Friday 10 December 2011
Today we had our electrical appointment with YHC - Your Home Consulting. We had the choice between driving down to Springwood (again) or going north to Moffat Beach, and while we were thrilled by the thought of getting stuck in traffic around the city on a Friday arvo, we decided to take the scenic route to the coast.
We should say that we were emailed our 'home work' a week in advance and in typical AM and Dave style we got to it at 10pm the night before. Plantation had given us copies of our basic electrical plan which shows all our standard inclusions (SI). SI includes ONE cheap as chips batten fitting to each room, a power point or two in each room, and one two way switch for the stairs. They do not include anything practical like outdoor lights, power for our AC unit, co-axial for t.v, phone points, fans etc. After all it's only Queensland, who needs AC and fans anyway? We had managed to scribble a few extra lights and fans and switches on the plan which helped, as, in typical Plantation style our 'Consultant' does very little consulting.
For those who haven't built before (clever, clever people!) you have your contract signed and sealed, and then you upgrade your electrics thereby spending more money which you are responsible for, your financier won't pay. Early in the process we had no idea how much upgrades would cost but figured we wouldn't have the cash to splash and so we included an allowance in our contract (in our case 10K) and the bank would then pay for the entire house and we would only have to pay if we went above our allowance.
Our contract presenter claimed most people spend about 2K so she was pretty sure we would come in under budget. DRUM ROLL PLEASE........our electrical upgrades came to $8,968!
And here is the new plan (blue is what is standard/included in price, red is upgrades. No downlight is standard though it just replaces a light point)
