Making Sense of "Site Costs"

Site Costs can be one of the most frustrating aspects to building a home with a volume builder, as they can often appear to be a bucket in which you tip large sums of money for almost no visible result.  So I thought it would be a good idea to give an overview of what goes in to site costs, so that you can at least understand why this bucket is so large.


By the way, if you are reading this hoping to find a way to reduce your site costs, sorry, they tend to be hard to avoid.

 

In order to understand why site costs can be so high, it is important to understand where they come from.  Here are some of the most common things that make up what builders call 'site costs'.

 

Temporary Fencing - This will typically run across the front of your block to stop people from getting in.

 

Crossover Protection - This is protection of the bit of your driveway that crosses from the footpath to the street.  Your local council will require your to pay for its replacement if it is damaged.

 

Site Levelling - Builders expect your block to be flat and if it is not flat, they need to make it so.  They usually only allow for a slope of 300mm across the site, from front to back and side to side - realistically, very few blocks are this flat.

 

Construction of Retaining Walls - If your block needs to be flattened in order to accommodate the concrete slab, this may require the creation of retaining walls.

 

Traffic Management Plans - A traffic management plan may be required if there is public transport near your house (there is a bus stop right outside our site) or if there are schools nearby with children coming and going.  A traffic management plan will also be required if you live on a busy street.

 

Cranes - In some cases, materials will need to be lifted on to your site by way of a crane.  This is not uncommon where there are power lines on your side of the street or where access is limited.

 

Double-handling - If a truck delivering materials cannot get access onto the site and unload directly to where they will be stored or installed, then double-handling occurs.  The truck needs to be unloaded and people need to carry things around.  This extra labour attracts a cost.

 

Piering for your Slab - Most volume builders quote on providing a 'M' Class slab, which assumes that your land is flat and relatively stable (see here for more information on this).  If you require piering,  then this will be part of your site costs.

 

These are some of the key things that will be considered when your site costs are quoted.  They are a function of the site that you have and there is relatively little you can do about these costs.

 

And Now for a bit of a Rant...

Another cost that is sometimes on quotes is a premium, based on the suburb in which the house is being built.  Builders justify this on the basis that tradies need to travel further in order to build your house.  I am highly sceptical of this argument for several reasons:

• I've lived all over Melbourne and in several other cities around the world and I have found a relatively even distribution of good trades people.
• (for the builder that I have looked at this closely) the map of which suburbs pay these premiums is not based on average distance from any particular point or location.
• Not all builders apply this sort of charge.

In reality, the maps I have seen more closely resemble a  map showing zones of (perceived) suburban affluence.  Therefore I have reached the conclusion that these charges are a "we think you can afford to pay more, so we will charge you more" premium applied by the builders, without even the courtesy of hiding it away in other costs and charges.

 

 

Volume Builders Quotes (Part 1) - Comparing Things That Matter

Reading through a sales quotation presented by a Volume Builder can be very confusing.  If you are trying to compare quotes from two or more builders, you will have the devil's job coming up with meaningful comparisons.  We have just finished comparing quotes from 3 three different builders and it took hours and a huge spread-sheet to distil everything.  In the end, it was impossible to come out with an 'apples' to 'apples' comparison, but the attempt to compare the details on a line-by-line level across different builders and houses yielded some really interesting points of comparison.

So I thought I would start a list of details that are important to look for in the quotes presented by volume builders.  I'll add to this list as I think of more things.

Site Costs

Make sure your site costs are realistic, particularly when considering the cost of the slab and site access.  Our house is a knock-down/rebuild project and while two of the builders quotes we have reviewed based the cost of the slab on a P-Class slab, the third was based on an M-Class slab, which made their quote cheaper by about $25,000, but almost certainly unrealistic.

Cement Sheet In-Fills

Cement Sheet in-fills above windows and doors - This is more about the appearance of the house than its structure.  Cement sheet is used by builders as a quick and easy way to fill the gaps above windows and doorways.  If you like it, fine.  However, brick in-fills generally look better.  Be especially careful where there are cement sheet in-fills on the front façade of the house, as this will affect the overall appearance of the house from the street.  In particular, it is worthwhile working out if there is a cement-sheet or brick in-fill above your garage door.

A Cement Sheet In-Fill above a Bi-Fold Door.
Would bricks look better?  I think so.

Eaves

Some builders include eaves as standard, but many do not.  Eaves give the roofline of the house its character and give the house its overall house 'shape'.  Eaves require extra materials (timber, tiles etc.) and extra labour, all of which means extra costs for builders. While some builders include eaves as standard, some also only include the eaves as part of the façade.  This can be a cost-saving compromise, which gives the house an attractive outline from the street, but is not suitable for corner-blocks.

Skirts and Architraves

Many builders use 45mm skirts architraves as 'standard', which is probably ok for tiled floors or timber floors.  However, in carpeted areas of the house, the height of the underlay plus the thickness of the carpet can easily be 25mm or more.  This creates a visual effect (and you won't see this in display homes, which use higher skirts) of skirts that appear to barely poke above the carpet.  It is probably a good idea to check that you have at least 70mm a skirts in carpeted areas of the house (if not all the way through) so that they look right.  Also, make sure your architraves are the same width as the height of your skirts, otherwise your door-frames will look out of proportion.

Flyscreens - Flyscreens are a necessary item in Australia.  Make sure they are included.

The First 5 Things You Should Know About Building with a Volume Builder

Ok, so I probably should have posted this information earlier in the process we are going through, but hopefully it can help people getting started in the house-building process.

 

If you are engaging a volume builder to build your home, then here are a few truths that are worth keeping in mind, so that you understand what is important and what is not.

 

1. Despite Appearances, You are Building a Timber House

It is highly likely that your new home will have brick exterior.  However, the house itself is supported by a timber frame and, so, from an engineering perspective, it is more correct to say you are building a timber house with brick cladding.  This is true in nearly all volume-built houses.  The bricks give it a nice appearance and help keep the weather out, but they offer no structural value whatsoever to the house itself.  This is important because timber is a natural product and, over time, it will move.  In the years to come, this can result in cracks in plaster and other damage and (within reason) these are inevitable.  To complain about this (as I see many people doing in on-line forums) is a bit like complaining that your tyres get worn out when you drive your car.

2. Volume Builders only Build Houses on Flat Land

Your land needs to be flat, or flattened - volume builders do not take any slope on your land into account and the house is not modified to meet the needs of the land.  Rather, the land needs to modified to meet the needs of the house.  This can be a significant expense under the heading of site costs, as even a gently sloping block can require excavation, retaining walls, and levelling before work can actually commence.

3. The Load-Bearing Walls are the External Walls

Nearly all new homes built nowadays use the exterior walls (rather than internal walls) to carry the weight of the house and the roof.  There are lots of reasons for this, but as a home-owner, one of the main benefits is that you can have large open living spaces.  This is also the reason that the sales people will be happy to discuss changing the interior wall configuration of the house and the costs will often be (relatively) low.  If the interior walls do not do anything for the structure of the house, then moving them, re-configuring them, adding extra doors to them (and so on) will not materially impact the structural integrity of the house.  By contrast, changing the exterior wall configuration will change the roof-line and structural support for the house and costs will rack up quickly as you make these sorts of changes.

4. The "Base Price" is just a starting point.

The Base Price of a house in a Volume Builder's catalogue provides the most minimal and rudimentary version of the house and you can be assured that it is absolutely nothing like the display home you might have wandered through.  By the time you have made the home attractive and liveable, you can expect to have added somewhere between 30% - 60% of extra costs onto the house.  And this will almost certainly not include driveways, landscaping and other things you will need to budget for.

5.  Some Builders May Not Want to Touch Your Block of Land

If you have:

• an irregular sized block
• trees
• power lines
• a busy road
• schools nearby
• or public transport nearby

then it will be important to get the builder to inspect your property early on and confirm that they are happy to take on the job of building your house.  Volume Builders are successful because they work on the basis of producing a relatively standard product over and over again.  If your site looks too hard or complicated, they may simply refuse to build your house. 

Enjoy!

Building In Hebel

If you want to get builders passionate about something, just mention that you are thinking of building in Hebel.

Hebel seems to be a product that instantly polarises people in the building industry.  We spoke to one volume builder at a display centre who builds only in Hebel, while another builder refused to use it point-blank.  Others offer it as an option, and everyone wants to tell you their opinion on it.

What is Hebel?

The Hebel product is relatively new in Australia, but has been used in other parts of the world for many years.  The product itself is a type of aerated concrete.  To understand it, just imagine a solid concrete block, and now imagine it pumped full with tiny air bubbles - that's what Hebel is.  I don't pretend to understand how it is manufactured, but it is the combination of concrete and air bubbles that gives Hebel its purported properties, namely excellent thermal and acoustic insulation.

A house built in Hebel is either assembled by fastening large Hebel panels (not load bearing) to the timber frame, or by building the house out of Hebel "blocks" which are basically large bricks.  According to the Hebel literature, the blocks can be load-bearing, removing the need for a timber frame.

Because Hebel is fundamentally concrete, all the builders we spoke to finished it as a "rendered surface".  Therefore, homes built in Hebel always have a very modern / contemporary appearance.

Benefits of Hebel?

We got curious in Hebel as an option for our house, so got a couple of builders who work with Hebel to provide quotes to build their standard brick house in Hebel.  In all cases, the Hebel option was an "upgrade" to brick, with additional costs.  At the time, we were toying with the idea of a fully rendered house and what was really interesting was that the "upgrade" cost of building in Hebel was about 1/3rd of the cost of rendering a brick veneer house.

In other words, while Hebel was more expensive than brick, it was much cheaper than rendered brick.  That raised a question in our minds as to what the difference in the rendering was.  It turns out that while a Hebel building is finished with a rendered appearance, it is not rendered per se.  Rather, something called a "Texture Coat" is applied.  The texture coat is apparently much thinner than render, which is the big difference here in terms of cost and labour.

Our investigation petered off at this point, not so much because the coatings turned us off, but because we got more interested again in the classical appearance and aesthetics of a brick house, which ruled Hebel out.

Reasons to Build with Hebel

• You want the look of a contemporary fully rendered house
• You want the benefits of the thermal and acoustic insulation that Hebel provides

Reasons to Not Build with Hebel

• You don't want fully rendered house
• You don't want to pay more

Trees and the Local Council

Okay, so one of the things that I should share with you is that our new block, the site for our new home is covered with trees.  As well as an old house that we plan to knock-down and replace, there are about 20 mature trees on the block – all natives - and we live in an area that where the local council (by reputation at least) are very protective of trees.

And I have been worrying a bit about the trees.

 

A bit of Background

When we bought the house, we bought it from a woman who had being trying her hand at a bit of property development – arriving from overseas several years previously, she had bought two houses in the same suburb with a view to knocking them down and building units.  She had (as far as I can tell) come unstuck by three problems (i) a big mortgage that could not be serviced by the rents she was getting (old houses due for demolition don’t rent well) (ii) a fall in the value of the properties she had bought between 2010 and 2012 and (iii) trees.

We know all this because (and this is an absolutely true story) a day or so after agreeing the price and signing contracts to buy one of her property, her “business associate” had arrived on the front doorstep of our home to try to convince us to back out of the deal.  He explained that the woman was in big trouble with her family in the motherland – turns out it was not her money she was using as capital and that she wanted to re-negotiate the deal.  We declined, and this is when he changed tactic and told us that we would never be able to build on the site because the council would never let us cut down any of the trees.

So trees have been on my mind for a while, and I decided that I would give the council a call to find out if what challenges lay ahead of us.  I spoke to a friendly lady at the council offices who asked me three key questions, before giving me some feedback:

• What is the address of the property?   I told her the address.
• Are you aware of any vegetation overlay on the property?   “No.”
• Are you planning on knocking down the house to build units or townhouses.  “No.”

Having answered these she quickly confirmed “yep, I’ve checked the address and there definitely is no overlay and if you are planning to knock down the existing house to build a single residence, then you are fine.”  And that was that!

It seemed all too easy so I drilled in a bit more.   It turns out that this council takes a pretty dim view of knocking down trees to build units and townhouses, so property developers need to do their homework.  However, unless there is an overlay on the title, then I am pretty much free to do as I please.

 

Timmmmmberr!!!!

 

As an afterthought, I should add that I am actually a fan of trees and one of the reasons that we like the block of land and suburb is the trees.  However, in our case, a sadly, quite a number of them will need to be removed to make way for the construction of our new house.

 

Soil Types and Concrete Slabs (Part 1)

If you are building a modern home, then that house will probably be built on concrete slab.  At the start of the project, the cost of the slab is one of the most variable of the costs for both you and the builder and it is not uncommon for slabs to cost considerably more than first estimated.

Increases in the cost of the slab can be disappointing to home builders, because it viewed as money spent on something that will never be seen.  However, it is extremely important that the slab be engineered correctly for the house you plan to build, in the location you plan to build it.  In this regard, it should be viewed as money well spent.

What is disappointing is the lack of information that is provided by most builders on slab options and their costs.  If slab costs go up, they generally do so once soil tests are performed.  However, for the buyer, this can introduce costs late in the process that, arguably, could have been foreseen by the builder as likely.

Which Type of Slab is Used When?

The construction of the slab itself (its dimensions and thickness) depend on the layout of the house and the materials used in the construction of the house.  Obviously, a two-storey brick veneer house is heavier than a single-storey timber clad house and the engineers will figure all of that out for you.  What matters (at least in terms of time and extra cost) is the type of slab that is needed for your house, which is primarily determined by the type of soil on which the house is going to be built and the gradient (slope) of the land.

What is Reactive Soil?

Soil experts often talk in terms of how "reactive" the soil is, and for house building, soil that is more reactive is more of a problem than soil that is less reactive.  "Reactive" refers to the degree to which the soil will move in terms of expansion when wet, contraction when dry and the likelihood of any sideways movement (i.e. is there a chance it will wash away in a flood).  More reactive soil means there is more movement, and soil movement is what causes most issues with concrete slabs.

Soil Tests

When soil tests are done, they measure a number of things to determine how reactive the soil is. 

• Clay content - clay is the enemy of concrete slabs and the more clay you have in your soil, the more engineering will be required.  The reason for this is that clay absorbs water and expands when it does so.  It also shrinks and hardens when it dries.  Without proper thought and engineering, this continual expansion and contraction of the soil under and around your house slab will cause it to move and (in extreme cases) even crack.
• Depth to bedrock - Knowing how deep you might need to dig to find solid rock is important
• Composition (sand, rocks etc.)
• The presence of chemicals that might be a problem to a slab

 

What Soil Types are there?

Based on the results of the soil tests, a building site is generally classified into one of the following classes, which is used (in part) to determine what kind of foundations and slab need to be laid:

• Class 'A' - Non-Reactive (you lucky beggars!) Your site is basically sand and rock, with negligible movement likely.
• Class 'S' - Slightly Reactive - There is some clay present on the site and slight movement can be expected over time.
• Class 'M' - Moderately Reactive - There is clay and/or silt present that may experience movement over time.
• Class 'H' - Highly Reactive - Moisture changes in the soil will cause a high amount of movement
• Class 'E' - Extremely Reactive - Are you sure you want to build here?
• Class 'P' - Problem

Most builders quote on the basis of an 'M' Class Slab, whether or not it is realistic that 'M' class will be sufficient in your location.  Remembering that most builders have built in most suburbs, they know what the basic geology of the city is and they know (at least broadly) how likely it is that an 'M' Class slab will be sufficient.

We are a 'Problem' Site

When we met with one builder recently, straight off the bat the sales-woman told us the truth about our site - we are a Class-P problem site.  Why?  "Bluntly", she said, all "knock-down sites end up requiring a Class-P slab.  Once you have pulled down the old house, dug out the old house's stumps and footings, pulled out any trees and their root systems and dug holes to cut off water and sewage connections, you have de-stabilised the soil to such an extent that engineering is required to support the slab."

So we are a Class-P site and will need a "Class-P" slab which means Piering - but more on that in a later post.

A Survival Guide for Display Homes

Marina and I have spent the last few weekends looking at display homes.  For me, this has been a completely new experience and with it came my first introduction to the world of "Volume Builders" and their sales strategies.

Marina planned the first weekend. She selected an new house-and-land estate on the fringe of the city where a number of the major builders had homes on display.  She packed the pram, a picnic lunch and thermos coffees

And with the older two kids happily spending the weekend at the grandparents, we strapped sprog number three (aka Chuggaluggs) into the baby seat and set off in search of "everything we need to make our dream home a reality", or so the brochure says.

On arriving at the "display village", I was expecting to be assailed by over-eager second-rate sales people, trying to steer my wife and I towards their company's products.  Instead, we were generally received with anything ranging from mild to total dis-interest.  One builder didn't have floor-plans for the house on display.  Others shrugged us off with a "There it is, let us know if you have any questions..."  In general, we really had to prod these sales people to get any signs of life and getting useful information out of them was (with a few exceptions) an utter waste of time.

On the first day we saw about fifteen display homes and I can honestly say that I cannot remember any of them clearly.  On the second day we saw about ten more, but then just had to give up - a severe case of "luxurious alfresco-indoor-outdoor-living-options" overload.

On the second and third weekends we were a bit more strategic, both with our planning and execution.  We narrowed down what we wanted to look at and if the house did not have a few key things that we were looking for (or had something definitely didn't want), then we skimmed through it very quickly.  This saved a lot of time and allowed us slow down for things that took our fancy.

Display Home Bling

The first thing I will say about the people who build display homes is that they clearly all copy each other's ideas and they definitely consider themselves to have transcended any notion of practical living.  I imagine these people more like fashion designers than builders, pulling together the "spring collection" for a catwalk parade, rather than something you would actually buy and wear.

After visiting around thirty or forty display homes, I can confidently say what the 2013 "fashions" are:

• Gigantic Front Doors - The smallest front door we saw on a display home was 1.2 metres wide and they are really heavy.  I'll concede that these dimensions are practical for getting prams in and out of your house, but beyond that I do not see the point.

• Butler's Pantries - Start with a walk-in pantry.  Now add a sink and call it a butler's pantry.  Don't be fooled, they do not come with a butler.

• Porcelain Floor Tiles - Fantastically expensive, these tiles are beautiful to look at, but have all the grip of an ice-rink if they ever get wet.  If you get these tiles for your new home, make sure that you tick the box on your health plan for hip replacements - you are going to need it.

• Windows behind Stoves - An external window made of (expensive) heat-resistant glass sits behind your stove to collect hot spraying grease and oil as you cook, the same way a splashback does.  Generally installed at the height of the stove (your groin), I am sure these create a wonderful view for your creepy neighbours.

But I also learned some practical lessons in how to make the most of visiting display homes, so here are my four key tips for survival.

 

Don't Worry About "What's Standard?"

One of the real difficulties when building a home with a volume builder is knowing the difference between the "standard inclusions" of the house you are buying and the "extras" and "upgrades" that invariably cost more.  If you are planning on going to display homes to figure this out, forget it.  Display homes are pimped-up and tricked-out to levels that leaves them all but unliveable in any practical sense.  They are designed to showcase a house design by appealing to a lifestyle that simply does not exist for real people.

As an example, in one case, when we finally went through a display home in detail with a sales representative, the only things (literally the only things) that turned out to be "standard" were the height of the downstairs ceilings and railing inserts on the upstairs wardrobes.  Everything(!) else was an upgrade of some kind.

Make Yourself At Home

Okay, don't take this literally - you are not allowed to shag, shower or shave in a display home.  What I mean by this is slow down.  My observation is that most seem to people go through display homes as though they are tourists on a tight timeline ("bus leaves in 10 minutes, folks!") and that they quickly explore the house, but only take away superficial observations.

If there is a house you are vaguely interested in, my advice is sit down and relax for a few minutes, and see what impressions you get.  You may find that the space you are in leaves a very different impression when you are looking at it from lower down.  You will notice lighting and the placement of windows very differently after a few minutes of sitting in a room.  Also, lots of line-of-sight issues become apparent, like (as we found in one house) being able to sit on a couch in the upstairs rumpus room and see directly in to a toilet.

This "slow down" idea was not a genius insight by us, by the way - it was a practical necessity.  When we were looking at display homes, Chuggaluggs (four months old) needed feeding every couple of hours, so we were literally forced to stop and hang-out in one of the display homes every now and then.

Take Photographs

In the several weekends we spent trawling through display homes, I took hundreds of photographs, but I saw almost no-one else doing the same.  I think not taking photos is crazy.  But, on reflection, I did take more photos than I needed, so here is my advice on this:

1. Take a photo of the sign in front of the house before you go in.  That way, you will have your photos grouped by each display home and it is easier to remember which house is which (trust me, they all become a blur after a while).

   

   Details - a staircase we liked. Go Figure

2. Take photographs of details you like, however small.  For example, Marina liked the low-set lighting in a staircase.  So we took a picture of it and later filed it (like many other ideas) in an "things we like" folder.
3. If you like a house, take lots of photos of all of the rooms.  For a couple of houses we liked, I stood in each corner of every room and took a photo, so that I could view the images alongside the floorplan when I got home.  This helped, especially remembering the vertical proportions of things (height of windows, ceilings etc).

Stay Grounded

Assuming that you are a 'normal' person, you will probably not get to live in a display home.  Even if you build the exact home on display, you will probably still end up disappointed.  This is because normal people have stuff: clutter, odd bits of miss-matched furniture, coat-racks, hat-racks, overflowing bookcases, kitchen appliances, unwashed dishes, laundry, hideous (but loved) holiday souvenirs, kick-knacks, kids toys and several prized (but hideous) amateur sports trophies that we hang on to.



I could have been a contender - my
2003 Division 5 (Runners Up) Soccer Trophy
will take pride of place in our new home.

So unless you are fortunate enough to afford to be able to buy new everything when you move in to your new home, all of this stuff is going to move in with you.  So you may as well start thinking straight off the bat about where you are going to put it all.

I am not trying to spoil the fun, but here are some of the practical questions that Marina and I asked ourselves when we walked in to every display home.  We asked ourselves these questions because we wanted to know if we were attracted to the layout of the house (which ultimately will have to be practical for our lifestyle), or the aspirational lifestyle that the presentation of the house implied/created:

• How will I lug the groceries from the car to kitchen butler's pantry?
• Where will the kids dump their school bags, sports bags and other junk when they get home from school / sports practice?
• Where will I hang my guests wet coats / umbrellas / hats on a rainy day?  And will my insurance cover their hip replacements when the slide on the wet porcelain tiles?
• How long will it take to clean these bathrooms, en-suites and powder rooms?  And more importantly, who do we think is going to do it?
• Where will the TV go?
• How often will we really use this home-theatre room?

With questions like these in mind, Marina and I were able to separate the houses we might genuinely be able to live from those we might want to live (if we had no kids and a butler)

Termites and Termite Protection

This is a post that I may add to (and clarify / correct) as I learn more.

Termites matter.  I think everyone I know knows someone whose house has been attacked by termites and the results have never been good.  So laying down termite protection when you are building is a very important step and one that builders should never skip over.

And because nearly all new houses these days are built out of timber, a termite attack is an attack on the structural integrity of the house itself.

What Are Termites?

Termites Attack! (not actual size, thankfully)

Termites (in Australia they are also called white-ants) are little insects that live in big underground nests.  They dig their way underground in tunnels in search of their favourite food - cellulose.  What is cellulose?  It is the primary ingredient in wood and the stuff that actually makes wood strong.  Termites live on cellulose and will travel a long way from their nest to find it.  They are a bit like ants in this regard for scavenging.   However, there is one big difference - termites hate sunlight and they hate being dry, so they never travel above ground.  All of their travels back and forth between their nest and a food source are underground and this is what makes them hard to detect if they start to attack your home.


Termite Protections used by Builders

If your house is build on a concrete slab, then the slab itself is a pretty good termite deterrent, given that it is very big and rather hard to chew through.  But the wily little critters are resourceful and persistent, so builders use special "treatments" on concrete slab homes to prevent termites from attacking by killing them.

People in the building industry refer to termite treatments as being "Part A" and "Part B".  Put simply, "Part A" treatments are put in place before the slab is laid, to prevent termites from coming up from underneath.  "Part B" treatments are put in place after the slab is laid and are intended to prevent termites from scaling the walls of the concrete slab.

What is a Part A Termite Treatment?

"Part A" treatments create a barrier beneath the slab, and can be either a physical or chemical barrier.  A physical barrier is typically a mesh of some kind, that termites can neither crawl nor bite through.  A chemical barrier is a spray (typically an insecticide) that is applied prior to laying the damp-proofing (the thick black plastic), prior to laying the concrete slab.

What is a Part B Termite Treatment?

"Part B" treatments are basically the same two options, these being physical mesh barriers or chemical barriers.  I have conflicting research that seems to suggest that chemical sprays used for Part B Termite treatments are only useful as long as the soil in which they are applied is not disturbed

Some of the physical barriers are designed to force termites to burrow up the outside of the wall of your house in search of timber to munch on.  They cannot do this exposed, and instead they will lay down small brown dirt tunnels on the outside wall of the house, in which they can scamper up and down.  These are easily spotted and will (hopefully) give you early warning of a impending termite attack.

Real Termite Protection

But this really brings home the point about termite protection when building a house - it is not really part of the construction process, but is a measure to protect against future damage to your home.

In reality, the best way to protect against termites is frequent inspections of your house perimeter and nearby trees to look for termite damage that might indicate there is a nest nearby.  I won't write about that here, but for those interested, there is a good site at the CSIRO that provides useful information on preventative measures termite protection.

http://www.csiro.au/en/Outcomes/Safeguarding-Australia/Termites.aspx

The Start

So we have started.


If you are going to follow this post series, then I will use this post to give an overview of who we are and the home-building project journey we are setting out on.


A bit about my wife and I. We've been married for 9 years and we like to kid ourselves that we have done this house-construction thing before. Well, sort of. The first house we bought together was an un-loved art-deco Californian bungalow in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Like many first-home buyers, we purchased the house we could afford in the suburb we could afford and we worked really hard to make it our own. We painstakingly restored all the art-deco features, renovated it and did an extension to the house as owner-builders. Being owner-builders meant that unlike most renovation projects, where the house owners hand the project (and a load of cash!) over to a licensed builder, we had to take responsibility for everything and needed to be much more hands on.

Our first building project (photo taken at about the time
we had spent all the money we originally budgeted)

And how did our first extension project turn out? Well, we learned heaps about building and construction, we made plenty of mistakes, spent way more than we ever thought possible, and ended up with a house that we absolutely love.


It is also important to know that this experience did not make us renovation junkies, eager to audition for the next home-improvement reality TV show. By the time we were finished, we swore that we would never (ever!) do another building project and that we would happily live in our beautifully restored, renovated and extended art-deco home until we were old, grey and needed dentures.


But life doesn't work that way. We were able to stick to that plan for about 2 years, and then we started having children. Five years further on, three sprogs and a dog have appeared and suddenly our house is looking smaller and smaller as our kids start to grow up.



So we have made the big decision and we are going to do it again. The big differences this time are that (i) we are definitely not going to do it ourselves and (ii) we are definitely not going to renovate an existing house. The former because with three children, we just don't have the time to do it. And the latter because the first big lesson we learned (years ago) about renovation is that it is an act of love, not economics and it is often cheaper to knock down and rebuild an old house.


To that end, we have bought a old house in a leafy eastern suburb of Melbourne, and we plan to knock it down and rebuild on the site. The chances are we will be having our house built by one of the big "volume" builders from an off-the-shelf plan


Why am I writing? Well, I am writing it because it will hopefully help keep me sane as we go through the process of creating our new home.


So who should both to read this blog? I am hoping that these posts will be of use (or mild entertainment) to anyone who aspires to follow us down the path of building a new house.


How frequently will I post? Meh, who knows...