New Development Royal Canal Park D15

cronos wrote:

Did you get doors between the Kitchen and living room?

Yes. I didn't even know there was an option not to get them. Eventually, we may replace them with sliding doors, but that's years into the future.

Nhol78 wrote:

Bruncvik - In relation to the router having to be in the hall, Did you replace the RJ11 sockets in the other rooms and in the utility room? When you say the only connection he could find do you mean the only socket that was working?

I wasn't present for the installation. But we didn't replace anything before the installer came; in this regard the house was just as provided by the builders. From what I've been told, the installer was testing several cables, including the ones behind the plain plate in the utility rooms. The only ones that worked for him (I assume that means they've had data connection) were in the hallway, so he installed a socket there.

In our experience, our snag list had been completed within 2.5 weeks since the snag. We then had the snagger come again and review all the fixes, and once he's been happy we closed on the house and got the key as soon as the money arrived on the builder's account (in our case that was overnight). So total time was about 3 weeks. Given the total lack or response from the builder since closing, both for information requests and requests for small fixes overlooked during the snagging process, I would advise against closing on the house until you are absolutely happy with its condition.

For those who are interested I learned a little bit more about getting the network set-up in the houses.

The electrician will replace all of the RJ11 (Phone Sockets) with RJ45 (Network/internet) sockets but will not connect them. You need to get another person to do this.

The electrician gave me a contact and i was quoted between 150 - 200 ( Price assumes that the electrician fitted face plates on sockets)euro to get everything live and to have a router in the utility room. This includes being able to have your internet router in the utility room and having the internet cables for the house alarm sorted out.

The reason why some people only have a live socket in the hallway for the internet router it's because none of the others are connected. There is a loop between that live connection and the utility room that needs to be connected to make it all work.

PhoenixParker wrote: »

Yes contact the builders. We haven't had it but a few people have. They're aware of it and fixing it for all houses. In the meantime work out a way to protect your cabinet!

Thank you. I called the office using the number that was recently posted here. Had the building site manager come out and check it. He told me to leave our key at the management office (we already changed our locks; he said they keep spare keys for the original locks at the office), and they'll be doing the entire Phelan Park row of houses on Thursday. He said that the problem only occurs in the en-suite bathroom and is caused by a lack of insulation on the extractor fan tube, which causes the steam to condense before released into air. They'll be adding insulation to these tubes.

He said that they were keeping a set of keys for houses to do minor repairs "until the dust settles". We weren't aware of that, either, but getting a more secure lock right from the start seemed like a good idea.

I lived in this area for years, right beside the canal there with a small 3 year old. It was great, we loved it. There is plenty of space really, I wouldn't consider it a dense area, aside from those developments everything else is greenery, canals and walkways, and behind you is all fields leading into Finglas. Ashtown in general is a quiet trouble free area, you are right beside the train into town etc/ For kids you have a great playground a minute or two walk from that new development, I would bo back no problem.

PhoenixParker wrote: »

Maybe someone who was there can say more.

From what I remember from the meeting:

The heat pump system can be somewhat peculiar for people used to oil/gas heating or storage heaters. The engineer compared it to a refrigerator: it pulls air in, pulls the heat from it, and releases much colder air out. The pump is capable of doing it with air of up to -20C cold. However, the system is not suited for rapid heating: it can heat water by 5 degrees per hour. Due to its design and the energy rating of the houses, though, it never needs to heat by more than that. As a result, there are a few operating procedures that are quite different from older houses:

• Keep the house at a steady temperature - don't turn the heat when leaving, and only marginally lower the temperature when departing for longer. That's cheaper than constant on/off mode.
• Don't mess with the controller in the water heater room. It's set by the installer for maximum efficiency and comfort (Program mode; don't switch to Comfort or Eco mode)
• Don't mess with the controller in the utility room. It serves mainly to turn off or on heating at certain times, which is detrimental to your electricity bill (see first point)
• Use only the thermostats in the house, and fine-tune the temperature in different rooms by adjusting the radiators.
• Don't look for immersion. The water is kept at a constant 50 degrees (once per week, the pump is programmed to heat the water to 80, to kill bacteria). So hot water all day long.
• Once per year, call the maintenance company for annual maintenance. Cost is 120 Euros, but the unit has a 3-year warranty (not sure the maintenance fee is waived for that, though).

The engineer also talked about the most common issues with the unit. According to him and Jason, the building supervisor, most of these issues occur within the first three months of operation; then the unit settles down.

• Air back-up: When air is not drained well from the radiators, it may back up into the pump, the pressure drops to the point where the pump may shut down. When you first move in and turn on the heat, you may hear the air crackling in the radiators; that's normal. If that persists for more than a couple of days, though, you may have that problem. (In our case, the noise stopped within one weekend.)
• Clogging of the filter: This is very common. It's caused by foreign objects (building materials, dust, dirt) introduced into the circulation. It decreases the efficiency of the pump. Cleaning the filter is part of the annual service.

One of the residents complained on the meeting that he called the servicing company, was promised help, but never received it. After two days, the pump started working on its own. Jason suggested that people with heating problems call the builder first, and they can arrange servicing. The engineer also promised that he'd investigate, and this won't be happening again.

That's pretty much all I remembered. Was pretty tired from work, so didn't pay as much attention as I should have. Anyone else, please feel free to correct me or expand on this.

cronos wrote: »

The Heron's on Bridge Avenue is it? What numbers? Just curious which side of the road they are talking about. A couple of months back I was told 20th of January and hadn't received any update since then.

If you are facing the canal I am talking about the left side which are mostly the even numbers. Odd numbers look very much on track for January

I've found this thread very useful so decided to contribute back to it.

House Type: Herron

Snagging:
Floors.
The floor finish was very bad with a series of waves, dips, and humps in the floor. The kitchen people installed the kitchen without making reference to it. However we were lucky that the flooring company we used carried out a full survey of the ground level floors. Some parts of the floor has a height difference of as much as 2cms.

This is expensive and messy to get fixed. From what I've heard this is not something unique to our property either. I don't understand how people on our road are moved in a head of us given the effort involved in getting this sorted.

Kitchen.

Multiple broken drawer runners, missing shelves, wrong tap. We paid extra to get a different finish on the kitchen and although we like it I'd not do it again. The kitchen crowd have been very stressful to deal with and require constant emails and phone calls.

Locks.

I'd seriously recommend replacing the front door and backdoor locks. Not because the builder has a key still but because the locks themselves are vulnerable to several forms of attack.

Vents:
Our engineer pointed out that our property was missing several water drainage vents above doors and windows to the front of the house. I can only imagine this is a problem with all houses.

Bathrooms:
Silicon seal missing in several places. Water pressure from master bedroom on-suite is not super.

Electrics:
If you're interested in under cabinet lighting there is a spur that goes back to a wall switch in the in kitchen.

Paint:
Watch out for paint misses and some small bits of damage in hard to see places. We got the paint details off ballymore and sourced the paint ourselves rather then having the builders back in.

General Thoughts for people buying now:

Make sure you email every request in. We made several requests to the builders such as only pinning the skirting throughout, not installing fitted wardrobes in one room, etc. None where done. I'd say some other house has badly fitted skirting boards and is missing a wardrobe . In the end it came down to whether or not I had things in writing by email.

All doors will need to be cut to allow any reasonable flooring to go in. We didn't request this during the build, and would strongly recommend requesting it. We got the doors cut as the floor was going in and it was just awkward and expensive.

Doors are sprung closing. This is good to maintaining different heating zones and for fire safety but you should think carefully if you have pets or small children as doors will slam shut behind you.

At the end of the day I've found ballymore very decent to deal. Being able to be on site is very important, trying to do things remotely will just lead to miss communications. I'm very impressed with the house. There's been a few issues and delays but this is to be expected. We did our Snaging on the 11th of November and moved in on the 3rd of December, and as said we had numerous issues.

Thank you very much for the summary, Manion. I share your pain in two points: kitchen drawers (extremely poor job - falling off the rails, and quite skewed), and silicone seal. Both of our showers have been leaking in the bottom right corner until I put some silicone there, but it appears I need to be adding more, as they started leaking again. Don't know where the leak is coming from.

As for the locks, that's the first thing we did after we got all contractors out. Unfortunately, we gave a key to the builders for the extractor fan leak fix, and I've been requesting my key back since then (week and a half), with no result.

Other than these annoyances, though, I love our new house. It's warm and cozy. Beats paying 50% more in rent for a cold apartment with storage heaters