AWS

Not sure if it’s true, I have heard from my builder that soil test results are now lodged with BCA/SLA (I am not sure specifically which agency) and if your immediate neighbour has just done rebuild recently, you can use his soil test result on request from that specific agency. Maybe the result can be used as long as it’s not too far away. I may be wrong but there will be cost savings if it’s true.

The other 10A breaker is for the pool pump? I suspect there’s water that got into your buried cable that cause the circuit issue. Or there’s water that got into the light causing the issue.

To add to what snoozee said, also do a push to test the RCCB (CD240B) module. If it trips, leave it at the tripped position and then work on swapping the timer and feed back further.

You can engage painting contractors that have extension cranes with cage for a single worker that can extend to the backyard from the front gate. The position of the crane may or may not block your neighbor’s gate access. If your land’s depth is very deep, then there is another method which contractors can use is to go to your roof and install support on the roof edge so that the worker can carabiner down the side wall to do the painting. These 2 methods will have least risk of damaging your neighbor’s roof and most times they won’t object.

I am not sure about other brands but my UniFi system is able to allow me to create different WiFi networks with controllable excess. I think other brands should be able to do that too. Managed switch has more functionality compared to unmanaged ones. And the price differences is worth it in the long term due to your required functionality. If the NVR is quite, it means there is less air flow and good chance the hard disk won’t last long. Unless you are willing to pay much more for SSD.

Red outline is the box. Green outline is the SPD. To remove the SPD, unscrew the 4 visible screws at the perimeter of box and out pops the box cover. Then use a Philips P2 to loosen all the cable connections. To remove the SPD: The will be a spring loaded metallic clamp. Use a flat head screw drive to push down the clamp’s recessed hole to loosen the clamp as show in red circle outline The blue rectangle outline is the DIN Rail where the SPD’s clamp latches on to give support. For a Type1+Type2 combi SPD, I will recommend Hager SPA401or DEHN 941310. For around SG$500-$700, is only a fraction of your hi fi setup, not even 3% of an amp. KAM is made in China, too cheap to trust. Do note the KAM is Type3 and you will need a Type3 to protect your setup and needed to be as close as possible to your setup. You can consider DEHN 953205. This is a single phase Type3 SPD. It is about SG$100+ from Amazon. DEHN & Hager mostly made in Germany.

For the replacement unit, you can source for a Type1+Type2 from e-commerce platform. Almost all foot print for 3P+N is same. You can use back the same housing. If you are hands on, off the breaker before the meter before disconnecting. Your meter display will be off too but it’s alright as there isn’t any alarm to be triggered. Once the meter display is gone, it further confirm that there is no live current downstream. Just don’t contact the neutral and earth wires.

It’s easy to swap out and if you switch off the main breakers before the PUB’s meter at the meter compartment, not the DB ones, it’s 100% safe. The life span of a SPD is not dependent on the number of strikes but on the total amount of energy being diverted to earth since installation. Once the varistor or gas discharge tube life span is used up, the indicator will turn red and it’s time to replace. Some SPD comes with a FM function and able to warn owner through a LED display or an audio alarm that the SPD is no longer functioning and need replacement.

I asked around previously from electrical supply shops locally and was shown this particular brand ‘kam’ for sale. It’s made in China. Price around $13 each and only single phase available, not 3P+N.

Pete, the SPM440E is a Type2. Did you managed to install any Type1? Further, the 3 LIVE & 1 Blue NEUTRAL cables tapped from the MCCB inlet connection looks very long. Any one phase cable length + PE cable looks like more than 50cm. There will be a certain percentage of pass through for Type2 surge and if you don’t have Type1 installed, there will be 100% pass through of Type1 surge.

Our 3 phase system is using TT connection and usually referenced as 3P+N. So you will need a 4 pole device for all connections. In layman term, you need 4 inlet connections and 4 outlet connections for any single device. Unless you split each phase with 1 device. Example will be the incoming circuit breaker as shown in your earlier post. In that picture, you can see 3 small white boxes and a smaller black box. The 3 white boxes each house a single phase breaker (63A or 100A depends) to connect one of the 3 LIVE phases. The black box is a direct connection of the Neutral phase which don’t need a breaker. So, if you can find a 20kA times four SPD, it can be used too. Make sure the SPD has 3P+N=4 connections. For the SPD installation inside you house’s DB, you can use 10kAx4=40kA. Do note: Class 1 also known now as Type 1, Class 2 also known as Type 2 and Class 3 known as Type 3. They are basically the same classification for the SPD. Type 1 will be expensive and not easy to find as most house owners don’t know it is highly recommended. It is not mandated by PUB when they sign off the main incoming electrical panel after installation by electrical sub-con. Personally, I don’t think PUB care if the house gets a lightning strike(taken care by the lightning protection system signed off by BCA)and in turn causes a surge current in the house’s electrical circuit and killing/shortening life span of your expensive equipments/household items. As long as the basic requirement(63A breaker and/or 300 mA RCCB) is there, and most important of all, the meter is running to bill owner at the end of the billing cycle, PUB won’t care. Anything damaged inside the house is under owner’s charge. The 63A breaker is to prevent overload/surge current at the sub-station from entering your house or cause fire at the incoming electrical panel cluster which you can legally take action. A Hager brand Type 2, 40kA total, 3P+N will cost around $250-$270 each, available at some local electrical supply shop. I am using one each for my 2 in-house DBs. Type 3 sold at electrical supply shops were China made and I don’t trust. You can go online e-commerce to search for DEHN or Phoenix Contact, both brand made in Germany. Typical e-commerce price of Type 3 in the region of $150-$200 each. For Type 1 you can look at DEHN. But DEHN mostly comes with Type 1 combined with Type 2. In theory, if this device is installed in your incoming electrical panel, it will arrest the Type 1 and Type 2 classified surge but because of the long cable length that run from your incoming panel to inside your house’s DB, some Type 2 surge (caused by lightning) will be picked up by this long length of cable and cause some surge at your in house DBs. One solution is to install another Type 2 only SPD at the in house DBs. They are relatively cheap at $270 max to protect your motor driven devices like water pumps, air con compressors, fridge compressors, fans motor etc. And because they are in the secondary level Type 2, they will last a long time. DEHN Type1+Type2 will cost around $600 from e-commerce but local distributor selling at $1000+ with installation another $500+. Note: Type 3 SPD is for protection of electronic devices and need to be as close as possible to device to be protected. Am analogy is those extension sockets with surge protection integrated. Example brand like Belkin. Because it’s a all in one commerce product, the small SPD integrated into the extension bar will not be able to neutralize the Type 3 surge effectively. From my own experience, I have noticed a marked reduction in motor driven noise (fan motor, fridge compressor) in my air con fan coils, fridges, and my network cluster. But it could be just me.

The first picture should be your main gate incoming DB (or referred as incoming electrical panel) because it has your incoming mains and your meter. It will be difficult to fit the SPD outside the incoming main gate electrical panel due water ingress issue causing trips or safety concerns. Further, there is a requirement wire length for each phase with connection joint from the MCCB outlet joint to the SPD inlet joint PLUS the length of the earth wire to the ground bar(shown in picture with 2 blue non conducting foot mount) total not to exceed 50cm. Once this maximum length is exceeded, there will be a drop in effectiveness to divert the surge current to earth due electrical inductances. From what I can see in the first picture, there is still space available but may require re-positioning the MCCB (small white box with some red colored ON/OFF toggle lever) This looks like an old ABB brand item.

Hi Pete The first entry of surge current is at the gate post where the electrical meter is located. If you are having 3 phase 63A, you will see 4 cables (L1+L2+L3+N) L=Live and N=Neutral. The 3 Live wires are Black, Grey, Brown. The Neutral is Blue.There is also a PE (Protective Earth)!which is green/yellow and this PE will be connected to your earth rod/electrode. At the incoming (gate post), you need Class 1 SPD(Surge Protection Device)with preferred 25KA per phase. So with 3 phase + Neutral, it will be 4x25kA=100kA rating. This SPD is preferred to be installed after the MCCB but before the RCCB. If your LEW want to install after the RCCB, you may encounter sensitive tripping of the RCCB unless your LEW can find a ‘S’ type RCCB which has a time delayed tripping function. This SPD can be connected in either parallel or kelvin connection. Do discuss with your LEW. At the DB, only Class 2 SPD is required. You will need minimum 10kA per phase protection which means 40kA total. This SPD needs to be install upstream of your DB’s MCCB & RCCB. Connection is either parallel or kelvin connection. To enhance protection to your Hi Fi equipments, you will further need a Class 3 SPD. This SPD should be installed as near to your equipment as possible. This is preferred to be just before your Hi Fi’s voltage regulator/stabilizer if you have one. Based on your description of using one phase dedicated to your Hi Fi system, install this Class 3 SPD after your wall power outlet and before the voltage regulator. You can install as many Class 3 SPD as required depending what equipments you need to protect. One power outlet=1 SPD. Connection in parallel or series. If series, there is a limit current of 25A. If connect in parallel, will be much higher. In summary, you will need: 1x Class 1 SPD, 1x Class 2 SPD per DB, multiple Class 3 SPD. Cost of SPD in descending order: Class 1>Class 2>Class 3. Hope these helps.

Some owners put in a LD(day or month)in the contract. Most builders if see a LD in a contract, will load in a sum to the final cost. Frankly speaking, they are not stupid that the owner insist on a LD in the contract and builder just accept the job without loading. Nowadays, jobs are plenty and they can choose. Whatever the final contract sum, the builder’s QS will definitely know the full cost to the builder before loading a 20-30% profit before accepting the contract or taking part in the tender.

Just for matter of interest for all, in China, the sellers of tiles are referenced to square meter. In Singapore, we use square feet. The factor differences is 10.7. A common mill MIC tile starts at SG$2/sf in Singapore. In China, this same tile is selling at SG$2/sm. The profit margin is 10 times excluding freight charge for the Singapore sellers. Factor in the freight cost of around $1800 average pre covid, excluding GST, the profit margin is still a good 7-8 times. A 20T container can fit in easily 800 square meter for tiles at 10mm thickness or 400 square meter for granite/marble of 20mm.

Shipping cost has gone up due to various reasons like fuel cost and covid requirements for container usage. Before covid, a 20T container charge from China to Singapore including clearance was around $1800. Now that container after off loading will return back to China empty, causing container shortages. Before covid, fuel price is half of what it is now. You can roughly estimate what will be the factor of increase. In business sense, if the demand is high, no business will lower prices or discount as there will still be buyers even they increase price. Now builders are actually buying up/reserve stocks when they are just doing demolition or piling works phase.

I am guessing choosing bathroom items now mainly concern the type of WC system you intended to use. Conceal system or external cistern type. For the external cistern type, the plumbing sub-con will need to know the floor trap distance from the wall. This will be easier for them to lay the pipes with the proper distance before the basement floor casting is complete. Volakas marble is nice! Especially the gold vein Volakas.

There are a few youtube videos on how to setup your UniFi system. It’s quite simple actually and the system configuration can be done in 2 hours actually, provided you already had all the hardware fully setup and ready to go. Do get the cloud key in order to easy access the UniFi’s UI. The UI is very user friendly and not difficult to navigate. Mesh system’s coverage and stability is subjective and some people swear by it. One couldn’t tell unless there is a side by side comparison with 2 system installed on a same location to compare between Mesh and AP systems.

Yes. The projected monthly usage cost multiply by estimated number of months of the project duration plus a certain margin to cover any delays will be added to the final contract price, hidden somewhere in the contract price. Another factor main-con use for profit margin is a big 30% factored in of the sub-con’s price.

You have all rights to deny entry to service his roof drainage pipe. All rectification works can be done by any contractor even in the most difficult to access location. It’s just a matter of how much the contractor will charge for the extensive preparations needed to reach the part of the house that need repair. Most probably the pipe will not collapse based on your description unless it’s a pitched roof instead of flat roof, then there is a gutter. Previously, gutter was allow and houses with gutter installed are really very old houses which may not fall under much set back restrictions in the olden days.

Hi leechaorui As per your post, Point 1: You can ignore what he said unless he is willing to spend money to excavate and gather proof Point 2: There is no law regarding leaves blown by wind ending up in his boundary except branches cannot encroach into his boundary Regarding the light, he also has no case. Unless he go through the CMC and CDRT route and it is not 100% he will win as it is difficult to quantify what is excessive. It will entirely dependent on the judge’s decision if it finally escalate to CDRT. Did his extension cause any inconvenience to you like rain water splashing to your house. As to what I know, It’s not the rain water issue but what the splashing water is carrying with it. Old houses has lots of dust/algae gathered on their sloping roof and once the rain water contact these algae, they will carry along with them a little bit of these algae and then ‘jump’ over to land in your plot. You will end up with constant washing to get rid of these algae. Did rain water runoff from the roof end up in your plot? This may cause flooding in your plot as the original design drainage may not cope. This can be a serious matter. So look at what the extension is causing inconvenience to you and work on it.

As some of your neighbor houses were built before the envelop control law was implemented, the owners tend to do illegal extensions(illegal based on present envelope control guideline). Try to discuss with them nicely. If you approach URA and lodge a complain, they will advice you to talk and discuss with your neighbor first (playing taichi). Unless the house was built with envelop control regulation, you can take pictures and submit and ask URA to look at the submitted plan in their archive and reference to your picture. Then URA will take action and ask your neighbor to remove. What snooze mentioned about the leaves falling through the air and then blown by wind and landed in your plot, at present there is no law regulating this. However, if the branches encroach into your boundary, it’s a different matter all together. You can talk to the affected neighbor nicely to ask them to trim the branches. A lot of people nowadays don’t have a sense of responsibility. They want to plant trees but don’t want to maintain it. If all talk fails, then you can apply to Community Mediation Center (CMC) for a mediated session with a mediator together with the neighbor since talks has already broke down and there is no agreeable solution. Don’t apply straight to Community Dispute Resolution Tribunal(CDRT) as they will still ask you to go to the base level of CMC and escalate higher to CDRT if the mediation session has no outcome. Difference between CMC and CDRT is during the CMC, the mediator is just a professionally trained mediator from different profession assigned by Ministry of Law. But during CDRT, there will be a judge involved during the session and the judge’s decision at the end of the session will be final and bound by the law. You can go to the CDRT website and there is some write about lights shining into your neighbor window. It’s ok as long as not excessive. But then again, how excessive is excessive? Personally, I feel that every house should have night curtains installed in case such situation arises and one can block the light coming in. Same principle as hotel rooms. Almost all has night curtains. People who complain light shining in when no curtain was installed are mostly self-entitled. On the issue if the tree has damaged the neighbor foundation, there is no way to verify. If he is nasty in the first place, ask him to excavate and submit a report and pictures on the tree root damaging the foundation. As long as there is no proof, there is no case just by assuming. Crack lines on his house could be just due to settlement or just concrete aging crack lines. Because you told him your concern of his illegal extension, he is in defence mode by finding possible fault that may be caused by you. In conclusion, 2 ways to solve an issue. Talk over it nicely or do it legally with supporting documentation. Best of luck on your resolution.

Yes, surge current & lightning current needs to be discharged into the ground(soil). Singapore earthing system is TT standard. UK is slightly different as they use TN-S. TT means the earthing is via ground electrode rod. Just like our lightning protection system (LPS) too. Make sure the electrical sub-con use a good quality earth rod/electrode. Must be solid copper or stainless steel and not any steel bar due long term issues of corrosion and end up loosing your earth electrode leading to high ohm resistance of greater than 1. Talk to your electrical sub con and they should have knowledge. If not, then start to be wary as there are quite an amount of half past six certified LEW who has not much knowledge on Lightning Protection System(LPS) and Surge Protection System/Device (SPS/SPD).

I guess if you already have signed your building contract with the main con, there will be a M&E sub-con works included. You can check in your electrical scope of works if surge protector system is included. If not, you can always request for installation and the main con will put this item under Variation Order. Check with main con or sub con how much they are charging first before committing. With the charge amount in mind, then work out your sums to determine if it’s cheaper to let the electrical con carry out the installation or you can after top, engage an outside LEW to install. Type 1 protector market price $500 and above depending on specs and brand. Type 2 Hager(Germany) brand SPM440E $200/$250(cheapest in market) compared to brands like ABB(France)or DEHN(Germany)or FURSE(UK). Beware of Schneider due risk of MIC imitation. Type 3 Furse brand ESP240-5A $150-$200 But in the market there is Type 1+Type 2 by Hager or Dehn. This is 2 in 1 protector in one housing. Around $1000. Furse has a Type 1+Type 2 +Type 3. But this Type 3 function will not be effective as this protector is installed in the meter compartment because Type 3 need to be installed as close as possible to the household equipment to be protected.

Another topic to put up here for discussion is lightning protection. As everyone knows that climate change is definitely here and affecting the globe. More wet weather means highly more thunderstorm and lightning activities. Most landed houses does not have a surge protection system installed other than the lightning protection system as mandated by BCA. So, it’s worth to spend an extra amount of money to install a surge protection system by your electrical sub-con on your home electrical system to protect your household equipments. Just sharing here some basic equipment requirements and not get ‘cheated’ by some sub-cons lack of electrical knowledge in this field. 1. Main incoming gate post meter compartment will need a type 1 arrestor to arrest the 10/350 microsecond induced wave. Minimum with 12.5kA I-impulse blocking. Total 3+1 poles(3 phase) of 50kA. Best is 25kA with total 100kA but cost of arrestor will be much higher. Choose either MOV type or Spark Gap type design. I personally prefer MOV due to technical details too lengthy to describe here. 2. Main DB inside house will need a type 2 arrestor. This is a 8/20 microsecond wave. A good spec will be same as type 1 of 25kA/100kA. But this can be reduced to half if your DB box is too tight spaced. 12.5kA/50kA will be fine too. Only MOV type for type 2. 3. Type 3 will be more demanding in terms of installation. It must be installed as near as possible to the equipments that need protection. Like network cluster, CCTVs, TVs and things of high value and importance. It’s define by Uoc. A value of 6kA is a norm. As a reminder of the LPS (Lightning Protection System) under the new BCA regulation from 2018, only copper tape(down conductor) can be used and no longer aluminium. This is because aluminium is rather weak and easily weaken by corrosion due cement and if buried inside concrete, and once a lightning current conducts, it will break and you will have a broken link. So it’s good idea to do spot checks during structural phase to make sure only copper is used and tied to the column re-bars before casting. Once cast, you cannot see anymore and there is nothing the owner can do. This is to ensure the sub-con don’t cheat and ‘makan’ your money. 1 roll of aluminium is $140. 1 roll of copper of 1/4 the length is $380. Go work out the sums of how much they can cheat. That’s all for now.