For a long time we have feverishly awaited the 04th of October, because we thought, finally it starts! But the total disillusionment came during the week and had already been apparent before. The site manager, whose name and cell phone number we were given by Viebrock in a side sentence of a letter with a different subject, was extremely difficult to reach. And by “extremely” I mean: several calls and e-mails to the requested address as early as five weeks before the start of construction were simply not answered. We were to find out later – and this is the sticking point at the moment – that our construction manager was in charge of 37 (!) parallel construction sites. Staff shortage and construction boom show their (after-) effects also here. We are anything but thrilled, of course. Especially because the only information we had about the start of construction between the last contact with the building application department and today was that there would still be a so-called “staking date”.

What happens at the staking date?

So you meet with the site manager at the property and he carries off where the corners of the house and in our case of the also considered garage would be. In addition, the site manager comes by for a chat and briefly discusses with the site manager in which corner of the plot there could be storage space for materials, etc. The height of the house in relation to the street is also discussed.

In addition, the height of the house in relation to the street is discussed again. This was very relevant for us, because it was initially determined that our house would be 50 cm “higher”, i.e. we would not have a ground-level entrance, but would have to climb at least two steps to the front door. However, this was impractical for us, because the garage should have later seamlessly connected to the wall to the front door and we also want to create a terrace on the flat roof of the garage. In addition, the planned side entrance door leads into the garage, which would have then also only led from the garage level to the first floor level via steps. Plus, the garage would have had to be unnaturally high to allow access to the roof from the upper floor as well with as few steps as possible.

In our case, we had noticed the height issues shortly before we submitted the building application. We honestly had a lot of question marks over our heads when we first saw the detailed plans and construction drawings. And in the meantime there are 37 versions with abbreviations, icons and details that we only understood.

The topic of building electricity and water was also brought back to our minds at the stake-out meeting. More about this in the following article…

In addition, a short satisfaction survey on the previous support at Viebrock is carried out (“Rate in school grades the consultants with whom you had to deal in advance.”) and you are still sent all kinds of material, which also contains not insignificant information.

It’s best to make notes room by room and store them in a central location so you can recall all the details before you move in.

Our recommendation

Thus, some relevant information is included, such as about the kitchen, but it is almost lost because there is so much material in pdf form. On the wall of the kitchen unit, for example, a silicate coating is recommended, only under this condition Viebrock will later take complaints, if there should be any because of moisture, wetness or the like. Of course, this is not included in the painting package…