Building a new home in Strathtulloh: the stages that decide how it lasts
Most building in Strathtulloh now happens on the estate side of the suburb, in Atherstone and the smaller releases around it, under the Toolern precinct structure plan. Lots are compact, builders are volume operators, and a house can move from slab to lock-up in a couple of months. Speed is not the problem in itself. The problem is that each stage is covered by the next trade within days, so a fault that nobody records on the day is built over and forgotten.
A fast build leaves short windows
On a typical estate build, the steel fixer, frame carpenter, roofer and waterproofer each hand straight over to the next crew. The window to inspect each stage can be a single day. Owners who get a text from the supervisor at each milestone and pass it on to us rarely miss one.
The slab carries the clay
Strathtulloh sits on the basalt plains west of Melbourne, where clay soils shrink and swell with the seasons. The slab is designed for the class in your lot's soil report, and it only performs as designed if the beams are the right width, the steel is at the right height and the vapour barrier is whole.
Frame faults are about load paths
The serious frame items we record are rarely about workmanship you can see from the street. They are a truss landing on a wall that was not designed for it, a bracing rod left out, a garage wall built thinner than the plans. Each is a structural question that has to be answered before the walls are lined.
Wet areas are small details
The membranes in bathrooms and laundries fail at junctions: a 40mm lap that is only 20mm, a bond breaker too thin to flex. These are cheap to fix with the membrane exposed and very expensive once tiles are down.
Handover is not the end
The PCI lists what is left to fix before you pay the final claim. We go into the roof space at every handover, because that is where exhaust ducts, sarking and insulation problems hide.
More about Strathtulloh
- Buying a house in Strathtulloh: estate homes, acreage and what to inspect
- How Strathtulloh is growing: the Toolern plan, the station and the estates
- Building permits, the City of Melton and resolving defects in Strathtulloh
- Strathtulloh soil: basalt plains clay and why slabs and walls move
- Termite risk in Strathtulloh: estate homes, acreage and conducive conditions
- The defects we record on Strathtulloh inspections, stage by stage
- Strathtulloh site conditions: wind, grassland fire and planning overlays
Written by our local inspection team from work carried out in Strathtulloh. Licensed building practitioners, Building & Plumbing Commission registration CDB-U 53425.
