So I haven’t been arrested… That’s good.

Well, one good thing came out of Thursdays on-site meeting with Ventura…. I wasn’t arrested for throttling anyone J

Now, on to the meeting itself. I must admit from the start that I approached the meeting prepared for a minor confrontation, I had emails backing up the claims I had previously made and dates for everything etc, which may have been a bit over the top but this is my house and I want it built properly. But when I got there at 8:30 (on one of the coldest damn mornings of the year! It was freezing!) he was there waiting for me, he greeting me and explained that he thought he would call this meeting so he could personally take me through the issues I had raised and sort them out with me. And bugger me, he actually did.

He explained that the guys that laid the concrete slab no longer work for Ventura and that he had organised with the plumber to do the required work at Ventura’s cost. Finally after 4 and a half months I have some resolution to this issue, yay! Unfortunately things went just a little bit down hill from there (and only a little bit, nothing too serious was encountered).

The recess box for the hot water unit was apparently a fault of the Scheduling Department, who forgot to order it and therefore the brickie never installed it (buck passing I thought, considering when I first pointed out the lack of the hot water unit recess, which was during the construction of the brick walls… but anyway I digress). The solution he has arranged is to have a hole cut out of the wall and have the brickies come back and face up the bricks that require it, now of course I would have preferred it installed by now but you can’t have everything in life you want can you.

And then I took him though a new list of issues I had that was written up from the day before when my wife and myself went through the house and noted a few things down.
1) The dishwasher recess has power to it (which is good) and water from the mains (which is good) as is required for a dishwasher unit, however it does NOT have an waste water drain for the waste water to go down (which is bad). The supervisor said it was because most people have the dishwasher under their sink and can tap directly into the kitchen waster water pipe (our recess is bout 1.5 metres away due to the way the kitchen has worked out). I pointed out that that wasn’t any good to me and I didn’t want a piece of polypipe running around my kitchen cupboards for the dishwasher, I wanted proper plumbing. He said he would fix it.

2) The shower in the bathroom is placed into one corner of the room against two walls and the plumber has managed to install the taps and shower head on the wrong wall! Seriously, even without the plans these guys had a 50% chance of getting it right. I’m beginning to doubt that they can read.

3) We have two gas outlets in the house for gas heating, one in the family room and one in the lounge room. Both are clearly shown on the plans as being close to the edge of each wall (within 300mm of the edge of the wall in fact), and both have been installed slap bang in the middle of the wall! Now I can understand (and accept) if they were a foot or two out, but both of these are over 2 metres out of place!! The reason they were put near the edge of the walls was so we could place furniture (namely couches) against the wall. I am now beginning to doubt that the plumber even had the plans with him at the time.

That’s 3 fairly biggish issues that need fixing but he did seem fairly earnest in wanting to fix them for me so I am hoping all will go well…. I’m ever the optimist I know.

On the plus side he said that he has booked lock-up for next week (week starting the 23rd of June) and the house should be finished 8-10 weeks after that, which brings us to mid-October which is pretty much when we were promised it would be done when we signed the contract, so that is very pleasing. I’m not going to hold my breath (namely because that is like 12 weeks away and I’m not Superman or anything, and because I am not yet ready to full believe Ventura) but things are looking hopeful. He did warn me however that that time frame was dependant on the availability of a Tiler who are in great demand appearently.

Still, I was feeling fairly good after the meeting. So until next time take care (and yes, I will one day get around to putting photos up, promise!!)

He's not the Messiah, He's a very naughty boy....

I am SO riled up at the moment (or more accurately I was when I wrote this a day or so ago), I need to find a defenceless kitten to yell at or something.

I just had a phone call from Ventura (a stand in Client LIASON(HA!) officer) today. She wants to book a on-site meeting between me and my brick supervisor which we have pencilled it in for 13th Thursday.

During the phone call she mentioned (in no particular order):
The concrete contractors who did my slab are no longer doing business with Ventura anymore (have I mentioned recently that the concrete issue STILL hasnt been fixed!!). Some other contractor will have to come in and complete the slab. She mentioned something about once they have been Ventura will need to sort out payment for them (I wasn't paying much attention so I'm not sure if she meant Ventura internally had to sort something out - if so why tell me? - , or if I was being told because I might have to handle the expense of the new contractor... Good effing luck on that, I'm NOT paying a cent).

She then mentioned the fact that apparently I'm a naughty boy (not her words I might add) for having the building inspection before the roof was fully complete AND then having the gall to include non-completed work in my report, she said that Glen requested I work a bit closer with him to organise my inspections..... I snapped at that point and developed a funny facial twitch.... WORK CLOSER !?, I don't know if I should scream or laugh at the moment!!! HOW THE BLOODY HELL CAN I WORK CLOSER IF THEY NEVER F**KING REPLY TO ANY OF MY MAILS OR BOTHER TO INFORM ME ON ANYTHING! And what the f**k is his problem any way even if I do do the inspection a few days early and the roof isn't bloody well finished! I'll damn well include it in my report and he can simply ignore it (as he has been doing for months with the slab anyway!) GRRRR!! *ok calm down, breath deeply, count to 10*

So now I have to take another day off work to meet with the supervisor at his request..... I might get dad to come out for the meeting, just to there is a witness to the 'justifiable homicide' when I strangle the supervisor.

Tempting.... really tempting....


In other news the gyprock ceilings and plumbing went in yesterday so it must have been one busy day on site (either that or they were working on Sunday), and the progress is looking good.

At this point in the construction I'm not sure what the supervisor is hoping to solve by having a meeting since we are pretty much on the downhill run, and he is not going to stop me emailing and phoning if I damn well feel like emailing and phoning. Of course I could be going totally off tangent and the meeting is merely because he wants to discuss my colour choices for the paint or something..... Maybe...

We shall see..

Great Ironstone Roofing Batman!

Another stage down, another inspection completed. And this one went fairly well actually.

In the words of my building inspector the roof carpentry is “excellent” and “above spec” in many areas (like the use of long bolts instead of nails in some high load parts of the roof and using thicker stronger timber then the standard in areas). So that is quite good news.

However the colorbond sheeting on top of the roof carpentry is a different story. It would appear that the guys who laid it had to rush off somewhere before completing the job and only hand enough time to screw in the colorbond sheets with a couple of Tek screws…. Or they are really shonky. A typical example is a 15 metre ridge cap which has only 3 screws in it, 2 on one side and 1 on the other…. I could pull that off with my teeth! So that is the major “needs to be fixed” item on this inspection report. The rest is pretty good.

The plasterers finish putting up the interior concrete render yesterday, and boy does the place look dark and gloomy or what! Next week the ceiling will be installed and then its down to the plumbing and fittings (tiling, kitchen cupboards etc – windows in there somewhere..). According to my inspector the house is running pretty much on time, maybe even a little ahead of schedule in comparison to the other houses he is looking after, so perhaps all my complaining has gotten me some where (or am I doing Ventura an injustice here?....... nah I don’t think so).

The one thing that still makes me weep, which at this point has gone from being annoying to being a farce, is the concrete slab situation. The problem we had at the very start of construction when the slab was laid HAS STILL NOT BEEN FIXED. I’m not sure what it will take now to actually fix it, really it is pathetic, just pathetic.

Now I am faced with the situation that when (IF!) someone turns up to fix the concrete there is a strong possibility of damage to my now rendered walls and not to mention the amount of rocks and dust and s*#t that will get kicked up and not have anywhere to go to cause the roof and ceiling are on.

So currently my mood swings between happy, cause the roof is basically good, to down right filthy at the amazing contempt and stupidness of the builder in fixing an issue that has been highlighted since the slab went down 4 months ago.

Oh well… time for ANOTHER letter to Ventura asking about this… again.

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 :-)

One more day...

Some times it feels like manning the barricade I tell ya!

According to the actual brickies (whom I spoke to on Saturday morning) they will be finished on Tuesday the 30th. Of course this was before it absolutely bucketed down with rain most of monday morning, so assuming no work will get done today then maybe just maybe the brick work will be finished on Wednesday....
maybe...

I tend to trust the brickies a bit on this one.. Ventura on the other hand is about as useful to me as a piece of paper and pencil is to a deep sea scuba diver.I sent an email to them on the 23rd of May asking some specific questions and pointing out some specific issues/concerns I had (and still have) with the building process. As of today (the 29th) I still have not heard back from them, and basically that is just pathetic. I know they recieved and have read my email (MS Outlooks read receipt isa wonderful tool!), but thay just cannot be bothered to talk to the customer. I get the distinct impression I am an inconvieniace to them, nothing more.

For example, after I sent the email on the 23rd I mentioned above I sent another on the 25th, which included the email I sent on the 23rd (included as a subtle hint) the body of the email was as follows:

Just, as always, following up on the email I sent on Tuesday. And you may (or may not) want to let Chris know (concrete supervisor) that he should look at finding new slab contractors as nothing has been done to fix the oversights made when they laid the slab on the 16th of March (which I am sure he is well aware of). Of course he may well be on the phone to them every day, but having heard nothing back from Ventura about the situation for at least a month I can only assume (for lack of evidence otherwise) that little is being done about it

The reply I recieved back from my Client Liasion Officer (that title is a laugh to begin with)
is:

I have been in touch with u regarding the slab, maybe not by email but I have verbally spoken to u about it .I have on a number of occasions spoken to Chris about it and yes the company we use isn’t reliable. I will how ever speak to Chris again to see if he has any news
Thank you,
K**** S*******

(the * are my insertions)

If I could point out at this point that the last time I was in any way contacted about the slab either verbally, by email or by carrier pigeon for that matter was on the 5th of May (at around 4:15pm in fact - I record the date, time and content of EVERY contact with Ventura) and it was to tell me that the concrete contractor was coming over that weekend (6th of May) to fix the problem. So while I was incorrect at saying I havent heard anything for a month, I was pretty damn close since it was 3 weeks AND a broken promise, which they never bother to inform me about.

The best line is where "KS" agrees with me that the concrete contractor is indeed unreliable, as if that is meant to make it all better or something?!

I'm going to send them another email today, not asking any questions but just pointing out the lack of feedback, service and help I have so far recieved. By a happy accident I have been given the General Manager's email address and I might CC him on this also, however I am depressingly sure it will change nothing, there seems to be a very imbedded culture of "dont give a crap about the customer" with this company.

Still, I might feel better though!


Take care.