greeeen

I think all owners should be informed of the risks involved when using Invisible Grilles and similar products. If you ask the vendor about safety, they will be honest with you and you will still see people purchasing them.

Replacement roof not an option for us now. Painting it with a coat of solar reflective paint seems to help, the effect is equivalent to those rock wool insulation. Now can chill under the awning during weekends no problem. At the same time I save cost by just coating it on my own. Anyone with polycarbonate roof may consider this option.

Good idea, on top of that, I will place a bottle of hand sanitizer at the door. Keeping hands clean from the moment I step foot at the door. And it is helpful for courier/food delivery man, too!

Clean parts of the kitchen while cooking.

Anything more than 500m will make you break a sweat, that's 6 minutes of walking. My friends considers 1000m distance near to MRT, cause they don't really perspire that much. Sometimes I appreciate the extra 10-15 minutes of walking home from MRT though, keeps me active even if I do not have time for weekly workout.

I have got a Polycarbonate awning that gets super hot during the day, making it impossible to do anything under it for more than 5 minutes. The translucent-plastic-cardboard-looking construction traps heat and at the same time allow a heat from the sun inside. I am testing out a solar reflective paint HeatAX on one half first. Seems too help a lot. Any other ideas other than replacing the Awning?

It is this one I am talking about. Sorry for the confusion.

Hot Sun = Hot Roof/wall Hot Roof/wall = Hot Room Hot Room = Aircon consume more energy = Higher bills Reduce heat entering your home with HeatAX Solar Reflective Coating!

Safe enough for kids, if you have wire gaps less than 4 inch. Safe for pets, if your wire gap is 2 inch or less. (Unless you have a hamster, can confirm squeeze through) Not safe if you have a corridor unit, wires still can be cut! Just my opinion

Wa. thats bad, sorry to hear that. Thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing, solid information. I also added Solar Reflective Coating to my house exterior to keep it cool, can reduce air con electricity consumption. HeatAX coating so far best specs.

Mitsubishi starmex. Have used this model twice already. Satisfy my requirements. Few years is easy. Bought from Best Tech and cool world respectively. I also use Solar Reflective paint or Thermal insulation paint on the exterior of my home to reduce heat buildup at home during the day. come home after work to a cooling room. Electric bills also reduce cause I think the aircon dont have to work so hard now. I use HeatAX solar reflective coating fyi

Congratulations on your new home, and your baby!

I have both my door and gate installed with that lock model. You can use it for just the door but then you would still need to carry a key with you. So far so good but fingerprint sensor can be quite finicky. Expect to scan 2-3 times to get into the house, and if may not work if your finger is dirty with grime. I would still go with it for the convenience of never worrying whether I misplaced my keys and being able to let people into the house remotely via the passcode (eg parents) if necessary. IIRC I paid 800 or so for installation of both with local warranties. They installed a gate mount and provide a remote control to unlock it.

Good to know, thanks for the knowledge

Ya my insect screens do reduce the ventilation, can cause smells to linger around. I recently removed them and it helps. Anyway my area not so much insects I realize. I also always anticipate my neighbour's cooking, closing my kitchen window before any damage is done. Cleaning the floors also help, if you dont mind the work. The key here is to prevent any cooking fumes from entering your home in the first place. They can find they way on your floor and furniture and stick there until it no longer smells. Warm room can also intensifies smells. I use Solar Reflective Paint on my exterior wall to reduce heat entering my house, so i dont need to turn on so many fan when it is hot. Air con also dont work so hard, reducing electricity. HeatAX thermal insulation coating..

Wa... really good planning. I am happy for the kids, everything at home seems to be perfect for this family. For landed homes in Singapore I feel that sometimes we need to use Solar Reflective Paint to keep the roof and wall cool, Come back home after a long day, the house is not warm and uncomfortable.. Best part is, can save electricity cause aircon work lesser to cool a house that is not that warm in the first place. I use HeatAX solar reflective paint, can just DIY on my exterior walls.

Post-fumigate is a must. Seal up holes, gaps, cracks around your house. These might be rat holes, will will attract snakes. Also keep your trash in the bin at all times, not leaving it beside the trash bin even when it is full to not attract any rats. Get plants that can repel snakes, too. Keeping your home or shed cooler can reduce likelihood of snakes resting there. Use Solar Reflective Paint or Thermal insulation paint like HeatAX to keep it cool. Use the paint on your home can even help reducing consumption of electricity cause your aircon dont have to work so hard!

Are you able to live without kitchen reno for now? Just get basic furniture (2nd hand, hand me down) enough for you to have a good night sleep, eat, relax. Pay of debts while you have a basic roof over your head. Can be tough sure can do it! You need to focus on getting your credit score back up so you can get a loan, or just save enough cash for your reno. JIAYOU!!!

The ID I worked with has just two people (project managers) in their company. They engage various contractors for all the work done. So think of them as the main-con. Usually how it works is this: You either pay a project management fee and that is the price you pay for the convenience and they are then supposed to work in your interest to get the best rates for you, since they are already getting paid for that service. OR you don't pay a project management fee and they take a cut from the sub-contractors to earn. I understand that they have to make money too. In my case, my ID requested a project management fee of $15,000+ for the management and design of our home. (Context: The whole renovation project cost was over $100k and I stay in a private property.) Because of the fee, she said she would will not charge any mark-ups and will provide me with all the invoices. At first, she claimed it was not a practise to provide any invoices to clients. But I insisted for them. This rang some alarm bells but because they were a third-party recommendation, we still went ahead. Throughout our time working with her, we realised several contract amounts not tallying up, many promises to fix things always were "forgotten" and I'm not gonna go into detail but at this point, there were over 10 instances of dishonesty (that we just gave her the benefit of the doubt for) and it was getting hard to trust the things she was saying. We started to get suspicious when we requested for add-ons which required new quotes. I would request for 3 quotes but she always came back with just one. At first, I thought she was just lazy for always using the same expensive supplier because she didn't want to find more quotes for us and always said there was no one else. How shady interior design firms operate in Singapore Our suspicions lead us to ask around and get the quotations ourselves and boy did we get a huge shock. For 3 separate additions (small issues like blinds/curtains/etc), our quotes were half the price as the quotes she was giving us. Turns out, one of the contractors we ended up getting the quote from was a current supplier of hers, who offered us a much lower rate. And he explained to us how her company operates, and how the ID + supplier industry works in general. He said they will approach the supplier and ask for the cost price that they will charge. Then, they will add their own cut to it between 20%-50% markup and ask the supplier to issue clients the invoice with the inflated amount. The more she thinks she can get away with it, the higher % she will add. Once she finds a supplier who is willing to do this with her, she will keep using that same supplier. Hence that guy giving better rates was not chosen. So any homeowner who receives the invoice will feel that it is legit, but actually, it is heavily inflated due to the special agreement between her and the supplier. The invoice is a clever ruse to trick homeowners. We ended up exceeding our renovation budget by about $30k with the provisional charges for things like electricity doubling from $10k to $20k. What makes us so angry is how she said she was going to charge an overall fee for project management ($15k+) so everything would be transparent. e.g same logic as hiring a main contractor. But all this while, she was getting under the table deals too, inflating the invoices and effectively charging us twice - one from the comms and one for her lump sum fee. Because she inflated the amount, instead of us getting our dream home we saved up years for, we had to do away with some features we really wanted because it was over our budget due to the extra money was going to her as under the table profit.

Great responsive website! all the best

You can opt for 2-3 inch gap instead of those standard 4 inch wire gap. It will be safer. And we do our best to child proof the home, nothing near window that is climable.

You will need PE if touching anything related to Structure. A&A or not, depends on what is the extend of reno you are doing, from just your description only, most likely A&A. Cost not sure.. be sure to use Solar Reflective Coating or Thermal Insulation paint to keep it cool in the day. Will help you save money on cooling your home.