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Ah ok, that's not how it is traditionally done in the flats here in Bombay. What is done is:
1. Window on the outer part of the sill.
2. The grills affixed to the walls around the window but jutting out (the front plane of the grills is ahead of the building wall)

Have attached a photo of how it is done here. The green part is the window sill which is framed by granite/ marble. Then the windows' channels. Finally the grills jutting out of the wall, so effectively no place for water to rest.

Does anybody know what is the procedure to extend the building plan approval in Bangalore? My building plan done in Feb 2020 is expiring this December. We were planning to start construction early this year but due to Covid, all our plans went out of the window.

The approved plan is valid till end of 2021. Can i extend its validity by another year? If so, what is the procedure? Are there any charges?
I will speak to my architect also but if anybody knows the procedure, it will be helpful

As long as you start your construction before the building plan expiry, you should be fine. Honestly, no one bothers about the plan approval expiry. The approval is needed to get your commercial electricity connection for construction purposes. Other than that , it is of no use.

Also, since the delay is due to Covid, the authorities who ask for this document will be accommodating.

Query to the experts here.

Can I waterproof my terrace with Asian Paints Damproof solution or any other product like Dr Fixit if I am harvesting the rain water from the same surface?

I have read articles which suggests not to paint the surface if one is harvesting rain water.

I am looking at creating a partition wall in my apartment to make a separate guest/study room. I have been suggested weightless wall. What is it exactly and is it good to go with something like this?

Why don't you just use a gypsum board partition wall. That will be the lightest, the easiest, and the quickest to install, and in the event you wanting to revert back to your original layout the easiest to remove without major damage.

The other option is using light weight aerocon blocks or sheets (look up Hyderabad Industries)

My recommendation is using the first option.

We had a wall built to make part of our first floor an independent house for some time. Use case was similar - build a wall into an existing constructed space.

Since there were no load bearing beams/pillars in the area where we planned the wall, the weight of the wall was a concern. But, the local contractor we had approached showed some "light weight" fly ash bricks. They really are very low weight! The lightness is unreal. These apparently aren't for load bearing use cases.
We had this wall for a couple of years, and can say that it had excellent sound isolation and did not get any hairline cracks etc.
We took it down since we wanted to use the space ourselves, and can confirm that the it was structurally strong - this took almost a day for the demolition for one guy with a sledge hammer.

Since the purpose is a study room guessing sound insulation is important. In such a case, the fly ash bricks suggested by whitewing will work as there will be an acceptable amount of sound insulation. If sound insulation is not of prime importance then I am all for building the wall with the gypsum board as suggested by Keroo.

Very easy to build and also beautify with matching color of the room and I am thinking now you can also insulate between the 2 layers to achieve sound insulation in this method too. Advantage will be lesser mortar work, plastering not needed on the wall surface, just prep it for painting and paint it with whatever color you need. Have seen a penthouse room built using the gypsum boards and it was very hard to make out the difference. There was decent sound proofing as well.

Drywall Partition Wall is what is the best option. With Gypsum board on both sides, sound insulation by F/Glass, Rockwool, Mineral Wool etc. and concealed Electricals. Hardly any addition to weight. Can be painted to match indoor decor.

I did exactly this and weightless wall was under consideration as were options like Gypsum , Concrete board (better than Gypsum). I also have used Concrete Board for dry walls at certain places as well as got cladding on one of them. So have experience of different types of partitions.

For my study/ guest room, I used sliding-folding doors like this made by the local carpenter: https://www.hafeleindia.com/en/info/...olutions/4681/. I see you are in Bangalore so they have a Design center which should have a demo of their fixtures for this type of partition.

Before getting it installed, understood different types of this installation (hanging from top only, channel based on top-bottom, center partition vs side partition etc ) and made choices based on how to keep the rooms look bigger.

It was more expensive than building a light wall but the beauty is I can open the area or close the area based on need. And it has turned out really well. On the expense part, the logic of cars works here as well for me: delay and buy the better car which I enjoy daily (i.e. the sliding partition doors) instead of a car which is ok thinking I will buy a better car in future (i.e. the partition wall). I can post a photo or answer queries in case you think of this option.

Please do as I know nothing about these things unless I see them visually. Many thanks again to you and the others above for patiently answering me. I intend to revert with a few more questions shortly. This system sounds really awesome and interesting.

The only issue is privacy?

I have to say this. I just keep getting blown away by the responses from the good folks here. Any topic almost has people with real expertise willing to share their time and energy in writing out advice. Just bloody awesome.

To see it visually, this video will probably be better than photos at my place. This is probably from the Hafele Design Center in Bombay because it looks exactly like that when I visited. Also these doors are not as fragile as the person shutting the doors gingerly is making it out to be https://youtu.be/DpZblB_qRlU

Key points from the video:
1. It shows two types of doors- one where there is glass present and the other on the right of the video which is pure plywood. The one on the right takes care of the visual privacy issues. (Sound still can go from below the sliding doors unless you have a bottom channel which is present in video associated with point 3 below)
2. It is an example of center opening i.e. you have doors folding on each side. The other type not in this video is single side opening where all doors stack to one side. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/M_n1YibEiTM
3. The other big design decision is whether to keep the door hanging from the top only or to have channels at the bottom too (like this)https://youtu.be/260V3TZyo0I. Unlike the video, one can have channels at the bottom which are completely flush with the floor so that one doesn't trip over bottom channel. The advantage of having bottom channel is that the doors last longer because they are resting on the channels and not suspended from the top only. Also with the bottom channel, doors can be a lot longer as you can see in the video. The disadvantage is that with channels at the bottom, the visual continuity of floor tiles is broken and it feels like two zones even when the door is open.

I have side opening , top suspended sliding doors (I didn't go for bottom channel due to reason mentioned above i.e I wanted my entire space to look like one big area when the doors were open without any bottom channel on the floor). I also did not use the Hafele fixtures but got heavy brass fixtures from a local shop which were significantly cheaper. The reason for trying to save money here was that we were not intending to keep opening-closing the partition daily. If our intended use was daily, we would have gone for Hafele/Hettich/branded fixtures which come with warranty.

Excellent suggestion by @One.

The privacy issue can be easily addressed by using solid shutters. The only issue I have found with top hung fixtures is that it isn't sound proof (requires a small gap at the bottom) if that is one of your requirements.

Hafale have several experience centers in Bangalore. Just Google and go to the one closest to you.

Good luck

I have seen an entire building having walls made of PUF panels, maybe an option for your use case as well. These are insulated wall boards and will give you good noise insulation as well.

Okay, so my room space is about 8x11 feet. That's 8 in width and 11 ft in length. I don't think I will be able to do this sliding partition, and so will go directly for a "weightless" wall to hyphenate the big space. I have this feeling that room will just be used like a storage unit for all the crap we don't use every day. I hope to ensure it doesn't turn out like that.

Instead I plan to install a sofa-bed pull out, have a single solid wood wardrobe and keep the rest of the space bare. This then turns out to be a guest room or a meeting room even, if I want to meet and entertain friends while my family is out lounging in the living room.

Sliding door partition to make that space inclusive of the existing space. Well, we thought about it, and we really do not intend to entertain big parties and the like at our place, so we think that space is better utilised for guests and meetings without intruding on our own personal spaces. The other thing is installing an 8x11 foot sliding door partition...even thinking about it seems scary from a cost perspective lol.

So now, I have to start thinking on the angle of this weightless wall. So I am thinking a gypsum/dry wall (are they the same??) partition wall with sound insulation thrown into the inside and then paint the whole thing to match the rest of the walls in the house so it looks seamless.

Any advice or suggestions?

Picture of layout attached. The pencil marked space is the extra room. We are removing the dining room space.

If you guys still feel a sliding mechanism is interesting considering the space and layout, I will enquire costing.