Hougang/kovan 4A Resale Reno Journal

[kovan4us 5]

Hi KS! No lah...let's share what we learned.

Actually, I regretted not putting in CAT5 when I redid my cabling. I would have more options now.

I am on the 200Mbps plan with TV content with SingTel. It is no longer being offered. I was unwilling to upgrade because I would have to pay more. We are already paying the HIGHEST broadband rate among the developed nations, we need to be paying less, not more! Haizz... no choice la.

But now, it is worth considering. If I were to sign up the 300Mbps plan, I would be getting a new router. Maybe that might solve the problem. For extra $10 over 2 years, it would cover the cost of a new router.

The problem here is too many Wifi stations around. So the only way is to out-power them. If you can determine where they are coming from: next door, downstairs, opposite, then point the antennas at them and form a shield around your house. Hehe, just my theory la. I am also kidding with the 10ft antenna, my wife won't allow it.

[kovan4us 5]

Cooker Hood -- What is the right height?

I mulled over this before the installation. Came the time to install, we just went along with what our carpenter suggested.

Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!

After a month in the kitchen, I have hit it at no less than five times and from all sides. I should now be able to answer this with some authority: how should the hood be positioned? Here's the definitive guide.

Measure, measure, measure.

First, there is a constraint you have to work with: the maximum distance between hob and hood. For my Fujioh hood, the separation distance should be within 800mm.

Second, determine the height of the hob. It should be around 800mm to 900mm, depending on your height and what you are comfortable with.

The height of floor to hob in my case is 900mm and hob to hood is another 750mm making it a total height of 1650mm or 1.65m. I am 1.75m tall and the hood is just at my eye level.

I had a chance to take measurement in my rental apartment, my mom's and my two in-laws': average height is 1.55m. Lowest is at 1.5m, at my chin level. That unit is in my brother-in-law's condo, came installed. He is slightly taller than I. In actual use, it is not that bad. You can still get a full view of the cooking area.

Keep it in view

My recommendation? Hood should be well below your eye level. Somewhere between your eyes and chin. Somewhere at your nose or upper lips. At your chin level if you are really tall.

At that level, even when you bend your head, eyes staring downwards, fully engage in your food preparation, you will still have the hood in your view -- less chance of ouch!

[w1nn7e 0]

Hi kovan4us

Would you mind share contact of your carpenter, Mr & Mrs Chua? TIA.

[kovan4us 5]

Plumbing Part 2 -- Fixing the basins and pipes

 

The company that my ID engaged for doing the plumbing work was quite a big company.  So I requested for a different group to come down to fix the issues.

 

They sent down a guy called Ah Meng, late 30s?  He worked alone and fixed the tilted washbasin in the common toilet.

 

 

 

He also put in valves (mistakenly called them switches) below the washbasins and shower heads.

 

 

Something I thought was a standard but then they made you ask for it.

 

-----------------------

All cold water pipes leading to faucets SHOULD be fitted with a valve.  If not, when you need to change the faucet or when it breaks, you will have to run outside to switch off the main supply to the entire house.  

 

Hot water pipes only requires a single on/off valve next to the exit point on the hot water tank.

-----------------------

 

At the same time, he also helped to put in the rest of the racks and hooks to the wall.  All went well without a hitch.

 

A second group came later in the week to change the pipes.

 

Before

After

 

Other than just look 'nicer' it also fixed another issue:

 

Hot water pipes should be at the bottom and on the inside for safety reason.  How do I know this?  The bunch that installed it told me.  And yet, they still installed it with the hot water pipe running 'outside' (see the Before pic).

 

This second group was also a bunch of young guys but they did a much better job.

 

Edited April 7, 2016 by kovan4us

[kovan4us 5]

Kitchen Basin - Top-mount or Under-mount?

 

Under-mount of course!

 

Ok, we initially agreed on top-mounting because it would be easier to replace.  Also the previous owner's under-mount sink had so much stained in the joint between the counter and the sink we thought we had better avoid it.

 

There's so much debate on this forum already and I shall not repeat the good and bad of both.

 

What should we do?

 

Luckily, we had our carpenter to rely on.

 

"Leave it up to us." said Mr Chua.

 

Now that we have used it for three months.  Let's take a look:

 

Under-mount - for the look and the convenience of pushing whatever leftover on the counter top directly into the sink!

 

 

Top view

 

 

The quartz top just hovers a little bit over the sink.  This was done so that water would not easily get trapped and stained the silicon seal.  It worked very well and we don't really have to bother much with it.

 

It's so good to have an experienced carpenter on your side.

[ricepapergirl 21]

2 hours ago, kovan4us said:

Plumbing Part 2 -- Fixing the basins and pipes

 

The company that my ID engaged for doing the plumbing work was quite a big company.  So I requested for a different group to come down to fix the issues.

 

They sent down a guy called Ah Meng, late 30s?  He worked alone and fixed the tilted washbasin in the common toilet.

 

 

 

He also put in switches below the washbasins and shower heads.

 

 

Something I thought was a standard but then they made you ask for it.

 

-----------------------

All cold water pipes leading to faucets SHOULD be fitted with a switch.  If not, when you need to change the faucet or when it breaks, you will have to run outside to switch off the main supply to the entire house.  

 

Hot water pipes only requires a single on/off switch next to the exit point on the hot water tank.

-----------------------

 

At the same time, he also helped to put in the rest of the racks and hooks to the wall.  All went well without a hitch.

 

A second group came later in the week to change the pipes.

 

Before

After

 

Other than just look 'nicer' it also fixed another issue:

 

Hot water pipes should be at the bottom and on the inside for safety reason.  How do I know this?  The bunch that installed it told me.  And yet, they still installed it with the hot water pipe running 'outside' (see the Before pic).

 

This second group was also a bunch of young guys but they did a much better job.

 

Oh I didn't know you could request for switches at your water pipes! Do they charge you extra for it? Shall check with my ID!

[kovan4us 5]

HI ricepapergirl!

Of course no charge.

 

Edited April 7, 2016 by kovan4us

[kovan4us 5]

Home Wifi Woes Update 2 - Dual router setup

 

Left over food for dinner -- ok.

Messy house -- ok.

No lights, no fan in the room -- ok.

 

Everything is OK as long as wifi is working.

 

Problem with Wifi Repeaters

 

I had a Powerline repeater in one bedroom and a wifi repeater on the other.  If you start to move around, your session can easily get dropped.  This is because even when your laptop switches to a stronger repeater, the session will not be handled over.  It may mean you have to reset the connection.  Matter is much worse if you are in between your wifi modem and repeaters.

 

Internet is not working!

 

Few days into setting up the repeaters, complains mounted and they simply switched the repeaters off.

 

One night, after another round of complaints, I decided to make some changes.

 

Dual router -- one to face SingTel and the other to broadcast wifi

 

Overkill?  Yep, but doing this actually solved two problems:

 

1. Keeping the SingTel modem to face the internet makes it easy for SingTel customer service to conduct tests.

2. Keeping the SingTel modem near all my Ethernet connected devices will mean less unsightly cables on the outside.

 

 

 

With the Wifi router outside, dead center of the house, time for another round of test.

 

New Wifi Router -- Dlink 868L.  For this test, I decided to keep both routers side-by-side.  Connecting to http://www.speedtest.com.sg/.  Mine is a 200Mbps plan.

 

Living Room, 5ft away from router, unblocked.

 

77.68Mbps - SingTel Modem

87.16Mbps - Dlink 2.4G

139.67Mbps - Dlink 5G

 

Bedroom 1, 15 ft away, room door in between.

 

14.28Mbps - SingTel Modem

81.33Mbps - Dlink 2.4G

112.57Mbps - Dlink 5G

 

Kitchen, 20-25ft away, 2 walls, next to a fridge, washing machine and dryer.

 

5.51Mbps - SingTel Modem

11.83Mbps - Dlink 2.4G

58.56Mbps - Dlink 5G

 

Wahaaaa!!!  I cannot contained my joy!  58Mbps at the furthest end was totally unexpected even though no one would be using wifi in that spot.

 

Ok, one more test to see if my theory is correct:  broadcasting ONLY 5G will yield better results.

 

Living room -- 148Mbps (better by 9Mbps)

Bedroom 1 -- 93Mbps (less by 9Mbps)

Kitchen -- 72Mbps (better by 14Mbps)

 

Mixed results.  Improvement is marginal.  Nevertheless, less radio waves moving around is better right?  So I turned off the 2.4Ghz on the routers until...we need to print. 

 

Yep, printers don't support 5Ghz.

Edited April 7, 2016 by kovan4us

[kovan4us 5]

TV Mount -- LG LSW400BG

 

Three types of mount in the market: Fixed, Tilt and Full Motion

 

Correspondingly S, M & L -- size of the mount, weight and thickness.

 

I picked the LG mount because it was exactly what I had wanted:

 

Slim

 

And just enough tilting motion up/down and left/right for access and in case there's unwanted reflections.

 

Mine is a 55inch Sharp.  As long as the TV comes with a Vesa mount, 400x400mm, it should fit.

Edited April 7, 2016 by kovan4us

[pipsqueak 3]

Your blog is super informative! 

Thanks for sharing about the wall mount..i may consider that for my home

[kovan4us 5]

Kitchen -- Pantry Table

 

We spent many hours arguing about what should be used to separate the cooking area and pantry: should it be a counter, bar top or table?

 

Doing an extension of the kitchen counter or adding a bar counter would be the easiest decision. However, both are not very useful.  A counter (extension of the kitchen top), makes it hard to find a suitable chair, whereas bar top (bar counter) though looks nice, it is quite useless.  Hehe, sorry people, there was a time where bar counter was so popular, we had done it, my brothers, in-laws... all did it.  As soon as it was completed, nobody uses it:  bar-top surface is too small and bar stools are uncomfortable.

 

European Design Ideas

 

Inspiration came from EuroCucina 2015 -- most of the designers went for a conventional table.  This was what we had in mind:

 

 

Yep, a table would be 100% useful.  Easy to find chairs too!

 

And so we did it:

 

 

Sure... the legs could be something sexier like these:

 

 

 

but I don't know where to find someone who would do power coated steel table legs.  Anyway, we were just too happy that our carpenter agreed to do what we asked for:

 

 

On a typical day, it sits two: breakfast or a quick bowl of instant noodles during supper time.

 

Other days, if need be, all four of us can still fit in:

 

 

And if my wife so decides to finally take out her Kitchenaid after ten years in storage, she will have no more excuse that there's no space for weighing scale, measuring cups and a whole collection of baking pans of various sizes.  Because the table can be morphed into an island...

 

 

 

 

 

1000% useful!  And it was my wife who thought of it.  Well done wife!

[kovan4us 5]

Home WiFi Woe Update 3 -- Woe no more!

 

I showed off the dual router setup to my wife and she shot me a thoughtful question:

 

"Really? One more power eating thing?"

 

Hmm... ok then.  

 

SingTel to the rescue!

 

I called up SingTel to see if there's something they could offer.  After hearing my wifi problem with the modem, the customer service officer did a line test - there were some error packets!  

 

"It does seems like there is a problem with the line or modem.  We will schedule an engineer to do a modem swap."

 

 New Modem Are Dual Band: Aztech FG7003GRV(AC)-J

 

With the new router in the same position, I did a quick test on just 5Ghz band:

 

Aztech vs Dlink 868L

 

Living Room - 134Mbps vs 139Mbps

 

Bedroom 1 - 84Mbps vs 112Mbps

 

Kitchen - 42Mbps vs 58Mbps

 

Dlink is marginally better but hey, Aztech comes free!

 

Connection Dropped!

 

After just two days, complaints mounted.  Moving from room to room, connection dropped.  Sight... another call to SingTel.

 

This time round, it was a bit more difficult to convince the customer service agent.  Nevertheless, she reluctantly agreed to get an engineer to come and have a look.

 

Signal Strength vs Download Speed

 

The SingTel engineer armed with Xirrus Wifi Inspector, me armed with Speedtect.com. 

 

I told him about the connection drop and he told me to use 2.4Ghz instead.

 

That's right, there are articles online touting the same thing: if you are far from the router, use 2.4Ghz because the signal travels further.

 

The SingTel engineer showed me the measurement on Xirrus: 2.4Ghz had twice the strength of 5Ghz.  

I showed him the measurement on speedtest: 5Ghz had 10x the download speed of 2.4Ghz.

 

5Mbps vs 50Mbps -- which one would you choose?  

 

He relented and asked me, "so what do you want me to do?"

 

"Ok, can we try another modem? If the problem persist, I will resort to my dual modem setup."

 

No two modems are alike!

 

The second modem fared worse:  it look longer to connect to the internet and the wifi speed immediately started off with just 5Mbps of connection speed before slowly rising to full 100Mbps.

 

The SingTel engineer went downstairs and brought up another modem.

 

Third time a charm

 

This modem was blazing fast: fast to connect to the internet and almost as fast on wifi vs Dlink:

 

Living Room - 142Mbps vs 139Mbps

Room 1 - 98Mbps vs 112Mbps

Kitchen - 58Mbps vs 58Mbps

 

As of the time of writing this article, it has been operational for more than five days.  No more complaints.  Case closed.

Edited April 7, 2016 by kovan4us

[kovan4us 5]

Neufloor Update and Verdict

 

It's been a month since the touched up.  I believed that's enough time for me to calm down.

 

Trip to Showroom

 

Before the Neufloor guys come down to fix the problems, we went down to their showroom in Guillemard Road.  

 

The salesman explained the product and gave us a demo: lighting it on fire and scratching it with a coin.  I examined the system and got a better idea how to put the system work.

 

Fix-it team

 

The same two guys came down.  Found out the supervisor's name was Q? or sounded like it.  He didn't seem to want to let us know.  He also said that the first guy who came down was Andy, his GM.  At this point, I didn't know if I could believe his words.

 

How to install skirting

 

If you don't already know, these days, the vinyl floorings are mostly using clip-on: easier, faster. 

 

In the showroom, the skirting, or side board was also clip-on.  Something similar to this:

 

 

I didn't had the chance to take photos while the salesman was explaining it to me in the showroom.  In the case of Neufloor, the metal clip was nailed to the floor.  Then the skirting board was pressed down onto it.  In either system, no nails will show.  Not like this:

 

 

 

Then they had to cover the nails with coloured silicon.  It was so badly done it was like screaming out to me, "check me out! Nail inside!"

 

 

An Unforgettable Conversation

 

When asked, the supervisor replied:

 

"We only do that (the clip-on for skirting) in Europe.  We don't do that in Asia."

 

Then why did the showroom use the clip-on?  

 

"That was wrong.  We told the salesman already."

 

You had a clip-on system for floor tiles.  You also had a clip-on system for skirting.  Can't you see that someone had already thought of the installation process and designed the system, why didn't you just follow it??

 

"It's like that one, we don't do it in Asia."

 

  ....

 

"We have done hundreds of houses in Singapore.  All like that one."

  ...

 

"Really, we have done HUNDREDS of houses in Singapore..."

 

After the third time he mentioned it, I shut up.  There was an epiphany...

 

I should not be angry with him.  Instead, I should be angry with YOU... 

 

The hundreds of YOU who had done it before me.  If enough of YOU had spotted it: the nails, the sharp and uneven corners, the mis-matched colour between the floor tiles, gap-fillers and skirting... then the less I had to deal with it.  It's like passing the problems on and on...

 

They did tried their best

 

I was sure they did.  They got hold of some of my boxes to weight the tiles down in places, tried to use razor blades to smoothen the corners...

 

By then, I had given up.  Because without the right techniques and tools, there was no way they could fix the problems.

 

European Standard vs Asian Standard

 

Macbook vs Acer/Asus/Lenovo...

 

When I mentioned this incident to my brother.  He had the same experience when his condo in China was being renovated.  

 

"We are not up to the European standard and renovation workmanship in China is not quite up to our standard."

 

 He had to show the workers there pictures of how things are done here.  Even then, they didn't know how to do it -- no expertise, no tools.

 

Conclusion

 

Material wise, it was good: comfortable to walk on and none of the 'stickiness' on a hot day when your feet are a little damped.  Conceals dirt pretty well too. However, I could not condone the bad workmanship and equally bad excuses.  

 

Verdict: Avoid.

Edited April 7, 2016 by kovan4us

[JohnJohn 13]

By any chance, could you share the washing machine you are using pls? I'm looking for one now and am confused by all the brands and jargon out there.

[Stream 4]

On 2/11/2016 at 11:48 AM, kovan4us said:

 

 

 

Hi,

I find your posts to be very informative. It's first time I heard of Gerberit!

Since you did the ledge in the shower area, I'm just wondering why the two hot/cold water pipes below the mixer are not concealed in the ledge? Was there any constraints?

Also, you posted pics of the old air-con ductings. How did it turn out after your renovation? Any pointers?  

Edited April 8, 2016 by Stream