and all the bricks have arrived. So Ron is not happy, I'm amazed that Ventura does not seem to be able to even organise a simple delivery and Ventura doesn't seem to care (In fact I am becoming convinced that Ventura Homes could not organise an orgy if they were in ancient Rome).

The one bright point in all this is that after talking to Ron for 20mins I found out more about the soakwell issue, including how it will be solved then I ever did after weeks of communication with Ventura.

Ron says that he can install the soakwells after the brick work, its is just not his preferred option as it now requires him to use the laneway down the side of the house and removal of several parts of the boundary fence. This is fine with me as I have to remove the fence anyway cause we are getting a new one installed there, so the more he takes out the better!

On the finanical side I am still refusing to pay Ventura Homes the first invoice we have recieved because they (after FOUR WEEKS) have still failed to come out and fix the problems with the slab. To re-cap, the problems with the slab are fairly minor (set down needs enlarging, bath grave needs grinding out and a few other things) but since I was promised 4 weeks ago that the slab contractor was going to come out and fix them and nothing has happened I am insisting on a written guaranteed date that these will be done by before I pay the money. Sounds fair to me, and I have informed Ventura (politely) of such.

I'll ring them up later today and speak to them about it. I have the money, its sitting in my bank ready to go and I can transfer it immediately, I just want my written guarantee that it will be done (since I am not at all confident it will get done without one).

Moving to stage 2

Well things are progressing somewhat, the toilet, shed, and other building supplies have been delivered to the building site, so now we just await the arrival of the bricks.

We also received the request for the first progress payment earlier this week, and I am just waiting on the few things from the first inspection report to be fixed before I pay it (and I have informed Ventura that this is the case). The things to fix at this point are fairly minor (the bathroom setdown needs to be increased, the ensuite bath grave needs to be dug out, and the concrete slab in the bed 1 area needs to be smoothed down), but I feel that until they are complete then stage 1 isn't complete, and if stage 1 isn't complete then I shouldn't have to pay for that stage.

I'm holding out a vague small hope that the bricks will be delivered today, given previous experience everything on this project seems to be down just before the weekend, and with tomorrow being the first day of the Easter long weekend the odds are good.

Fingers crossed.

Defects sorted. sort of

Well, I received a reply from our builder (Ventura) about the issues that I mentioned in my previous blog. The answer was pretty much what we were expecting, in short all o the minor stuff (like the set down isn’t large enough and the slab needs smoothing down) are going to be fixed and we have no answer on the major item, the soakwells.

The reply we received about the soakwells is that Ventura has passed our plans onto the company responsible for the drainage systems and they will reply soon with a solution. I’ll be generous and give them until Thursday before I start chasing up an answer, which seems fair.

Also this week is the week that the bricks should arrive. When I asked about them on Friday I was told that all the scheduling is done each Monday so she couldn’t tell me if my bricks were going to arrive this week until Monday. Well, to day is Monday And I’m going to send a polite email chasing up the bricks and then of course ring up at around 3pm if I haven’t heard anything.

One cool thing that I found works is the read receipt ability of Outlook (it would seem that Ventura’s email server is running MS Exchange). What that means is that when the recipient of my email opens my email to read it, their email server sends me an email automatically to tell me that the email I sent has been read. It allows me to track down the “I never received your email” comments that have happened a few times (and perhaps were quite genuine), plus it allows me to know when my email was read.

So for the end of this week I am hoping to have
a) All my bricks delivered on site
b) All the minor defects corrected, and
c) A solution to the soakwell issue

Here’s hoping!