Plinth Level Done!

Plinth level is done. PCC completed for the plinth. Compared to the traditional construction, this is additional layer that gives a major benefit in terms of the stability of our structure.

Since we have opted for the frame construction, having this weight added to the ground floor along with ground beams at the ground floor and foundation structure underground lowers the center of gravity of the entire structure. This helps make our structure very stable in the event of an earthquake.

From the foundation level, we have following layers:

• PCC plates for column pedestals of M15 grade RMC
• Column pedestal RCC structure with M25 grade RMC
• Column RCC with M25 grade RMC
• Ground beams RCC tying all the columns with M25 grade RMC
• Brick masonry from ground beams to Plinth level - 2.5ft
• Coping and PCC at Plinth level with M25 grade RMC

We used 15 truck loads of sand (550 cu.ft. X 15 = 8250 cu. ft.) for filling up to plinth level after back-filling the excavated earth. Added about 7 tankers full of water to make this settle down. All this should've been done by September 2013. So, we are two months late compared to the original schedule. But the project is picking up pace now!

Added benefits of M25 grade PCC and sand filling at plinth level is improved termite protection. We however did do the necessary termite treatment at foundation and plinth level before doing PCC work.

Both the water tanks are also complete with slab. Only thing pending is the plaster on interior for these tanks.

We now get some idea of the room sizes. It feels a bit small at this point. But I guess it is the case with almost all constructions until the rooms are finished.

Off to getting the first slab cast! I must commend our team for coordinating work so far. We can not order the batch of RMC that is less than 4 CuMtr. It becomes commercially nonviable. So, adjusting quantities and scheduling work such that that much quantity is utilized without any wastage is not-so-straight forward.

Electrical planning is also complete before we cast the first slab. More on that and slab casting work later...
Here are some of the pictures of work  towards the finished Plinth.

Compacted Sand finished till plinth level

RMC pumped for Plinth PCC

PCC curing with water

House footprint visible from the vantage point

We are out of the ground, finally...

Between the rains, Navaratri & Diwali, the work continued at breakneck speed, but we were not able to achieve our goal of finishing the plinth before Diwali break.

Diwali this year was quiet nice, knowing this most like was our last Diwali in our current home. By next Diwali, the goal is to move into Utsav!

So, there it is... the deadline... Move-in by Diwali 2014. What's the plan to get there?

1. First thing's first, we need to finish ALL masonry work by February 2014. 
2. Windows, plumbing, A/C & AV ducting, electrical & flooring done by March 2014. Since we are going to go for UPVC windows, this does not seem like a major problem. Our electrical plans for all slabs are out and looks like they will need very little tweaking as usual.
3. That leaves six months for interior furniture, kitchen, glass, and systems installation. Doable, right?

Here are some of the latest pictures of how much the work has progressed before Diwali break. Ground beams are cast perfectly and water tanks are also done. We are going to fill up the remaining portion by sand instead of earth. There will be brick masonry work on top of the beams till the plinth level after which there will be plinth coping covering the entire ground floor.

New post after a long long while

Rains of September 25th stalled work for quiet some time. Here are some of the images of the conditions on the ground after rain.

Thankfully, the foundation work was done, column RCC done till the ground level. But, filling excavated earth back in was quiet painful since everything was soaked in too much of water.

We lost good two to three weeks of work due to rains of 3 days.

Oh well, all is well that ends well... but when???

3D Rendering of the expected outcome

Move over scale models... It's CGI time!

Thanks to the hard working folks at our Architect's office, we have a beautiful 3D render of our project.

Here it is...

Hope the actual outcome is as beautiful as this one...

Foundation Work

It has been a great learning experience so far. I truly appreciate the effort that goes into construction work. It is one thing to sit in the office and design and make decisions on something and completely the other thing to execute it on ground.

Udaybhai and team are very competent and efficient at executing the column and foundation details given to them. However, reliance on technology slows things down a bit at times.

I hear that nowadays contractors are so reliant upon TotalStation output that they do not undertake work without the surveyor coming to site at multiple occasions and giving them the markings on site. So far they have visited our site for following activities:

1. At the very beginning to survey the site
2. To give excavation points
3. To give PCC location and size points
4. To give actual column footing location (on the PPC) and size points
5. Pending: Once plinth level PCC is done, to give final column locations. After that, next levels all will be vertically above the ground level columns.

At several occasions, our work has stalled since the surveyor is not available to come on site to mark points. What happened to our good old tape measure?

Here are some pictures from the foundation work:

Rain Rain Go Away...

Come back another day :-(

We decide to start building our home in 2013 and this becomes the year with historical rains in Ahmedabad :-(

Under the normal circumstances, I would welcome so much rain... It is just beautiful all round with Green Carpet still visible everywhere. But, not this year. Our construction commencement already got delayed by two months due to heavy rains and we are not seeing much reprieve towards the end of September as well!

Foundation work has completed. Plan was to complete filling up the excavation and start working on the ground beams. We missed this  task by about 4 days... Had the filling been completed, all this rain would have been perfect to completely settle it down.

Checkout the latest satellite image from the Indian Meteorological Department. Ahmedabad is lighted up like never before and more rain is expected in the next few days..

Work has started!

It's all so exciting! Construction work has finally started this week. 

Steel binding for columns and PCC for the footing is complete... Some latest pictures here

A few thoughts on the process:

• Safety - Seems like a non-issue to the workers as well as their supervisors. I bought safety glasses for the person cutting steel (you can see in the picture that he is not wearing one) on the condition that his supervisor will have to pay for it if I caught him not using one while cutting steel. Guess what? He was not wearing it the very next day! How do you deal with these guys? They say its not practical to use these safety equipment. 
• Using Tobacco - Seems like people in construction industry can NOT do without it! Again, I have given an ultimatum to my site supervisor to stop chewing it all day or face cut in the salary. He is such a nice guy and we are very happy with his work so far, but how do you wean them off of it?
• Coordination - It's too premature, but looks like things are falling in place and we are not losing a day anymore. Goal is to finish first floor slab by Diwali this year! My masonry contractor is confident to finish the entire box by end of February 2014. 

Kids are enjoying going to the site and seeing the work in progress. There is so much learning for all of us going through this process! Rehaan is very much interested in finding out how the building stands without falling...

Design Details

Spiral Staircase:

How did I forget to mention the Spiral Staircase so far? You might have noticed that there is no support in the center. It is completely free-standing stair with supports at the floors only. It is in the most ideal location as well from the design standpoint, but width is smaller than what would be desired. However, this is the best staircase we could get considering the space constraints.

Planning to build something that looks like this:

There are several design issues with stair that yet need to be resolved. The height of the risers currently set doesn't let the stair rise to full height to be set on the beam. Hope it gets resolved by the time we get to casting the first floor slab!

Design for natural light, cross ventilation and weather protection

Let me outline some of the very important aspects of sustainable building and how they were addressed in our design:

Natural light and solar heat reduction:

It is very important to have proper orientation of your house to maximize usage of the natural light. However, with fairly hot temperatures throughout the year in Ahmedabad, you also want to make sure that you don't let much direct sunlight into your house either.

The most ideal orientation for a house in this region is to have Northern exposure for the rooms that are going to be used the most during the day. This orientation cuts down on direct sunlight entering the rooms and sufficient window openings maximizes ambient light to fill the rooms. 

In central & western India, the sun path is towards south. I found a very good app that shows sun path in your region for any time of the year: www.suncalc.net

The design we have maximizes opening towards the north preventing solar gain from the south and west. All living rooms and bedrooms have North orientation. This allows for more ambient light and cuts down direct sunlight into these areas, thus reducing cooling requirements.

Cross Ventilation:

Design allows for cross ventilation of most areas of the house. Triangular shape actually helps in this matter. It helps reduce cooling requirements.

Reducing Weathering effects on the house:

You can see recessed windows in the design. This removes requirement of separate weather shade above each window. This is one of the most basic features of contemporary architecture and our design stays true to that.

Overhang on the parapet works as additional weather shade without directly impacting the ambient light. It protects walls from the elements.

Final Designs as of September 5th 2013

So, here are our updated designs as of today... You see, most everything is cared for..

We got walk-in closet in Master Bedroom, Library nook in kids' room, Island in the kitchen, a large media room with wall for projection and what not!

Ground Floor: 

First Floor:

Second Floor:

3-D Rendering Views:

Clean lines, perfect horizontal and vertical ratios and mini-me roof design and wood-stone-glass facade characterize the elevation of Utsav Bungalow. Check out beautiful 3-D renders of this design.

Math buffs... Do you see the Golden Ratio (phi) here? 

Cool Design Elements we are considering

Living / Dining Door to the Garden:

Instead of a folding / sliding door opening up to the garden, we are considering canopy garage door type opening to the garden - Check out these cool designs. Something along these lines... Let me know how to procure necessary hardware in India :-)

Also, our span is much more than this door... So not sure if this kind of design can be used at all.

Polished RCC Flooring:

As I mentioned in my earlier post, we are considering using just polished concrete with some pigments built-in instead of separate flooring. Maybe we will end up using some flooring in the bedrooms, but for the most part we don't want to. Check out some of the cool pictures I found for this kind of flooring...

Now the challenge is to find artisan that can yield these kind of results in Ahmedabad!

Design Updates

As I mentioned in my post regarding the initial designs, it had mostly everything we needed - and more... Like a swimming pool we never thought we could have in our own house! Also got a media room on the top floor, a spiral freestanding staircase and a vaulted drawing room.

However, some of the key elements were missing:

1. Needed an entry foyer that didn't open up directly into the drawing room.
2. Needed a storage space right next to the kitchen.
3. Needed a bathroom in the Lounge area on the ground floor.
4. Needed doors that could open all the way for inside-out feeling in the living / dining area.

I also thought it would be a better idea to have vaulted ceiling in dining / living area instead of the drawing room. This because we could then have direct earshot access to the kids rooms. I also thought it might be better idea to have kitchen closer to the entry to the plot. Felt so much glass in the drawing room doesn't make sense. There are issues related to heat trap, theft, etc.

Prashantbhai tried to accommodate these key elements along with my long-shot requirements as mentioned above and provided designs that met most of these.

Ground Floor with kitchen towards the entry and vaulted ceiling in the middle:

First Floor with vault in the middle:

Lift shaft had to move to the right, creating weird passage ways into the bedroom

Second Floor:

Again, due to lift shaft movement, passageways into the rooms look pretty bad.

As you can see, these don't quiet meet the high standards set by the original designs. So, finally I dropped my long-shot requirements and we accommodated the key elements mentioned above.

In the mean time, structural designs kept on updating with the architectural designs and we got final set of designs by the end of August. Digging was done by this time and it all coincided perfectly to start the construction work.

Work Commencement Delays

Before the decision was made to go forward with this project, we were told that we will need to leave 4.5mtr margin on the longest side. The plans you just saw were made accordingly. We were obviously not going to use all the space on the ground floor, but the top two floors had cantilever projection that met the margin requirements.

We submitted all the necessary paperwork before the deadline of May 15th. This is when the new Design Rules were going to be effective, which could delay the permissions. However, after submission, we figured that we had to leave 6mtr margin from this side! That was a huge bummer...

We wasted our two weeks on understanding the ramifications. As it stood, the project was all but canned. If we lost 5ft from the longest side of our design, there was no way we could get the rooms of decent size. We were not sure what to do...

And, then came the savior in form of the new Design Rules! It gave us a leeway on one side. We could leave 2.25mtr instead of 3mtr as per the old DR. So, in effect, we could just offset the entire building on one of the two back sides, thereby losing less than 3ft from teh front side.

Updated design and plan passing process took good two months! Unfortunately, monsoon of 2013 ended up being one of the highest rainfall years in recent history of Ahmedabad. So, we got delayed in getting the work started.

However, during this time, we finalized our other team members. Mr. Saurabh Patwa came on board as our Project Management Consultant. Saurabhbhai has vast experience and knowledge in the field of building construction technology and processes. He has worked with many known business houses of Gujarat. He has been very meticulous and provides much needed understanding of the execution process. He helped us finalize the masonry contractor and site supervisor as well.

Another important member we finalized was Jigar Shah of Amee Associates. He is my batch mate from LDCE 1997 and one of the best structural engineers in Amdavad. He was suggested by our good friend Bhavesh who himself is a noted building contractor working on infrastructure projects. 

Saurabhbhai, Jigar & Prashantbhai together have formed a very solid team for us. Lot of minute design issues have been ironed out, thanks to each one's deep understanding of our requirements and vast knowledge in their respective fields!

By the end of July 2013, we got our AMC permissions to commence the construction on this site. We started digging, but had had to halt it half-way due to persistent rains. The digging work completed only by the end of August 2013. 

Here is a picture of site from a vantage point on top of the building opposite to the site. 

Design

Given these parameters and the plot shape and area, our architect provided an amazing solution, which he showed to us in person. Remember, Prashant Pradhan is based out of Gangtok, Sikkim. So it has already been interesting working relationship these days.

Here are the initial plans we got for our project:

Ground Floor:

The ground floor has separate drawing and living rooms, a TV room & a large kitchen. However, we need separate entry foyer, lesser amount of glass around the stairs and more importantly - 6 mtrs from the long wall as opposed to 4 mtrs left in this design. Also, need a store room next to the kitchen.

First Floor:

First floor has two separate bedrooms for children and a balcony for one of the rooms. See how the rooms are almost rectangle? No weird angles in bedrooms!

Second Floor:

Second floor has master and guest / parents bedroom with a sitting area in between. The rooms are sufficiently large and again, have very usable shape!






And now check-out the 3D views! These totally convinced us to just go forward with this project. With this kind of design we were sure that we will be able to accommodate our wildest ideas in the design...