The Tender Appointment

Last Wednesday (Jan 17th) we had our Tender Appointment at the PD offices in Berwick at 1pm. 'Glen' was the man and he was going to explain to us all of the in's and out's of what we were buying and what other variations we had decided to include. The session ran from 1:00pm till 5:20 with a half hour break for a bite to eat and a coffee in the Berwick main street.

Glen went through every single item , front to back, all 10 pages worth and read every single word, including the model numbers for the appliances, 'upside down' - just so we could read along with him right side up. This is what he does, twice a day, every day (well almost anyway).

First up we went through the 'standard' house and inclusions.... yadda yadda yadda. Then came time for the Site Costs. Well..... we had been provided an allowance by the PD consultant which we had hoped was possibly overstated as we think our block is in reasonable shape. Apparently not. It has gone up by $7,000 - that's right, seven big ones, all beacause the land has a slope. (time to start saving!!)

As can be seen from the image below, they (the Builders) are going to have to excavate the block and include retaining walls and drainage pits along with cut and fill sections to ensure the area is usable around the house. Glen explained in great detail what the drawing meant with all the squiggles and figures and it actually sounds quite good what they have decided to do. The garage will actually be lower than the house level by 240mm to allow the driveway gradient not to be too steep and they have included a level plateau before the garage entry so its not a steep rise into the garage itself.

I think with the retaining walls and level areas around the house it should make for an interesting and creative landscape, one I'm looking forward to building :-)