snoozee

If you want pivot doors better confirm it first and let your main contractor know early. Cos the frame would be different and you will also need to cater for the pivot mechanism in the floor as well. Else you will have a problem if the normal door frame is installed as the design of normal door frame would be different from pivot doors frame.

Can’t comment on the cost but since existing pipes already 20 years old, better to change them. Using bigger pipes to each storey before reducing to smaller pipes for final outlets will ensure better water pressure for each outlet even when multiple outlets are in use.

with RC roof you will need to do proper waterproofing before the final screed layer is applied. concrete itself is porous so water can seep through if water proofing is not done properly. also RC roof would be heavier than other roofing options so you may incur addition cost for your entire building if you want a RC roof. honestly, no point doing RC roof unless you are building a roof terrace for entertainment usage.

not sure if you saw the quotation that @prodriver6 shared on his construction cost. the builder had quoted 65k for architectural and PE fees. so assuming the PE is paid 25k, the architect would have been paid 40k for his services. Now his quotation is of a total of 1.1M. So after deducting the QPs fees, it would be 1.04M of construction cost. If say he went for the architect route and the architect charged him 100k for the services (based on 10% of construction cost), there would be an additional cost of 60K for the architect fees. However if the builder charged him more than 60K in VO because of changes after the submissions, etc, then it would have cost more to go with his design and build contractor compared to going the architect route. Personally, I feel it is better to confirm all requirements before getting a quotation rather than signing a quotation based on estimates as you can go from "money not enough" to "money really not enough" if the VOs start to add up. Not sure if your builder's quote includes fees for RTO but you will need to hire a RTO for the construction process and this RTO is usually preferred to be someone neutral since he/she is supposed to check on the builder's work. So if the RTO is someone familiar to the builder, then there may be conflicts of interest.

If the quote is given after the structure and foundation is designed, then your contractor should have factored the plate bearing test cost in somewhere already. But reading your other thread where you mentioned that you went with design and build contractor, then you need to confirm on this already. This is one of the drawbacks of signing a quotation before the building design is done and confirmed as you face potential VOs due to nothing being confirmed at the point of signing.

What type of foundation did your PE design for? For 45k, I don’t think it is piling right? Sounds more like doing footings or raft foundation with this price for substructure

in SG, the wind direction is usually North-South for most of the months with some changed to East-West for a few months. This is why property agents always tout N-S facing houses as good buy. A well designed house should allow for cross ventilation such that air can flow in from the front of the house and exit from the rear (and vice versa) regardless of facing of the house. This is more so for inter-terrace as the house does not have any openings at the side as opposed to semi-d which has one side openable. That's why inter-terrace house sometimes has air-wells designed to bring the hot air up from the living room to the top. But if there is no way to bring the hot air out of the house, the air-well is redundant since the hot air would be just stuck in the top floor. While mechanical ventilation may help, it is always better to have cross-ventilation so that the air can be vented out naturally from front/back of the house. One thing about cross ventilation is that you need to be able to let air enter and exit and the way to do this is not to have any obstructions for the air in the first place. But a lot of house owners would just build solid brick walls as boundary walls and this will just obstruct the air from moving in and out in the first storey. So without free flowing air, the hot air inside the house will just remain stuck there and heat up the house. While people can argue that the solid boundary walls are needed for privacy/security reasons, there are other ways to mitigate this like using fence and putting in plants to act as shield for prying eyes. Plants also have a cooling effect when wind blows through it as well. And don't expect a 1.8m high boundary wall to provide you that much security as it can be scaled over easily (remember the low wall for army SOC).

pricing can also swing wildly without COVID. If the contractor is not interested in taking up the job, the pricing can be quite high. I think the contactor would rather quote high and not get selected rather than reject to quote the architect as this may mean the architect may not invite the contractor for future quotes anymore.

normally part of the building contract unless the test fails then your contractor may claw back the cost for additional test(s) from you.

i'm using dahua 6MP CCTV. 2MP resolution would be very poor. you can pay for 8MP or even 4K resolution CCTVs but they would be much more expensive. POE means Power Over Ethernet. for conventional CCTVs running on coaxial cables, you will need to supply another 13A socket such that a power brick can be plugged into the power socket to provide power to the CCTV. But for POE devices, the power is drawn through the same Cat 6/7/8 cable from the switch which also provides the power. So basically you just need a single ethernet cable to transmit the power and data. It's much more convenient and you don't have to pull separate set of power cables to provide power to the cameras. Every POE CCTV camera will need to have a single ethernet cable which is connected back to the DVR which has POE capabilities. AP is Access Point for WIFI which is different from CCTV unless you are buying wireless CCTVs which is another topic on its own. For the quotation, let's just say you are paying for warranty (I hope at least 1 year) and also the labour needed to install the system for you. if you really want to know how much is the equipment cost, you can always search online for the individual equipments listed to find out the pricing. For me as I can DIY the installations, etc, I basically paid a fraction of what you are quoted. The only things I couldn't DIY is the laying of conduits and cables so this part is done by my electrical subcon as part of the building cost.

This is photo of plate bearing test done for my house. test is done on excavated ground at 1.5m deep as that is the depth of the bottom of my footings as specified by my PE.

thread starter has not logged on since Jan 2021. So those asking for information no need to place hope here and continue asking. Anyway it seems TS is more of a contractor (or working for one) rather than home owner. 😑 Photos seems to be staging photos for sales material rather than an actual home owners photos

If you are going to tear down and rebuilt, you are looking at a cost of more than 1M. Do you have budget for this? If not, then the viable option is to just do an A&A.

My builder charged me around 2K for the test. Not sure if include excavator and operator cost or not as this was a VO which I paid due to the test being repeated due to initial failures. this was before COVID so not sure if price now had gone up by how much.

Your builder should arrange for this test. It’s not only the excavator but also the company who will bring the test equipment to do the measurements. if your test fails you will need to redo until you get it passed or change the foundation design before you can start work.

no. PV panels just generate electricity in DC and needs an inverter to convert the DC to AC for usage. if you need to store the generated electricity, you will need to add on batteries into the system to store the electricity and this will add on cost, need to find space for storage as well as increase your risk of fires. We've all read in the news about PMDs catching fire while charging so do your own risk assessment.

I was considering solar water heater but ended up installing heat pump water heater instead. one problem of solar water heater is that you will need to get one with heating element as during overcast days, you will not be able to heat up the water. So you will end up using the heating element which would be like any normal water heater. Anyway the cheapest solar heater I found previously cost about 6k excluding brackets needed to mount to the roof.

overtime the panels will lose its efficiency. at new, the panels may give you more than 90% efficiency and after ten years, the efficiency may drop to 80% or lower. in a PV system, panels are just part of it. you still have the invertors and other electrical components within the system. assuming that the lifespan of the inverter lasts for 8 to 10 years, you will still be looking to change it at least another 2 times within the lifespan of the entire system which could be a few K each time. I've seen proposals from PV install companies which calculate the ROI based on perpetual increase of SP tariffs. but the reality is that the tariffs doesn't increase all the time. for SP tariff to hit 40cts, you will need oil prices to go up by at least another 40 percent. back in july 2008, electrical tariffs was about 30.5cts when global crude oil was about USD139. Today crude oil is trading at about USD75. So unless something major happens and global crude oil goes up to USD150, it is unlikely we will see SP tariffs at 40cts anytime soon.

if you really want to build 2 semi-d on your land, yoongf had already given you the suggestion on building a pair of back to back semi-d with side access already. anyway there's nothing you can do about your land size short of buying over your neighouring plots.

If your front width is 15m but your back is 17m or more, you could carve into 2 plots. One plot of regular 8m width throughout and the other plot with 7m front and 9m wide at the rear. The 2nd plot will give you an average of 8m throughout which still can meet requirements. Not sure you have a detached house or semi-d as you didn’t confirm but if you have semi-d, you need to know if your neighbour can qualify to become a detached house or not as well. anyway, do a topo survey to confirm all dimensions and you can work out from there

yes, you should be right that URA is more concerned about the building width of at least 6m wide and not the actual plot width. There are leeway given for irregular plot sizes with examples given on the URA website but URA still requires an average plot width of 8m for the plot in order to qualify as a semi-d. If TS has a regular shaped plot then he can't apply the regulations used for irregular sized plots. So the only best bet is to use your suggestion of back to back units if he still intends to sub-divide

is your house a detached house or semi-detached house? from your previous posting, you mentioned you bought a 6060sqf semi-detached house. so if you currently have a semi-detached house and you want to develop your plot into 2 semi-detached houses, apart from your own plot's conditions, you will also need to check whether your currently attached neighbour's plot is big enough to become a detached house or not. basically the frontage must be at least 10m and plot size of at least 400sqm. if your neighbour's plot can't fulfill these conditions, URA won't allow you to detach from your neighbour as well.

You can always write in to URA to ask but I don’t think they would budge. The rule of 8m frontage for semi-d and minimum 200sqm has been there for years. If you have not done a topo survey, get it done first to confirm your plot size. Just because your opposite neighbor plot can do it doesn’t mean you can because plot sizes can vary in nearby areas.

Semi-d need minimum plot size of 200sqm. So the front plot needs to be at least 20m deep if the width is 10m wide. the back unit footprint would also be small since I guess the “frontage” would be along the 43m depth and building setback line taken from there. Basically 100sqm will be wasted as driveway unless the land is being fronted by roads on front and side, then will make things much easier since can try to apply to create new access opening.

unlikely to be able to appeal. land size has nothing to do with the road outside. of cos you can always ask your neighbour if they willing to sell. assuming same sized plot then with total 30m frontage, you can build into 2 corner terrace and 2 terrace houses.