Is it gone yet!?!?

As I said in the last post, the house was off our block one day after it was supposed to be and the block is still not clear.  What are the consequences for construction industry people not doing what they are contracted to do?

Thanks to the Queensland government there is this great website where you can look up the reputation of your licensed builder or tradesman.  The Queensland Building and Construction Commission (previously  known as the QBSA) allows you to punch a tradie... no no no... I mean punch in a tradie/builder/company name and out pops a report.  This report has their turn over, their bad deeds and their rectification record. House removal mate's record showed his turn over was small time but he'd been around for 15 years.  His bad deed record was clean.  Completely clean. The names on the truck weren't matching up with my house guy, and I realised he is not actually a house remover.  He just buys and sells removal homes, subbing out removal work to another company.

The trucks have a different name on them.

After the house was gone, I rang him up every three working days (on average) and asked "When is the rubbish going to be taken away?".  He would say in a couple of days or next week and once mentioned that it had been raining so it was taking a while.  I was getting weary of nothing happening but if I was unreasonable or too disgruntled, he might walk away. Wifey was telling me to calm down.  I was pretty busy at the time and didn't want to deal with sorting out the mess.  I'd previously studied up on this construction agreement stuff and worked out that I should allow reasonable time for rain (it had been quite rainy).

Two and half weeks like this!

Two and half weeks after the "gone by" date (reasonable enough time for rain), I consulted with a solicitor, made a call to the removal guy and spoke the phrases "reasonable time", "in breach" and "recover costs".  He seemed upset (as you would) and told me, that each time I called him, he would call his sub contractor who would then make promises to him.  The very next day (a Saturday) a machine was on site removing rubbish and digging out the old slab.  The following Monday, the machine was gone, without the job being finished.  Of course I made another call and asked politely... "It's not finished, the machine is gone, what's happening?".

Yay!  Machine on site. Nearly finished!

The answer was "The machine sunk in the wet clay... It's started raining, the ground is too wet and nothing can be done until it dries. There is no way it can be surveyed, and there is no way a soil test drill can safely enter the site."

"How long do you think it will take to dry out?"

"Weeks."

Awww... Where did the machine go?

I went and had a look at our land myself... he was right, and here we are... still not ready for our new house.