CDM

I've been browsing Porter Davis Homes web-site (www.porterdavies.com.au). Their homes are showcased very nicely.

Does anyone have any experience with this builder? Good or bad?

- CDM

herrchook

Very good friends of ours built with PD and their house is beautiful. They had a problem in the summer with a water leak which was apparently the only prob they've had in the 3 years since it was built and my friend said PD couldn't have helped more to resolve it.

On a more negative note, another friend has only just finished her build and has had no end of delays and gripes with them.

Overall though, from what I've seen (lots of their showhomes and 3 proper homes) I'd say their homes are lovely.

Smartinis

OK, just don't let my OH get started on Porter Davis!!!! We built with them and moved in about 15 months ago and have had nothing but problems from even before day 1 of the build, they forgot or didn't bother to apply for planning permission till the day they went on site and then got rejected due to our house being 2 storey and there being some incorrect statement on the land title. However they had had 4 months to sort this out but hadn't bothered so we had to wait to build. Then we had 3 site supervisors, each of the previous ones quit mid build, it only takes 20 weeks!!!!! and each blamed faults on the one before obviously. They put in the wrong bath, wrong patio doors, wrong windows, forgot to put in the niche in the kitchen and managed to order the wrong front door. There is more to the list but you get the point. All were put right before hand over but the stress was amazing and only corrected because we were close by and visited often to notice. We could wander round and look (along with all the neighbours because even after lock up it was always open!!!!!). On the day of hand over they still had to put 3 coats of paint on the stair well and didn't have time to clean the place, they came a week after we moved in!!! The paint work was shody to say the least and defintitely not show home qualilty as we had been promised. Our son had a bath and the water leaked through the theatre room ceiling (full of electrics) as their so called plumber hadn't connected the trap on the bath properly, its only a plastic fitting for goodness sake. It took them 6 weeks to come and fix it, during which time we couldn't use the main bathroom. Then they had to cut a hole through the bedroom wall to get access to the bath as it was tiled in and they said they probably couldn't match the tiles!! On the day the plumber never showed up so the carpenter fixed the bath as he got fed up with waiting to fix the wall!!!!!. Then in December we had the Termite inspection company round for their annual inspection to keep up the warrenty and they said that PD hadn't cut the plastic back on the slab and so it was ineffective, great when you have a 2 storey house made of wooden frame!!!!. So we had to have a new trench dug right round the house so that it could be redone which of course meant digging up flower beds, path and of course our brand new laid alfresco!!!!! I am not normally one to winge but we really got a Friday job house, others on the estate building single story have been fine but beware they don't all come out looking like the show homes. I think sometimes it really is a matter of luck, we obviously didn't get it!!

ukecadet

At the end of the day it's all down to the tradesman you end up with on your job.
Unfortunately you have no control over that and it's a bit of a lucky dip.
Any house that I've worked on has been spot on.I've seen other jobs and they have been shocking.Different standards ,yet we're both working for the same builder.
My advice.When you go ahead with a build, be on the supervisors back and check progress as often as possible.You wont be popular but if the supervisor thinks your a pain in the arse he'll put his best trades on the job.Good luck.

magic.no7

i wont go on about any good or bad builders but class them all as bad, if youre going to spend alot of your hard earned money ask them for 4 jobs they have ongoing at the mo and call in on spec, at least you can see how their jobs are ran and what standards their tradies work to. Trouble is when things get tight builders give work to tradies that work for a cheaper price, and when its busy the better tradies are then hard to find. As cadet says the diff can be shocking, i've seen jobs happily finished that wont last a year, and if the supervisor is a gobshite then things get left ie bath wastes.
Good luck

Dorothy

That's good advice. We're living in a fairly new area so see how the houses around us are being constructed. There are some builders we would never touch and others who seem to be doing a very good job.

Take a drive around the estate where you plan to build and look at other homes your builder is currently building. It should give you some idea of what kind of workmanship they put up with.

CDM

I think this is true of wherever you build. When we built our home in Florida, we had a terrible on-site supervisor, which meant that we effectively supervised the build ourselves. I was in the face of the site foreman every day and he eventually put a new supervisor onto our house.

I went to the house every day during the construction with a video camera, notepad and spirit level. All the trademesn knew that their work was being watched closely and we 'caught' a number of things that would not have been noticed after the house was finished.

Slipping the trademens a few dollars here and there was very useful and we got lots of extras done that way that would not have been allowed through the official route (extra power outlets, insulation, etc.).

We found that there was a genuine distinction between builders as far as overwal quality was concerned. I'm just trying to figure out how far up or down the scale of quality PD sits. I'm blown away by their web-site and how the show-case their homes and I'm trying to decide if I should go with them or not.

- CDM