We're in the news!

Well, not us personally anyway, but The Ponds as one of the newest suburb is.  Here is an article from SMH that compares Sydney: Old vs. New.  There is another mention also in this article.

It's great to see that The Ponds as a new suburb has been getting a lot of mention in the public news and even more so when comparing The Ponds and all the newest suburb around the city with the oldest suburb in the history of Sydney, The Rocks.  The article mention that The Ponds has a lot of places and lots of green grass out and about but The Rocks is just kilometers of paved and concrete all the way with not much grass on it's footpath.  Maybe trees but even comparing The Rocks to a residential suburb, there is not much competition in that department also.

The Ponds is a new suburb with a new living concept.  We were handed a guideline by the developer at the time of purchase and we have to adhere guideline in order to have our house build.  It's a great concept and I don't mind it at all.  I think it's great to have a uniformed design with the other houses in the area. I guess one of the reason is to keep the value of the area at a certain level, which is not a bad thing really.

It will be a massive change of lifestyle for us as a family having to move from where we were living before in the inner west, all the way to the north west.  I can already imagine some of the sentence that I will say when we move in: "It used to take us around 15 - 20 minutes plus 5 minutes walking distance from home to the station.  Now it takes us around an hour to get to work!"  or something to that effect.

I've already mentioned this very same reasoning in one of my early post.  Reading that article made me think and asked myself "Why are we moving to The Ponds?" and at this point I forgot that I've posted the answer before.  I'm glad that the very same reason was still my answer if we were asked that question again.

I guess in addition to that reasoning is the appeal of the community that draws people to the suburb and to the lifestyle that we are longing for.  It's true that I've already met and know our neighbors even before we move in!

My office is situated within 5 steps to The Rocks literally and some of my photography work has also include The Rock as one of my favorite location.   I don't think it's necessary to compare The Rocks and The Ponds or the other new suburb.

The Rocks has it's own historical value also that I quite like it the way it is.  It's true that some of the redevelopment maybe has destroy some of the lifestyle value there.  Something that exist in 1973 (even before I was born!) may not be there anymore.  Having said that some are still there, like the convenience store around the corner near the Australian Hotel.  Or the connecting alley along George St at The Rocks.  I hope the local council can still maintain and keep it's historic value for time to come.

Tips and Tricks: Air Conditioner

In one of my previous post, I mentioned that I will give some reasoning behind our decision to go with Metricon in installing our ducted air conditioner.

For those who have the experience of building a house already, then this post may not be related and you may have already the experience.  However if this is the first time that you are building a house, I can only say then I hope my experience can give you some insights to your building process.

You may have heard from a lot of people and in my case, that the builder charges a margin on any price that they quote to you.  Metricon state clearly in their contract that we signed, there will be about 25% margin on any job or fittings that we ask them to do or to supply.

In theory, I understand the reason why they do this and they do need to make profit out of the job as well.  I don't have any problem with this economic concept and accept the contract as it is.

How does this relate to getting the ducted air conditioning unit from Metricon.

We were recommended by our sales consultant to go with Metricon to install our ducted air conditioning unit.  So that's what we did, we include the air conditioning as an item in our tender documentation with the price of $12,950.  For that price, we are getting the top of the range air cond product, Daikin, so there is nothing wrong with the product.

I called a number of company like Frost Air; Actron Air; Blue Star Air Conditioning and some few others but these guys provided some of the cheapest quote all round.  However out of the three only Frost Air and Actron Air can work of the plan whilst Blue Star Air Conditioning still need to inspect your place before they can provide you with a formal quote.

In my request, I've asked them to provide me with two quotes.  One quote with only providing the air cond unit plus the installation and another quote with the whole lot like installing the ducting, the air cond unit and installation of the unit.

The cheapest quote that I got was from Frost Air and we are getting Fujitsu as the unit.  The price with only providing the unit was $11,500 and with the whole works it was $14,000, which was actually more than what Metricon had charge.

Buying only the unit mean only providing the unit.  It also still mean that your place need to come pre-ducted in order for them to fit in the unit.  Getting Metricon to do the pre-ducted work would cost us $4,000.  Which means if you add that to the price of the unit, it will end up costing a lot more.

I guess you can pretty much sums up that we ended up going with Metricon to install the air cond unit for us.

This however maybe different if you are building a single storey house.  In single storey house:

• you don't need to worry about the ducting going through between the first floor and the ground floor; 
• if there is enough space/void in between the walls; or
• the height of the cavity between the first to the second level.
• price would also be relatively cheaper than two storey house.

You need to take all that into account when making your decision to go external for your air cond.  Unless of course you are going old school and install the wall mounted split air conditioner system, then all of the above doesn't really relate much.

So there you go, another argument to go single storey or double storey and which one is cheaper to have a ducted air conditioning system..