snoozee

Haha. Guess we both got the Venus white from the same supplier

basically someone had screwed up badly. I suppose the water pipes are for your bath tub. if your bath mixer is wall mounted type, the pipes should be hidden in the wall behind the tiles and not exposed like this. the hot water pipes would not be at 100 degrees but I suppose it would be still hot enough to cause some redness to skin if come into contact. the only way to rectify this is to hack away the wall tiles and have the pipes concealed inside the walls. just noticed that even your pipes for the WC are run exposed. if this is a full reno of the toilet, no reasons to leave the pipes exposed as they can be concealed within the brick walls. just for reference, the pipes are concealed within the brick walls by hacking a channel in the bricks. later on tiles are laid over the brick walls hence concealing the pipes. before and after pics below for my house on the concealed pipes

the numbers for the various levels look funny with level 3 having such a small floor area. also, not sure how the designer is planning to squeeze in a mezzanine within the current first storey and 2nd storey when the floor to floor height currently seems to be maybe 4m from photos. BCA requires a minimum 2.4m clear headroom for each room meaning the minimum 1st floor to 2nd floor height would be at least 5.2m after taking into account 150mm or 200mm as floor slab thickness.

as mentioned one of my earlier posts, if you do a rebuild, you could throw in a mezzanine floor within the house to gain back whatever space that is "lost" from the deficient setback. the mezzanine floor can be up to 60percent of the house footprint which equates to about close to 70sqm (based on 115sqm foot print). this would be much better than having a house with the 2nd storey jutting out like a sore thumb from the rest of the house if you are to retain the existing setback and build another 1.5 storey above. like what iceeyez mentioned, squarish layout is more flexible than a rectangle layout. in terms of cross ventilation, the air flow just need to go through the 10 to 11m of space rather than needing to be pushed through 15m to 20m of space for a rectangle layout

anti termite is treated to the soil below the floor slab. if the house isn't torn down in the first place, there's no way to treat the soil under the floor slabs. can't possibly lift up the existing house, do the treatment and put back the house on the ground right? :P whoever told you recon just need to retain key pillar and beam is just giving your the information like icing on the cake. there's much more to this basic requirements than just retaining the key columns and beams. if so simple, URA won't have differentiated between A&A, recon and new erection already.

I may be wrong. but the main problem is your additional structure is in the supposedly setback region. based on what I read on the URA guidelines, any new proposed structures must fall outside of the 7.5m setback region. so if you need new structure columns and beams to support the additional storey, then they should be after the 7.5m setback and not within the disallowed region. Best is you call an architect to get more clarity on the regulations. quoted below URA guideline Currently, landed houses that undergo Addition & Alterations (A&A) or reconstruction can retain existing parts of the building that do not comply with prevailing development control (DC) guidelines, such as building setback. The deficient setbacks of the existing structure could have arisen due to the application of an old setback standard. For instance, an existing wall that was previously approved with a front setback of 5m can be retained upon reconstruction with proposed new structures having to setback according to the current setback control of 7.5m. However, if these non-conforming structures are demolished during the A&A or reconstruction process, all new structures erected must comply with the prevailing DC guidelines.

I think I saw the house you're interested listed on one of the property portals. if i got the correct property that you are eyeing on, your diagram is a bit wrong as well on the plot size as the kink area is actually a sharp corner and that area is almost negligible. the property I found is not in a normal landed house residential zone but is in a 1.4 plot ratio zone. this means that the landed houses in that zone can be built up to 3.5 storeys high which is why you see some low rise apartments there. if you want to do a recon and add another 1.5 storey, you may run into issues with the foundation especially on the existing soil conditions. since there is a possibility to build up to 3.5 storeys, it would be better to just do a complete rebuilt which can give you maybe 5000 sqf built up area rather than try to do a reconstruction and retain the existing setback. also (if I got the correct property), the 2nd storey at the front is cantilevered with no columns supporting it at the bottom. if you are to build a new storey or attic above the 2nd storey for a reconstruction, you may not get the approval from URA since you may need to add new columns to support the new storey/attic within the setback area which is not allowed.

the official set backs of the plot would look something like this. the square area plus the kink area would give you an estimated buildable foot print of about 120sqm. so you could get a total GFA of more than 3000sqf for the house if you are to do a rebuilt. throw in a mezzanine floor and you can get close to 4000sqf. unfortunately there's nothing you can do about the existing land shape and you would have to just work with the constraints for a new build.

I assume that the 21.9m part where there is a kink is a dead end?

are you sure your land area is correct? based on what you mentioned in your initial post, the dimensions of the land is 10.9m by 20m which gives a land area of 218sqm. coverting to sqf will give you 2346.5sqf which is almost 500sqf off your 28xx. in order to get the 28xxsqf based on same plot width, your depth of the plot would be around 24m instead of 20m. my comparision to a 1600sqf inter terrace is based on the land area of 2346sqf. but with a corner terrace, you are bounded by a 2m side setback as well which means you will lose 2m x 20m = 40sqm = 430sqf of buildable space similar to an inter terrace which does not have a side opening. this will effectively put your land area at 178sqm = 1915sqf which is about 315sqf larger than a inter terrace. to put this 315sqf into context, this is about 30sqm of land which further translates to a width of 1.5m based on your 20m land depth. so this 1.5m additional width would not give you a very significant additional buildable area for your house.

Firstly, check if the house is located within any landed housing areas which have specific guidelines on setback by URA. Certain landed housing areas do not need to comply with the 7.5m and instead can be at 5m or retain existing setbacks to be in line with the neighboring houses. Yes, for reconstruction, you can retain existing non-conforming structures like deficient setbacks. But there are also quite a lot of other requirements as well and does involve the architect and PE to determine if the existing non-confirming structure would be safe to integrate with the new house or not. So basically more paperwork and approval from URA needed. for a total rebuilt, you would end up with a building footprint of about 8.9m wide and 10.5m deep. The footprint is actually slightly larger than a “standard” 1600sqf inter terrace plot which is about 6m wide and 24m deep which gives a building footprint of about 6m wide and 14.7m deep. So in terms of buildable area, you don’t actually lose much from a normal inter terrace house. Since this is a corner terrace plot, you gain the side areas which an inter terrace don’t have. though a squarish footprint may seem weird, it all boils down to how the house layout is being designed. So instead of having rooms which are like 3m x 5m, you can have rooms which are 4m x 4m in size. When rebuilding a new house, you can plan the layout as how you like it without the constraints of the existing structure. Also, one need not design the house layout in the standard manner where the living room is at the front, kitchen and washing area is at the back. In fact, I have seen house layouts where the kitchen is the first thing that one would see when entering the house. If you have not bought the DIP and SIP for this house, please go and buy first to see if there are other deal breakers for this house. If there are drainage and sewerage issues/restrictions for this house, then it would be better to just walk away and find something else as these drainage and sewerage issues would cause more problems which sometimes can’t be solved by money

My guess would be close to 2 years. If your interior design is very intricate, may stretch longer

all projects that were paused during the CB would definitely be delayed. the question is how much delay there would be. my own project which was about 3 to 4 weeks shy of completion before CB has now stretched 10 weeks due to lack of manpower. add in the 8 weeks of CB and 1 week after entering phase 1 before we could resume work, the whole project has been delayed by almost 5 months and counting...

many companies rely on the workers from our neighbour in the north who travel in and out everyday. with the lock downs and such, the workers can't commute in and out daily. the RGL requires the workers who are approved to come in to stay for at least 3 months before they can go back. the problem is finding accommodation for these workers. are the companies going to foot the accommodation bill for these workers? one of my subcon was relying on the workers who did not go back during the lock downs to perform all the jobs. the workers were lamenting that their workload had increased by almost 100 percent for them during these period as they had to cover for those workers who couldn't come back to SG. even though BCA had approved most (if not all) sites which had stopped during the CB to resume, I still don't see some landed housing sites near where i'm staying resuming work and most likely it is due to lack of manpower.

government is only covering cost of swab tests for personnel in the construction industry until 31 march 2021. it's not just the workers who need to be swabbed but anyone who goes to construction sites regularly needs to be swabbed. this means consultants, project managers, etc all need to do it. the cost of one swab test is about $200. each personnel needs to be swabbed every 14 days. assuming the main contractor has 20 workers, this would equate to an additional cost of $8k per month. if your project lasts for 12 months, this would equate to almost $100k which the developer would end up footing. add in the other sub contractors' workers and the cost will just snowball. the other issue is the availability of raw materials. if other countries economy don't reopen and good can't be shipped to Singapore, the price of raw materials would definitely go up which will translate to higher construction cost. manpower wise, as long as there's no new infections spreading in the workers dorms and the dorms don't get locked down, the workers can go to work. but the main contractor still have to ensure that safe distancing, etc are adhered to on the site. so if you have a 1600sqf inter terrace plot, and each team of workers need to adhere to 2m safety distance, how many workers can be on site at any one time? so the project would definitely get extended due to the limit of the number of workers who can be on site. eg: previously there can be say 20 or 30 workers on site at one time to do different things for 2 days. but because of the safe distancing requirement, the site can only have 10 to 15 workers on site. so the 2 days job could become a 4 days job instead. hopefully a vaccine for COVID-19 can be found and approved for use soon

a king size bed would only need a max 2m by 2m space. you can tuck your bed in the space between the corridor wall and toilet wall (which is 3.1m wide). so after deducting the 2m (actual width of kind size bed is 1.82m), you would still be left with 55cm on each side of the bed which would be sufficient for a small bedside table. your wardrobe for the master can be on the wall between the master bedroom and bedroom 3. the master bedroom width should be about 3.45m wide (after accounting for wall thickness). so after catering for the bed length of 2m and wardrobe depth of 60cm, you would still have a walkway of about 85cm which would be quite ok to walk through. these older HDB flats are designed quite spaciously so there's actually no need to do any major hacking. if you want bedroom 3 to be bigger, then hack away the store room and build a new one in the kitchen instead

get your house's structural plans and see if there's any structural components for the airwell low walls. you will most likely need to get a PE to design the new floor for the covered up airwell. best is get hold of your house's structural plans first and then consult a PE on what you have in mind.

just put the bi-fold door frame outside of the door arch.

sorry that I kaypo and gave my worthless virtual 2 cents. all the best to you as you're not the only one affect by the current situation. just remember that while your situation is bad, there are people worse off than you somewhere in the world. stay positive and I hope things turn for the better for you soon. good luck!

sorry to hear about your situation. i'm sure you can find some remedies to nullify the bad fengshui for them missing the timing. but the world we live in now is very different from the start of 2020. currently the government's mandate is still for companies to have staff work from home as much as possible. if the company's bosses are working from home, you can't expect any company staff to give you the mobile number of the bosses right? if you are the boss, would you like it if your staff freely gives out your direct mobile number to anyone? many industries are facing a manpower crunch due to the lockdowns for both Singapore and Malaysia. even though the RGL was recently opened, it doesn't mean workers from Malaysia can come in and out freely. Many companies are relying on workers who had not gone back to Malaysia before their lockdown and our CB to continue to work. So the workers who are here have to pull in extra hours and take on more load to fulfill the operations needs for the company. So delays are definitely bound to happen. Yes, the workers missed the auspicious timings, but at least they managed to get it installed for you before HGF rather than after HGF started which would have been much worst for you right? If they couldn't installed yesterday, you would have called off the delivery right? This would mean you would have no hob to use for the next few weeks until HGF is over and this would be much worse isn't it?

You need to see if your other neighbour’s gate on the left is more than 4m away from your boundary or not. If less than that, then can’t shift. Not sure how you managed to buy the BCA plans as usually owner is allowed to buy or someone authorised by the owner. Like I said, if you really want to confirm, use good old school measuring tape on site to measure. If your family has just one car, 3.4m wide access would be good enough. But if you have 2 cars and want to park both cars inside, you may want to have a bigger gate as 3.4m could be challenging to have free access for both cars. Meaning there would be shifting of cars needed if the car which arrived home first wants to go out. Hope you get what I mean about the shifting of cars. $350 psf does not include professional fees and submission fees. You may need to factor another 100k to 200k for these fees depending on who you engage as your architect, PE, RTO, etc. Main cost of any rebuilt is the house foundation and main building. This can form up to about 30% to 40% of the entire cost. If your house needs to do piling, this is about 100k in costs. If need to do RC trench to protect the sewer, could add on another 50k to 100k. Other big ticket items are the sanitary and electrical. If you want to have a lift, prepare another 50k to 100k depending on what type of lift you want. Carpentry is another big ticket item but again depends on how extensive you want it to be. If you want to have marble for your whole house including toilet walls, it would definitely be more expensive than just normal tiling. Parquet flooring price is comparable to entry level tiles in terms of psf. Parquet floor normally is $3 up for standard 12” x 2” x 11mm strips. Longer strips are more expensive. If you want team board for stairs, this can cost from $100 up per piece. Homogeneous tiles 600x600 is normally $3 up. There are huge tiles in the market which are 1200 x 1200 or even bigger. These would cost much more psf. Marble tiles which are 600x 600 usually starts from around $24psf for the more common types. If you want exotic marble, it can be more than $60psf. Marble slabs are nice but also expensive. Normally builders will do brick walls unless it is necessary for an RC wall to act as additional structural component as determined by the PE. RC walls are usually needed for structural needs like the household shelter or a lift shaft. a landed property gives the occupants a different type of living experience as the owner can choose to design the house with lots of greenery. Even for a terrace house, there is an option for a front garden as well and for semi-d, an additional side garden. However, many owners choose to tile up the entire open areas instead of having a garden. Of cos this is individual preference but tiles absorb heat from the sun and the heat gets trapped hence potentially making the house warmer than it should. Compared to plants which have a cooling effect, having more greenery could make a house cooler. So what you want to do with the open areas within the setback is really up to your individual preference and lifestyle. Do you want to spend time every other week to tend to the garden or you just want to have a tiled open space where you can do anything you want including having potted plants as greenery. A compromised option is to keep the side set back for the length of the house as a garden and the rear setback area and front setback area be tiled up for other purposes.

Bedroom door lock sets are standard ones and can be replaced easily. Just need to buy one which has the backset which matches the existing one. If not sure of the backset depth, buy a new lock set where the backset has adjustable depth and you won’t go wrong

usually gates have to be paired. for semi-d, this would mean the gates for both houses would be next to each other where the party wall is. of cos the exception is that you have a very side frontage of more than 10m which would allow for a minimum of 6m of planting verge within the plot width of your house. eg: if your plot width is 12m, you can have 6m planting verge on the side of a 3m wide gate. the other 3m can be added with the neighbour's planting verge to make up the 6m provided that your neighbour side already has an existing planting verge of at least 3m wide. see picture below. creating a new access point is a relatively easy job provided you have the authorities approval. what's needed is just to redo the box drain where you want the access point to be and then make good the original access point and extend the road kerb until the new access point. of cos drainage drop inlets, etc also need to be done and all these must be designed by a PE and approved by LTA. the surveyor is needed to check where the boundaries of the land is and get all the various land/road levels so that the architect/PE can design the house and access points based on these levels. normally this is done only AFTER the house is purchased. so if you want to engage a PE and surveyor to do work before you purchase the house, you would then have to pay them again after the purchase since the scope would be different already. cos i don't think any house owner would allow for a surveyor to enter their house to do a survey for a potential buyer so you can only do the external survey and later on do a full survey of the land. the PE would also need to design an entire house's structure and foundation for a new built and this work would greatly exceed just the design of a vehicular access point. I don't think LTA charges anything for submissions. BCA charges is more for house development and not just for the drain. the fees payable to BCA is based on the GFA for the new house so this would vary for a house with 2000sqf built up vs a house with a 10000sqf built up. for the outside kerb shifting, you may also need NParks approval and pay fees as well cos the grass patch on the planting verge belongs to NParks if i'm not wrong. PUB may also need to be consulted since you are going to touch the drain which belong to PUB.

any hacking of walls need HDB approval. extension of toilets can only be up to 600mm and used as "dry areas" according to HDB. so it would be unlikely your plans would be approved unless your new shower area is still confined within the original toilet floor area which essentially means you need to shower next to the toilet bowl. best is check with HDB and they will tell you whether can do or cannot do

unlikely you will be allowed to purchase. if the corridor is exclusively only accessible for/by your unit, then it is possible. but if it is a common corridor, meaning any one can walk through it to access units on the other side, then highly unlikely to be possible.