Our House construction experience

[ravivasudeva]

The Compound wall dilemma

I am aware from sources like BBMP engineers and other neighbors that the general understanding in wall construction is that compound wall on the right side of the property and on the front side should be constructed in our area where as on the left side and back side would be in your neighbors site. (Right side is when you stand in your property and face the road).

There are other ways of handling this as well

1. Construct all sides of walls in your area, then your neighbors can't use your wall for purposes like grill fixing, keeping plants etc.
Disadvantage is that your neighbors construct their own walls, so it will waste space for both.
2. Construct wall on the center line so that its a common wall and both can use for grill fixing, plants etc. Here space wastage would be less.
3. As i mentioned above, right side and front side are constructed in our property and rest of the walls in neighbors area.

In my case, back side compound wall already exists (big stone walls) and on the right side and on the front side i will construct. Before concluding on the left side, i called up the owner of my left side owner who papers are still not correct. Firstly he said that he is not interested in my idea but later i told him that the cost would be borne by me since it will secure my house and later he would have full control over the wall and i would not put up grill. He said he would get back in few days time. If we mutually agree upon this idea, i plan to do an affidavit declaring the same.

Let me know if you people have any suggestion or aware of problems in my approach.

[sano]

Hi Ravi,
Nice post and very informative,
I assume that the pinth beam work is going on now, please post more pictures. I am also in the same boat, started my villa construction today near electronic city.
May I know how many separate houses/ floors are you building? Just curious about the size of the sump...
I have planned for 8000 liters, for only a single dwelling duplex villa. Will it be good enough?

Reg the compound wall, I think the safe option is to have it in your own site unless the plot is too small and you want to take the advantage of those extra inches. In my case the left side neighbour has a wall and now it may looks like I need not make a wall that side. But my neighour's house is in the ground level and I'm planning for 2 feet height from the ground level. In this case, his wall will be short for my villa and I will have to make a wall in proportion to my villa's height.

Rgds,
Sano

[ravivasudeva]

In the last few days the work went slowly due to SSM discussion but the good news is that my SBI loan was approved, i submitted the original documents and completed the registration in Sub registrar office. If anyone need help in contacting a SBI home loan agent, i would definitely recommend my agent name. I also received 20% of my home loan amount to my bank account 3 days back.

My structural engineer didn't wanted SSM but our contractor never did foundation work/(paya in kannada) without SSM, so our contractor and mastri were taking time to understand the plint design and how to execute it. Finally they were convinced that SSM can be avoided and then the plint work started. Also the centering person didn't do any plinth without SSM, so he too had to understand it. The dimensions of the plinth varies depending on where they come, for example, plint of outer wall are 9 inch wide and 1.2 feet deep but the depth will change for internal walls, this added some complexity. So centering work was done accordingly.

Even though it took time, the plinth is coming up well...which you can see in pictures below. We also avoided SSM for parapet wall and instead went for small columns and plinth design.

6 inch slab on the Sump done

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Plinth design

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Plinth design for parapet wall and concrete work

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[ravivasudeva]

Overall plinth view

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[ravivasudeva]

Hi Ravi,
Nice post and very informative,
I assume that the pinth beam work is going on now, please post more pictures. I am also in the same boat, started my villa construction today near electronic city.
May I know how many separate houses/ floors are you building? Just curious about the size of the sump...
I have planned for 8000 liters, for only a single dwelling duplex villa. Will it be good enough?

Reg the compound wall, I think the safe option is to have it in your own site unless the plot is too small and you want to take the advantage of those extra inches. In my case the left side neighbour has a wall and now it may looks like I need not make a wall that side. But my neighour's house is in the ground level and I'm planning for 2 feet height from the ground level. In this case, his wall will be short for my villa and I will have to make a wall in proportion to my villa's height.

Rgds,
Sano

Thank you Sano, i have posted few pictures now and good luck for your construction.
I will construct 3 houses, 2 for rent for 1 for mine. Which is G+FF+SF, and 2 car parking in G. The final size of the sump turned out to be 14,000 liters which is little beyond my requirement of 12,000 liters. You can make your own decision depending on water availability, num of people in house, cost factor and area. My suggestions is to go for bigger sump if permits.

Yeah, i agree with compound wall suggestions which i am constructing in my land now.

[chandra1635]

Hi Ravi,
Nice pictures. About compound walls, you gave the above formula. But r u still constructing in your own land ? I am confused in above text.
why you did so, again ?

Thanks
Chandra

[ravivasudeva]

Hi Ravi,
Nice pictures. About compound walls, you gave the above formula. But r u still constructing in your own land ? I am confused in above text.
why you did so, again ?

Thanks
Chandra

Hi Chandra, the primary reason is that my neighbor was not interested in my proposal. Further, I wanted to install security grill all around, keep my house at 2 feet high from road level and have a washing area next to wall (which means i will clad tiles on the wall). So i finally decided to do it in my own land. I told my neighbor that since he disapproved my proposal, i conveyed that he can't make use of our wall and i am now happy with my decision

[ravivasudeva]

Plint work is completed 5 days back and all the columns are filled with concrete by Saturday. Centering have been removed and curing is started

I have instructed my mastri to bring jute bags for column curing. Curing will go for for 28 days.

Now we need fill the soil into the structure up to 2 feet from road level. Due to slope on my site, the filling is as much as 5 feet on backside. A total of 15 lorries are expected to fill it.

SOIL MAFIA

I guess there is a mafia for soil filling and they all tried cheating us. There were multiple people who approached our contractor, mastri and me for soil filling but i authorized only one person Daya (that too with a friend's reference) for filling and asked him to call me before dumping soil. It so happened that 2 loads of soil was dumped on Friday but not sure who did it. My contractor called me to inform that soil has arrived and full of boulders. I was confused who did it. When i called Daya and asked if he sent soil, he said he will check and get back. Later on the same day when i went for soil inspection, 2 different people came and claimed that they dumped soil for which they asked money but no one clearly told me who asked them to do it. I blasted them and didn't give them money. Yesterday Daya called me to say that soil is being dumped on my site and 5 loads arrived whole day with mix of stones. Today Daya is telling me that previous load which arrived on Friday was on his behalf but he didn't claimed that on Friday itself? It's clear that they are all cheaters. Today, I just ordered him to stop soil dumping and we have another supplier ready with my contractor reference. So guys, please be careful with soil suppliers, infact it seems that all are linked even though from outside they look like different suppliers.

[ravivasudeva]

Few pics here, love the structure and the way it is coming up. There is no honeycombing and i feel labors did a good job.

Structure of plinth beams and columns

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Structure of plinth beams and columns

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Structure of plinth beams and columns

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[ravi555]

ravivasudeva,

Good details.. Could you also eloborate more on:

1. WHat is the cost estimate for 1 chadra?
2. Are you going for Labour contract or full contract with a builder?
3. How much deep you went for borewell and what was the digging cost and pumpset cost?
4. WHat is your site over all dimension? How many floors..chadras per floor?

Please share more details on your experience as it will help me and many others like me..I am planning to construct soon