snoozee

Balcony usually is open to sky and should remain so unless it falls within the building envelope. adding a toilet is not that simple like you want to have one. There are water supplies and waste pipes and you need to consider how to join back to the existing pipes. Look for an architect or PE who is well versed in the regulations for landed houses and see how your existing house can be renovated to what you want.

check with your PE. Cantilevered roof would depend a lot on the loading and materials to be used. If you are doing RC carporch roof with roof terrace, then don't even need to think of cantilever so much without columns. But with lightweight materials then it's different. your PE should be able to calculate how much can be done. worst case is you have exposed tie rods to tie back the roof to a higher part of the column to provide the additional support if you don't want to have columns.

not better or worse. standby power is negligible. the only difference is the running power. if you have multiple medium or small size rooms, the sensible thing is to install a multi split unit so the rooms can share a compressor. but if you have a large room, then a single split unit will be needed to effectively cool down the room since you need a unit with a bigger BTU unless you are ok to install multiple wall units in a single room. for my house, i am using system 2 multi split units for bedrooms. my master bedroom is using single split unit. in terms of running cost, the single split unit is slightly higher than the system 2 unit as the power drawn is slightly higher.

your front boundary setback is min 7.5m with leading edge of car porch at least 2.4m from front boundary. this means your carporch roof can only have a max length of 5.1m if you adhere to the standard setbacks. the only way you can exceed 5.1m is you set back your building beyond 7.5m. my carporch roof is 5.1m and cantilevered with no additional columns. using steel beams with 3 main beams tied back to the main columns of the house.

depends on how many aircons you are planning to install. a rough guage would be the list price for HDB systems plus another 20% to 30%

pull a 32A point to where you are planning to install your cooker. better prep a higher amperage point even if the cooker you are buying now doesn't require it. at least future proof the point first.

Just walk around your estate and see if anyone has gas installed for their house. You will see on the pavement near the meter box showing a metal plate saying gas pipe below or something similar. If you see the sign then should be able to get piped gas. Else means no chances already.

Write in to city gas to check. You will likely need to pay for the laying of pipe to your house if there is supply nearby.

Haha. Yeah funny why only tarp one side. that’s why need to do precon survey of the neighbors houses to cover this type of situations so that there won’t be any disputes on damages

normally when the house is demolished, contractor should use tarps to cover up the exposed areas first to prevent water seepage before tidying up the party walls, etc. looking back at my old photos, my contractor had already tidied up the exposed roof areas on my neighbour side prior to my old house roof was removed. no matter how careful the workers are, there will definitely be cracks and leaks happening on the neighbour side due to vibrations, etc during construction. my neighbour also had cracked walls and some leakage during my construction period. anyway contractor will have to bear the cost of any damages and reinstate at his own cost.

note the part of RC roof. if you decide to do RC roof, then submission can't be avoided.

No need submission but you still need a PE to draw up the design, etc. as long as the extension is done according to regulations, should not affect future sales even without submissions. Just don’t extend all the way to your rear boundary line as this is illegal and will affect your future sale of the house as buyers can use this as reason to back out of purchase.

You need to do routine maintenance and have the lift inspected and tested annually before you can renew your operating license with BCA. So if you buy from overseas, you need to find a company which can install, maintain and inspect the lift for you here. If the lift you bought isn’t used locally, then you will have problems finding spare parts as well. buying a home lift is not like buying an appliance or gadget overseas where you can just DIY replace it when it’s faulty. It will be easier to just buy it locally with the relevant service and support from the company rather than try and save a few K and end up with a while elephant if it breaks down without being able to get spare parts for repair.

I'm not a fan of smart switches, etc. why waste electricity (no matter how little usage is still waste) to have these devices on 24/7 when you can just take a few steps to turn on/off the switch/appliance when needed? If you really want to have these smart switches, do tell your electrician in advanced so that neutral cables can be pulled to every switch location. Even though there are smart switches which doesn't need the neutral cable, I've seen quite a number of photos of them melting after some time. Also some smart switches require the neutral cable in order to work. The other question is the availability of smart switches with safety mark. Without safety mark, you will definitely not pass the SP inspection prior to TOP approval for your house. So the only way to circumvent this is to change to smart switches after the inspection. But how to hide the neutral cable is another thing you need to consider since random switches/sockets may be asked to be removed during the inspection.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.