Engage the Swart Wire Captian!

Yesterday I had my own electrical contractors (as apposed to Ventura’s) go out to the building site to start the installation of the house’s Cat6 and coaxial cabling setup (the engineer in my is drool, seriously).
Maybe its just a case of tepid water tasting like pure heaven to a man dying of thirst, but these guys are wonderful (as compared to Ventfury… sorry, Ventura). Met them on site, walked through the house pointing out where I wanted the data and TV ports, they offered helpful suggestions and advice on what should go where and where just pleasant to speak with.
To stop the risk of Ventura’s electrician laying his cables all over my shiny Cat6 cables (which need to keep a minimum 150mm separation from all other power cables) they are rigging up a high tensile cable (think steel core washing line which is as thick as your little finger and you get the idea) which hangs about 2 feet down from the roof rafters and is tensioned to be ‘twangy’ tight (technical term) to which they will attach the data cables to keep them away from the electrician’s cable runs.
I asked them to put a couple of totally unrelated chases into a particular wall for me, quite happy to pay, but they said its not a problem, their guy doesn’t cost any extra per chase. They are even going to lay a small amount of conduit for me to avoid some future difficulties when it comes time to install the security alarm system.
Ahhh such professionals are a delight to work with!

Now, back to Ventura…
Concrete slab – still not done
Brick issues, mostly already fixed (well spin my nipple nuts and call me Frank! – for those people who are not Red Dwarf fans (poor souls) please ignore that last comment).
Roofing, rafters et al are done except for a small bit at the front of the garage where they can finish totally until the brickies fix the debarcle the left by not inserting the steel reinforcing rods into the brick columns.

Next step is to fix the Colorbond roofing (and the sisulation blanket underneath that) to the roof, and then its time for another inspection. Given the success of the lst one I am hoping to arrange it to be done at about the same time as the last one (bout 9:30am) so we might catch our Brick Supervisor on-site again.

Hope is a cruel temptress

Took the day off work on Thursday to meet the Houspect building inspector onsite because finally the brickwork has been completed.

About half an hour into the inspection guess who turns up, the missing roof guys (who should have started on Tuesday, but until I wasn't even sure they existed). Well they turn up and get straight to work (rather industrious) claiming they will be able to roof the equivilent of 50 square metres of floorspace a day, so all being well they will finish on Wednesday the 14th of June. They seem fairly competent (but then I siad that about the brickies too) and the main roof guy had a long chat to my inspecotr about some new roofing standards that have come in recently to make sure they both understood things the same way.

And THEN bout half an hour after the roofies turn up guess who else turns up! Glenn the Brick Supervisor, and that WAS a surprise. As it turned out it was a really good thing to have happen as my Housing Inspector showed that he is worth his weight in pure gold as the first thing he did was introduce himself to Glenn and then take Glenn around the construction and point out the major things that need fixing and then gets agreements from him to fix them. Now I know what you are all thinking, you are thinking "It will never happen" and so was I but then Glenn got on the phone in front of us and called Ventura Accounts and cancelled the payment to the brickies, and then rang the brickies and told them get over to the site and to fix a series of issues if they wanted to get paid. I was almost impressed (I say almost because I have learnt to reserve my judgemtn until something actually gets done).

Although I must admit that I was slightly stunned at the flurry of activity on my block, we had the inspector measure and hitting and testing everything in sight, Glenn on the phone arguing with the brickies, and 4 roof carpenters balancing on top of the walls over the place (an OH&S nightmare!) moving long bits of timber around.

Still, most importantly the overall report from the inspector was that the brickwork was pretty good, all the measurements are accurate to within 10mm, the walls themselves are straight and not likely to fall down anytime in the future and the rooms are all where they should be. But boy is he sharp (he being the inspector) , on a blank wall of large limestone bricks, (full height and about 4 metres wide) he spotted 1 brick (one!) that was poorly laid, with far to much cement between it and the next brick (and we are talking cream cement here). I would never have spotted that, never.

The other major problems (relatively major to the other problems, but by no means huge problems in themselves) can be summed up in 2 words : "Lazy Brickies"
The problems are:

1. Haphazardly spaced weep holes in the lower brickwork (2 in the space of 2 bricks and then none for 8 bricks)
2. That one brick that was very poorly laid
3. A lack of brick ties on ajoining walls. luckily however it only seems to be on the half height wall that forms the kitchen bench, there are no ties between the end of that wall and the main wall it butts up to.
4. No ties on bricks that go over one of the interior doors, a couple of taps with a chisel handle worked a brick loose
5. The biggest problem structurally was in the garage. The garage has 6 columns to strengthen it (siz point on the single brick wall that has a second rown of bricks applied) and only in 3 of those columns where steel reinforcing rods used. This will require quite a bit of work to fix, but fix it they shall!

That is about it for today. But finally some progress.

The building of the barricades

Well tuesday has come and gone (for those that arent paying attention, it was 2 days ago!.. wake up!)

That was the "we will be finished by this date, really, honestly!" date, needless to say they are not finished. but in this case it was raining constantly all Monday and Tuesday so I can forgive that, hopefully they will be finished today, since today is 2 days since the promised end date, and 2 days is the time lost to rain.

However, seeing how much is left to do from yesterday evening I seriously doubt it. Half the garage, all of the front wall, the top row of bricks at various points around the house and the linen cupboard and robe in one of the bed rooms all have to be done by the end of today for them to met their deadline.... not likely.
Oh well..


Still on the plus sie, the weathre will be fine for hte next 10-12 days according to the weather bureau (a bit of crystal ball gazing on their part I think), but if it holds true then that should see the roof carpenter clear to completing the roof (he starts supposedly on the 6th of June). And then the cabling guy can come in and do he magic with my ethernet cables!

So maybe, just maybe it will all work out...


On the slightly funny side of things (funny as in "I either pretend its funny or I has a mental breakdown") the accounts department of Ventura homes sent me out a invoice on Tuesday informing me that the second stage of house construction has been finished and the second payment is due... Excuse me?!... This by the way was on the same day I recieved an email from my Client Liasion Officer (HA!) telling me the brickies have been delayed and will not be finished on time so the roof carpenter has been re-scheduled to the 6th of June (the brickies where due to finish on the 19th of May remember, I recieved this email on the 30th of May, did they think I hadnt noticed that my house wasnt finished or something?!).
Any ways I politely and with only a little sarcasm informed the accounts lady that my house had not in any way shape or form reached the end of the second stage and Ventura will have to wait for their money a bit longer.

She replied saying that after talking to her boss she would grant me a few extra days to pay the money. At this point I decided to walk away from the computer beofre I sent an email that I would very likely regret. SHE will grant ME and few extra days?! Excuse me!? The damn house is running behind schedule but I still have to pay as if it was on time? I bloody well think not. I will pay, I have the money ready to pay, but I will not pay until
a) the stage is actually complete
b) the stage has been inspected my by building inspector
c) any defects found are resolved (or discussions are made to resolve them at a later date)
d) the defects FROM THE FIRST STAGE are fixed


Sounds fair to me. And they can go and lump it if they think otherwise.

Enjoy people and have a great weekend cause I am going to have a good one! I am having a BBQ brunch with my family on Saturday which is always wonderful, On sunday I am going to spend most of hte day trying to bond with my baby niece (9 months old) who when she see me bursts into tears (talk about taing a hit to the self esteem!), and then in the afternoon I am going to the Model Train Expo, and then on Monday I will spend the day as a delivery driver on Rottnest Island. If you havent been there for a holiday then, well, I pity you, and if you have been there then HA! I get to drive on Rottnest all day (the delivery bit will consist if about 2 cartons of milk and a bottle of wine all day, so I can cope).


Take care :-)