Picking right Architect and Contractor

November 17, 2012
Day 210

I wanted to share our experience with a topic that I hope you find very relevant - that of picking your architect and contractor. You may wonder, why talk about that now.. Well, I couldn't have written about this earlier even when I wanted to. There are things that we have learnt in hindsight for which we had no insight early on. It is only after being in the process for 6-9 months that I appreciate all the parameters one should consider while picking an architect and a contractor.

So, let's go back about 24 months back in time, i.e. November 2010 when we started this process of envisioning and designing the house.

For starters, there are a number of steps before you start to construct your house. It may not be obvious how these steps are sequenced and time each would take. And therefore, we all end-up under-estimating time and effort required to even start the process. Below is the typical chronological sequence leading up to house construction.

Build your own vision of house - House building is a very creative activity and like any new thing, you want to indulge yourself fully to enjoy it. House building is as much about knowing yourself as about building a physical structure. That's where it becomes either fun for some folks or frustrating chore for others. I have number of friends who would rather buy a pre-built house and are perfectly happy with that. There is absolutely nothing wrong in that! My first advice therefore is - You intrinsically want to build your own house to have fun doing it. Don't do it to compare or compete with anyone.

Think about parameters that would influence your house. These could be external elevation of the house, spaces within the house, budget, layout of the physical structure, levels within your house, reselling or renting house partially or fully, daily habits or routines of folks who would live in the house, and so on. While you do these, pay special attention to how you and folks who would live conduct their daily lives - what are their habits, what are their likes, dislikes or constraints, and how these might change over time. All of the influencing factors above help build a vision for your house. You may either document your vision through a document, or create a Google sketchup or anything in-between. Point is to have somewhat specific idea that describes personality of your house.

There is tons of material available on web and I'd suggest to make yourself familiar. You may also refer to various house design magazines, or read newspaper columns, or blogs such as this to arm yourself with experiences of others. The book that I found particularly helpful in our process is Designing Your Perfect House as it clearly and comprehensively articulates the whole process.

It is hard to put a time-limit on this step and my advice would be to set-aside time each week to build your vision. It is easiest to lose pace on this activity, or postpone it to later stage and doing so has the risk of either compromise, or having to start all over again after you have realized your own vision.

During the process, you may either feel you have a perfect idea of the house, or you may feel confused about what your house should look like. If you feel you have perfect idea, I would say stop now and proceed to the next step. However, don't be rigid about your idea - it will change. Allow for changes as long as they fit within your vision for the house. If you feel confused, keep looking and as you do research, jot-down items that you either really like, or really dislike. Over time you will see a pattern in what you really like or dislike and that will help you create a picture of how your house should look like.

Meet various architects - It is important to meet different architects as they have different styles and preferences. Some of the variations we have seen amongst architects were

1. Some architects build houses of contemporary style while others favor traditional style
2. Some architects have a good eye towards attractive elevation while others are better at detailed planning of individual spaces. 
3. Some architects are fixated towards a feature of the house such as stairs or floor levels while others may be fixated towards earthy materials or concepts.  
4. Architects that are well reputed may relegate most of house design work to their sub-ordinates while relatively young architects themselves design the house. On the flip side, well-reputed architects have tons of design ideas and experience which very young architect may not. 
5. Some architects tend to design tens (if not hundreds) of houses in a year while others may only do 5-10 in a year. 
6. Some architects charge flat fee versus others that charge % of total house cost. 
7. Some architects have designated contractor that they work with while others work with any contractor of your choice. 

I am sure there are other parameters as well but this hopefully provides rationale why it is important to get to know the spectrum to make an informed decision. Ultimately, there is no right or wrong decision, it is what you feel most comfortable with. 

Next obvious question is how to get to know what type of architect you are dealing with - Well, you will never have 100% idea, but a few things that can help are

• Look at houses they have built. Don't rush to conclusion based solely on pictures, pictures can be very deceiving. It is important to visit the houses to get first-hand view of houses. While picking the house, pick a combination of relatively new (< 1 year old) house as well as somewhat older (2-5 years old) houses. Once you have seen 3-4 houses you might start to notice a pattern. 
• Provide your requirements and ask if architect would make a mock design. This will give a sense of architects' vision in reference to your own. 
• Do reference check with house owners. Often, pointed questions elicit better insight than a generic question. 

Finalize an architect - No matter how many architects and how much analysis you do, there will never be surety while finalizing an architect. The point really is you want to have reasonably good idea of architect's style and should feel excited at the prospect of him building your house. For us, it was this intuitive sense when we finalized the architect who designed our house. 

As you may have already guessed, above process does take few weeks to few months depending on your situation and there is always cost of over-analyzing. It is not unreasonable to expect 4-6 months to finalize an architect. Not that I recommend this approach, but we also know of friends who picked an architect and had to change their mind mid-way through their house design. While you'd lose retraining amount, it is better to cut your losses than to compromise on your dream house.

Some of the things that we learnt about our architect and why we feel very excited about him even today -

1. Coincidentally, our tastes matched much more than we originally thought. Our choices matched in picking materials, traditional design of the house, attention to detail, and standards of quality. 
2. Accessibility - We never had to struggle to get his time. He has been intimately involved in design. He is our direct contact and has always been very responsive.
3. Flexibility - Whatever requirement we have had he has designed creative ways to incorporate them. In rare instances where we were not excited about design, he has shown flexibility to incorporate our input and revise design. 

House building is a long and intimate process where architect and contractors are your trusted partners. As the owner, you should take initiative to build such a relationship as that will result in final product that everyone will feel proud to attach themselves to.

Iterate over design - You would typically meet architect to provide your requirements. Depending on architect, this meeting is either free-form or more structured. There are quite a few questionnaires available on web for design of spaces. Here is an example of questionnaire for House overall or for specific room such as Kitchen. Find one that you are most comfortable with and fill that out. This will help clarify your thoughts even if you didn't share with your architect. We did both - independently brainstormed our preferences and then followed-up with similar questionnaire list to refine our thoughts. Some of our preferences are listed below

• Open floor plan – No kitchen door, Large windows
• Vastu compliant
• Sunny in living areas
• Good air circulation
• Porous boundary between outdoor and indoor living spaces
• Environment friendly – rainwater harvesting, solar energy, composting pit, recycle water for gardening, toilets, etc.
• ...

End result was when we met architect he got pretty clear picture of our likes and dislikes, our personality and that helped him build the design. As you can see from image, initial concept plan very much was in line with our requirements. We certainly were very excited seeing such a concept plan. The courtyard feature for example has been both unique as well as one that meets our expectations.

Once you have concept plan, you want to internalize it for few days. Observe how you and others who would live in the house live daily and how your house would fit-in with those habits. Note down refinements. This is also great time to re-look at those magazines, newspapers, web, for design ideas. Don't be influenced by the fancy materials and color combinations - those will come for later. Right now, you want to think about spaces and ensure your current and future needs are incorporated within them. Also, pay attention to how spaces transition from one to other to make sure it is natural. You also want to ensure that space is oriented and sized appropriately. This is the phase where structure of your house is defined and more you can glean from your research to validate or refine ideas, less you will be surprised later. This phase can take anywhere from 2-6 months depending on how many iterations it takes to finalize.

Submit plan for approvals - Once your design is finalized, architect creates plans that have to be approved by your city municipality. Depending on your state and country, requirements, process and schedule for city approval would vary. Suffice it is to say this process takes times and is easy to be overlooked. For us, it took nearly 9 months and unfortunately there is not a whole lot that one can do to make it faster.

You may want to check with your municipality, architect, contractor or any 3rd party if there are avenues to start the approval process in parallel with previous stage of house design. For example, out of 9 months, we could easily have overlapped 2-3 months had we paid some of the fees up front. Any way, in the whole end-to-end process of house building, I found this stage to be most idle and frustrating, both because it causes break in momentum and because you have no direct control. Like they say, best to not fret over things for which you can't do anything!

Meet various contractors - Depending on architect you pick, this step may or may not be necessary. When you do have the pleasure of picking a contractor, you do want to start about 3 months prior to anticipated start data of construction. That will give sufficient time to assess various contractors and also not delay construction start. Like architects, there are a number of parameters to consider

1. Quality - Contractor is the one who will realize paper-plan into real-structure. You don't want water leakage in the house after mere couple of monsoons, for example. It is critical to observe in detail houses that contractor would have built. Older the house give you better sense of durability. Newer house give you sense of attractiveness of construction. 
2. Speed - Some contractors tend to be fast while others can be real slow. Fast is generally good as long as that doesn't result in compromise. Contractors that are slow or have break in continuity of construction are best avoided. 
3. Communication - A critical factor is being able to communicate with contractor and his workers. Some contractors, especially fast ones, have number of houses going on in parallel and delegate day-to-day activities to their "managers" and workers. If these folks either don't understand the language or are not able to relate to incorporate guidance it often results in frustration and stress. It is also of great benefit if contractor is e-mail savvy as often you may just suggest your requirement through web link or pictures and it is much easier to send link rather than bring him a print-out. 
4. Experience - Thumb rule here is of course more the better. That would have exposed them to variety of styles, materials, architects, and owners. Each of those will help them mature and therefore be a lot more effective partner to work with. 
5. Resourcefulness - There are a number of functions that your contractor manages - civil, electrical, painting, carpenter, and several more. Given that these folks tend to be laborer-type, there would be an ongoing churn that contractor deals with. On top of that, depending on specific requirements of the house, contractor will need to procure specialized workers and materials. You want contractor who has alternative plans for every situation without compromising architect's vision. 
6. Accessibility - Contractors that delegate their job are always going to be hands-off. They also would have number of parallel construction going on and would always be time constrained. Depending on their attitude, some times we have seen they interpret architect's drawings themselves not bothering to check-in with the owner and architect. There are others who do only few houses but are thoroughly engaged in day-to-day activities. 
7. Estimation and planning - Contractors have to upfront estimate the cost and timeline of the project. Then, on an ongoing basis, they have to schedule mobilize material, mobilize resources, and sequence day-to-day activities, all within that high-level schedule. This skill doesn't come easily to most folks and I have yet to meet a house-owner whose house was delivered without his "micro-management".  Obviously, a contractor who is able to do as much independently will offload you. 

Like with picking an architect, it is difficult to find contractor that excels in all of the areas. What you want to do is identify the ones that you are willing to make compromise on and ones that you want contractor to be really strong in. Following things help you in revealing contractor's strengths and weaknesses.

• Visit as many houses that contractor built - Add combination of houses that were constructed a few years ago, to the ones that recently completed, to the ones that are under construction. Visit the house under construction few times in a week will provide snapshot their workers' day-to-day behavior. 
• Talk to the house-owners whose house were recently completed or better yet are under construction. They are likely to share "horror" stories if there were any. 
• Engage with contractor on detailed design and construction planning - Ask him about where he would procure material, workers, what are the specific milestones he'd shoot for, how you and him would track progress and so on. 

Finalize a contractor - Most of the criteria to pick a contractor are also described above. The main point I want to stress here is the dynamics between contractor and architect. Again, look at house building as an exercise where you, architect, and contractor have to have the right dynamics. Architect and contractor have to communicate and trust each other as much as their equations with you.

The most important aspect is for contractor to realize that his role is that of implementer and architect has to realize his role is that of designer and inspector. Contractor therefore focuses on building good quality house within time and estimates of cost provided. Contractor can make suggestions to you and the architect but ultimately has to execute on decisions given to him.

Thankfully, we have had that equations set from day 1 and therefore it has not been as stressful experience as it could otherwise have been. I urge you to set that equation as early in the process as possible.

Start construction  - Aha, finally, the day arrives when you can see some real action. It takes good 24 months from building first vision till you start construction. By now, you have accomplished huge part of house-building - assembling your team and establishing plans! You have already come half-way, believe it or not. You will soon be able to see your abstract dreams taking shape. It is start of an exciting phase in house-building. Celebrate accomplishment of this milestone !

Some best-practices to keep in mind going forward

1. Visit your site every other day if not every day to track progress and compliance to plan
2. Keep a payment chart that tracks when you made the payment, to whom, and what it was for. 
3. Track schedule very closely. Like any project, devil is in the details. More questions you ask architect and contractor of immediate milestones, dependency, inspection schedule, decisions that you have to make, more informed you would be. 
4. Ensure that you, architect and contractors meet at least once a month. Quite a few finer details get ironed out through these conversations. Preferably, these meetings should occur at the site itself.  

That's all for now.. It has been a long post, but hopefully worth it. Feel free to point out any details you would have liked to see and I will see if I can incorporate it.

Ground Floor Roof

Day 210
November 17, 2012

Ground Floor Roof !
While walls come-up quickly and show visible progress, it takes a bit of time to get roof completed. For starters, it is advisable that all walls progress at more or less equal pace as roof construction can not start till all walls are up.

In our house, we have wirecut bricks in certain areas and as I mentioned in my earlier post they take a while to procure and once procured take further time to lay them in place. One of the reasons for delay is it requires specially skilled mason to handle cementing of wirecut bricks.

Additionally, we had specific pattern to arrange them in. A couple of the patterns are shown here. Patterns make the wall come alive; they however cost a bit more both in terms of quantity of bricks as well as time taken to lay them so they are appropriately aligned.

As a layman, these delays were not obvious to us at the start.

Having gone through the process we now know that laying wirecut bricks takes twice as long and laying wirecut patterns takes thrice as long as the normal bricks. For us, these added 3-4 weeks to overall schedule.

Obvious advice is to be paranoid about each task - ask stupid questions as that'd uncover potential surprises that can be avoided.

Roof height

Unless a house has tall ceilings, most people don't pay attention to how high the ceiling should be. They usually go with the standard 10 or 10.5 feet height. And so did we. Our architect, however, had designed drawings with 11 feet height. As the walls were getting constructed, I actually felt 11 feet looked too monstrous in some rooms and was reluctant to go with that. Being the first-time house-builder it is very hard to know whether to stamp your opinion, or go along with architect's design. Do some research on advantages and disadvantages to find an answer that is right for you. Here is a quick summary of pros and cons of 10 feet vs 11 feet.

• Taller ceilings give feeling of spaciousness. Rooms look a lot more elegant. 
• Taller ceilings cost more and take longer to build.
• Taller ceilings in a multi-level house mean more stairs to climb.
• Taller ceilings help with keeping room cooler as hot-air stays at or near the roof. 
• Taller ceilings provide larger storage space should you construct wall cabinets. 

We decided to go with 11 feet and after the roof was casted, I was thankful to have listened to architect and contractors' advice. 1 feet makes a huge difference in feeling of spaciousness and elegance.

Electrical design

As soon as the roof is cast, a number of activities - electrical, window frames and shutters, plastering, etc. can happen in parallel. By now, your architect should already have finalized furniture layout and should be talking to you in terms of electrical layout.  It is critical for home-owners to freeze both these items at this stage as without them none of the other work would proceed.

For example of electrical drawings, here are a couple of samples from our house. Undoubtedly, there will be a few iterations to get these right. So, allow yourself a bit of time on how you'd live around your new house. That'd determine number and type of lighting you'd need. Lighting is one of the crucial aspect to set ambiance so you want to make sure to not rush it.

A couple of rules that we followed for electrical layout

• Be liberal with points - I have observed that more often than not after the house is done you realize need for additional plug-points. While this costs a bit extra upfront, I'd much rather not have to open-up electrical (or avoid having power strip everywhere) after house is done
• One open plug-point per wall is a thumb rule - Again, calibrate according to needs of each room
• Avoid too many types of lights, we picked a type (e.g. wall mount) and repeated that across the house. 
• Avoid more than 6 switches in a switch-board - Hard to remember which switch is for what and looks kinda ugly.

Roof construction:

1) Order materials - While this is an obvious thing, some times procurement adds delays. In our case, we needed long-enough "bamboos" for 11 feet ceiling and those were not readily available. Ensure that contractor orders steel, cement, sand, aggregate, etc enough in advance so that it arrives in time.

2) Setup centering - This is where maximum time is spent. Workers setup metal sheets supported by the bamboos. Depending on roof area this can stretch over in days or weeks. Thumb rule is to expect 1 room per day. If you have stairs, those are also done at this stage. This is because they need to ensure the leveling of stairs occurs at the same time as centering is set up.

3) Do form-work - Once centering is setup, they lay-out steel rods that will hold the roof together. This is done in usual mesh pattern. For about 1000 square feet roof, it took 1-week to set this up.

4) Layout electrical conduits - Contractor will identify electrical drop points in each room. These are essentially points from which electricity flows into the room. It is good to have electrical layout finalized at this point although if it is not, contractor will identify a few default points.

5) Structural inspection - One final step is to get structural engineer to approve construction. Structural engineer is the one your architect would have consulted to structurally build your house. His approval is critical to ensure house meets the safety standards he'd have set in place during design.

6) Pour cement - Pretty straight-forward step. I was surprised that this takes usually 4-6 hours. My contractor suggested to manually make cement so as to have better control over proportion of cement, aggregate and sand. However, market is also full of ready-to-pour cement mixes as well. Go with whichever you (or rather your contractor) feels comfortable with. It is important that whole roof is done in a day to allow roof to solidify at once.

7) Remove centering - Once cement is poured, make sure it is cured regularly. This allows cement to bind really well. Curing happens for few (2-4) weeks. Typically, centering stays for support for about 6 weeks.

8) Payment - My contractor insisted to have fewer but bigger payments and that model worked very well for us. My second payment was when ground floor roof was casted (first was when plinth level had reached). My BOQ (bill of quantity) is also structured for each phase (Plinth, Ground floor roof, First floor roof, etc.) This model allows me to easily verify actual versus estimate in BOQ much more easily. Every time bill is raised, architect also needs to verify quantity of material used vs estimated and doing it less frequently makes his task also easier and more efficient. Any way, point of this bullet is to verify how you are tracking with respect to estimated cost and justify any deviations. 

9) Schedule and Quality review - Final check-point at the end of this phase is to review schedule and quality with your architect and contractor. This must be not just at the macro-level analysis of big-picture items, but rather a finer-level analysis.. For example, what factors contributed to delays, what compromises led to aesthetics or structural inadequacies. By now, you'd also have had a good rapport with both architect and contractor to unequivocally communicate action plan going forward. My advice is actively ensure that mistakes are not repeated, don't assume that someone once told will henceforth do the right thing.

Ground Floor Walls

Day 132
September 1, 2012

Walls come up !

Overall house perspective

Living Room

Ground floor Bedroom

Patio

Best way to describe progress is to show some visuals.  So, here they are..

A number of our rooms have exposed bricks. Seeing them in real is very different than seeing them in architecture elevation. One obvious piece of advice on deciding on elevation materials is therefore to look at more houses than blueprints. Even seeing pictures like this is not a replacement for actual visits to the house. Actual visit gives a real sense of the space - How does the space gel with rest of the surroundings, Likes and dislikes about material texture and finer details, and so on.

We had seen these "Balyapatnam" bricks at a few houses and while bricks themselves were not that much of a surprise it indeed is exciting to visualize how bricks add character to various spaces.

As mentioned earlier, once markings are done and inspection has validated them, protruding walls is a pretty straight-forward task. This video shows workers as they were building these walls.


A few things to keep in mind

• Your contractor should have planned detailed supplies and pre-ordered them. These are things like sticks, bricks, aggregate, water, etc. Make sure these don't add to delays. 
• Laying expose bricks requires skills. Also, it usually takes longer to lay these than the normal bricks. More masons that can lay them in parallel, faster progress it'd make. 

Exposed brick walls have to be planned upfront to avoid re-work later on. Specifically,

• Niches - Position, height and width of each niche that would be placed in the wall. 
• Electrical layout - If any ducts have to pass through this wall these need to be planned and performed while these walls come up. (Note: From aesthetics perspective, it is advisable to not have any electrical points in the brick wall itself.)
• Brick patterns - To avoid monotonous look, border brick patterns can be added on a wall. Typically, these are added a few rows above the lintel. These have to be decided and upfront planned with mason. Some times, masons may not know how to lay patterns (especially if they tend to be difficult) and it is wise to allow time for these. There are a number of patterns available on the net.. Some tend to be dominating while others tend to be too big and are better suited for bigger buildings than houses. Do a bit of research to identify ones that best suit dimension and style of your room. 

It is important that adjacent walls come-up together. This provides uniformity to spaces as well as allows workers to connect edges as they come up.

Lintel beam

To refresh, lintel beam serves the purpose of binding various spaces in the house together as well as providing foundation to host brick layers extending to roof. Lintel beam is placed typically on top of window and door spaces.

This video talks about process of constructing lintel beam. Process is very similar to laying any slab. Put re-inforcement in the form of wooden sticks. Then, lay wooden sheets on top of window or door space. Do the form work (i.e. lay-down the steel rods that provides the core of the beam). Provide shape by reinforcing wooden planks on both sides. Pour the concrete and allow it to dry for a few days. Remove the wooden planks on the side as well as wooden sticks. That's pretty much it.

While it does sound simple, this process does take time and a lot of this progress is not visible (unlike when walls come up). Our philosophy for construction  has been to ensure daily progress but not judge the quantum of progress. We believe this works better to ensure quality.

Stairs

Last piece in this segment is the stairs. As mentioned above, all parts of the house needs to come up together. Stairs in the house have to blend with the connecting walls and hence it is about time to start working on them.

This video covers baseline work for stairs. It is similar in concept to laying down a beam. It is a bit more work because before laying the concrete they need to provide exact shape of stairs through wooden planks.

While planning stairs, ensure that each step is not more than 7" tall. Also, typical depth of each step is about 11-12". These are little things that are important to get right (You don't want people to think where to put their step while climbing stairs :-)).

Once lintel beam is done, workers continue process of laying further bricks that extend walls to roof. Next post will talk about laying ground floor roof. 

Ground Floor Plan

Day 98
July 28, 2012

Foundation wrap-up: 
It is almost 100 days and foundation work is complete. We are on to ground floor now. Before we get started on ground floor there are a couple of things to finish on foundation

1. Foundation inspection - If architect has not inspected foundation level be sure to schedule and ensure it gets done now. Purpose of inspection is to:
• Ensure height of foundation is in accordance to the drawing
• Ensure house does not have unintended height differences across various spaces
• Build an opinion on the quality of construction
• Ensure setbacks are appropriately marked.
2. Receipt verification - Before ground floor construction starts, it is a good idea to assess planned vs actual cost to construct foundation. Contractors typically provide a Bill of Quantity (BOQ) that lays out estimated material required for each work item and corresponding cost. This is the time to verify overage or underage of quantities and actual cost. A good way to cross-check this is to have your contractor provide receipts of materials used and have your architect measure the quantity of material used in the house. Depending on individual arrangements, a % of estimated payment can be released earlier but final settlement for foundation level should only be done after receipt verification.

This is also the time to apply for the "Commencement certificate" (CC) that municipality often recommends. CC, as I understand, is often a requirement to procure "Occupation certificate" (OC) when your house completes and before it can be occupied. For Bangalore anyway, CC *seems* an optional thing for residential construction. Although I was planning to procure CC, I dropped that plan based on architect and contractor's advice. 

Ok, let's get on with the ground floor plan. 

Working drawings:

Here is complete set of drawings architect will provide to you and the contractor to construct ground floor. The actual number of drawings may vary depending on complexity of the house. Here is the types of drawings you should expect

• Wall schedule - Shows what kind of wall, such as plastered, exposed brick, or claddings
• Detailed working drawing - Shows detailed width of each edge within room, height and positioning of windows and doors, and position and dimensions of niches within walls
• Chejja details - For houses that have sloping roof, this one shows position, width and slope of the chejjas. 
• Lintel details - Shows internal structure of the lintel beam, width, height, and measurements on top of each window and doors. 
• Electrical layout - Shows detailed marking of electrical points and switches. This one requires thinking through lifestyle habits and therefore may require a few iterations to settle. 
• Roof slab marking - Shows the height of roof slab, construction markings for laying the beams, and materials to be used for making roof slab. 

Ground floor plan:

Ravi explains process of constructing ground floor. Basically, there are 4 stages: 

1. Lay-down bricks till lintel level

2. Construct lintel beam

3. Lay-down bricks till roof level

4. Lay-down roof

The two new terms I learnt were sill and lintel. For those not from civil engineering background, sill essentially is the bottom-edge of the window and lintel is the top-edge of the window. 

Constructing walls is typically easy as it amounts to laying down bricks (or blocks if you were using cement blocks). The only complexity arises as a result of windows and doors. Hence, contractors first need to clearly mark position for each window and door including their sill and lintel positions. For doors, sill is 0 and typical lintel level is at 7'. For window obviously these vary depending on individual requirements. 

Make sure these markings are clearly visible and do not get washed away. 

Upon completing markings usually next step is to lay down first-course brickwork. What this means is laying down first-layer of brick on plinth across the house. The video below shows first-layer brickwork laid out in the house. When first-course brickwork is completed it is critical to schedule "first course brickwork" inspection. This allows architect to validate width of each wall within house to ensure it is according to the spec. This is the last stage before wall start to build-up and so important to double-check as mistake here can be expensive. 

Wire-cut bricks

In our house we have identified a few areas to have exposed bricks. These are special bricks in a few ways

• They cost more - about 4-5 times more than the average bricks
• They require special skills to lay them down 
• Since these bricks are always exposed (unlike standard bricks which gets plastered upon) these bricks should be handled with extreme care and should not get chipped while laying down. 
• Any electrical points on walls that have wire-cut bricks have to be established and planned for upfront. 
• Any niches within the walls that have wire-cut bricks have to be planned upfront. 

This video shows a glimpse of character wire-cut bricks add. I wasn't a big believer in them initially but seeing them in real has certainly turned me over :-)

Once architect inspects first course brickwork, workers simply repeat the pattern of first-course brickwork by laying further courses of brickwork. Of course they have to keep in mind door and window positions and respective sill levels. However, it is more or less a mundane task and walls actually come-up quite fast. 

This also actually first real exciting stage as spaces come alive and as you walk around the house you start to develop the feel of the house. House is no more an abstract concept or a mere plan on the paper. It is real and alive ! We did notice increased drive within ourselves to go and visit the site everyday to observe every little progress and be a part of action. Following blog posts will share some of the pictures from ground floor construction. 

Day 83
July 13th, 2012

This post will cover on 2 topics - 1) Plinth beam casting and 2) Retrospective of Foundation

Plinth Beam Casting
Plinth beam is the horizontal cement beam across the house perphery laid on top of foundation.

This picture shows how the finished plinth beam looks.            

Purpose of the plinth beam is to:

1. Prevent leaking of water into foundation - To prevent a house from settling it is critical that no water be leaked into foundation. Being made of cement, plinth beam is impervious and therefore prevents water from rain, flooding, etc. from leaking into foundation. 
2. Provides support for walls - For load bearing houses, walls carry the weight of the house. Plinth beam provides solid footing to raise those walls.
3. Holds house together - Since plinth beam sits across the periphery of the house, it provides binding force across rooms. For example, without plinth beam it is possible for one of the rooms to settle thus creating uneven floor level. Plinth beam prevents that from happening. 

Basic process to construct plinth beam is as follows: 

1. Mark-up width - Usually width of plinth is half that of the foundation. In this case, foundation is about 18" wide and so plinth is 9" aligning with the outer edge of the foundation. Inner 9" of foundation meshes into the floor level of the house. 
2. Lay down the steel beam - As the adjacent picture shows beams are the core of the plinth beam.  Beams have a loop every 6" that holds it together. 
3. Setup re-inforcement - Before concrete is poured, re-inforcement has to be established to provide rectangular shape to the beam. This takes majority of effort as planks have to be nailed properly in place and once concrete is poured they need to be removed. 
4. Pour the concrete - Next step is to pour the concrete. As concrete is poured, mason ensures that it is evenly spread and smoothens out any edges. He also needs to ensure the height of the beam is consistent throughout the periphery. 
5. Remove re-inforcement - Concrete turns solid within 24-hour and final step is to remove the planks leaving the beam intact. 

This short video explains this process in action. 

Foundation Redone:

To give background context, ground level at living room area is 1' higher than that at the guest bedroom level. Typical height of plinth level is 2.5' that includes 1' of plinth beam and 1.5' of foundation masonry. Turns out though that foundation masonry was 2.5' at living room and 3.5' at guest bedroom. What this meant was plinth height would be 3.5' from natural ground level. This was realized only when plinth beam casting was about to start. To add to misery, by then Rainwater tank was already done to align with 3.5' of plinth !

My architect was clear that plinth level can be no taller than 2.5' or else house would look place oddly high. What followed was no fun - We ended-up undoing a few days of work. Specifically

• Reduce Rainwater tank height by 1' by chipping away at just-finished concrete tank
• Remove 1-layer of foundation stone masonry from across the house periphery to reduce the foundation height by 1'. 

Here is the clip of work being undone. It could have been worse had plinth beam been built. Good news was we caught it at a time that cost us about a week and some cost in material and labor. Having said that, there were key lessons learnt -

1. Trust your gut instinct - Even though as homeowners we may not be in construction business, you have a feel for what's going on. I certainly did feel that foundation was looking tall. While "plinth" was a new term and I didn't know that it was 1' in height I concluded I knew no better. That was the critical mistake. No question is a dumb question especially when you are new to the domain. Had I had surfaced my instinct more strongly or did some research things could have been different. 
2. Working drawing consultation - I independently found my architect and contractor. So they had no prior relationship between them. When architect released drawings there was no consultation that occurred between the two. So, architect didn't get a chance to explain the nitty-gritty and contractor felt drawings were clear-enough. A big no-no ! It is critical that drawings are released to contractor only after architect has had a chance to explain them to the contractor. It is best to have such meetings at the site to relate paper drawings to the actual mapping onsite. Often times, what looks right on paper doesn't feel right to the eye. If that's not possible, have them meet at architect's office. 
3. Inspection schedule - Identify stages at which architect would come and inspect the site to validate it is built according to the specifications. In this case, architect mentioned a couple of times need to schedule inspection. However, given that this was first or second inspection we were not as diligent as needed. 

Again, in retrospect, it was not a terrible setback.. Like many other things in life, none of the lessons were new; rather they were re-inforcement of what you would learn at many other times. Lessons learnt were critical and have since been put in practice. There is now tighter collaboration between me or my wife, architect and the contractor and crisper conversation about respective point of view. So, in the end it definitely had a silver lining !

July 2nd
Day 72

RainWater (RWH) Tank:

Last blog talked about center-marking pillars.. You would notice in this video a number of such pillars are now set up to mark various edges. Also, various rooms are now filled with sand (aka earth material). Once foundation masonry layers are completed they will start consolidating earth material in each of the rooms. This process is equivalent to making dough. The volume of dough shrinks as it absorbs water.. Similarly, they alternate process of adding earth material and water so that rooms themselves are flush with dense earth material. The idea behind this is - more dense the earth material, less chances of air bubbles within that and therefore less chances of house settling in ground. 

Best way to describe RWH tank is through pictures that describe various phases. As a reminder, tank has a capacity of about 60,000 litres. For more description on how I arrived at 60,000, refer to <>. Tank area was excavated about 7' below the natural ground level. Further, tank is built-up to be about 2.5' above ground level - in line with the plinth beam.

Next step is to to setup steel re-inforcements to provide structural support. At the base of the tank, they criss-cross steel rods and tie them together with hooks. Then, vertical rods are tied at the edge with the flooring. Finally, similar criss-cross pattern is setup at the walls of the RWH tank. It is important to excavate tank about 1' wider than the required capacity so as to allow workers to perform their work. Although the structure looks a bit daunting actual work didn't take more than 6-7 days.

Once steel structure is established, pouring concrete on the floor is fairly straightforward. Doing the walls is more complicated though. Essentially, they split-up wall into 3-layers, each 2.5' tall. Then, across the boundary of RWH tank, both sides of vertical steel rods are "bound" with wooden planks. As the picture shows, wooden planks themselves are supported with wooden rods. Finally, concrete is poured in to them. All said and done, each layer takes about 4 days, and it took about 12 days to get the tank done.

Final step involves a few minor, but important activities

1. Sloping at the floor pointing towards the manhole. The intent being while cleaning the tank all water should accumulate near the manhole. 
2. Water the concrete to allow it to strengthen. Plaster the walls and floor for nice and consistent finish.
3. Apply chemical treatment on walls to make them water proof. Test for leakages by spraying water and checking for dampness on the outside.
4. Fill the outside of RWH tank with earth material. Allow them to consolidate to form completely immersed structure. 

All said and done, it took about 30 days to complete this tank. Besides cost, this delayed the project a bit.. I am hopeful though this investment will some day prove worth it.

Completed tank:

Next post will cover plinth beam casting.

Foundation Masonry Layers

May 10, 2012
Day 20: Foundation Masonry layers

Last post talked about components that make up foundation of the house. This post focuses mostly on masonry work. First, it may be obvious, but just to be explicit, house construction requires a LOT of water. Till the super-structure is completed, almost every activity, starting from excavation, making cement, watering foundation and walls, compacting earth metal, and many more that I will only realize in due course. On an average, expect to use up 20,000 litres each month i.e. about Rs 2,000 on an average.

Masonry work is done with a set of cement concrete blocks that are "glued" together with cement mortar. You might recall that excavation was about 900mm deep. Each block is about 150-175mm tall and including mortar height of each block would roughly be 200mm. Foundation of a house is typically up till plinth which generally is 450mm above the ground level. This implies several layers of foundation masonry.

In our house, ground at the rear-end of the house is 300mm lower than that at the entrance-end.

Hence, plinth-level will be 900 + 450 + 300 = 1650mm from the excavation level. Considering each layer of masonry is 200mm, total number of masonry layer at rear-end is about 8 and at the entrance-end is about 7.

 

The section view of cement blocks is sketched here. As is evident each layer of cement block works its way towards the center. Space on the outer periphery is filled with earth metal whereas the space between cement blocks is filled with cement mortar. I was surprised at the speed with which this work got done.. It took workers just a little over one week to do about 4 layers across most of the house.

Columns: There are 4 columns to bear the load of the first floor balcony and the family room areas. Excavation for columns is about 1500mm. Base of the column is filled with mortar. Then a steel column of about 3000mm is erected as shown in sketch here. Rings are tied approx 150mm from each other to hold the column together. Finally, they'd pour cement concrete around it to create the actual column structure.

Center-line marking pillars: Towards 4-minute mark in the video is description of center-line marking pillars. Center-line marking is to mark center-line for all the edges. Picture shows marking of center-line for window. Blue squares are center-lines that were already marked for main edges of the room. Those were the basis for excavation to occur.

Additionally, a new center-line is now marked (shown with red rectangle) for where the window edge on ground floor would be established. The center-line is marked with pillars (refer to the video) that will remain placed until ground floor actually comes up. These center-lines are marked throughout the house wherever a nook changes the direction of the primary edge of the room.

Finally, this video shows the actual work to build that column described above.