snoozee

Just to add on to what AWS mentioned, the "leak" along the duct is more due to condensation on the ducts rather than actual water leakage. however, this should not happen if the ducting is properly insulated when being installed. ducted aircon utilises a big blower unit to push air through the ducts. the sizing of the blower and corresponding condenser unit depends on the area needed to be cooled. so a ducted aircon can have same BTU rating as ceiling cassette units. one thing I missed out to mention is that the bigger BTU required, the bigger the size of the condenser unit. a 42K BTU condenser unit can be more than 1.2m high depending on brand and model. so if you do not have the space to install/move such a big condenser unit, then you may have to use a smaller BTU unit which provides lesser cooling. so in order to achieve the same cooling for a room, 2 sets of aircon may be needed. if there's no space for 2 sets of ducting and blower units, then choosing ceiling cassette or wall mount units would be preferred unless one can live with slightly less cooling.

please do not be so ignorant to think that all corner terraces must have the same layout as what you envision it to be. a corner terrace simply means that it is a house at the end of a row of terrace house but no where does it say that is must have the same front/rear boundary as the house it is joined to. TS already mentioned that the house has a uncommon layout where the gate is on the side and not the front. this clearly shows that the boundary of the house is different from the adjoining house. I had also mentioned that I had seen a map and saw a house with a layout similar to what TS had mentioned hence my drawing is based on the map information I had seen as what TS had provided does not show the entire full picture. if you had not seen TS's post on the uncommon layout, I had superimposed her sketch along with the floor plan to make it clear. I have also attached the map image of a house with a layout similar to what she had described. so with this information, tell me how can the car porch roof can be extended along the party wall (wall B) all the way to 2.4m from wall A when wall B itself is NOT a party wall but a front boundary wall. with the access point (gate) being on wall B itself, URA requires that the car porch roof can only be up to 2.4m from the gate itself which means wall A is no longer a frontage but a side boundary and the car porch can be up to 2m from this wall. just FYI, a semi-detached house by definition means 2 houses joined together on a plot of land. BUT it does not define that a semi-d MUST be joined to each other side by side. I have seen semi-d houses which are joined back to back and they still fulfill the definition of being semi-d because they still share a same party wall at the back of each other.

Anyway the plan does not show the entire full picture. Whether you right or I right only URA decision matters based on what I saw on the maps, I had drawn up the set backs as the actual frontage is the gate part which you circled in black. TS already mentioned that there is a gate there in her earlier post

Hope your friend's fortune had improved by leaps and bounds after spending the $30k for shifting the lamppost.

honestly speaking, if you are not in the industry, it's hard for you to know what are the basic and what are the premium materials that are being used. eg: metal roof. there are various brand in SG. but some are premium brands whereas some are basic. composite panel roofs have cheaper made in china ones compared to other more premium ones. water proofing membrane also have basic and good ones. $3.50psf tiles is the price to you but not to the contractor who gets discounts for them. even if you do a walk in, you can get a 10% discount if you haggle for price. many $3 psf tiles are made in china and some made in Malaysia ones can also be cheaper than $3psf. I even bought a set of Spanish tiles which was listed at $3psf at one of the major tile distributors. depending on your luck, if you happen to choose your tiles when Hafary is having clearance sale, you can get tiles at 50% to 70% discounts. I managed to get some Spanish and Italian tiles for 50% discount during their sale last October and they are at less than $3psf. the only thing is that the discounted tiles have to be paid in full immediately for the stock to be reserved for you. but the 50% discounts does become quite substantial due to the quantity. also, be proactive during the construction. don't just leave the construction there and wait for move in. go to the site often to check and see what is being done/used. then you can also check online to find out what specification are the raw materials being used and determine what you are getting. however, the better way is do get a QP to do up the specifications and the QP can then also ensure the quality as well since he/she is supposed to represent your interests.

you seem to be contradicting yourself.

if you applying for new 60A or 100A 3 phase supply, then not considered as shifting. it is a new service application. new application for 60A (41KVA) supply is $5300 before GST. 100A (69KVA) is $8800 before GST. but for 100A supply, need to have LEW perform inspection yearly. I had to pay the 5K+ for the application for a new 3 phase supply as well as the original supply is just a single phase supply

so did your friend pay for the shift? For my house, we had to shift an incoming cable (running through my property) which is currently shared between my neighbour and my house and SP verbally mentioned there would be a cost to it. later on they did the shift for me FOC.

were you the owner of the house at the point of asking?

HTH

yes I think you are right. then the car porch roof will have a set back of 2m from wall A instead.

I believe the car porch set back would be taken from wall A. so from wall A to the house would be 7.5m and from wall A to the edge of the car porch would be 2.4m

If your purchase price is 2.3M now and you rebuilt it at 1.4M then sell at 3.7M you will still lose money due to stamp duties and bank interest. a simple way to see if your “investment” is sound or not is just check how much are the brand new houses around your area is being sold at today. If the transacted prices are more than 3.8M, then you are unlikely to lose $$$. But what will happen in 10 years time no one will know or can predict. singapore has less than 80,000 landed houses. So the land price for freehold land would most likely increase over time. But I don’t think we will see a 60 percent increase like what we saw from 2009 to 2014. The housing prices today are similar to the levels of 2014 after seeing a small 10 percent dip from 2014 to early 2017. if you look further back, landed house prices was at a peak in 1997/1998 before dropping drastically over the next few years and then being stagnant before rising again in 2006. So basically some people who bought in 1997/1998 had “lost” a big value of the house before breaking even after 10 years. Of cos those who managed to hold on for longer and sold their houses between 2011 to 2014 would have made more $$$. Before all the property cooling measures came in, I believe there are also people who managed to buy in 2009 and then sell in 2011/2012 and made a tidy sum of money. But this is a scenario which is unlikely to happen again So if you are looking for a short term (5 to 10 years), then I would say don’t bother to do a full rebuilt as the ROI may not be there. A live example is a house owner near my place. The owner bought an old inter terrace for 1.8M several years ago. The house was renovated to make it look new with new interior and such. Last I saw the house was put up on the market for 2.8M. I believe the owner had spent maybe 200/300k just to do up the house before putting up for sale after 5 years is up. so you can see, landed houses need a longer period of holding time to really make $$$. The main reason would be more of land price appreciation over time. Also landed houses have a much smaller target group of buyers than condos. For one, the price of a landed house is much higher. Then only Singapore citizens or PRs are allowed to buy a landed house unless one is a rich FT who is willing to throw a few million $$ to invest here(eg: Mr Dyson)

is the house still occupied when you viewed it? the furniture inside the rooms will make the a room look smaller than an empty room some ideas for you to think about. i'm assuming the front can be pushed out by 4m and the sides by 1m. then for bedroom 2 and new bedroom, you can create a jack & jill toilet in between them. the master toilet needs to be relocated but where to move it to depends on where the waste pipes are running. if the 1st storey is about 4.5m from floor to floor, running new waste pipes below the floor slab should not be much problem to eat into the 1st storey ceiling height so you can push the new master toilet to the front. for toilets, it is best to have a window for natural ventilation so usually it is best to locate them next to the building wall instead of inside the house.

a corner terrace and semi-d has the same setbacks front - 7.5m from boundary to building line car porch can start 2.4m from front boundary line side and rear has 2m setback if you are saying the edge of the front porch is 6.1m from the front boundary, I assume (estimated scale) your building line is starting about 11.5m from the front boundary line. so you can potentially push the front out by 4m. if you do not need the family room on the 2nd storey, just get rid of it and then push bedroom 2 to start in line with the bathroom. then you can get a much bigger bedroom 3. your master bedroom can also then start from the staircase line as well since you are pushing the front of the master outwards already. if you want, can also potentially add another ensuite for bedroom 2 in the area opposite the common toilet now. honestly speaking, my estimate is that the land size is about 2800sqf which is just slightly smaller than a semi-d. not sure how much the house is being listed for but seems quite good in terms of potential

your peekture a bit small. can't see the dimensions clearly. but it does seem that the house is already built to the maximum allowed based on the various set backs. having a corner terrace is similar to having a semi-detached house. the open side makes ALOT of difference in terms of letting light in and providing air flow. for a inter terrace, you can get only light and airflow from the front and back. but in a corner terrace or semi-d, you get it from the sides as well. for bedrooms, can't see the dimensions. but my estimate is that bedroom 3 is about 8.75sqm which seems to be quite ok in size for a child's room

it seems that many people who buys a landed house wants to rebuilt to maximise the GFA. a landed house provides the owners the opportunity of having a private outdoor space which most apartments would not have. my personal opinion is that if the owners are not going to make use of this outdoor space, then might as well buy a condo which saves the headache of home maintenance. most older houses would have been built without the GFA being maximised so as to provide a balance between indoor and outdoor space. of cos an architect could design a new house with this in mind as well to maximise the upper storeys while still providing enough outdoor space for the 1st storey. my suggestion is for you not to be fixated on the GFA but focus on what you plan to do while staying in the house and your lifestyle. also think about how long you are planning to stay in this house. if this is going to be your retirement home, then it might be better to just rebuilt it now and then provision for a home lift and spaces which allows for unobstructed movement. if it's just going to be short term (5 or 10 years) then maybe just do a simple renovation would be enough.

not sure how true it is. but it seems that if a contractor/builder is not really interested in your job, the quotation will come in quite high

yes I agree. but of cos the cost also goes up since structural steel is not going to be cheap and I believe the glass would also need to be laminated safety glass. this would increase the cost as compared to a RC lift shaft.

as mentioned, only SP and LTA can make the decision on whether the OG boxes and lamp post can or cannot be shifted. But since you are not the owner of the house, whether they would entertain your question is something else. For new gate openings, there are rules to be followed and the basic rule is that your new opening must be immediately adjacent to your neighbours. eg: if your neighbour on your left has the opening on his right most side of his house, then your opening must be on the left side of your house which matches his. this means your right side would be a wall which matches another wall for the neighbour on your right. with this said, the relocation of the boxes and lamp post can only be to the side where there isn't a gate opening but a boundary wall for the house. so it could be possible that only 1 OG box and the lamp post needs to be shifted. so question now is whether you want to take the risk and buy the house without knowing if the infrastructure can be shifted or not. I would say just email SP and LTA with the house address and see if anyone replies to you. then from there decide whether to buy the house or not.

are you doing a full rebuilt or A&A? if just A&A, would you be able to accept a lower ceiling height due to the ducted aircon? the ducts will have to be run below any existing beams and if the beams are already quite thick, you will lose more ceiling space. of cos if your house already has a 4m high ceiling, losing another 0.5m shouldn't be much of an issue. for my own house, we opted for ducted aircon for the living room as we didn't have much wall space to do wall mount and we have a double volume living room so ceiling cassette is out. but the ducting design was another challenge itself due to my ducting having to run under a beam and then needing to make the drop as low as possible and at the same time keeping the eventual box up as small as possible and aesthetically pleasing at the same time.

Moving infrastructure is usually done by requests to the relevant authorities. It can be done but just takes time and maybe some money involved. for newly developed houses, if there are changes to the road opening/access, the newly installed kerbs, etc all have to follow LTA’s guidelines

A inter-terrace house is normally 6m wide. So the 2 OG boxes and lamp post would most probably take up 3m of space. This would still leave 3m of space for the opening for the gate. Maybe TS wants the opening for the entire width of the house( which is not allowed) or on the side where the boxes are located( which might not be approved if the opening don’t match the neighboring house). I don’t think SP and LTA is silly enough to install the infrastructure smack in the middle of a potential house access opening. but then I may be wrong about the authorities. Cos previously I saw a undeveloped piece of land which can be built into a inter terrace. But in front of the land is a bus stop. Not sure if the bus stop got shifted now that someone bought the land and is building a house

How wide you want the opening to be? the OG boxes belong to SP power grid. Better call or e-mail them with the address of the property to verify on whether can move or not. If they say can move, you may need to pay for the relocation of the boxes street lamp belongs to LTA so you need to check with them

Legal way is to do the proper submissions. adding a bathroom requires sanitary work and will affect the public water supply so PUB should be informed. adding a room means adding structure so by right BCA needs to approve. you don’t need an architect but at least a PE to submit to BCA for approval. of cos if you choose not to do submissions, just don’t get caught or have people complaining about your extension