snoozee

My gate card reader cum intercom has a metal face plate. Facing afternoon sun also. So far so good.

unless budget is not a concern, I would highly suggest you to work out your sums first. mortgage interest rate is increasing due to Feds increasing their rate by 0.5% just last week. buying a house will mean a 25% up front payment in cash/cpf with at least 5% mandatory in cash as LTV ratio is at 75% now. so for a 2.3M house (cheapest freehold inter terrace currently listed on the market based on property sites), this will mean you need to fork out 575K up front with minimum 115K in cash. The stamp duty for a 2.3M house is currently at 76.6K which can be paid via cash and/or CPF. if you have additional properties in your name now, do note the LTV ration will decrease and you also need to pay ABSD as well. Assuming you need to spend 1.2M to rebuild the entire house, banks can only loan you up to 75% of the construction cost. This means you will need to have 300K in cash to pay your contractor/consultants before the bank loan drawdowns can take place. Also bridging loan for construction usually is at a higher interest as well of about 5% until you receive TOP/CSC which is when the construction loan can be converted to a loan similar to the mortgage loan rates. So basically if you are planning to buy and rebuilt now, you are looking to need at least 300K + 115K = 415K in cash with another 536.6K in CPF/cash which is close to 1M in total. once you've worked out that finances is no issue, then you can start sourcing for your ideal piece of land in your preferred location. Ideally you should buy an old single storey house in its original condition if you have the intention to rebuilt as the pricing should be slightly cheaper than an existing 2 storey house. only at the stage when you have short listed your target land/property then should you get an architect/builder in to seek opinions on the rebuilt potential and cost.

if you can't find the plug, then just put newspaper or styrofoam into the pipe then pour cement in to create a seal. this is a common method done by contractors

assuming this is the carporch roof terrace, it is not allowed 99 percent of the time. if someone complains to URA then the owner will need to remove. for the 1 percent, there may be already existing landed housing areas which does allow for this covering so houses in these areas would be allowed to have these built. contractors will just do what they are told and paid to do (after TOP/CSC). they won't care about the legal aspects since ultimately its the owner who is responsible and not the contractor who does the job.

if you know how to DIY can DIY. need to seal the sanitary waste pipes properly as well as terminate the water supply..

the market for these products isn't big in SG. private landed houses number less than 80k. for commercial usage, don't need so much features and functionalities also. either fingerprint/keypad or card/keypad usually will do for commercial applications. so if there's no demand of the products, why would anyone bring the products in and risk not being able to sell them? the product that is brought in today might become obsolete in 6 months or 1 year when newer products come out in the market. unfortunately if you are unable to DIY and self support, then best to find products are are readily available locally rather then getting a fancy system which you may end up needing to pay a premium for someone to help you troubleshoot in future.

yes, the button is similar to the break glass box. anyway the break glass box is not for outdoor usage so unless you want to put the box inside another waterproof box else it may cause short circuit when wet. search on aliexpress. there should be some products which fit your requirements.

I don't have the numbers but I would say expect to pay at least 20 percent more now compared to 2019/2020 prices. Meaning if 2019/2020 the PSF is about $350, you are looking at a PSF cost of about $420 today. below is the tender price index from BCA which basically shows that there is a 20 percent increase in 4th quarter 2021 prices against prices in 2019/2020. see the below tables on how raw material prices has increased from 2020 till today. Cement price has increased by about 20 percent, concrete price by about 10 percent and steel rebars pricing by almost 70 percent. If you look at the text in red, BCA is expecting further higher raw material prices due to the fact that we are importing in all the raw materials and oil prices (needed for transport) has increased due to the war

Suggest you buy your DVR first then decide whether you need to modify it or add fans to the cabinet. Adding fans is useless if there's no outlet vent and cutting out holes may allow sound to exit which brings you back to square one. relocation of electrical sockets in a room is not difficult. But if concealed then more problematic since it involves hacking the wall then patching back and painting. Very messy job. Easier to just run extension with surface mounted trunking. Adding another set of sockets is also ok as long as the entire circuit isn't overloaded. Must check the overall electrical plan to see the socket to be extended already has how many other sockets in the same circuit. Usually electrical sockets are installed with a 20A MCB on the DB side so if there's already devices pulling high amperage on the circuit, then not advisable to add more sockets as this can lead to overload and tripping.

fans are normally connected to the main board using removable connectors. If you die die don't want to hear any fan sound then just disconnect the fan connector. Of cos you risk overheating of the device in the long run depending on which fan(s) you disconnect. I believe some NVR will have fan to provide for overall ventilation and some might also have fan to cool down the main chip on the main board. Again if you are keeping your NVR in an enclosed area, why be so bothered about the sound from the fan. It's not as if the fan is generating sounds which are as loud as a busy highway or MRT running on the tracks.

Look at it this way. You already signed the contract with the builder and I assume it is without having the fixed total contract sum for everything all included. So even if your builder quotes you additional 100k for the pile caps which you feel is unreasonable, what can you do about it? Your house still needs to be built right? Unless you want to terminate your builder and find someone else to take over the project which will give you more headache and delays to project start and completion. this is why it’s always better to go the architect route to have the architect draw up all the tender specifications and requirements and builders tender the total project sum from the tender documents. This way, you won’t run into the problems you are facing now with uncertain costs. Sorry to say but you are kind of stuck with no choice but to accept whatever cost your builder quotes you even if you think it’s unreasonable.

if you think it's unreasonable, then get hold of the foundation plans from the PE and send to piling companies to request for quotations and see what they come back with. every project is different due to soil conditions as well as the number, depth and type of piling required so I don't think anyone can tell you if the 61K quoted is reasonable or not.

haha ok. perspective playing tricks on the eyes. you got permission to cut down the tree in front or it wouldn't affect your driveway access?

should be side view. very expensive house.🤑

I think you should ask yourself what is your long term plans first. By long term, i mean 10, 15 and 20 years and beyond. If you are planning to stay in the house long term or even take is as your retirement house, then you shouldn't be asking about the resale value and instead focus on what to do up for the house to ensure you don't encounter big issues in future. Since your house was built somewhere in the 1990s, It would be close to 30 years now even though the previous owner did A&A 10 years ago. Even if you throw in 1.5M to do a reconstruction, I don't think this 1.5M will add on to the current valuation even if you decide to sell the house in the near future (within next 5 years). So if you don't have long terms plans to stay there, spending so much money to do up the house may not be worth it unless there is a huge spike in landed house prices again. We've seen landed houses prices jump more than 50% over the period of 2009 to 2013 and it is unlikely to happen again in the near future even though the prices will increase due to inflation, etc. Do also note that if you need to take a construction loan to finance the reconstruction, the interest rates for bridging loan (until you receive TOP) is much higher than mortgage loan and it will increase again soon due to USA increasing their rates. My view is that if there's no major structural issues with the house and you are ok with the layouts of the rooms, etc, then just do a renovation as opposed to a full reconstruction if you are not planning to stay long term.

Common wall as in party wall? If on your side can remove. If shared between 2 houses unlikely to allow since this can affect the structural integrity of the other house. for beams usually can terminate on your side but columns are no if shared. the PE isn’t called a PE for no reason. Likely the structural plans had been viewed or on site visit done before leading to the conclusion. If your friend is not happy can always seek second opinions. Some PE might be more gung-ho and might say yes to your friend but ultimately every demolition plan needs to go through BCA for approval. So if BCA doesn’t allow still back to square one.

I have telephone points for every room including the household shelter. All are connected to an internal PBX so I can do internal intercom between rooms/floors. Also have a telephone installed inside my home lift so in case of emergencies can call for help. Anyway all my telephone points are run using Cat6 cables and RJ45 keystones so I can switch them to data points if I want to or convert any data point to become a telephone point. This is why I have all my cables terminated at my store and into a server rack so I can do the changes easily by just changing where each patch cable plugs into on the patch panel.

I would suggest you work with your builder to redesign the height for each level. As mentioned, BCA requires a minimum of 2.4m finished floor to ceiling height for any rooms so your 2.35m for mezzanine will not pass TOP inspection. a 2.5 storey house can be built up to 12m in height. with your 5.7m plus 2.55m plus 2.75m, you have a total of 11m. add in 20cm for each floor slab (mezzanine, 2nd storey and attic) will be 11.6m. If your roof thickness is less than 40cm, you can actually allocate height to the 2nd storey. Also if you are planning to do false ceilings to hide the beams and such, you will lose more height as well. The problem with low ceiling is that heat gets trapped within the rooms. For your inter-terrace, you have no side windows as well to allow for the heat to escape unless you are going to do set back on the sides to carve out space for side windows. Another potential issue with low ceilings is that if you plan to install ceiling fans, the low height will become a bit dangerous. a DC ceiling fan will have an overall height of about 35cm. So if your ceiling is only at 2.4m, it means the fan will be only about 2m from the floor and can easily be touched when an adult raise the arm upwards. If you have small kids, they may jump off the bed and hit the fan as well which is very dangerous. While it looks and feels grand to have a double volume ceiling, you also need to think of the practical aspects of living in the rooms upstairs with such low ceilings. If i'm not wrong, newer flats are now designed with floor to ceiling of about 2.6m so your 2.55m is actually lower. The 2 videos you shown are houses which are in 3 storey zones so they have more height to play around with to create such high double volume ceilings. Unfortunately you don't have that additional 3.5m in height to play around with for your house in a 2 storey zone. If you can, reduce the height of your 1st storey by a bit and add that to the 2nd storey instead. Just to share, my house is also in a 2.5 storey zone and it is also designed with a mezzanine. the floor to floor levels split are 2.8m (1st to mezzanine), 2,7m (mezzanine to 2nd), 3m (2nd to attic), 3.5m (attic to roof). But my architect done a good job with space planning and allowing for drops for certain areas on the 1st storey so the result is that that one doesn't feel the low height levels. I also have a double volume ceiling is is about 5m high. I installed ducted aircon as I don't want to have the wall mounted split units exposed. Anyway, if your land size is about 2000 sqf, there is no way you can get such a big build up area (1677) for your 2nd storey. Assuming your land dimensions are 20ft wide by 100ft deep to give you 2000sqf, this will translate to a dimension of 6.096m wide by 30.48m deep. URA standard setback for landed houses is 7.5m front and 2m back. So with this setback in mind, your house foot print can only have a max of 6.096m wide by 20.98m deep which gives an area of 127.89sqm or 1376.6sqf. Of cos I'm calculating based on standard planning norms so if your house is in an area with slightly different planning criteria then my calculation will be wrong. But the main thing is that you need to check with your builder on the exact dimensions of each room you want to have aircon in so you can do the planning correctly. Else you will be wasting money in over-sizing the aircon requirements than what is really required.

it's all personal preference. firstly, equipment don't last forever and will fail without warning. this means that network switches or NVR or cameras will fail suddenly. When things fail, it's easier to troubleshoot less items than more. So direct connection of CCTV to NVR will basically eliminate the possibility of the network switch and/or LAN cable failure if you are using your network switch as the POE supply and connecting the switch to the NVR via LAN cable. I have experienced network switches partially failing and troubleshooting is a pain and time wasting as well. Also it depends on how many LAN points you have at home as well. A 24 port network switch technically can only have 23 ports used since you will need to use 1 port to connect to upstream router. If you are connecting to another NVR, means you are left with 22 free ports. So if your total number of LAN points and CCTVs exceed 22, then you either need to buy another network switch or use a NVR which already has POE switches to connect the CCTVs to. CCTVs recording is usually 24/7 so it means that network traffic is flowing constantly. So I would rather have the network traffic flowing directly from the cameras to the NVR instead of through another network switch via a single LAN cable. Anyway a POE NVR doesn't cost that much more than a single network port NVR. But you might have to pay more for a POE switch which can supply higher power output and POE ports to support all your devices.

haha. i didn't pick up on the ceiling height. mezzanine ceiling height 2.35m cannot pass BCA requirements also.

don't believe what is mentioned in the videos. 6m or 7m high ceiling is exaggerated. comparing the scale of the items in the house, I would say the first house has a ceiling height of just over 5m (instead of 6m) where the 2nd house has a ceiling height of less than 5m (not 7m) anyway if you don't use the aircon that often, you don't need to service it too often as well. Maybe the owners just do major servicing every 6 months and of cos need to pay for scaffolding la. Anyway the first house boss owns a reno company as well so maybe can easily get his workers to bring in scaffolding as and when is needed so not a big problem.

if your CCTVs are all from the same manufacturer, I suppose it won't be an issue to view them all using the same app since ultimately all the CCTVs are within the same network. Again, do your own diligence and check with the seller or online for the specifications. Even if you run less LAN points, it will mean you need to run more power points for your WIFI CCTV. the CCTVs need to be powered somehow either by POE or through a power brick. Honestly, using POE is much a cleaner installation than a 13A socket and power brick. Do also note that POE switches has a max power output rating as well so if you have too many POE devices and your POE switch has a low power rating, you can't power everything up. for me, my CCTVs are connected to the NVR which has POE function as well so make things easier for me.

the thicker black fiber optic cable is what NLT uses as well so will be more hardy for longer runs esp when need to bend in more areas. option 2 will provide you slightly more flexibility if you intend to upgrade or subscribe to multiple service providers since the OTP from NLT default will have 2 ports usable. So by pulling another optic fiber from the original OTP and having a new one in your TV cabinet, you can have the option to use one port for internet and another port for cable TV. the LAN cable option will mean you are stuck with just one service unless you pull another LAN cable as standby. Also, do note that most service providers uses a different port on the ONT for cable TV and internet. so if you have only 1 LAN port at the OTP location, you will have a big problem as you cannot run both sets of service over 1 LAN cable. but with option 2, the traffic is still through the optic fiber cable and at your cabinet side, you can do the necessary connections you need for cable TV and internet. Another thing is that if you are planning to have cable TV and internet, you may want to get a switch that can do VLAN so that traffic from different sources will be distributed differently within the switch. Else there might be issues if you plug everything into a normal switch with no traffic segregation. Of cos the other option is to have 2 separate switches, one for cable TV and another for the internet usage. i'm not an audiophile so no comments on speakers. even for my house, I just bought some speakers off Amazon to install in my walls so that can turn on my radio tuner and listen to music in the living room when needed. for location of internet equipment, make sure you have plenty of space for the cables. it's not a joke trying to organise 20 to 30 cat 6 cables in a small confined space

don't combine your floor area when calculating aircon cooling requirements. break them down into individual rooms. a guide to calculate the BTU is to take the total area in square meter, divide by 5 and then multiply by 3412 to get the BTU. eg: 20sqm room will require 20/5 x 3412 = 13648 btu. so you can get an aircon with wall unit which can provide at least 13K btu going by the above calculation, your mezzanine room of 848sqf will be about 80sqm which gives you at least 54k btu required. so your plan of one 14k btu unit is hardly enough. I note that you have a double volume living room and you plan to have a ceiling cassette aircon installed. Are you planning to have the ceiling cassette installed in the double volume space or at another area where the ceiling height is lower? Assuming your floor to the floor of the upper storey slab is 5.7m, after deducting the slab thickness of about 20cm and your drop of false ceiling of another 40cm so you can install the ceiling cassette aircon, your aircon will be about 5m high. how are you planning to do the maintenance? This means your aircon contractor will need to bring in scaffolding in to access the aircon every time maintenance is needed and this will cost you a bomb. you will be better off installing wall mounted units or ducted aircon which comes out from the side of the wall instead. Also your floor area is huge at 186sqm. going by above calculation, the required BTU is about 127K which would need about 3 condensers. assuming your 2nd storey bedrooms are all same sized, each room will be about 39sqm which will mean about 26kbtu of cooling is needed for each room. your attic's rooms assuming each is 60sqm, this will give you 41k btu of cooling required. So if you look at the above BTU requirements, you are likely to require single split aircon units for each room since multi split units cannot get the required amount of BTU required to cool down the rooms properly. Assuming you install 3 condensers for your living room and dry kitchen and then 1 condenser for each room, you are looking at having 11 condensers for your house. have you catered for enough space for 10 condensers? Do also note that some condensers which are for higher BTUs are huge and are more than 1m in height. You need to think of how you can also remove the condensers in future if they break down and needs replacement. I would suggest you rework your spreadsheet to break down the floor areas into individual rooms instead of going by the absolute built up area. Once you remove the irrelevant areas like stairs, corridors and toilets, I think you will be left with smaller floor areas and your required cooling requirements will also go down and that would be a more accurate representation. If the numbers come down enough, you might be able to get away by using multi split units for the rooms instead of single split units. If you are getting quotes yourself, send your floor plans to the aircon suppliers and have them work out a proposal for you.

@Topline you have a few options. 1. leave the OTP in current location and have the ONT/ONR there as well. then pull a LAN cable from this location to where you want your router to be inside your cabinet. 2.leave the OTP in current location. Get your electrician to install another OTP at the location with a thicker black optic fiber from this location to your cabinet location where there will be another OTP. the original OTP will be connected to this new OTP using the thin yellow optic fiber cable. the other new OTP in your cabinet will then be used to connect your ONT/ONR again using another yellow optic fiber cable. 3. get NLT to relocate the current OTP all the way back to your meter compartment. then get your contractor to pull a new thick black optic fiber cable from the meter compartment back to where your cabinet is. However, this is also provided that your meter compartment has the space and necessary lead-in pipes from outside the house to route the optic fiber from NLT's distribution point somewhere outside your house. you will then also need to have another lead-in pipe from the meter compartment back into your house. Costing wise, 1 would be cheapest whereas 3 will be most expensive. Just to share, I paid NLT more than 1K (subsidized) to run a new optic fiber from their distribution point to my meter compartment because my contractor cut the original cable. As for how much space is needed for your switch, it all depends on the model you purchase. My POE switch cum WIFI controller has a depth of 43cm. add in the C13 plug behind this will be about 48cm. So the minimum depth I would need is about 50cm for my switch after catering for cable bend as well. If you are getting a unifi dream machine pro, it has a depth of 29cm. add in 5cm plus another 2cm for C13 plug and cable bend, you will need 36cm in depth. then you also need to cater for another 5cm or so for the RJ45 plugs in front will give you a total of 41cm in depth needed. so 32cm of cabinet depth is hardly enough. Unless you buy those small desktop switches which has a smaller depth of say 20cm, then you can make use of that cabinet space. Search online for the specifications of the switch you have shortlisted and see what is the depth. Also see what type of power plug and power supply is used for the switch. Usually rack mounted switches will use standard C13 plug whereas desktop switches will have it's own external power supply hence just using a small plug. But since you are looking at 24 or 48 port POE switches, your 32cm space will not be enough. see the sample dimensions (H x W x D) of HPE POE switches below. HPE OfficeConnect 1920 24G PoE+ (370 W) Switch (JG926A) 4.4 x 44 x 26 cm (1.73 x 17.32 x 10.24 in) (1U Height) HPE OfficeConnect 1920 48G PoE+ (370 W) Switch (JG928A) 4.4 x 44 x 44 cm (1.73 x 17.32 x 17.32 in) (1U Height)