DIY: Sensor floodlights installation

So this is something I was going to do as soon as we moved in (over a year ago!) but of course I kept forgetting to do it, and only happened to remember while at our local hardware store. We had a standard bayonet mount light fitting outside our front door, and I'd always forget to turn on this light when expecting visitors.



So this is what you call a standard builder's light fitting, the most basic thing imaginable that does the job. The good news is, with this light fitting (also called a batten mount) there are many direct DIY replacements available that you don't need an electrician for. This takes maybe 10-15 minutes to do and is very simple.

I chose this twin floodlight sensor DIY fitting - you can also get oysters with sensors, but I wanted a lot of light in the front. About $30 for the sensor unit and $7 for a twin pack of floodlights. They're pretty high powered at 150W each, but this light will only be on when someone triggers it at night, so I'm not too concerned about their power consumption.



So the next thing you need to do is get up on your ladder and remove the light globe, the threaded screw collar, and the plastic dome thing around the bayonet mount until it looks like this. You probably want to make sure the light is off too.



Open up your DIY sensor light. Make sure you've got the DIY version - there's also a non DIY version in case you have no bayonet mount - for that one you'll need an electrician to legally install it. I've removed the centre cap on the light - you can see a little plug right in the middle - this screws into where your original lightbulb was.



Place the unit over the original bayonet mount, rotate it so the sensor is facing the direction you want, then replace the original screw collar to hold the sensor unit in. If you want, you can also add 3 screws around the outside of the unit to stop it moving, but I've put a few of these in other houses and they stay pretty firm without additional screws.




Screw in your floodlights, adjust the angles of the lights and sensor and make them firm using the wingnuts provided.



Finally, test to make sure your lights work!



I only want these on when someone walks into the sensor range at night, so I'll wait until tonight to make the final adjustments. There are two adjustments you can make - sensitivity of the sensor, and duration of light, just turn a couple of dials on the back of the sensor. The beauty of it is, you can leave the light switch inside turned "on" all the time, but these floodlights will only come on when someone triggers them.

The next lighting-related project is to replace more of the internal plain bayonet lights with nicer ones - we've got a fancy light for the entrance that we'll need an electrician to install, but there were quite a few nice DIY fittings that I might get, once they're Tina-approved! Any electricians reading this in Melbourne and want to help us install some lights in return for some blatant promotion on our blog? Contact us! :)

T&T

Inspecting your house: Australian Standards, Building Code Australia etc

OK, so I was trying to find a guide to doing a completion inspection - here's some of the useful things unearthed. Of course, anyone building a new house with any builder would be wise to sign up to homeone and read the forums thoroughly (and use the search facility before posting a question that has been answered many times before). Here's some of the useful ones we'll be adapting for our inspection;

A&E's guide on H1
Another H1 PCI checklist
Yet another H1 PCI checklist
Archicentre guide
Jay's comment on previous post

So "PCI" usually means "Practical Completion Inspection", but of course all the different builders use different terms for the same thing. We'll be getting our independent inspector in, as it will be money well spent. To be honest, I think we'll both be a little dazed at the fact our home is "practically completed" to be doing a thorough inspection, so having an experienced independent third party will be useful, plus will hopefully have better eyes than us.

The other thing having an independent inspector around for, will be his ability (I hope!) to back up any significant problem by referring to the relevant building standards. I spent ages trying to find our where to get these Australian Standards, or Building Code of Australia documents online - turns out it's not free access. But if you have access to a university library, they may have a licence to access the building code. Wonder why such an important document isn't freely available? The cynic in me would suggest it's a nationwide conspiracy to keep consumers in the dark and unaware of their rights to demand a product delivered within acceptable toleranes - but then again, that's just the cynic in me.

However, I was able to find a "Guide to Standards and Tolerances" - two links to the same document are:

http://www.justice.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/84179/guide_standards.pdf
http://www.buildingcommission.com.au/resources/documents/S+T_GUIDE_07.pdf

which are useful to anyone at any stage of building, not just completion. Wish I'd read this 6 months ago!

I also spoke to someone at work today who's a residential electrician, and he agrees with me that our light positioning is rubbish and not to tolerances ("Just plain lazy and/or careless electricians" is his exact words), plus our powder room exhaust must be externally vented as there's no opening windows in the room, and the exhaust fan must also be wired in series with the light switch. More things to watch for at our completion inspection! I think the positioning of the lights is the thing that bugs me the most - to be fair, the builder/SS seems to be doing the right thing 95% of the time, but to not pick up that the lights are nowhere near the centre of the room is a fairly major oversight. Just fix that, and I'd be a super happy chappy!

Memo to self: Rod was meant to go to the house today and measure up the bit of fence that needs to be replaced adjacent to the garage, to be done ASAP! It's been down since November last year, and it's not fair on our long-suffering neighbours and their dog! Seems to me that they could've built that garage wall with the original fence intact, since all they did was replace my timber paling fence with a bit of temporary security fence anyway! Also to get carpet deposit confirmed/paid tomorrow.

T&T

Day 230: Late meetup with SS

Was on the way home when our SS called asking if we could catch up tonight - we ended up meeting at 6:30 - I guess site supervisors gotta work around the clock! Anyway, it was just to check whether we wanted some extra glass splashback in the kitchen - the standard design doesn't put any glass into the window reveal - despite the fact that all Metricon display homes with a window splashback and glass, have glass that go into the window reveal.



So here's a pic - taken on my new iPhone4 (without the useless LED flash going off, which makes everything look blue). The big glass piece on the side with the powerpoint hanging off it is standard, then there's another small glass piece which goes next to it (but only as high as the window reveal), and then there's "normally" plaster at the window reveal. Our SS thought it'd look better with the extra glass piece in both reveals for about $150.

Sounds reasonable, and we said so at the time - but now I recall then when we signed up with Metricon there was a promotion on for a glass splashback - we paid extra for the kitchen window, about $800 or so, we didn't get any credit back for the reduction in glass splashback (now taken up by the window) and now we pay a bit more, to get that little bit of glass back.... *sigh* ultimately it's not a huge amount of money, but given that we paid for the window, it would've been nice to have been given the glass that goes into the reveal.

Anyway, this certainly isn't a reflection on our SS - we've been quite lucky to have had a couple of very good site supervisors, who seem to be organised, efficient and proactive. Not long to go guys, keep it up!

We also had a quick look around the house - shelves are in, wardrobe fitout in the master bed is in (another item thrown in with the promotion, but it's actually quite a good size fitout with lots of shelves and drawers - happy!). Door handles are on, though the master bed door is meant to have a privacy lock which was put on the ensuite toilet instead - an easy fix, just swap the handles around. Errm.... mirror robe doors are on and look good too! Caulker has been through the house sealing up all the gaps. Still waiting on the rainfall showerhead in the ensuite shower and toilets - they'll both be put in sometime soon. The laundry splashback which is a little short will have another row of tiles added... happy about that too. Cement sheeting has been installed in the garage & portico, so they just need to be prepped and painted, then the garage door can go on. The house has also had a bit of a clean, and looks a million times better than when it's filthy!

Had a little talk about the light position in the sitting room and upstairs leisure - as a reminder, here's the sitting room lights and where they should be...


and the upstairs room lights, and where they should be too.


The thing about the electrical plan, is that it doesn't specify to the millimeter exactly where things should go. Now that allows for variability in the house construction process - for example, presence of studs or trusses etc, however I don't really think that's an excuse to stick a couple of lights obviously off-centre in the sitting room, or to put them a meter from the expected position upstairs. We did adjust the upstairs light position with our previous SS, and as to be expected not all changes or agreements are communicated to the following SS.

Still... all we want are our lights to be centred! Doesn't seem to be too much to ask. The electricians managed to do it everywhere else, but had a bit of a brainfreeze when doing the sitting room and upstairs.

And coming back to completion date, we had originally pencilled in Friday 20th August for a completion inspection, but might have to put it back to Tuesday 24th. It's very difficult for me to arrange a day off work, so let's hope this is the last adjustment of date. That said, we're not in a huge rush to get in our house - provided it's of a high quality finish (and YES that includes putting the lights in the centre of the room, not 40cm from a wall!!) we don't mind waiting another week, fortnight or month for the completion inspection. However it seems that head office is pushing for a completion this month, and providing quality doesn't suffer, we'll certainly be happy to have our house done!

Also need to organise carpeting - got a quote from Fowles flooring in Clayton for 40.5 lineal meters of carpet - enough for all upstairs and the home theatre room - for a dark grey carpet, so I'll head down there tomorrow to confirm everything and leave a deposit. Not sure if we'll have the carpet done before handover, but it won't be long after anyway, apparently there's a few days to have the carpet in stock, and about 2 weeks to book an installation day.

Finally for today, reminder to self: check the final invoice thoroughly! It'll be for the remaining 10% of contract value, plus our electrical upgrades, plus tile upgrades, minus an amount for an underground powerpit which we organised and paid for ourselves, and minus an unknown amount for "cranage provision". Also a credit amount for changing to a different toilet than originally selected, and a little more for that glass splashback extension.

Phew, gets complicated! Will also need to have a thorough re-read through the contract and see if there's any other provisional items we may be entitled to.

If anyone has had handover on their house, please comment and let us know what to look for, tips and tricks are most welcome!

T&T

Day 214: Review of the last 3 days of work - Electrical fitoffs!

First time back to the house since Tuesday - and wow, people have been busy! Electricians, plumbers, brickies and heating contractors have all been working in the last 3 days, but today's post will focus on lighting first.

Externally; the silver aluminium handrail has been installed over the balcony. Plus a downpipe has been run from the balcony gutter, though no connection has been made to stormwater drainage. Also you can see where the electricians have roughed in connections for external lighting on the balcony pillars, and a double floodlight I'll put in over the garage door.


Internally, the electricians have been very busy fitting off all the powerpoints, light switches, batten lights, downlights and exhaust fans. Unfortunately while most of the work has been excellent, there's a few of these moments going on as well.


For example, in our sitting room there are two lights. Most people would accept that having them lined up in the middle of the room is boring, yet necessary. However, ours are at least 70cm away from the midline of the room... not acceptable!


However it gets worse upstairs, where there are two lights in the open area/leisure room. So, you would think the light in the leisure room should be centred - rather than placed 40cm away from the wall? And the other light should be placed in the middle of the "hallway" leading from the master bedroom to the bathroom? Erm, no. I brought this up with our last SS, Monique, that the electrical roughin had left the lighting wires in the wrong spot. "No worries, the sparkies will put them in the right place!" I was told...... erm..... fail.


Anyway, that's the major issues with lighting, thankfully most other things have been done well.
The stairs have 3 step lights installed - upside down I think, as the light is placed facing up, just right for blinding you as you try to walk down the stairs. However, we may leave them like this (!), as the lighting makes an unbelievably cool shadow of the stairs on the ceiling when dark, which of course is impossible to photograph. Anyway, simple to flip them around if we want to.


Next pic, upstairs bathroom. The single batten light/"chinaman's hat" is wired in series with the exhaust fan, which is massive but fortunately not too noisy. We've got quite a few of these standard light fittings to replace after handover, but won't choose any light fittings until after handover is complete.

In addition, I think the powder room exhaust fan is meant to be externally vented, but no evidence of an external vent is present. Another issue to bring up.

And we've saved the best pic for last... we went with a whole lot of downlights in the open plan area - 5 over the kitchen, 5 over the dining table, and 9 in the family room, each with 2 way switches and dimmers. Expensive.... but we waited until early evening to turn everything on, and it looks incredible! Our colours are pretty much all cool grey neutrals which can sometimes look a bit stark, but with the downlights, everything is surprisingly warm (and definitely not as beige as the photo may represent)! Very happy with how this has turned out in this area.


So, adding to our list of things to check on with regards to electricals are:

• Sitting room lights not centred
• Leisure room, hallway lights not centred
• Damage noted: home theatre rear powerpoint (plaster damage), heating duct in entryway (split ceiling plaster)
  
• Laundry splashback tiles only 20cm high instead of 30cm high (not enough tiles were provided for the job)

Fantastic to see so much work done in the last few days, and though I've highlighted some errors, at least they're relatively easy to fix. Move light fittings, replaster, repaint, add tiles to laundry splashback. Next post will focus on plumbing.
T&T

Day 210: Gearing up for the final stages!

Ran into our SS today - he was at our neighbour's site (which he also supervises), cleaning up all the loose rubbish on the block himself. Nice to see a SS who gets his hands dirty! Anyway, apparently we're still on track to get most of the internal fixing done by end of the month.

He did say we can get our carpets in before handover, which is brilliant news - now I'm wondering if we should get our stairs sanded & stained as well, before the carpets are installed. It's a matter of finding out whether a dark stain on the stairs (to match our front & rear doors) would be too dark - will check with Tina on that first. Be nice to have it done before carpets go in upstairs, for a neater finish.

Anyway, I grabbed a meat pie and sauce (the bakery around the corner does the best homemade beef & cheese pies with huge chunks!) and had lunch in the kitchen, daydreaming about how in the not-too-distant future we'd be in the kitchen cooking up a storm, watching TV, and just living the life in the house we've been dreaming and planning for the last 2-3 years!

No trades have been working the last few days, so I just wandered around, trying to see if there's any defects we need to keep an eye on for our final inspection. I don't think I'll bother our SS with anything I find at the moment, as there's still their own QA inspection and window service to be done, and there's still a lot of internal fitoffs to go. Anyway, here's a few minor things that will probably get fixed before our final inspection.

I've heard a lot about this window service thing, which is where all the windows get inspected and fixed before handover. A lot of our window frames were damaged externally during bricklaying with dents and scrapes, so they'll need to be fixed. Also, some windows are sticking or not straight. For example, this is the family room window: at the top there's a big gap, while at the bottom it's closed. Hopefully easily fixed with the window service.


And another example of window damage: in Bed 2, there's a nail protruding from the frame straight through the top frame. D'oh!


Then there's this issue which might be harder to fix: the ensuite window. I remember the bottom wooden frame for this window was removed at frame stage so the bath hob could be tiled right up to the window frame, but it appears the carpenters forgot to reinforce the bottom edge of the window, as now there's a pretty big bow in the window. Left unsupported, this window could just... fall! Needs fixing; but will probably require removal of some tiles, supporting/fixing the window frame, then repairing the bath hob, re-waterproofing, and re-tiling.



Now this isn't really a problem yet, but the manhole hasn't been put in Bed 4. Normally the manhole to the ground floor roof is in Bed 3, but due to our particular roof design, it needs to go in through Bed 4 robes. Pretty quick & easy job for the carpenters to stick in this manhole, but needs to be done before the electricians come in for fixing, as there's lots of wiring in the ground floor roof they'll need access too. And don't mind the apparent white lines in the robes, it's a reflection of my camera flash against the painted architraves!


Back to the ensuite, the shower niche and around the hob appear to be missing grout - but I've been told the plumbers will do some siliconing, to allow for flexing/movement of the tiles, rather than grout. Hopefully this big gap in the shower niche will be fixed too!



Internal doors: Rumpus room door has a huge crack in the bottom edges, looks like the door is coming apart! Needs to be repaired or replaced. Also the ensuite WC door has horrible dry patches all over it, and a big scar across the master bed door from the inside, both need repainting.


And finally for the day (long post, huh?) the bathroom sink is meant to have a light switch (for a light above the mirror) on one side, and a powerpoint on the other side. However, the electricians were meant to cutout on the walls prior to tiling, so the tiler could leave a cutout for them to get access to the wiring. But since they didn't (forgot?) to expose these switches, I'm not sure how they're going to locate them with the tiling all done! Anyway, not my problem to fix, they'll figure a way out.

Ultimately, these issues are all relatively minor and pretty obvious, and should be straightforward enough to fix. I'd be surprised if Metricon's Quality Assurance people didn't pick these things up before our final inspection, if a layperson can detect them!

And ultimately, we'd rather have all the little things fixed before we get our house - I know for sure that once I'm aware of something that's not 100% right, it'll annoy me forever until it gets fixed!

T&T

Day 157: Sparkies on site

Little bit of work done today, with the electricians running in some wiring to the garage now the roof there has been completed. While I couldn't get my 3 car garage, or even a workshop, at least there's plenty of powerpoints and a TV outlet!


Near the front of the garage is a double powerpoint, plus light switches for the ceiling fluoros and an external light.

There'll be two fluoro lights on the ceiling - can never have enough light in the garage for working!

Inside the sparkies have starting locating wiring for powerpoints and switches. We've placed the washing machine powerpoint and water taps on the wall above the machine (hate bending down to turn things on & off inside cabinets!)

Apparently someone from the cabinet company came by to check on the installations today too, and have left this sign:


So while the fixing stage is meant to be complete by 31.5.10 (according to MyMetricon), I very much doubt it'll be complete by then unless teams of tradies work throughout this weekend. The definition of the fixing claim stage being complete is:

"The stage when plaster is hung (decorative cornice may not be complete) architraves, skirting, doors, baths, basins, troughs, sinks, cabinets and cupboards are fitted and fixed in position. Attached garages, front porticos and carports are completed (Granite installation may not be complete). Or percentage of works completed."

Erm... we have no doors, no skirting, no architraves, missing plaster in the kitchen and none in the garage, portico isn't even started and many items from the lockup inspection haven't been addressed - so should we receive a fixing invoice in the mail before these items are completed, there's no basis for us to pay it!

T&T

Day 122: Data, TV and phone cabling installed

Didn't go to the house today (again, too dark after leaving work) but Tina got some good shots of the new cabling installed this morning. While the electricians installed the power & lighting stuff earlier this week, a different team came in for the data, TV and phones.


All the network cabling returns back to the walk-in-linen cupboard (white cables). There's also 7 TV points which come back here to a Starserve box.


This shows the TV and data point going to the home theatre room. Though there's only one network point coming here, I can always add in a switch in future in case there's more cabled networking needs here.

T&T

Day 119: External lockup... complete?! Electricals... complete?! Progress!

Someone managed to spend 4 hours at our house today - the time went quick! Both the carpenters and electricians were on site today from about 7am, with the electricians wrapping things up around 2, but the carpenters staying until 5.

Facade is complete! Cladding has been installed all around, and eaves complete with eave edging also installed.


At the back of the house, the cladding has also been installed on the first floor.


While I was there, our SS also pulled up, as she wanted to deliver a couple of bits of timber personally for the chippies so they could finish the external lockup today. Thanks to Josh & his team of carpenters for doing a great job on our house! Things are going well - now external works are pretty much complete, the weather shouldn't really hold up any further progress.

The immediate plans according to Monique;

• Data, TV and phone cabling hopefully done this week
• Plumbers back for lockup plumbing fitoff (bathtub connections etc) and to fix the ensuite showerhead which shold be on the ceiling, not on the wall
  
• Painter to start work on painting the eaves & cladding Thursday
• Scaffolding to come down next Tuesday
• Lockup inspection by Metricon's surveyors plus Metricon's Quality Assurance inspection then to be done next week
  
• Plaster to be delivered next Thursday
• Our independent inspection (which we're yet to organise) tentatively booked in for next Friday.

And as for longer term stuff... plaster should hopefully be hung by start of May, then lots of painting and fixing. Cabinets, kitchen etc. June to July should see final fixing with tiling, showers, plumbing fitoff... and hopefully final inspections sometime in August, with handover September - or maybe a bit earlier!

We're not all that frantic about the handover date - as long as things are done correctly and well, we're not in a huge rush to get in - but it is nice to hear we'll be in sooner rather than later!



Someone also came in to cement in the bathtubs. You can also see some metal flashing between the floor and bath hob, part of the waterproofing process in the wet areas.


And finally, heaps more wiring in the house with the sparkies running in all the cabling for ceiling light battens, downlights, wall lights, step lights etc. It was a lucky thing I had today off, as our sparkies consulted me a few times to check I was happy with downlight and powerpoint positioning. Because the heating ducts are installed first, downlights often aren't located exactly where they're drawn in the electrical plan. Only two sparkies did all the wiring, the boss & his apprentice, and he'd been working for Metricon (and not any other builders) for more than 20 years! Thanks Rob & Rod!

So external lockup is pretty much done, and internal lockup about 90% done. Good progress!

T&T

Day 116 or 117; meter box fixed into position

We didn't go to our house yesterday, but we noticed today that someone had come to fix the meter box, which was hanging loose in the sitting room.


So now the meter box is secured - the meter box positioned was out by just a few inches when the slab was poured, but the fix is pretty easy. You can see the big orange conduit coming from the bottom of the meter box, going into a pipe which runs into and under the slab out to the underground power pit on the footpath. The yellow pipe is a gas line up to the heater in the roof space, and all the white wires are for 240V power to the house. And if you look hard through the very dirty horizontal feature window, you can see our neighbour's lovely (and by lovely I mean awful) brick wall, as they've got not one, but two garage walls on our western boundary. Going to have to cover up that horrible view, probably with bamboo screeners and something green and leafy. Haven't thought about landscaping yet - got months to get into that!

We did our usual Sunday afternoon drive to check out other builds in the area; this photo below is of an extended Laguna that had their slab laid a week before ours, but seems to be going a little slower than us now.


The bricks they're using is also Austral Melbourne series, but Cotham with flush off-white mortar. I think it's a light brown crossed with orange, but it's hard to describe - I think it looks pretty good in real life, but Tina isn't a fan of it.

One thing about the Hawthorn series of bricks is that there's quite a bit of colour variation, in particular tiny black specks that you can't see unless you're a few inches from the brick, and more obvious large dark spots on bricks that you can see in the photo above. Not everyone likes variation in bricks, and there's plenty of bricks created for almost 100% uniformity, but we like the variation and contrast. The owner of this house chose black (monument) for their windows, which reflects the black variations in the bricks. Now the other interesting thing about black is that Metricon don't recommend dark exterior colours - probably because our climate can be pretty scorching, and the darker colours would absorb more heat and then have more potential problems due to warping etc. Anyway, we also chose some dark exterior colours (as have thousands of others building new houses), and hope it won't be an issue!

T&T

Day 115: Electrical installation commenced

A couple of electricians were working on the house today, getting the main wiring for power run throughout the house. Exciting!


There had to be a few changes from the original electrical plan;

1. GPO in the powder room had to be moved from the wall where the vanity is to another wall, or it would have been covered by the mirror.
2. GPO above the laundry bench had to be moved as it was too close to the laundry trough (risk of electrocution, not nice!), so this one has been moved to another wall too.
   

If you look closely at the above picture, on the floor below the left GPO are three blue marks; this is so the electricians know where to cut through the plaster to access the wiring for fitoff. Pretty impressed the guys were able to get the whole house wired for power in a day! They'll be back on Monday to run through all the lighting wiring. Different people will come in to run the data and TV cabling through the house, probably sometime next week too.

No carpenters today, so our linea weatherboard cladding is still sitting in the driveway waiting to be installed - with any luck, that'll be done next week too, then painting of the eaves & cladding can get underway.

And I've finally managed to sell my car after advertising it for 5 months... buyer picks it up tomorrow, phew! Will be driving around a $500 junker for a while, but at least the mortgage is getting a big chunk taken off it - plus avoiding heaps of interest as well! Here's one last photo to remember her by - what a magnificent ride, plenty of power & torque, will be fondly remembered! This photo taken in a prestigious estate where there's quite a few Metricons being built!


T&T

Day 114: Internal aerial connection

No work done to our house today, but the urge to blog strikes again; so here's a pic of the aerial... from the inside.

Quite a few metres of RG6 cabling all curled up. This will connect to a Clipsal Starserve box in the walk-in-linen downstairs, and then send out a bunch of feeds throughout the house. I think we somehow ended up with about 7 TV outlets (!), in the sitting room, family room, home theatre, leisure room, master bed, bed 2, and the garage. TV points are one of those things that you kind of have to stick in the house during construction, as it's hard or impossible to add it in later. In my parent's house there's only 2 outlets, and rabbit ear internal aerials don't work very well, and very badly in a 2 storey house (on the ground floor at least!).

So though we mostly watch stuff that's been torrented, DVDs or bluray, free-to-air digital TV is slowly (veeeery slowly) getting better, and all the TV points will be installed & ready to be used!

Oh yeah - and for everyone who hasn't got to their electrical appointment yet, the standard house comes with 2 TV points and no aerial. The aerial is about $300 or so, and each TV point something like $80+, and you may need a starserve box if you're getting more than 4 points.

T&T