snoozee

Nope. Just normal split unit aircon systems for rooms except for master (single unit) and living room (ducted).

my aircon plan was done up before plans was submitted to URA. Cos I had to decide between installing normal wall mounted aircon or ducted aircon for my living room. Because I have a mezzanine, I can't do ceiling cassette units since the ceiling will be too high up. In the end I chose ducted aircon as it would make it more seamless rather than have 2 wall mount units jutting out of the wall. since all the aircon pipes have to be routed all the way from 1st floor to the attic, we had to plan how the pipes (gas and water drain pipes) are to be run. For gas pipes, we designed a "service duct" where the gas pipes all traverse vertically up from 1st storey to the attic and these are later hidden in box ups with brick walls. So in the drawings, there are holes indicated in the floor slabs for this "service duct" so that the workers can adjust the rebars around this hole and put the form work/PVC pipes for this hole before casting the floor slab. The holes are indicated in the drawings so that workers will not miss out. During construction, many things are happening concurrently so it is very easy to miss out small details like this. If this detail is missed out, then the floor slab will have to hacked or cored through which is not ideal. I think what you need to now is to confirm your layout of your house. Once this is finalised, you can decide on the placements of the light switches, power sockets, network points and aircon positions in the rooms. tap or water outlet points for toilets, kitchens and yards can also be decided at this stage. the number of lights and how you want the light switches to be controlled (one way or two way switches) must also be done at this stage as well. the aircon height position on the wall can be decided on the spot when the installation is done. But if you don't want the false ceiling recess to be done, you must remember to cater for the false ceiling drop and install the wall unit lower than the ceiling. Cos the sequence is that the gas pipes and drain pipes for aircon will be done up first before the false ceiling is done to hide all these pipes. if your aircon installer terminate the pipes at too high a position, you will end up with the recess later when false ceiling is done. When I was briefing my aircon installers, I specifically told them I don't want this problem and we took reference from the lowest point in each room to determine where the aircon height will be. basically once the floor plan layout is finalised, all the ancillary services planning will come in.

interesting that you call a semi-detached house a corner terrace

besides the P trap, you also need to think about your aircon pipes as well. How you are planning to route the gas pipes from each room to the aircon ledge where the compressors are and how to hide the pipes that goes underneath the beams. So this will also play a part in your ceiling height and box up. proper planning of aircon height placement will also let you avoid the ugly "wearing of hat" where a part of the false ceiling is recessed upwards to cater for the aircon indoor unit. the big players like shindler, kone are geared towards commercial sector so there won't be an issue with overhead. even hitachi/mistubishi isn't interested in dealing with home lifts when i enquired with them when sourcing for my home lift. there are many companies focusing more with home lifts in the market so you can search for these instead. pricing is very competitive among these smaller players. if you want to have glass lift shaft then you must be prepared to pay for it since the lift shaft would need to be built separately using steel columns and beams.

it all depends on the contract with your builder. progress claims will usually be submitted by the builder on a monthly basis for payment certification by the architect and then payment disbursed by yourself or the bank (through their lawyers) if you are taking construction loan

if you are adding a lift to your house, do note that if your attic is only 3m high, your lift options are limited as traction lifts usually need more than 3m overhead. the average overhead requirements is about 3.3m so check and confirm your lift supplier fast so that their structural requirements can be designed into the building plans for submission. remember that BCA requires a minimum ceiling height of 2.4m for all rooms. if you are not planning for flat beams, then one way is to design the beams such that the coincide with the rooms parting walls and the beams are at the edge of the rooms. then your false ceiling need not drop so much to hide the beams. toilets not only have the sanitary waste pipes but also the vent pipes. so you need to consider where the main vent pipe goes out from your roof and how to hide this pipe. PUB also requires the vent pipe to be of a minimum certain distance from any windows/openings so if your vent pipe is near to a window/opening, then you will need to put in a very tall pipe to fulfill this requirement.

are you doing 6m (1st and mezzanine), 3m (2nd storey) and 3m (attic) or 5.5m + 3m + 3.5m? normally for beams, they are designed such that the height is much more than the width. so if your beam has a width of about 150mm, the height could be 500mm. so if your floor to floor is 3000mm, you will be left with effective 2500mm floor to beam height. normally for construction, there will be a 50mm offset such that when the floor finish is done, the floor level will be as per architectural drawings. so this means that you are actually left with 2450mm height from floor to underside of beam after the floor finish is completed. other areas where the floor slab (assuming 200mm thick) will be 2750mm. if you are planning to have false ceiling, then the coverage can only be until the bottom of the beam for a flushed look unless you don't mind exposing the beams here and there. one way to overcome this height issue is to have the PE design flat beams or design the entire floor slab as a "beam". by flat beams, it will mean instead of a say 150mm by 500mm sized beam, you end up with a wider but shorter beam of about 400mm wide by 350mm height. this will help you gain some height compared to having beams of 500mm or 600mm height. however, with flat beams, you will encounter another issue when trying to hide the sanitary waste pipes. the P trap of the waste pipes has a height of about 300mm+. with normal beams, this bottom of the P trap will still be above the lowest part of the beams in the room. But if you have flat beams, the bottom of the P trap will be lower than the beam. So you will need to cater for box ups or drop your ceiling even lower to hide the sanitary pipes. So have this in mind when you position your toilets in your house. best if the toilets can be stacked one above each other and you will save headache on placement and hiding of the waste pipes later on since you don't really need to have high ceiling for toilets compared to rooms which is preferred to have high ceiling for better ventilation.

Thread width of 250 is quite ok actually. My feet is sized 44 and it feels ok with my stairs of 250 thread width. But since your stairs is wrapping around the lift shaft, ok to use 275 to just make use of the space which would be wasted anyway. Good that you are giving 1200 stairs width as moving mattress up the stairs will be a problem around the bends if it’s just 1000 wide. if you can increase the walkway of the pantry to 700 would be slightly better. 800 would be best actually. Maybe can consider not having the vertical flutes there to get the extra 100mm. You can find a table, place it at 600 from a wall and see how tight the space is.

depends. my parents' place floor to ceiling is only about 2.43m. just enough to put in Ikea's tallest wardrobe at 2.4m and I had to assemble the wardrobe vertically (in it's final shape) instead of the usual install on floor and tilt up vertically.

breaking up the stairs into multiple flights instead of one long flight will allow the legs to "rest" when walking along the landing before going up the next flight. you as the owner can decide on how you want to break up the stairs as long as your architect can design it such that the minimal overhead clearance of 2m between the steps and the above "ceiling" is met. if I am the architect, I would design the stairs such that the 3 flights will fit nicely around the lift shaft rather than having one step protruding out at the bottom and top then needing to build "columns" to "block" the stairs. so a 5 + 7 + 5 config may fit nicely as well

Nope. normally profit in attendance will apply to nominated subcons. How can contractor charge the owner this when owner is DIYing something in his own house? if you are really concerned about this can always install the CCTV after you take over the house upon TOP. The important thing is to have the wiring all done up first which would be part of the main contractor’s scope assuming you are getting his electrician to pull the wires for you.

2.6m if you use a fan which is 35cm in height, you will be left with 2.25m from floor to bottom of fan. whether too low or not and efficiency of fan is subjective. more important is the safety issue where the fan blades are not so low that one will be able to touch it when the hands are raised up. do note that ceiling fan works by pulling air from above and pushing it downwards and towards the sides. if there is not enough volume of air above the fan to be used, don't expect it to work very well in pushing air around.

before even buying the CCTV system, you will need to know where you want to monitor first. then you need to know which models of CCTV to buy. even with same model of CCTV, there are cameras with different focal length which will provide different field of vision. eg: a camera with a wider field of vision will make the objects smaller whereas one with a narrower coverage can capture the objects bigger on screen. so the angle of coverage will determine how many cameras you will need and how to position the cameras such that they can overlap a bit and provide you with an almost 180 degrees coverage. you electrician could help you with the installation of the physical cameras but you may need to configure the recorder and cameras yourself. always read the instruction manual on how to set up the equipment. I made the mistake of not reading the manual and had problems paring the cameras with recorder.

you need to install down rods which are mounted to the concrete ceiling and then install your laundry bracket to these rods. cannot install the brackets to the false ceiling as the plasterboard of false ceiling cannot take the weight of the laundry.

check what is the height of floor to ceiling first. if you have just over 2.4m in height, then a ceiling fan will make it lower. even the shortest ceiling fan will be about 30cm+ in height. alternative is to just install wall mounted fans instead.

all flooring will have a gradient, just how much only. if you really not happy with the amount of gradient then tell your ID or contractor and ask them to redo.

floor tiles are never laid perfectly flat. a gradient is needed to allow for water flow.

Yes, you are right. I got mixed up with grilles for a moment. However do note that latches for folding doors/grilles tend to break after several years so you will face the security issue if both top and bottom latches for the same panel breaks at the same time

question is how is your swing door design? is is just a single panel door or part of a group of swing and fold sliding doors? if you are just having a single door, you should be able to use those push pull mortise locks provided there is the correct sized aluminum profiles in the market. take a korean brand digital door lock as example. the width from door edge to the other side of the lock edge is about 115mm while the depth of the mortise mechanism is about 104mm so you will need a piece of door frame which is of at least 120mm wide in order for the lock to be installed. i'm not sure if there are aluminum profiles which are of 120mm wide or bigger. if there is no such width of aluminum profile, then of cos the vendors will tell you can't be done since they can't fabricate something for it in the first place. now if what you have is a series of foldable doors, then the push pull mortise lock won't work at all since once the other panels are unlatched, the whole series of doors can be opened even if you have a mortise lock installed. even if you have a rim lock which has a retractable mechanism, it won't work as well. for this type of doors, you need those rim lock which the lock mechanism is actually latching/grabbing on to the base on the other side.

do you have grilles in front/behind the swing door? how thick/wide is the frame of the door? you could try to explore those locks for HDB metal gates. plenty of options

You may want to get your contractor to check on the roof flashings to see if they are ok. else just scrap away the damaged paint and then repaint with new sealer and paint. Then monitor again to see if the problem comes back

Is you and/or your neighbour’s house rebuilt previously? is the roof directly above this room or is there another storey? If roof is directly above, it could be leakage from the roof or flashing between you and your neighbour’s roof which caused this. During the heavy rain over the last 2 weeks did you managed to feel to wall to see if it is wet? You can always repaint the wall but if there is really a leak and isn’t fixed then the problem will still remain

Looks like water seepage causing the paint to “pop”. Is the other side of the wall a toilet shower or external wall? if toilet shower then need to redo water proofing. if external wall then need to see if there’s cracks on the plaster and fix it. Maybe need to do a layer of waterproofing sealing paint as well The blisters need to be scrapped off and then whole wall should be painted with sealer first then finishing paint

Waterproofing usually done on surface which will be in contact with water. If you have car porch roof terrace then waterproofing should be done on top and not below

if your main contractor's electrician is running all the network cabling as part of your building contract, then the WIFI subcon should omit this item out from their quotation. as mentioned before, you need to have a confirmed WIFI layout plan first before you confirm any network subcon's quotation as your electrician will need to know where to run the ceiling conduits and cable for your WIFI access points. It cannot be your electrician run the conduits and cables to where he wants and the locations are not where the WIFI access points are supposed to be at. yes it is a tiring journey rebuilding the house but it will be a fulfilling journey when you get to the end of the line eventually.