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snoozee

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Posts posted by snoozee

  1. Posted

    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.

    • Like 1

  2. Posted

    3 hours ago, Topline said:

    Does any one know whether in a reconstruction, it is ok to remove old columns or beams on the common wall that are not supporting anything? My friend was told that her PE said the authorities will not allow for her project … sounds silly to me.

    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. 

  3. Posted

    41 minutes ago, Topline said:

    Guys, did you install telephone points in addition to data points in your rooms? Wondering if i should ....

    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.

  4. Posted

    26 minutes ago, wersingaporeans said:

    the land size is 2000 sqft inter terrace, those figures are all indicative for rough planning. The height should be around hdb ceiling as we wanted to have more rooms for multi generation living. 

    for double volume living room, ducted aircon was suggested but I personally don't know any landed home owners with ducting aircon. 

    my friend who rebuilt his semi d installed a lot of split aircon units instead. I am more inclined to use all split unit aircons after snoozee point about the additional scaffolding cost. 

    After reading up on google, seems like split aircon is easier and cheaper to maintain ! 

    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.

     

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    38 minutes ago, Topline said:

    Snoozee, can you please elaborate why connecting CCTVs to NVR is an easier or better set up?

    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.

  6. Posted

    12 minutes ago, yoongf said:

    Hmm.. based on your lvl 1 floorplate of abt 2k sqft, your land plot shd be quite big.. ie this is quite an atas house.

    But... all your ceiling heights are unusually low, lower than HDB substantially. Are u sure you want to proceed with this design? 

    Low ceiling heights feel much hotter, and for the attic floor which is your master rm, will require substantially bigger cooling power. Also rooms that gets the afternoon sun. 

    For me.. i agar at 70btu per sqft to be able to get that instant freeze feeling.

     

     

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

  7. Posted

    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. 

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    46 minutes ago, Topline said:

    One question on viewing CCTV on mobile apps. Is it possible to view both POE CCTVs and wifi CCTVs (which i may have a couple placed in the house) within the same app?

    I'm thinking of getting a 24 port switch but just in case i want to add more CCTVs and my switch ports are maxed out, i'm thinking i will add wifi CCTVs instead. But i would prefer to view all CCTVs (wifi and POE) within the same app.

    Actually, if this works, i can also reduce the number of LANs to run/ hide in the ceiling ... i could just change all indoor CCTVs to wifi ones. 

    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.

  9. Posted

    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

  10. Posted · Edited by snoozee

    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.

  11. Posted

    @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)

  12. Posted

    hope your ID is well versed in landed house regulations.

    whether you can get approvals within 6 months or not depends on how many times your submitted plans get rejected. URA takes about 1 month to check and approve/reject. So if your submission gets rejected, the same process and wait time is repeated. Usually BCA submission is done after URA approves of the plans. BCA side wait time is shorter (last time standard is 7 working days) but of cos if reject then repeat same process. One thing you can "help" is to pay up promptly as soon as you are requested to pay for the submissions. Cos the authorities will only start processing upon payment. So if you take you time to pay then they will also take their time to start processing.

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

    While the covered carporch roof might be legal, you trying to extend the attic until above the carporch roof may not be since it will be outside the envelope already. Unless you leave the roof above the carporch roof room as an open terrace which might be still passable though you will need to install high lightning conductors for safety. 
    best is check with URA to get clarifications as only they can tell you whether your plans can or cannot be done

  15. Posted

    write in to URA and seek their advise is the best. Cos there are some housing estates where this enclosed room is actually allowed. So if you see most of the houses around your estate have this additional room, then high chance is that it is actually legal.

    In the even that URA informs you that the room does not conform to regulation, then you would likely need to remove the roof and walls forming the room.

  16. Posted

    extractor fans are usually hooked up to the same circuit as the light so that both light and fan will turn on and off at the flip of the switch. If you want to have a timer then you will need to set up some home automation device such that when you turn on the switch, the automation device also turns on and starts an internal time to count down 1 hour then later cut off the power supply to the fan.

     

  18. Posted

    2 hours ago, Topline said:

    I have not used an NVR before... would it be necessary to keep viewing the contents? I suppose for initial set up but for watching CCTV footage, is it possible to view via mobile phone? It would so much more convenient.

    Depends on your NVR model. Mine allows me to view the footage from a mobile app. But more search functionality when viewed directly from the NVR via monitor

  19. Posted

    If you already have a OTP installed in your living room, you don't really need to relocate it. just make sure you run 2 or 3 RJ45 Cat6 network points near to your OTP so that the ONT can connect back to your central network switch via one of these RJ45 network points.

    Cat6 network cables have a max distance run of 100m from point to point. So just build your "server room" in a location where you can spare the area to place your equipment. this "server room" can be anywhere in your house or in your attic if you want.

    Calculate how many network points you are going to have and add in the points you need for WAP. For POE network switches, the next step up for 24 ports is 48 ports and price also is much more expensive. If you can squeeze everything within 23 network ports (1 port will be reserved for the uplink for your ONT), then you can get a NVR which has few network ports. Else you may be better off buying a NVR with 8 POE ports and connect your CCTVs to the NVR directly instead.

    to view videos on the NVR, just buy a cheap 2nd hand monitor and have it hooked up permanently. would be easier than carting a monitor every now and there.

    fanless or have fan doesn't really matter. your equipment is unlikely generate that much noise unless you specifically buy data centre grade equipment which is not meant for home use

  20. Posted

    the OTP does not belong to starhub. it belongs to NLT.

    is your OTP going to be in the original location as when it was first installed? when opennet (previous name of NLT) ran cables for landed houses, the termination point is somewhere inside the house as opposed to for new built where the termination point will be inside the meter compartment. I believe you could get NLT to relocate the termination point for you and if they are shifting it to the meter compartment then you would need to get your contractor to run a new fiber from the meter compartment to wherever you want the internal termination point to be.

    Of cos you can just leave the OTP where it is now like you mentioned along with the ONT, then run a Cat6 cable to wherever you want to install the other switches and equipment.

    Is the DB inside your house? If yes, does it have space to store network equipment and such? Honestly speaking, the location of where the network points will terminate should be decided very early on in the project rather then being left as an afterthought since you will have problems trying to run cables or have to redo finishing just to run the cables. I'm not sure how many network points you are planning to have but assuming you are going to have 2 points for each bedroom and 2 for living room, that will be a total of 14 points for 6 bedrooms and the living room. Adding on to your 6 POE CCTV points you are looking at at least 20 Cat6 cables. I can tell you that trying to hide 20 Cat6 cables is not going to be easy and if you are planning to have the termination point in your living room, then you will need to find a way to hide the big ugly trunking for the Cat6 cables. For my house, I am using those big trunking for aircon pipes to house my network cables before they go inside my server rack.

    And don't be so overly concerned about having no fan or heat issues. Like I mentioned, your roof attic is unlikely going to heat up to temperatures like 60 or 70 degrees so even if the equipment runs at around 40 degrees Celsius will still be ok. Equipment and hard drives for NVR don't last forever so you will need to replace them eventually

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

    23 hours ago, Topline said:

    Hi, can I check if I want the ability to create separate wifi net work for guests and maybe my kids, I would have to get a managed switch? Unmanaged switch seems easier to manage but I do want these features. Any simple managed switch to recommend?

    Also, any quiet NVR to recommend? I’m still looking for an appropriate place to store my NVR… concerned about noise. I can potentially store it in the attic store… so noise will disturb less people but the heat from the roof is a concern then. No air con there.

    you don't need a managed switch to have different SSIDs/Guest network for your wireless network. It all depends on your feature set of your wireless access point and/or controller. While the price of a managed switch is just a slight premium over non-managed switches, there's no point paying more for something which you don't really need. If you mess up the configuration of a managed switch, you may find yourself with more problems if you don't have the knowledge to reconfigure the switch. Personally I prefer HP network switches as those I bought comes with limited lifetime warranty meaning HP will replace the equipment for free if it fails. I recently just claimed warranty for a network switch which is more than 10 years old.

    For NVR, it depends on whether it comes with an inbuilt fan or not. Not every NVR comes with fan so it depends on the particular model. Even if the NVR does come with fan, usually the noise generated from these small 40mm fans will not be substantial unless a server grade fan is used.

    if your roof insulation is done properly, the heating up will not be substantial. There will be heat stored and released from the walls but it won't get that bad as the interior of a car parked under the sun for the whole afternoon. All my networking equipment are stored inside a storeroom which is normally closed with no ventilation save for the gaps around door frames. My network switch measures its internal temperature at 38 degrees Celsius which is warm but not that hot to cause equipment death.

  24. Posted

    1 hour ago, petetherock said:

    Yep 👍 

    a spare line is so important 

    I ran most of my Electricals in a trunking in my floor

    forgot to add a point to light up the side of my garden  sigh ..

     

    install solar lights. My gate pillar lights are solar and they can run for almost 12 hours. I recently modified one of my solar garden lights by detaching the solar panel from the LED portion so that I can hang the solar panel at a location where there is sun. After doing that, my garden light now can last throughout the whole night as the single lithium ion battery can be fully charged as there's no plants to obstruct the light.

  25. Posted

    8 minutes ago, petetherock said:

    My place had an existing OTP outside at the porch. 
    so my electrician ran a fiber cable to where I was going to site my switches and modem under the tiles of my car porch. 
    it made it simple for the openet crew. 
    Simple job and minimal cost of a couple of hundreds

    if you ask them to run and resite their external OTP it will cost more and you may have already finished all your tiling or false ceiling and you end up with external trunking 

    NLT will just terminate at the meter box as that is the guidelines for new built. If you want to have a point inside the house then I think can do private arrangement with their contractor or engage own contractor. 
    mine was all covered by my electrical subcon and I have new underground lead in pipes for fiber, electricity and spares

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