snoozee

sometimes it's not the roof that is the issue but how/where the room is facing as well as the windows. if you have a room and windows which are west facing and getting direct sun, then the room will be heated up due to the heat coming directly in from windows. but if you have a canopy/sun-shade above the window which reduces the impact of direct sunlight, it will help in reducing the heating effect of the sun. you could also install window films which cuts out infra red light which can help reduce the amount of heat coming in through the windows. also the brick walls serve as a thermal mass which stores the heat from the sun and releases it slowly throughout the evening and night which adds on to the heating effect. so apart from moving to another room, it would be up to you to do trial and error to see what can help in reducing the heat from the sun

I think most of not all OTPs will have some clause which covers illegal works. But whether the untrained eyes can see it or not is another thing and property agents won’t mention anything at all as well even if there are illegal works. I had came across some houses with illegal works previously when I was house hunting and best is stay far away from these houses unless the plan is to do a total rebuild then the illegal works become negligible.

"not comfortable to provide" sounds like a bad excuse to me as you will get hold of the information ultimately. if the agents are doing this for you FOC, then go ahead. Make sure the surveyors also look through thoroughly on whether there are any illegal works as you become liable for them after the completion. if you need to pay for the survey, then it will be much cheaper to buy the plans off BCA then getting a surveyor to do a survey and draw up the plans. BCA search fees is $25 and then you pay another $25 for each set of registered plans. so in all, you may end up needing to pay $50 for the plans only. ultimately, you will still end up needing to buy the plans from BCA if you decide to do some major work as no survey can give you information on what is below the ground for the house's foundations.

Well, I guess the seller is just being a PITA. Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do if they choose not to oblige on this and if you back out of the deal because of this you will lose $$$. BCA only allows the owner to buy the floor plans or parties authorised by the owner. So you have no way to buy them now unless the seller authorised you to do the purchase from BCA.. Honestly there shouldn’t be any reasons why seller disallows unless there are illegal works which the seller is worried that might be found out before the completion as legally he is still liable for it before the completion. Options you have now is to try to get the seller to sign on the authorisation letter to allow you to buy from BCA. Since you mentioned it is an old IT, see if you can get any other neighbour who has not done up their houses to buy their floor plans instead as those old houses usually have same layouts. Of cos last option is just to wait until completion to buy from BCA. Also I don’t understand why your completion is taking so long at 28 weeks unless your or the seller had requested for extended completion date. Normally completion of sale and purchase will be done within 12 weeks after excise of OTP. If the seller has requested for extended completion, try to ask nicely to get him to authorise you to buy the plans since you have allowed for a longer completion period so they can stay there longer. if you plan to do a reconstruction in 5 to 10 years time, might as well just do it now. Construction cost will increase as years go by. Also by then, you will have to deal with the hassle of finding a temporary home to stay for 1 year and also the moving out and back.

check whether your storage heater has it's own dedicated MCCB in your switch box or not. if have and your switch box has extra space, can try to find a 20A timer and put in inline with the storage heater's MCCB so that you can configure the timer to turn on/off at the preset time(s).

A simple way is to use $350 per square foot of new space. So if you are adding 1000sqf, cost would be about $350,000. Just to give you a gauge, last year a family friend was quoted 800k++ for a reconstruction of his corner terrace from 2 storey to 3.5 storey. This is only for construction cost and doesn’t include professional fees and submission fees

best is to check URA website to confirm if in a 2 or 3 storey zone. not to be rude but some people think that a 2 storey with attic house is a 3 storey house. if you see your neighbourhood has 3 storey with attic (looks like 4 storey) house, then high chance that you are in a 3 storey zone. however in certain areas, one's house can be in a 2 storey zone but their neighbor across the road is in a 3 storey zone. 300k is my guesstimate. but construction cost has been creeping upwards so chances is that 300k may not be enough, especially if you end up needing to do new foundation for the extension. if you really want to be safe, put aside at least 500k for the entire works.

is your house in a 2 storey or 3 storey landed zone? if it is in a 2 storey zone, you can't add a 3rd storey. but you can add an attic storey to your house. if you have not done so, go and buy the original plans of your house from BCA. then get a PE to determine if an additional attic can be added to your house or not and see how much strengthening of the existing structure is needed in order to add the attic storey cost wise, I would say could be anywhere around 300k and upwards just for construction costs. authorities fees and professional fees are not included yet.

you can't simply remove a beam from your house especially if your house is quite old. many old houses were built together and many times, your beams are connected to your neighbours houses beams. if you really want to remove, then you need to engage a PE to determine if the beam is safe for removal and what/how a replacement beam can be constructed. anyway, best is to leave the beam alone and design around it instead as structural changes isn't going to be cheap and most probably would require submissions to the authorities as well. for electrical, you need to check how much ampere your existing incoming is providing. if it is 63A, then you need to consider how much electricity you will be using at one instance in time. ie: how much aircon is turned on, how much kitchen appliances are running and how many water heaters are turned on. aircon can take up from 3amp to 13amp depending on what brand/model and configuration you have. say if you have 2 big ceiling cassette or wall mounted aircon in your living room and both are turned on at the same time, you might be using about 26 to 28amp of electricity already which is almost 40% of your available 63amp available. if you decide to use your oven (about 12amp) to roast something and also use your induction cooker (about 15amp) to do cooking at the same time, you may be reaching your max available ampere. so whether to change from single phase to 3 phase largely depends on your lifestyle and what you wish to do in your house. if you do not plan to install and use many electrical appliances, then a single phase may be sufficient. if you like cooking, entertaining and use aircon most of the time, then it would be better to spend a few thousand to upgrade to 3 phase.

don't have clothes hanging in the kitchen when you are cooking. if clothes not dry yet, hang them outside first and bring in after cooking is done.

closed

I can't confirm if quartz countertops will crack or sag over time. but quartz countertops are made of quartz chips embedded in resin which sounds similar to solid surface countertops which are made of some kind of resin as well. I have seen solid surface countertops sagging due to lack of or broken supports at fast food restaurants so I am inclined to believe that quartz countertops if not properly supported may behave in the same way. your dilemma now is to have to chose between aesthetically pleasing against functionality. I would suggest you talk to the users of the kitchen counter (wife and mom) and make the decision from there. if the users are going to spend hours using the counter rather than non-users who just see the counter 3 or 4 times a day, then it is better to build the height for the users who are actually using the counter for "working" rather than non-users who just look at the counter top. at the end of the day, "happy wife equals happy life"

Assuming the floor to countertop height is 910mm, after minus the 850mm for the dishwasher, you are left with 60mm. assuming the quartz thickness is 20mm, then you are left with 40mm. But if your quartz has an overhang to make the front look thicker, and assuming the front profile is 30mm, then you are left with 30mm of space. if you are going to have a 1 inch thick plinth for your counter base, then you basically have only 5mm of gap left which would be almost negligible. if your concern is to have a counter which is like only 880mm tall, then I would say don’t integrate the dishwasher in as you would not be able to do it unless you buy a dishwasher which is much lower and is designed for integration into cabinets. Those 850mm tall dishwashers are more meant to be stand alone. if you really do not want to have structure to support the quartz countertop over the dishwasher, I suppose it is possible. However do understand that over time you may run a risk of the quartz sagging or even cracking due to the lack of support over that 600mm width.

just take a ladder to climb up and unscrew the screws securing the brackets to the ceiling. ceiling would most likely be left with some marks from the brackets as well as the holes from the screws and plugs. so depends on whether you want to putty over and paint the ceiling or leave it as it is.

Blinds usually fall under the classification of being a fixture and fixtures are usually supposed to be part of the house when the house is sold. If there is no list of inventories to be left behind or to be removed, then the usual case is that fixtures are assumed to be part of the sale. Dont make it that the buyer assume that the blinds are part of the purchase and you assume that you are free to take it away based on your own definitions. Just talk to the buyer on whether he/she wants the blinds or not rather than just take it away.

as mentioned, it is a grey area so better check with buyer on whether they want the blinds or not rather than you take it away and they make noise later when they discover it being missing when doing the inspection of the property during the hand over. by definition, fixtures are items which are more or less permanently attached to the property regardless of whether it can be easily removed or not. blinds would kind of fall under this classification. same as wall mounted fans, aircons, etc which technically are removable as well. when I sold my flat previously, all wall mounted fans, roller blinds were sold as part of the flat. My curtains wasn't part of the sale but the buyers requested for them so I gave the curtains to them as well when they requested for it. of cos if you really want to take the blinds away no one is stopping you.

depends on what arrangement you have with the buyer. if not stated in the sale and purchase agreement, then better check with the buyer on it. technically anything moveable can take. but if your blinds are fixed, then becomes a grey area.

if the "attic" is squeezed within the exiting roof profile and the 2nd storey, then yes, maybe can get away with not being counted as an "attic" since it is somewhat like a loft within the same 2nd storey. however if the entire roof is removed and the building height increased to cater for the attic, it will be counted as a new storey and will be classified as reconstruction instead of A&A.

You have to check with contractor on cost of the window. But are you doing it for aesthetics purpose or for additional space. If additional space, then you need to build an additional floor within the room so this will be additional cost.

Additional full attic is reconstruction as that is considered a storey. 300k budget unlikely possible for additional attic. What you mentioned is dormer window. Think that is still considered as A&A

Yes it is allowed to remove the existing false ceiling and redo it. But do understand that you will have to redo the false ceiling inside the house and do up the insulation as well to block out the heat. If you are intending to build lofts in each room, do note that you will be required to do submissions if your loft exceeds 5sqm. It would also be good to get PE to do load calculations to determine if the structure can take the load of the loft or not. Also it seems that your house had undergone some A&A most likely in the early 90s. But your house might be very old so the ceiling boards at the 2nd floor might contain asbestos unless they had been removed during the last major renovation. If asbestos still exist, you will need to get specialist to remove them. On the roof on the left side, there is a vent pipe for the toilet there. So you may want to redo this pipe if you really want to reclaim all the available space. of cos if you have enough budget, you may want to build an additional attic floor which will really allow you to maximise the available space

Outside your boundary? If you say it’s from scv/ StarHub, then it will be where the lead-in coaxial cable for your property is tapping to. However it may not be just for your house and might be serving a few households. Currently cable services are until 30 June 2019. You can try contacting StarHub to see if they are willing to remove that after that date. But chances is unlikely unless IMDA requires them to remove all the cable infrastructure around Singapore which will cost millions of dollars. The most updated regulations does not require any coaxial cables in the lead-in pipes anymore. Even coaxial cabling in household shelter is no longer needed as well. However IMDA still requires every house to have internal coaxial cables being run even when there is no lead in coaxial cable. But I managed to obtain a waiver for the coaxial cabling by indicating that I would be providing additional cat 6 network points in place of the coaxial cables

haha, I've seen that photo before. for that development, the sides and back of the house are all "sealed" with earth with only the front exposed for the drive in garage. somehow the developer had asked the architects (I think 3 or 4 different firms for the entire development) to have the common design of this type of garage. however the original site was actually a small hill so they could get away with that. most important is that the approval was before the change in regulations. you can call URA but I double anyone would give you an answer unless proper submissions was done which can only happen AFTER you buy. as for road level, you need to engage a surveyor to perform a topo survey of the house and surroundings. of cos you could maybe call a surveyor to perform a survey of just the outside of the house to find the road level. not sure how much that would cost you though. another option is to see if the house owners still have the original plans. but if the house is very old, I doubt they would have the plans.

how expensive is expensive? just to give you a guage, SI should cost between 2.5k to 3k (before GST) for a small landed house project for 1 single borehole. again depends on the scope which the PE determines. yes you can get on your own. but the problem is who is going to provide the scope of work, determine where to drill and also make the decision of when to stop the boring/drilling. normally the SI contractor will check with the PE on whether the drilling is enough or not to stop as the PE will then based on what is given in the SI report to design the foundations of the house. I can give you names of companies to contact but without a scope of work, it is pointless. I can tell you my real life experience that PE1 gave a scope of work to a SI company to quote and the quote was a 5 digit figure. I got another PE2 to give another scope or work and asked the same SI company to quote based on the scope given by PE2 and the price came back to be about 3K before GST. in construction projects, the PE is as important as the architect when it comes to scoping the project. if the PE is used to handling huge projects, they may give a scope of work which is normal to them for big projects and thus the cost for SI will also go up. also after that, the PE may decide to go for piling for the job which would also lead to higher costs. however if a PE has much experience in handling small housing jobs, the scope of work for the SI company will correspond to what is needed for a small landed house. this PE may also design a foundation based on just footings instead of piling if the soil condition allows for footings. the cost difference between footings and piling will be tens of thousand of dollars. if you feel the SI quoted is expensive, get the scope of work and then us that to ask other SI companies for quotations. also, ask your architect how experience is the PE in handling small housing jobs and if possible, maybe change another PE who is used to doing these small housing jobs. to be honest, I think many PEs will just go for piling as foundation as this is something which would hardly go wrong regardless of what type of soil conditions. however this also leads to the house being over-engineered as well as brings up the overall construction cost.

land excavation is generally not advised though URA does allow on a case by case basis. however you need to bear in mind that if you are going to level the ground, you WILL NEED to put in ERSS which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. so imagine paying hundreds of thousands to view walls everyday. since you mentioned the height of the back yard is almost 1 floor higher than the front, you will definitely not be allowed to level the ground since the maximum height allowed for retaining walls is 1m (1.5m depending on cases) for landed houses. so what you could possibly do is to level the ground until where the height is about 1.5m and build a 1.5m high retaining wall to hold the soil at the back. if the front road level is below 104mRL, then you could build a "basement" and then add on the rest of the house above the "basement". why "basement" is in quotes is because the "basement" is actually at the road level but since there is a regulation that all living areas must be at or above 104mRL, whatever is below 104mRL can be declared as a "basement". it's a bit funny that the "basement" is at road level but that's how the regulations go. then you can build the rest of your 2 storey or 3 storey above this "basement". so if the house is in a 3 storey zone, you can technically end up with a 5 storey house (3 storey with basement and attic). just to be clear, whatever I mentioned does not reflect the relevant authorities views. since each piece of land is unique on it own, URA has it's own definitions on what can or cannot be done. Even a QP cannot guarantee that what is planned can be 100% approved by the authorities. also it is no use trying to take examples of nearby houses to argue unless these houses are constructed after the last major change in regulations on envelope design. Cos after the regulations on envelope design, anything that was approved before that may not be approved under the new regulations.