Tender Appointment

We met with our tender presenter at Eden Brae Head Office in Baulkham Hills to review and discuss the fixed price package inclusions, the block, as well as our specific upgrades. 

The tender agreement falls part of your contract, so it's important to get as much detail locked down as possible, specifically structural changes. Eden Brae advise no more structural changes can be made past this appointment. A little daunting when you're trying to decide 18 months out! 

We had quite a list of upgrades and wall movements to work through during the tender appointment. Most of which we had costs for already, except for all the wall movements. I have detailed all upgrades and corresponding costs in a separate post 'Our Upgrades'. We also made sure that nothing had fallen off the list between our sales meeting and the tender, thankfully it was all there. 

Despite knowing your final contract price, don't be fooled! Your contract price doesn't include all the additional upgrades which happen at the colour selection appointments. We made small provisional allowances in our contract which means we could borrow some money from the bank without being too out of pocket at the end.

We had prepared a list of questions which we worked through during the tender. It was interesting to note that if we didn't ask then the presenter wasn't proactively highlight any watch points or things to consider...

For example; we were told we'd have a water tank included in the price (BASIX requirement), which was great to hear, and then we moved onto the next line item. We stopped and asked for more specifics around the water tank such as the size, style and location as this was not part of our drawings. We discovered the 3,000L above ground water tank was a round tank and was going to be positioned at the back of the home between the laundry door and our fixed glass window in the dinning room, which would cause us two problems; 1) it's an eyesore 2) if we wanted to install a ducted air conditioning system we'd have nowhere to put the outdoor unit. We then looked at upgrading to a slimline water tank so that we could position it around the side of the home along the fence line, however this option was a no-go because of the size of our block and minimum setback requirements. Our last option was to investigate an underground water tank which was an option we pushed for verses being offered to us in the first instance. I now wonder what would of happened if we didn't stop and ask the question? 

During the tender we also learnt that we'd have a 900mm (high) retainer wall approx. 1m from the back of the home, all the way across the block! This was a result of the slope of the land and that they need to cut and fill in order to lay the slab. When we first visited the block it was surrounded by fencing and had to be viewed from a distance, and still you were only guessing because nothing was pegged out. In actual fact we thought our block was flat. So as you can appreciate this was not good news! It means extra money (outside of the contract) for retaining blocks and additional excavation! We wish we had of known about this prior! 

At the end of our two hour meeting we processed the $2,500 tender presentation fee and locked in our contract appointment. Another step closer, happy customers!   

Here is our floor, elevation and site plan: 

Floor Plan

Elevation Plan

Site Plan