snoozee

might not be the case. piling would be needed to create new support for the upper storeys since the existing foundation won't be able to support the new upper storeys when the first storey is retained. my thought is that the new piled foundation is solely only for the new storeys and not joined to the existing one (I may be wrong on this though) since there's no way to dig big enough holes in the ground for footings or do a raft foundation since the existing foundation is in the way. but if the soil conditions are good enough and the house can be built on footings or raft foundation, then there's no need to do piling at all for a complete new built. I think what TS should do now is to engage a PE, then get a soil investigation company in to perform the soil investigation for the land. then from there determine if piling would be required or not. of cos if the house is located in a well known estate with low lying area with marine clay soil, then most likely need to do piling. but even then, within these type of estates, there are higher areas which have good soil which need not do piling at all. So paying 3k for the SI report is important before the start of the project planning.

you are not going to save 300k on retaining the existing structure. if you are lucky and your house is in a area where there is good soil, you may escape with just doing footings or a raft foundation. this could save you maybe close to 100k from doing piling. to do fencing instead of build brick walls as boundary wall will mean quite a bit of savings as well. opt for those mid-range or lower ranged sanitary ware. a $300 toilet bowl compared to a $1k toilet bowl means $700 savings. multiply that by say 6 toilets will mean about $4k in savings. don't splurge on smart switches, etc. do normal ones which are non-designer stuff opt for half height tiling for toilets unless necessary like in shower areas. you save on the cost of tiles and labour for tiling. but still need to pay for plastering and painting which is still cheaper than tiling. for flooring, marble would be most expensive. getting big homogeneous tiles for living room will look good as well. if you like hard wood floor for rooms, get parquet instead of engineered wood. else just do tiling as well for the rooms. light fixtures can order online from China. can save quite a substantial amount as well though you may need to pay the electrician to install them since your main-con can't earn from this. for ceiling fans, no need to buy those $400 and up DC fans when a $200 AC fan will perform the same job. unless you want to splurge $3k on a 84 inch Haiku fan to make your house look grand, else getting a few normal ceiling fans or standing fans will also work. the ducting for ducted aircon will cost much more than the aircon unit itself. get ceiling cassette units to save on the cost. if you can live with exposed beams on the ceilings, tell your main-con or PE that you do not want to have false ceilings and ask the PE to design flat beams instead. a normal beam will be about 500mm to 600mm thick whereas a flat beam will be about 300mm to 400mm thick. no false ceilings = $$$ saved for the roof structure, can ask the PE to design using steel columns and beams instead of RC. then do a metal roof. this will cut the construction time as well as lower the cost a bit. sliding windows are cheaper than casement windows. no need to pay extra for low emission glass as normal glass will work. if want to block out the sun, do solar films later on. doing normal metal railings will be much cheaper than glass railings. anyway, there's many things that can be done to cut costs. how much the house costs eventually really depends on how much you want to splurge on the finishes. by cutting down on the luxury finishes, you can save quite a bit of costs on the construction.

Don’t think you can save much from a reconstruction vs a rebuilt. You need to put in new piles either way and there won’t be much cost difference. The cost of the actual building structure is maybe 15% to 20% of the entire project cost. So conserving the original 1st storey structure won’t save you much compared to if you are doing a reconstruction for an existing 2 storey house. let’s say you can save 50k from conserving the 1st storey. But the existing structures prevent you from the ideal design layout you have for the first storey. Would you spend this 50k to get your ideal house or save on it now but end up thinking “what if I had just spent that 50k initially“ in future

since it's a single storey, there's not much value to keep the existing house and do a reconstruction since there's nothing much you can reuse and you are still subjected to the constraints of the existing structure. it is faster to demolish an entire house than to pick and choose what needs to be demolished. also with the house gone, it would be easier to do the foundation and soil prep including termite treatment. 1.5M for a 2.5 storey detached house sounds reasonable assuming is all in already.

FYI, PE is Professional Engineer. which part of the grille you want to change? top or bottom of both? the top part seems to be just screwed onto the beam and walls so changing that should not be a problem. the bottom part is cast inside the concrete kerb so you can't change that. if your neighbours have the same bottom grille, it means it was installed by HDB during the construction and this is meant to be a safety barrier and not to be removed. if you want to remove this grille, you need to get a PE to redesign a new safety barrier and/or change your bottom windows to laminated safety glass which is compliant and can act as a barrier.

many old houses are not built up to the max allowed foot print so it's not uncommon to see a big unsheltered backyard area for old landed houses. some owners over the years had covered up the backyard areas with some even covering up to the boundary (not legal). for you to extend the back and at the same time do so for the upper storey would mean new structural components like underground footings/beams/columns etc. if the soil condition is poor, piling is needed. honestly speaking, to spend so much money to extend 1m of space is not worth it. after factoring in the walls thickness, you may get less than 1m of added space. cost wise, better go and talk to a builder to get some estimates with the actual floor plan

Yes, a PE would need to look at the existing plans to see if the existing structure can take the weight of the new attic storey or not. You will definitely need new structure members for the attic floor or/and the new roof unless the existing house already has a RC roof which means you only need new columns and beams for the new roof normally the floor of an attic is cast together with the building’s columns for a new built. But for addition of attic, the PE may opt for a different design after taking into account of the existing structural design. As casting a new RC floor may overload the existing structure, the PE may design the new floor using mainly steel beams and columns with some kind of decking system. from previous posts by others who had asked for quotes before, adding of an attic would be at least 300k and up

honestly speaking, if the intention is to just buy a house and spend a minimal sum of money to renovate it, then I would suggest to move on from this house. even though the cracks and sloping floor outside the house may not indicate that there are structural issues with the house, fixing these issues outside the house will eat into your renovation budget of which the money could be used somewhere else.

You can still engage a PE to access the house for structural issues. If the cracked and sloping floor is outside the house, it might not be that bad. just that you may need to redo the floor. But if inside the house, then it might be a sign of potential issues.

you would need to so a soil test before construction. the PE would then design the house's structure based on this report. assuming that you are doing a rebuilt, the PE usually would request for a plate bearing test to be done again prior to the foundation works. this is to make sure that the foundation design is correct. the main reason is that normal soil investigation is done either at the front or side of the house before the existing house is torn down. but soil conditions may vary throughout the site (if really unlucky). so the plate bearing test is done in the middle of the site to confirm accuracy of design especially if piling is not involved. if there's any issues down the road, the PE who signed on the structural design would be the first to face the music. pests would be around for any houses. even if you keep your house super clean, the pests would come over from your neighbours so there's nothing much you can do about them "crossing the borders". for house next to drain, please buy the PUB SIP and DIP first to check if the house is subjected to any drainage setbacks and have sewers running through the land. if there are drainage setbacks, then you can't built the house as much as you want. if there's a sewer, then you would need to build away from the sewer or construct a RC trench to protect the sewer. the RC trench could cost more than 6 digits depending on how long and deep is the sewer. if the sewer is more than 1.5m deep, ERSS needs to be done to stabilize the ground before excavation and this ERSS would cost tens of thousands to erect. just FYI, the ERSS for my sewer cost me more than 50k as my sewer was just below 3m deep and about 9m long (width of my site).

From the looks, 90% to 95% complete by Christmas maybe possible. Move in by then I think highly unlikely. You still got carpentry which can only be done after all the flooring and walls are finished since they need to take on site measurements. Not sure how extensive your carpentry work is but fabrication and installation is at least 2 to 3 weeks or more assuming no manpower issues. Then also need to do a post con survey and authorities submissions. doing the survey and getting the signed drawings is at least 1 week if fast. Submission to authorities will need for them to look and give comments or approve. PUB takes at least 2 weeks to reply to the submission. In order to move in, you will need BCA to grant TOP which requires clearance from all other agencies first. So if any agency don’t don’t grant clearance, your QP can’t submit to BCA as well as BCA will reply back to ask for all documents. anyway, the “fun” part would be cleaning up the entire house before move in.

sellers or owner DIY. not the carpenter's job. carpenter just need to make sure the cabinet opening is built according to the required dimensions provided by the owner.

for airflow, try to ensure that there is a path for the air to flow from front to back and vice versa. airwells are optional since if there's no way for air to come in and out in the first place via cross ventilation, having a airwell is useless. for landed house, there's always going to be bugs and even rats. just hire a pest control company who goes over every month to do some preventive measures and also lay mouse traps. nothing much you can do since the pest can come from your neighbours even if your house is super clean.

your trees will grow taller day by day. today provide you with shade doesn't mean 5 years later will still have the same amount of shade. :P

if your marble floor is supposed to be sealed, do check and confirm. mine is supposed to be sealed but it didn't seem or be. initially when water is split onto it, the marble immediately turned darker due to water penetrating into the stone. I did a DIY sealing of the marble and it was a world of difference. marble no longer turned dark after mopping/spilling water.

yours I think is worse as your west side is now just a brick wall. if your stairs is situated on that side of the wall, it would mitigate the problem. the heat absorbed by the brick during the day will be emitted back into the house during the night so will make rooms warmer or harder to cool down. Basically the brick wall will act as a thermal mass to heat/cool down the house

as mentioned, if your neighbour on the west side is already built up, then their house would provide some shading for your house so the west sun won't be that bad. only the front part will get hit by the sun. if not built up, then would mean it's fully exposed to the sun. my house is facing similar direction as yours and the late afternoon sun gets into the house when the sun gets lower. i'm just waiting for window films to be put in to mitigate this problem.

assuming your pool is taking up the 2m side set back, you can have a 1m wide canopy from the building to partially shade the pool. of cos you can put in those retractable canopies later to shade the remaining 1m.

congrats on your purchase. your house is not exactly west facing. from your drawing, i'll assume it is a semi-d. not sure where is your front as you didn't indicate it on the drawings so can only assume it's facing north-west. for semi-d, your house will still get the partial west sun in the afternoons and evening (thought the sun position will shift throughout the years) and if your left side (non-party wall side) neighbour is built up, you will get some partial shade as well. But if your neighbour is still a single storey or not fully built up, do expect more sun to shine into the house especially in the late afternoons when the sun goes lower. for windows, I think only way is to put good solar films after construction. but do design the house with cross ventilation such that air can pass through the entire length of the house be it via corridors or through the rooms. another important aspect is to have canopies for all the windows. the canopies will act as sun shades to block out part of the direct sun when the sun is higher and also allow the windows to be partially open during rain since the canopies will also block some of the rain (except if the wind blows the rain horizontally)

it the flat is an old flat where the walls are not plastered smooth, I guess this standard is "acceptable". but your flat seems to have the walls all plastered nice and smooth so this finishing around the windows doesn't look too good. personally, looking at the jagged edged outside, it kind of shows that either the contractor is rushing to complete or simply can't be bothered.

can't really comment if this is the normal standard of not but my parent's place windows was done like this during the HDB upgrading exercise almost 20 years ago. The original window frames have to be removed together with part of the cement on the wall and later on, the new frame is installed and the gaps filled back with cement. the lines you see is due to the workers brushing the wet cement with a wet sponge or brush to smoothen the cement surface. I must comment that the external parts are quite badly done as the workers didn't seem to bother to smoothen the edges and just leave them jagged. in order to do a nice finish, the workers would have to apply a layer of plaster to fill in the imperfections of the cement and later on use sandpaper to sand down the surface for a smooth finish before applying paint primer/sealant and finally the finishing paint. the plastering and sanding down is a very tedious process and can take a few days to complete since everything is done by hand. it is common for plaster to crack after drying so what is normally done is that more plaster is used to fill in the cracks and then the surface is sanded down after the plaster has dried and then paint is applied. My understanding is that anything outside your house belongs to HDB and painting is not allowed. But your contractor could have at least gotten some paint which matches the external wall colour to do the touch up instead of just leaving it as raw plaster since the raw plaster can absorb water when it rains.

Poon’s marble pricing is the cheapest from what I had searched. The only thing is he doesn’t do the cutting of the slabs which isn’t a problem if one is just looking for marble or granite tiles. But the contact he gave me for cutting marble charges quite reasonably as well

The boss I dealt with surname is Poon. Maybe related to your friend Ron? anyway most important is that got good price for the marble tiles. Much cheaper than the usual tile suppliers. I also bought 3 slabs for marble for my kitchen island and toilet vanity tops. Even after factoring in cutting cost by another subcon the overall cost is still cheaper than doing quartz or solid surface

The company I got mine is just a single word. Maybe yours is a middleman? I paid less than 20psf after gst for mine you can google the address and find out the company name

Nope. I dealt with an older gentleman. The company name starts with “S” the warehouse is at Senoko right?