Dwinsplace

I suspect that Storage heaters have been around for much longer and so its more well known. Gas heaters by comparison are only gaining some popularity in recent years I believe. Could it also be that the discrepancy between the electricity and gas tariffs were not as great before? So people didn't need to consider an alternative? Previously the competition seemed to be between instant electric vs storage and once you factored in the ability of storage tanks to provide hot water to more than one location, then the option becomes alot clearer. I went to CItygas today as I mentioned and there was a guy there who was very helpful and passionate about sharing information on gas heaters. Here's what I learnt in a breakdown: 1. He's not actually fully certain if gas will save money in your utility bill. If both instant electric and gas consumes the same amount of power then yes, gas will save. However, there could be electric models that have lower energy demands. Also he admits that there could be water wastage issues with gas. And gas would still consume SOME electricity either with a battery for ignition, or the newer AC powered models. AC power on standby 24/7 will drain about $1.50 on your utilities a month at current rates he says. 2. It should have more water pressure than an instant electric. The flow rate is higher and there is also the pressure from the normal cold water adding to it. 3. It can provide hot water to more sources than an instant electric. You just need to run pipes to each area. 4. There have been no cases of gas leaks to date. 5. Installation can be done in a few hours. UNLESS you have existing kitchen furniture, in which case they need to conduct a site visit to see if they can run the gas pipe within safety regulations. 6. Macro is the most common and best reviewed brand they have. Ferrolli is newer but has more complaints.

Black track lights look great! From taobao? Are they e27 bulbs?

It's been a joy to read. You have a knack for breaking things down really well. I'm currently investigating gas heaters. I'm at triple one Somerset having a coffee before I head into city gas actually. Will see if I have anything interesting to share after the experience. LED lights was also something I'm very interested in, but now that I hear about the driver issues, it might require a bit more research as well. I was also wondering, when you guys do reno with an ID, but choose to DIY/ supply your own materials for various bits cos you can get it cheaper; don't the IDs just inflate another area with the money they were supposed to make on the first aspect?

beautiful layout. Very square and spacious. And our design ideas and inspirations are very similar! hahaha. Will be following your progress! We are also looking for kitchen stuff etc. Heard that fujioh brand is very good so well done! I think furniture is even more confusing than electronic appliances just because of the sheer amount of choice. And now you can go to big shops, small ulu shops, custom make, taobao, amazon. OMG.

Thanks so much for the review kaykay!! Good to know that there are real savings to be had. For my layout, I believe that the pipes can be very short also, so waiting time should be about 10s I'm guessing. The fear of leaks were actually more from future nailing of things into the walls or small hacking for whatever reason and then unknowingly damaging the pipes. Or are all the gas pipes exposed? I totally feel your hatred of waking up earlier than you have to just to wait again. Haha! I guess whatever system we pick, we learn to shape our lives around the problems too. Like how you shampooed first. Lol. Good luck with your new flat!

This is really smart! And the holes in the vanity too! I've been wondering about whether a remote control's signal can pass through louvres! Thanks for answering that! Now I can hide all my gear.

Sim lim and adelphi are definitely scary places to go when you're clueless. But its a bit like visiting a high end furniture showroom. Good to browse and ask questions and find out your options. Alot of those guys there are just really passionate about sound and are happy to share some info. I've been there myself as a clueless noob and I've found them to be very sincere people. A number of them even directing me to other stores where they felt I would better find what I wanted. But that said, NONE of their systems are cheap. I think a basic 5.1 there will be 2.5-3K. And its SOOO easy to be poisoned somemore into Upping your budget further to 3-4K after seeing and listening to what they have. (thats what happened to me. sigh) The most impt thing I learned though? Know what you want the system for. Movies or music. Music means you want amps and speakers that will give you the colour you like for the music you like. Most people prefer warm mellow sounds for this. Movies means you need an AVR instead of an amplifier and speakers that are maybe less mellow and more sharp so that you can hear crisp dialogue and effects. And probably a subwoofer too for oomph. I saw a later post where you were debating between a bulky AVR and a sleek soundbar. Really good soundbars will exceed normal speakers, but generally the "soundspace" or "soundstage" created will be smaller unless you have sidewalls nearby for the sound to bounce off and back to you. Looks wise, no full 5.1 system with AVR will ever look as clean. But that can always be hidden in a TV console. At the end of the day, LISTEN before buying. No 2 speakers will sound exactly the same. So find a few that you like the design/ price for, listen to them, and then decide. Hope you have fun!! Oh by the way, which ID did you go with in the end?

Been quiet for a while on the blog. Mainly because we are still waiting on some IDs to get back to us. So far still lacking that spark, but to be fair we have only seen the proposal of 2 IDs. Due to work commitments the wife and I found that we actually had very few dates that coincided with the IDs to meet up. Oh well, hopefully settle things by the 2nd week of may. But I hope to start work on the 2nd week of june! So things are a leeetle tight. heh. What i've been researching lately though, is water heating systems for the toilets! I know I can't wait 5 mins for water to heat up so storage systems are out already. My family home has been using that system for years and years and what would happen is I would turn on the heater, and since I had to wait, I would go off and read a book, watch a sitcom or something and before you knew it an hour would have passed of wasted electricity. No no. What I need is to have hot water at the flip of a switch. So I've boiled it down to instant electric, and instant gas (from citygas) and here are my thoughts on them both. Ecofriendliness: Gas will be better since its a more direct conversion of energy into what I need. Instead of Gas to Electricity to Heat. Looks: Tough fight here. Gas allows me to use a nice shower mixer system (which can be costly) but I will also have the ugly exposed hot and cold water pipes from the heater into the toilet. Electric tends to look like a box in the toilet and I think I'm forced to use the shower systems they come with. But I will be saved from the mess of pipes. Cost: Tough fight here too. Initial outlay for electric should be about 200 for each toilet. Gas should be about 300 to service both but I will still have to fork out shower systems and piping works, so gas will most likely be more expensive in the end. In the long run though, gas is supposed to save money on the utility bill! But then I read that the burner only starts when you turn on the shower and so you have to leave the shower running for about 10sec before you received hot water. 10 sec doesn't seem like a lot? Just stop reading now, pretend that you're turning on the shower and then count to ten. It's quite a lot of water being wasted. Some people suggest gathering the water in a pail for manual flushing etc, but it seems like too much work to save a few cents that might actually still be wasted on extra water. Misc concerns: Gas leaks. Not heard of this happening yet, but the prospect is scary. Fire being blown out by winds and suddenly getting cold water. I hang clothes where the heater will most likely go and what if clothes touch the burner? It seems like I'm leaning towards electric at this point. Less unknowns I suppose. Would anyone care of throw in personal experiences/ reviews on either of the systems?

Yeah thats exactly what we are hoping for! So evorich says retail is $7.50, but I'm hoping IDs can actually get it for $6.50 and then maybe take a cut on top of that so I hopefully still pay less than 7.50psf *cross fingers*

This is an awesome review on Kompacplus! Thank you! Nice to see how it holds up to stains and scratches. Would love to hear how your gas heater performs too. I've read that the piping is a mess and that it takes alot (10 secs) of running water before you actually get hot water. So I was wondering if the savings I get from gas vs electricity will wind up in the excess water instead. I was very tempted by it cos of the cost and the green factor though. And it will allow me to use pretty showers instead of having to go with whatever the instant electric heater comes with.

The fair itself was so so. A lot of beds, a small selection of sofas. Some IDs and very small booths for unique things like lights and solar film and the pulley thing you use to hang your clothes. What we did see and like were the blinds though! Our first booth said there were 2 types of wooden blinds. Compressed wood and PVC which was more for the outdoors. Quoted us $10psf and said a big spiel about how he's aware of the competitors price but wants to give us the best etc etc. Wife was keen but we both decided to look around more. Second booth, similar product. 5 year warranty vs 3 years in previous place though and price range was exactly the same. But mechanism when I tried it felt stiff and wasn't smooth. American system he says but made in Singapore. Last booth was a company called Wink Curtains. Same spiel but less bull**** promises. He had 2 interesting things though. First, he introduced another type of wooden blind called solid plywood. He says you see the grain and the natural wood a lot more. We did see it the grain but he's making it sound like its a solid plank of wood, which can't be true. Plywood is still compressed plys of wood. And secondly, his mechanism was from Germany and while it only has 3 years warranty, it felt much much better. I trust German engineering. . We thought, all the price points are the same. If we put a deposit with this guy, we get 3 options of solid ply for $12psf, compressed for $10psf and PVC for $9psf. Instead of just 2 options with the other two booths. So we went for it! We are very sure we will use blinds anyway. Estimated quote for the whole house of about 3 half height windows and 1 floor length one is about $3.2k

Thanks for the tip songz! We went to the fair really late and when we asked evorich to bring down to $6, they said the material cost has gone up and it won't be possible. Maybe we are just lousy with bargaining. Anyway hearing that we decided to head to check out innovar. They had already closed tho! But my wife wasn't to be deterred. She picked up a brochure and called the boss at the late hour to question him on the product haha! Basically, according to the boss, innovar feels exactly the same as evorich. Just as noiseless etc. just that they have a thicker protective coating (by 2mm) and it's also anti bacterial. What I REALLY like about evorich is the lifetime warranty for both structural AND workmanship. I think that's really faith in your product and I feel assured with that. My problem now is that evorich told me they need at least 200sqft of flooring to give that price. It's not much, but I'm not even sure if the design will use her for whether tiles and cement will suit it better. But I'm pretty sure it will be cheaper to get it from them than to get it from the IDs.

Hey troublemaker! I shortlisted them primarily based on their past work. Whether they had a design aesthetic similar to mine. If a designer is naturally geared to like modern finishes with baroque furniture, then he will most likely keep shifting back to that during the design process and the look he generates for me might be a bit more 'forced'. I've read through a ton of TBlogs and its been really helpful! thats why I'm trying to post and give back a little.

Hey Puggy, The anthony gallos are available online (but you need a freight forwarder from the US) or Artcoustic at adelphi who is their distributor in singapore. I can't remember exactly what artcoustic quoted me, but it was about 300-400 SGD more. My system is 3 Adivas in front, 2 Micro nucleus at the back and a TR1 subwoofer. Including shipping, singapore tax and a rough currency conversion, I paid about $3150 for the lot of them. Adding on $750 for a mid range AVR and a little bit for cables, I would have spent $4K on the entire system. But please note: I got the stainless steel speakers cos they looked better and that cost me an additional S$300

Oh note to fellow bloggers! There is the BIG FURNITURE FAIR going on at the expo from now till the 27 April (sunday). I know a lot of guys are into HERF and I just spoke to them at their showroom. They told me that they will be having a sale for the duration of the fair. Normal price of HERF: $7:50 psf. Sale price: $6:50 psf! Best part, you only give $500 deposit to lock in the price and you can tell them later whether you want it only for one room or for the whole house. And you can select the colour later too. I'm DAAAAAMN tempted to lock myself in also but I'm not even sure if I'm gng to use HERF or just tile/ cement screed the whole way! ARGH! Thankfully i've already ruled out laminates cos i don't like to hollow noise and plasticy feel. From what I felt of HERF at the showrooms, it really is very nice. Warm. Less plastic like and the texture on the planks actually match the printed wood grain textures. Unlike some laminates I saw where the indents for grain where anyhow one and didn't coincide with the printed pattern at all! Also, I went to a number of furniture shops along Upper paya lebar today and a few of them are having sales now too! Grafunkt, OM, Lifestorey, Marquis. All have. But all were pretty expensive to begin with except maybe OM. I might go back there for a sofa... $1500 for a big L shaped sofa seems reasonable. Sadly I LOOOVE the grafunkt designs but the price tags. I've never had numbers hurt me so badly.... I've already had at least 1 meeting with all the IDs I had initially shortlisted. So far every one of them have some shortcoming and I'm waitin for the 2nd (or in some cases 3rd) meeting to see if the shortcomings can be overcome. Sigh. Wondering if I should go and meet more IDs. I mean, this is my dream... so I should find one that makes me go "YES!" right? As compared to just "...can lah". Hmmm....

Hey El Loco, Yeah I will be getting my ID to run the wiring to the rear speakers for me. That's the only thing that needs to be installed really. The rest is just connecting wires to the AVR and then turning on. Some audio shops will offer to install for you for about $100. But since i'm happy to connect the wires myself, and I have an ID to run the wires to the back, I thought it wasn't worth it. I assume you mean buy more speakers for the Sonos? The whole idea of it is wireless music so yes you can pipe in music to your toilet or any other room really as long as you have a power point there for the speaker. I haven't tested it in an actual house so i don't know if it works well in areas of your house where the wifi signal is weak. Hope it helps a little!

Here's a very brief review of the more notable speakers that I auditioned. 1. Sonos Soundbar. Great for tech geeks that love the wireless aspect of it. Clean and minimalist and if you pair it up with a wireless bridge, you can a large number of speakers to it. Place 2 at the back for effects. Place 1 in the kitchen for music as you cook. Place 2 in the study for when you read. Each speaker would need its own power point for power but everything can be remotely controlled by your IPad/ smart phone thats connected to your home network. You can group the speakers together and SIMULTANEOUSLY play up to 12 different tracks on 12 different groups of speakers. So you could have a movie going in the hall, and music in the study all at the same time. Pretty cool eh? Only down side? I think it sounds like crap for a 4K system. (includes soundbar, wireless bridge and 2 satellite speakers) sonos 2. Bowers & Wilkins 685: After the Sonos, this sounded like a dream! They played Adele's Someone like you and I could hear the warm tremble in her voice. The placement of all the instruments around her voice. It was thick without being muddy. Immersing you in the song. Even when I airplayed my downloaded music from my phone, the bass from the dance tracks were carried off well without a need for a woofer. And when I played jazz, the speakers excelled! Beautiful sound for a understandably high price of 4K for a 5.1 system. Sadly, just looks like... well... speakers. Nothing visually interesting. 3. Cabasse IO2These are french made and I only found them cos I googled "interesting audio speakers" and I have never heard of them before. Obviously what drew me was the looks. On that wooden stand it looks almost like a sculpture. So beautiful! So i went to listen to them in Adelphi and they couldn't do a full 5.1 set up but I heard it as a 2.1. The sound was terrible also. Clarity and all that was fine. A bit thin compared to the B&Ws but what I couldnt stand the most was the very very small sweet spot. What that means is that there is ONE position at which this will sound good. Move to get a glass of water, or simply move to the next seat, and you will hear one speaker or the another cut off. Or you will only hear the woofer. Or you won't hear the woofer at all. I suspect that the concentric design of the speakers resulted in a very specific line of sound and therefore also very specific areas where the sound from both speakers cancel each other out. Needless to say, it was a no go. 4. Anthony Gallo satellite speakers I only heard about this from one of the shops in Adelphi. They had bought a second hand high end Reference AV set for half the price and asked me if I was interested. The set was originally worth about 8K, looked to be in decent condition and so I was quite keen! Unfortunately when they were connecting the speakers I noticed that they had some issues with one of the jacks. They said it was fine but second hand electronics without warranty and dodgy connections started to sound a lot less appealing. Besides, the front and side speakers were far too large for my house. Can you imagine 3 of these framing your tv set?? reference AV Thankfully though, it led me to research Anthony gallo's other products and they have this super sweet satellite range. The size of a grapefruit and perfectly spherical. Beautifully cast in stainless steel (or black/white) and just beautiful. Of course, after the cabasse I was a bit scared of concentric designs so i went to their singapore store and had a listen, and its good!! No problems when I moved all over the room. Could hear dialogue and effects with a deep rumbly bass. The music isn't as mellow and the B&Ws but I've learnt that for small speakers, these were pretty damned good. It also helped that I could get the entire set for about $500 less than its competitors if I ordered online. So thats what I got! ... that and a speaker sized hole in my wallet. haha. Gallo micro

Now for that post on audio! I'm not really an audiophile. I download most of my music and I don't spend hours with my eyes closed and my ears enclosed in a set of high end headphones. But I do appreciate decent sound. I like to be able to pick out the different instruments and where they are on the soundstage. I like to be able to hear movie dialogue clearly and feel the effects whizz past me and the explosions rumble through my seat. I distinctly remember when I was a teenager, I went into the Bose showroom at plaza sing and just sat in for a presentation for fun. They put us in a dark room and played a video about the history of sound and its production and about how size used to equal power and performance (bigger is better). They had these 2 HUGE speakers about my height in the room and you could feel a physical wall of sound coming out of them, and the music just got louder and louder. And then at this point, the salesman comes in and moves the 2 huge speakers and you see that they are just empty boxes. What was really making all that sound was just these 2 teeny tiny jewel cube speakers and i was like . And I told myself, someday I would get them... That day had come! And despite what my audiophile friends told me about bose, I decided to go and try it. I mean, they are so beautiful and discreet! Unfortunately, and no offence to the guys who own Bose, after the audition I felt that my friends were right. The quality of the sound simply wasn't worth the $4.5k price tag! I was sad... So i hit the mecca of all things audio, Adelphi. And after listening to a ton of stuff, including Sonos, B&Ws, Q Acoustics, Cabasse, Pioneer and a few others, I learnt a few things. 1. Size does matter. A tiny satellite speaker will never sound as round or as complete as a floor stander in the same quality class. 2. Music and movie theatre concerns are totally different. The first asks for a more mellow, warmer sound. Whereas movie effects tend to come off better with speakers that are brighter and more tinny. The former are also cheaper! 3. Looks come at a very hefty price. Especially if you want the speakers to not really look like speakers. If you get what I mean. In the end (after like 5 visits to adelphi) I decided that since this system was gng to be used in the hall, movies would be the main concern. And since it's such a common area, looks factored very highly for me too. So I picked a US brand called Anthony Gallos that had just what I wanted. I got the higher end A'Diva range for the front 3 speakers because thats where most of the sound and movie dialogue is from. Also, if I play music normally, only the front 2 speakers will be used since I don't download 5.1 music. Then I got the lower end Micro Nucleus which sound considerably brighter for the rear 2 speakers so that I can hear all the whizzy effects. And buying online saved me about $300 compared to buying from adelphi! Now its currently being shipped to me. heh. Can't wait to get them even though I don't have space to keep them at the moment. haha. Downside was that I had set out to spend about 2-3K on the entire system. Now I'll be spending just under 4K for everything including cables and AVR. If this is a sign of my tendency to scale up during purchasing, i'm doomed for the rest of the reno.

My wife and I keep very different schedules. I work shifts and she has regular 9-5 hours so we actually don't spend ALOT of time together. What we love to do though is cook and bake together and so the kitchen will be playing a fairly central role in our renovations. The other thing is to lounge together on the couch with a glass (or three) of wine and a good movie. Currently we have an old 32" tv with one USB input and one HDMI input so I've been downloading movies and playing it through the USB. It wasn't ideal though. More often than not, there will be buffering issues with a large sized video file, subtitles couldn't be seen, and the TV speakers just couldn't handle the soundtrack. And then one day, my portable HDD crashed! So I had no way of porting the movies over except for a 256MB thumbdrive. Barely enough for a 30min sitcom. So we haven't been watching movies together at home and I kinda miss it so I set out to come up with a new plan for the new home that would enable even my tech-phobic wife to access movies/serials from the hall anytime we want. With a proper sound system to boot! Did a bit of research and found that my best option was to have a media player with dedicated internal HDD so that I could download on my computer, pump the files over to the media player and just have it on hand next time. Some people suggested using AppleTV or similar to just stream the movie from my computer but then I'd have to purposely go into my study, turn on my computer, play the file, and then run out to join my wife on the couch in the hall. I felt that the first solution was neater and also more energy efficient cos I wouldn't need to leave my computer on the whole time. A friend recommended Popcorn hour A400 vs my suggestion of the common AC Ryan HD3. After watching a few reviews online for the popcorn hour, i was fairly sold. High end visual and audio chipsets, a sleek metal frame and internal HDD slot. Supports all the codecs you need and also supports 3D videos. What I liked the most was that it has an internal bittorrent client so that I could let it do the downloading and turn my computer off! Even more energy efficient! Then I found out that AC Ryan could do pretty much the same thing with 2 things better. 1. The user interface for AC Ryan is sleeker 2. It's available from a store in Sim Lim. Popcorn hour as far as I know is not sold in singapore. If I'm not wrong, it originates from the philippines (I'm sorry but that country isn't really known for its electronics) and can only be bought from online sites for singaporeans. Popcorn wins out in capabilities, but ease of purchase and price made me pick AC Ryan in the end. So I've now bought it, plugged it in and I'm happily downloading 4GB bluray stuff with it! After playing with it a little while though, I found that it's not without its flaws. 1. The internet apps and capabilities are slow and somewhat difficult to navigate. You really need a keyboard and a mouse to effectively use it. The remote has odd buttons that aren't marked and you really do need to fiddle about with it to navigate. Till now I can't search for stuff on google via my TV. 2. The Movie Jukebox function is nice. It automatically finds movie thumbnails or album art for your music, along with director rating and plot summaries etc. Problem is, you need to install it on your computer and it requires a bit of setting up. I also can't get it to work properly at this point but i suspect thats because I always don't download the .nfo file in the bittorrent in order to save a bit of space. heh. 3. The interface is sleek but requires you to click quite a few times to get where you want to go. For instance: Main menu -> file manager -> internal HDD -> the movie you want. It's early days yet and maybe i'll find a way to optimise the system for my own use but I really like it! I have also bought a speaker system to complement the home theatre experience but I'm running out of time now and so I'll blog about it later. Haha. Imported from the US somemore... man when I get obsessed, its crazy. My wife says its endearing but I think she's secretly scared. lol

Haha yeah I know. The black frames, the solid plank counter top, the craftstone wall..... the bills will be scary! But thats what mood pics are for. To paint the dream before the quotation brings me crashing down to reality. Haha. I'm sure we will find a way to make some of it happen though! ....Maybe i just won't have any furniture in the house.

Super cool edgy sink that I have no idea where to find: image Clean, but raw at the same time. image image This one is just raw, but I LOVE it. Honestly not sure if I can LIVE in it? But the shot strikes a deep chord inside of me. image We're currently meeting up with different IDs and I'll blog about the experience after we decide on one. Think it will give you all a much clearer and more concise feel of what we experienced. What I will say though is that we are really excited so far! Looking forward to posting more as well.

Phew! Finally learnt how to embed the photos! That took about 20 mins of clicking and deleting... Thankfully, the wifey and I have similar tastes. We both like clean lines and a neutral colour palette of greys, whites and blacks with a bit of brown thrown in. (I love natural wood) She enjoys the slightly scandi look, while I prefer the rawness of the industrial designs. The combination of which I found is really popular on this forum! So we've had plenty of inspiration to draw from and here's a few pics of what rocked our socks. This is a motorcycle cafe in sydney called Deus Ex Machina. Not only are their coffees good, they also do custom bikes right there in the store! This one is an apartment in taiwan that I ripped off a fellow blogger: Toilet with black, white and woods: image You see where I'm going with this....: image