Andrew's blog

The resource consent application has finally been lodged with the council after many delays. One of which being the engineering.

Our engineer had already completed a Geotech assessment of the site, which consisted of digger pits, scala penetrometer testing and the like. The engineering came back as the bank being stable enough to build within certain parameters.

However, the earthworks plan, prepared by the surveyor, changes the building platform. The knock-on effect was that our engineer had to modify his original report to reflect the earthworks plan, before we could lodge the resource consent application with the Council.

Now that the earthworks plan has been drawn up and we know exactly where the house will be sited, the engineer needs to complete some more testing of our building platform before we can start the earthworks. Unfortunately the testing will only give him an indication of what the land will be like once the earthworks have been completed. So the engineer will need to be on site when the earthworks happens.

The unfortunate thing about all of this, is that all these things need to happen before our engineer will sign off on the house foundations. The upshot is that, only after the earthworks have been completed, will we know whether we need specific design foundations, a retaining wall or a stock standard concrete slab. The downside, of course, is that it pushes the build project out further, because we can't apply for building consent, until we know what foundations we need and until we have the engineer's big tick.

This makes us a touch nervous, having paid our deposit for the house and signed the build contract with our design and build company. But then, what is contingency money for? Worse case scenario we'll need some specific design foundations or a retaining wall.



Being ever optimists, we're trucking along with the house plans. This week we finalised our kitchen plans. I can't wait until we can cook in it.

We're meeting with a flooring company next weekend, and a colour consultant this week to decide all things colour related. And my goodness there are a lot of things to choose colours for: Garage door, front door, back door, walls, ceilings, hard wood areas, window frames, glass tints, roofing tiles, downpipes, kitchen cabinetry, benchtop.

Ooh, yay, what fun!!!