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snoozee

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Everything posted by snoozee

  1. verasamy road kim siah electric. i bought my legrand floor box from them. socket is sold separately. do note that if your house requires inspection by SP, you can't have this installed before the inspection as SP doesn't approve floor box installations especially in areas where it may get wet due to washing of floor.
  2. Singapore's water supply from PUB is not hard water so this should remove your concerns unless you are getting your own water supply from somewhere else like a well in your backyard? been using both for over 1 year and just clean the sinks using normal dish washing sponge about once a month or when see some stains. no need apply any special product. you do know that composite granite sink is technically plastic resin right? and there's no way plastic can absorb organic stuff like coconut oil as the oil will just be washed away whenever you use the sink with dish washing liquid.
  3. i have both. one granite composite sink from hafele and one stainless steel sink from Franke. there's no such thing as no maintenance needed even if you get a SS sink and don't maintain it.
  4. Yes. Most old landed houses except detached houses are built like this. Just tear down your side and after that the proper flashing is done up for the neighbours so won’t leak during rain
  5. I suppose you want to cover up your double volume ceiling and built a floor over the void for extra space. do you have your existing building structural plans already? If not then you need to purchase them from BCA. from application to retrieval should be about 5 working days. After which you need to confirm which set of plans are needed and purchase them. After that you need your PE to look through the plans and design the new structure for the new floor slab. I guess this could be a week or a month. Once the plans from the PE are finalised, application to BCA needs to be submitted for approval. BCA will take 7 working days to approve/reject the plans. Upon approval, your contractor can start work. No idea how long your contractor will take. With lack of manpower these days, contractors seem to rotate their manpower among sites. I observed for my neighbour's works, the workers can disappear for up to 5 days before working on the site again to do work for 2 days. So i guess if your work can be completed within 3 months, it should be counted as very lucky and fast already. In any case, engage a PE first and he/she should be able to advise you more on the timeline and costing after looking at your existing plans.
  6. can be done. 2 men can do it already as long as the ledge can be easily accessed from inside the house. even if want to mount the compressor outside a high rise building can be done by man. last time I had aircon installers mount a 50+kg compressor for my flat outside on steel bracket through the window.
  7. flat roof is RC or metal? the pros you listed can be achieved by having a proper located aircon ledge. also compressors are not that noisy these days. I have aircon compressors at the aircon ledge on my attic which is just outside my bedroom. can't hear anything at all when the compressors are turned on. the main issue of locating the compressors on the roof is maintenance. how are the workers going to access your roof? if you really want to locate them on the roof, get your main con to put in anchor points for life lines so that the workers can secure themselves while up on your roof. also when your aircon breaks down, how are you planning to get the compressor down from the roof? are you going to hire a crane? note that crane costs is calculated by the hour and can be up to 1k per hour depending on what type of crane is needed to reach the top of your roof.
  8. what kind of roof do you have? putting the compressors in the middle of the roof would definitely be a risk for leaks in future especially if you need to punch a hole in the roof for the pipes to go through. Also maintenance might be a issue as well especially if your roof is not normally accessible. Do note that technically you should not exceed your allowed height of the building and this may include the aircon compressor being required to be within the allowed envelope. For Semi-D, you could build an aircon ledge at the side such that the compressor is located there and then use some screens to conceal the compressors.
  9. I think it depends on what type of switches are being used. I don't have the latest Singapore Standard but the old CP5, it indicates that switchgear must disconnect the live wire before disconnecting the neutral wire or disconnect both live and neutral at the same time. by right the neutral wire does not carry current so there shouldn't be any electrocution happening unless there is a short circuit or the live wire isn't disconnected first (read above). water heater switches are two pole and disconnect both live and neutral at the same time so these definitely can pass SP inspection. But for normal light switches, they are just single pole and only the live wires are connected/disconnected when the switch is thrown. So if you have a neutral wire which is not connected to anywhere within the light switch housing I don't think it will pass SP inspection at all. Do also note that in order to pass SP inspection, all electrical switches and sockets should have the Singapore Safety Mark as well. So if you have a smart switch which does not have safety mark then it will definitely not pass inspection.
  10. columns and beams cannot drill through. but i don't think it's an issue to drill up to 50mm deep since columns are RC which are similar to household shelters and HS rule is drill no more than 50mm deep. but are you sure you want to place the TV next to a window? you may encounter very bad glare from the light outside.
  11. ideally it should be inside the house for convenience. if you want the helper's room access to be outside the house, then you also may want to place the toilet for the helper to be accessed from outside as well if it's not going to be ensuite. I've seen quite a few layouts for new houses where the helper's room also have an ensuite toilet. as you already pointed out, you want to lock all the doors at night. So what if your helper comes into the house during the night and then forgot to lock the door after that? Of cos you could install a digital door lock and door closer as well so that the door will be automatically closed and locked after access to overcome this issue. ultimately it depends on your layout. For my house, I was considering to have it outside the house since the toilet would be accessed from outside. But in the end decided to change it to be inside the house instead and accessed from the wet kitchen.
  12. you need to work out on your needs and wants if you want to keep your cost low but still make the house look good. for example, you want marble flooring, but if you're going to do marble for everywhere, it's going to cost you a lot. for areas like upper storey rooms and toilets, there's no need to do marble at all especially for shower area. wet marble floor is extremely slippery and accidents can occur as well. built in carpentry is also going to cost a lot if you are going to customise for everywhere. for my house, I saved on carpentry by just going what is required like toilet vanity cabinets, dry and wet kitchen cabinets, kitchen island and basic wardrobes for rooms. What i meant by basic wardrobes is just the wardrobe with clothes hanging bar and no built in drawers at all. For wardrobe drawers for my kids, I just bought cabinet shelves from Ikea and place them inside the custom wardrobe. Also don't spend on doing up laminates for inside the wardrobes and cabinets. No one is going to compliment you on how nice the inside of your wardrobe/cabinet is since it's going to be closed most of the time. Doing normal PVC or polykem interior will save a sum of money. For other items, there's always Ikea to buy from. Even though Ikea items don't last forever, it also gives you an opportunity to refresh the house after 10 years or so which would be quite difficult with built in furniture. for light fixtures, you can buy them online from China to save costs. Local stores will sell similar lighting fixtures but at a much higher marked up price. The only "problem" with buying online is you need to buy them early and then need to find space to store the items until you need to install. Make use of the 11.11 sale to get the most discounts. Normally contractors will provide items like sanitary and tiles for the project. if you want to supply your own, then you need to check with your contractor if he will be charging a profit in attendance or not. be up front with him on this aspect at the initial part during contract negotiations. For tiles, do visit the showrooms to find the designs you like and also check when the tile suppliers would have sale. I was able to save quite a bit on tile cost as we happened to visit the showroom when there was a sale of old tiles going on. Prices were like up to 70 percent off the original price. The only thing is that you need to calculate how much tiles are needed and purchase with some spares. Also sales items are usually non-returnable unlike full priced tiles which can be returned if there are too much excess and boxes are unopened. For sanitary ware, also do look out for sales as well. Toilet bowl is an expensive item and if you want to do concealed systems, it will cost even more. cold water only taps are cheaper than mixer taps so take this into consideration as well. items like bib taps and hoses can actually be bought online from China as well since these are not part of WELS requirements. Usually for tiles and sanitary ware, you can purchase the items first and then ask for them to be delivered later when they are needed. If you are redoing your staircase railings, note that doing glass railings would be more expensive than mild steel railings. Not to mention that if the glass railings shatter one day due to accident, you will need to pay for replacement. If you are planning to install ceiling fans, don't need to spend on DC fans unless you absolutely love the design and such. the supposed cost savings from electricity usage will never cover the much higher cost difference you need to pay for DC fans. For windows, don't need to pay extra for low emission glass. It would be cheaper to install solar films later on if needed rather than spending on low-e glass. Full height windows look nice but you also need to pay for the extra cost. If there's no need, you can just do half height windows for rooms. You also save on having to add a railing for full height windows to prevent falls. ironmongery is another area where you can save a bit of costs by buying online basically, draw up a list of the items you will need for the house and then work out what would be covered under the contractor's cost and what you are planning to buy yourself. Then you can start sourcing for those thing you need to buy yourself by taking advantage of sales and online discounts.
  13. I went directly to buy by myself and got some discount back then
  14. A single landed house is still just one house. Volume is considered small compared to big condo projects. So don’t expect too much discounts if any. If you want discount, ask for the commission from your designer. Normally they will get a small percentage of the total sales amount as commission.
  15. Look out for sale items i bought a bathtub from ferrara for $300. Also bought a stainless steel kitchen sink from them at $250. Both are project excess stock.
  16. A POE switch is just a normal switch which also provides power supply to the devices. Nothing fancy about them. Of cos some more expensive ones come with management software which allows you to turn on/off the POE for individual ports, etc. but if you have no need for these fancy stuff then a basic POE switch which has a power rating for more than what all your devices require will do. I’m not sure about the noise level of the ubiquity switch but you can check the technical specifications on the noise level. I have a HP 1920s 24 port POE switch and the noise level is rated at 36db which is hardly noticeable. But I have another HP POE switch which is an older model and this one is very noisy to the extent that I can hear the faint sound of the fans even though the switch is enclosed inside a server rack and inside a room. so I think as long as your switch is around 50db or less, it shouldn’t be that noisy at all
  17. Meter box for new builds. Your electrical subcon will then lay the fiber from meter box to your internal location where you want the termination point to be. do note that if your house already has an existing fiber termination point, you will need to contact opennet to retrieve the cable first to the meter box. Not sure how much they will charge for this. But if you didn’t do so and your contractor cuts the fiber, then later on you will need to pay more than $1k to run a new fiber from the nearest manhole to your meter box. and also for single landed house, there is no need to do any fiber readiness certification.
  18. Find the designs of bathroom fittings you like and then search for where you can buy them locally. If budget is not an issue, can always buy Toto or those German brands. Is sanitary fittings part of your building contract? If yes then you need to check with your builder on what can be chosen unless you opt to top up the price difference. volakas marble is mainly white with darker grey veins so search online for photos and see if you like the look of the marble or not. Marble is very nice but you also need to maintain it. After installation, make sure to polish and seal it properly. Also any spillage must be wiped off immediately to prevent staining. The sealing of marble buys you time for clean up but doesn’t mean it prevents the spilled liquid from penetrating the marble if left for some time. Other than that, regular cleaning with water should be done to maintain the shine as well. In short, clean marble like any other type of tiled flooring but take special care when it comes to spills.
  19. Search online for sinmac tiles. This is the direct source. George’s supplier should be a middleman who got from sinmac
  20. So you are essentially paying for a router but just using as an AP instead. not sure how much your routers cost but I think still cheaper to run a POE AP since don’t need to have extra power socket
  21. Neighbour notifications can cause delays if your builder cannot find the neighbour or you have a uncooperative neighbour. My project was delayed by 2 months due to one particular neighbour
  22. Your builder still has to submit all the neighbours precon survey and acknowledgements to BCA before BCA will issue you the permission to start demolition works. After that still need to apply and receive permission to start construction works you will also need to pay fees to BCA for ST-02 as well before they will process it. have you engaged a RTO or your builder covering this? Normally there should be an independent RTO engaged directly by the owner as the RTO will be checking on the builder’s works. So if the RTO is engaged by the builder, then there might be a conflict of interest
  23. Not necessarily will have PP. my project was straight away issue WP funny you mentioned that URA requested you to change to RC roof because of HS. Normally HS issues should be covered by SCDF and BCA is the coordinating agency for HS technical requirements.
  24. A mesh network would not work well in multi storey houses unless you can get line of sight between the nodes and the main router. Wi-Fi signal strength drops when it needs to pass through concrete and along goes the performance. It is still better to use multiple access points with dedicated wired back haul for multi storey houses
  25. Either he use your account and pay for it. Or you cancel your account, then he open a new account, then after construction is finished, he cancel his account and you open a new account again. Either way you are the one paying for the utilities so you see which option you prefer.
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