Update and TDL

So a quick update, painters should be being busy little bee's at my house starting today and the tiler is booked in to start on Friday! B my SS should be back on deck on Monday, so hopefully Monday or Tuesday I could have a date for the Final Inspection! -squeal-

I called a removalist company today and got a quote of $470 for the move so I've told them I will let them know when I have a date! I've also called my fencing guy and left him a message as he hasn't given me a quote yet :(

The past few day's I've been thinking a LOT about what to do once I am in my house and making a bit of a list. I started off thinking about my vegie patch and how I was going to water it. I figure I will install drip irrigation that can hook up to either the rain water tank or mains water. I then figured I should investigate the water restrictions and quickly discovered that you can no longer get exemptions for watering new turf - you can't water ANY grass with mains water anymore! Fair enough I suppose too. What this means is that I will either need an almost full rain water tank or some kind of grey water system. I figure I will run drip irrigation lines on top of the soil and under the turf and run it back to the rank and have the option for hooking up some grey water to it too.
At the Home Show on the weekend I found this nifty little grey water system that is the size of a giant wheelie bin. It comes with some filtery stuff for the in water (so say from your washing machine) and then also has a pump and a hose connected to it and as you need to use grey water within 24hrs it's the perfect size! I could use that to water my lawn with from a fixed point near the back door and also be able to wheel it around the garden to water plants! Noice!

Anyway, so with all this thinking about irrigation for the lawn and vegies I realised that it might take a bit longer to do the garden and I should probably wait until it is done before I get a dog too :( It just makes sense to do it that way though.

So here is my To Do List for once I am in my house and in no specific order at all - I will work out the order once I am in and see which one annoys me the quickest and needs doing:

• Blinds
  
• Curtains
  
• Vegie garden beds
  
• Irrigation for vegie garden
  
• Water tank
  
• Grey water wheelie bin
  
• water tank pump
  
• Irrigation for lawn
  
• Lawn
  
• Front garden

More to learn

Not having a garden at all I am a bit slow on the uptake for where we are at with water restrictions etc at the moment. According to Yarra Valley Water

• Lawns cannot be watered by residents, businesses and local councils. There are some exempt playing surfaces that can be watered.
  
• Manual dripper systems can be used between 6 am - 8 am on your watering days.*
  
• Hand-held hoses fitted with a trigger nozzle, watering cans and buckets can be used to water gardens between 6 am – 8 am on your watering days.

Sooooooo seeing as you can no longer apply for exemptions for new grass, it looks like a water tank will be a higher priority than the actual garden - fair call too.

It might also be time to start research watering systems to use too seeing as I know nothing about them all.

I figure for my vegie patch I will use some kind of hose that sites on top of the soil (under the lucern mulch though) and will try to maybe connect that up to an automatic timer and something similar for the rest of my garden too.

Gee another steep learning curve ahead of me!

Contact has been made

So I ended up calling N @9:30am, no answer, sent an email explaining how concerned I am about the lack of communication so close to the contracts appointment and how I really need answers from her. By 10:50am I still had no contact and she was still not answering her phone so I called reception to make sure she is actually at work - she is. Left a message with reception to get her to call me and @11:30am I got an email from her, finally!

My upgrades have come in at $906, thankfully within budget and the plumbing provision for the water tank to the 2x WC's can be done, but for $610 - I've asked her for clarification on this as others I know are getting it all (including the external power point) for $450.

I've also asked for:

• 2 x double power point to rumpus room along the wall adjoining the laundry spaced to the middle of the length of the wall at the same height as the other power points in the rumpus (300mm AFL)
  
• A double power point added to the internal north wall of the garage, spaced to the middle of the length of the wall from the hallway to the rear access door at the same height as the other power point in the garage (1350 AFL)
  
• Costings of the above
  
• The outside light on the corner of the rumpus room doesn't have a connecting line to the light switch in the laundry - can you please get this light added to the laundry light switch
  
• The cost to get two external junction boxes installed
  
• The plumbing provision terminated and the included double outdoor power point for this to be on the east side of my house, along the meals wall, south of the meals area window. I plan to put the water tank near the down pipe on this blind side wall but north of the HWS.
  

I don't expect to hear back from N again today in regards to this, but I hope to have something by lunch tomorrow

Not Happy Jan

Yesterday morning I emailed N at 8:16am about the plumbing provisions and the cost of my extras and I ended my email with "I look forward to your call and also receiving the detailed costings of my extra's today" as per what she said she would do on Friday.

By 1:30pm I had still heard nothing from her, no call or email, so after trying to call her over a 20-30 minute time frame I sent another email "I really need to get an answer on the below today. I just tried calling and there was no answer. Can you please let me know about the plumbing provision and the cost of my extras by COB today."

If I haven't heard anything from her when I get back from going for coffee soon, I am going to be calling and if she doesn't answer, then I will be calling reception and asking to speak to someone else who can answer my questions.

I have my contract signing on Friday and I need to get all of this stuff sorted as I need to work out the dollar amounts and adjust things accordingly and add extra power points etc too!

Water tank plumbing issues

This is probably going to sound silly, but it's another one of those OMG I'M BUILDING A HOUSE kinda things... I can now enter competitions that do things like garden make overs and all those other type of comp's that involve you owning your own house!! YaY!!!

In other house news, I'm having issues with PD trying to get them to provide the actual cost to do the plumbing provision for my future water tank to the two toilets. My sales person put in a $2,000 provision but I know other people building with PD that have been charged $450. I asked my CSC, N, to provide exact costings for me and she came back saying it was just over the $2k provisioned - ummm?? I told her that all I wanted was the plumbing done and I know what others were charged. she came back saying that they HAD to include the following and couldn't separate them:

-Installation of pump,
-Connection to 2 WCs,
-Mains water supply back up,
-Round PVC downpipe connection,
-Overflow to stormwater

I again asked for clarification as it seems really silly that they can't separate it when I'm not getting a tank through them! N then came back and said that they are concerned that if they do what I am wanting that it will affect my Certificat of Occupancy - wtf?!?! Grrrr.
I've been given the wording someone else has for their's to present to N (thanks Wanna!) so come tomorrow, if I haven't had a call or email after lunch, I will be calling N as I really need it sorted ASAP so I know how much everything is costing.

I also asked N on Friday for a total price for all my extra's so I can again work out how much everything is costing. She was going to try to get it to me Friday, but hadn't, so again I -need- that Monday