April 21, 2012

After such a long wait to get plan approved, finally, we start! Both Krishna and I are bubbling with excitement. We can finally start to shape our imagination!

Ravi, our contractor, says it will be 18-months to finish. That would mean December 2013 finish. It is going to be an intense, but fun, next 18-months. We have very high-level idea of what all is involved, and I am hopeful to capture as many details as possible through this blog. 

Day 1: Puja

All auspicious work must begin with puja. Here is our humble offerings to seek blessings of the land and support of people to realize our dream home. 

Day 3: Site markings

Site has been center-line marked now. Using working drawings from architect, outer-edge of site is marked. Those are designated by white threads. Then, based on setbacks, exterior edge of each room is marked, designated by neon green threads. It is critical not just to ensure measurements, but also perpendicular edges as these markings will be the basis for all further excavation and cement work. Those neon green threads guide sand-markings about 9-inch on either side for them to excavate. Finally, at the either end of those green threads, cement pillars are placed such that the green thread intersects through the center of the block. That's why it is called center-line markings. Eventually, green threads and sand-marks would go away and those cement pillars provide guidance while constructing walls.

April 30, 2012

Day 10: Watchman's Shed and Excavation start

Usually, first thing is to create Watchman's shed and restroom. Usually, layouts allow a watchman's family to stay at site overnight to look after site and stocked materials. So, this is the first thing that usually gets constructed. Ravi, our contractor, decided to setup shed near kitchen area. They got a bunch of rectangular cement blocks and essentially stuck them together through concrete masonry. To figure restroom they had to dig at a couple of edges of the site to identify sewage line and do hook-ups. 

Workers used site markings, specifically 9-inch sand markings on either side of neon threads to start excavation. As far as I know, building structures are of two types - load bearing walls and columns. As the name suggests, load bearing walls bear the weight of the house and are usually suitable for smaller buildings such as this. Column structures tend to require much deeper excavation to setup foundation. Additionally, columns structures are setup with iron pillars that hold the weight the building. These are usually suitable to carry load of large beams, or load of multi-story buildings. Our house has four columns, 2 on each side of the first floor verandah as that would be about 26-feet wide beam. 

Excavating ground reveals critical knowledge about the soil and therefore dictates the design of foundation. For example, for reclaimed land (i.e. ones that originally hosted lake and were filled with sand), soil tends to be soft and therefore chances of further strengthening the foundation to avoid it from setting-in. In some cases, ground may be full of rocks and therefore can take longer to excavate. Fortunately, none of that is needed here. As you'd see in video, soil texture is quite soft and colour is nice orange. Thankfully, we don't need any special treatment. Trick they use with excavation is to excavate about 6-inch and then thoroughly soak ground with water. This makes excavation extremely easy. For all load bearing areas excavation is done for 4-feet and column area are excavated for 6-feet. This building is small-enough that all excavation is done manually itself. Having said that, this is real work. Amazing to see these guys sweat it out the whole day !