Budget

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Budget

I used 3 main methods to cost and budget our build; I’ve will also be creating a detailed blog post about this topic.

Rawlinsons Construction Cost Guide
Retail and online pricing, plus my experience I have with technology supply chains
Quote from our builder, broken down into 46 categories.

As a general rule, we’ve realistically budgeted this build — I’d rather be pleasantly surprised when something comes in cheaper than shocked by how expensive it actually turns out to be. I won’t publically put our budget here.

The charts and data on this page will update nightly at 10.42pm via a Github scheduled Action, pulling data from Pocketsmith.

Current Budget Status

$21,892 (underbudget)

Savings Target

After 1 of 5 stage completions, my target is a $175,000 savings compared to my original budget.

History

Tip: A positive (green line) number represents a budget savings, and a negative number (red line) is an overspend.

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  title "Build Underspend/Overspend Tracking History"
  x-axis ["2026-08-21", "2026-08-22", "2026-08-23", "2026-08-24", "2026-08-25", "2026-08-26", "2026-08-27", "2026-08-28", "Latest"]
  y-axis "Dollars" 0 --> 127500
  line "savings" [127500 "$127,500", 55606 "$55,606", 55606 "$55,606", 43663 "$43,663", 22400 "$22,400", 22400 "$22,400", 22400 "$22,400", 21892 "$21,892", 21892 "$21,892"]

Detailed Budget Breakdown

Legend:

✔️ = Final spend, no more to spend.
💲 = More to spend.
🤞 = Possibly more to spend, not sure yet, but “fingers-crossed” likely to be under budget still.

Council & Pre-Start

Item	Budget	Actual Spend	Status	Notes
DA Fees	$10,000	$12,256	✔️	This came in higher due to NSW Long Service Levy (Building and construction) that I only found out about after our DA was approved.
Certifier Fees	$4,000	$2,970	✔️
Surveyor	$4,000	$2,200	✔️	Cash job brought this in much cheaper, also did several GCP targets for me for drone usage
Insurance	$10,000	$6,659	✔️	I initially budgeted this based on a pure guess

Foundation & Earthworks

Item	Budget	Actual Spend	Finalised	Notes
Site Cut	$20,000	$11,396	🤞	We saved heaps in this department because I found a local, had a game plan for them and I ensured we didn’t need to move any cut materials offsite.
Drainage, Stormwater	$15,000	$14,600	✔️	This line item was the very first invoice I received from a trade, and boom! I was pretty much bang on
Underslab Insulation	$7,500	$3,507	✔️	I priced on retail, once I setup trade supply - it came in heaps cheaper. I also bought with 20% wastage, and had heaps left over.
Slab-edge Insulation	$7,500			Not purchased yet, but will be way cheaper than budgeted
Hydronic Heating Slab Provision	$16,000	$9,512	💲	Includes pipes, 2x manifolds, floor sensors
Slab Sensors & Monitors	$1,000	$240	✔️	I installed 6x DS18B20 temp sensors

Electrical & Data

Item	Budget	Actual Spend	Finalised	Notes
Conduit & Electrical Pre-Provision	$3,000	$2,776	💲	I did all the conduit myself as electrican was happy for me to do it

Framing, Trusses and Roof

Item	Budget	Actual Spend	Finalised	Notes
140mm External & 90mm Internal Frames
Roof Trusses
Stuctrual Steel & Timber
Rigid Insulation Panels
Sarking & Tapes
Framing Insulation			Foam Gaskets, Tapes, Sealants,etc

Windows, Doors & External Thermals & Weathertightness

Item	Budget	Actual Spend	Finalised	Notes
Thermally-broken Windows	$120,000	$34,600	✔️	I will create an entire blog post just for this line-item, but I managed to get a recommendation and introduction from a local retired architect who has built a passivehaus himself in Hume for thermally broken, double glazed, warm-edge, imported European tilt and turn windows.
Thermally-broken Bifold Doors
External Doors
Internal Doors

Lockup Stage

Item	Budget	Actual Spend	Finalised	Notes

Fixings Stage

Item	Budget	Actual Spend	Finalised	Notes