Team-BHP (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/)

-   Shifting gears (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/)

-   -   Home Construction / Makeover / Maintenance Thread (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/shifting-gears/100713-home-construction-makeover-maintenance-thread-164.html)

I almost always don't bring apartment construction quality as a reference because then, I will have to defend the builder (which I have sworn never to do). There is no involvement of the end user and its built to cost. I say this as I have friends who are contractors who do the actual construction (after 2-3 levels on subcontracting) for big builders in Bangalore-Mysore region. The corruption, sorry "commission" that gets eaten at each level would put government organizations to shame.

If it is a house vs house comparison, I am always willing to learn.

I suspect the villa your mom stayed in would have "load bearing walls" instead of pillar & beam based construction. I have seen similarly aged houses within the family and friends group. They tend to have 10-11 inch walls and are literally "bomb proof".

Fun Fact 1: My uncle built a house 30 years ago using dressed "stone" for walls and RCC for roof. Imagine drilling a hole through lol:

Sorry but you are talking about QC of a builder and generalizing it for the product. Since you have tagged it as "IMHO", we cannot go into deeper details. And I will leave it at that

Food for thought: Do we have any apartments built with red bricks to compare with apartments built with concrete blocks?
Sorry, I digress. I would never want to bring in apartment construction as a reference.

Fun Fact 2: A mid-tier builder constructing villa project in a gated community was tired of all these bricks vs blocks debate. He constructed all the walls with RCC. Imagine drilling a hole :Frustrati

You seem to be getting upset by some of the replies so this will be my last post on this subject

A QC of a builder and a house owner both comes down to BUDGET. Budget means making choices between 'quality' of civil work vs finishes. I would love to tell all my clients to build their houses out of aerocon blocks (apartments) or wire cut bricks (houses) but it's just not possible unless one compromise somewhere else which then comes down to finishes which nobody wants. Yes, most builders/contractors do use poor quality bricks/blocks/concrete simply because it's easy to cover it up with plaster and the issues don't show up until much later at which point they have washed their hands of any accountability.

Not certain, but I think the early Total Environments apartments were frame structure with a brick infill. Now some builders have started using Winerberger porotherm bricks instead of concrete blocks because it's more cost effective in the long run.

Cheers.

Concrete blocks being bigger in size speeds up the construction. Red bricks take more time but can be built with better accuracy which should take less plastering being easy to maintain straight lines.

While I was constructing my house and overseeing the concrete quality with M20, M25 grades etc for columns, a house that was being built for sale on same road deviated from such standards twice over even compared to M5 ! The labourers were surprised that I was using lower ratios of cement/sand/aggregate in the mix.

Gurus,

Looking for inputs regarding this scenario. We have a tank room located on the top floor that will be utilized as a laundry room for housing a washing machine, dryer, ironing board, and similar items. We plan to place a 1000-litre overhead tank on a steel stand on top of this room, resulting in a total height of 10 feet (tank room height) plus 6 feet (steel stand height).

My question is whether this height will provide sufficient water pressure for the washing machine’s inlet, or if there are any other ideas to increase the height for better pressure?

You can even avoid using a stand/support to raise the height of the overhead tank (could be risky in heavy wind situations). Instead, place the tank directly on the roof above the room and use a water pressure pump like these.
https://product-selection.grundfos.c...g?tab=products

I agree that using a pressure pump makes sense in this case. In fact I wonder if you even need a tank. Can't the pressure pump be kept in the lower floor and let the pressure go to higher floors? Then you would not even need to have the extra tank - reducing cost.

One other way to increase the pressure is to use larger diameter pipe starting at the overhead tank and go down to regular size as the pipe nears outlet in 2 or 3 stages. Each later stage smaller in diameter - creates a jet effect. Haven't tried this myself but have seen this method employed in creating water pressure for a small dynamo to generate electricity. I'm planning to give this a try once the construction reaches plumbing stage.

Yes, the latest in pressure-boosting pumps are, apparently, able to draw water from a sump. Do away with the roof tank and the pump that fills it. Downside: no water without electricity.

Grundfoss are the Rolls Royce of pumps, and come with a price to match.

You don't see water tanks in the Gulf. Just these Grundfos, and when it fails (very rarely) you suffer when water pressure drops to a trickle.

Yes, the pressure would be sufficient since you will be having a total height of 16feet. Install a 1.5 inch pipe from the tank to the laundry room and reduce it to half inch at the point where it enters the room. This will increase the pressure.

Thanks a lot for your replies.

The problem seems to have become more complex now. Additionally, We need to place Solar Water heater on laundry room roof. So, a separate water tank is needed to feed Solar panels and and this tank needs to be positioned higher than the Solar Heater's tank by 5 feet

So I would need something like this
1. Sump fills >> 1000Ltr Tank >>(overflow fills)>> 500Ltr Solar Tank
2. 1000Ltr tank bottom pipe feeds the house

Question 1: Suggestions/Ideas please on correct placement for this? Would be helpful if height can be provided for each item
Question 2: Will the main tank not have too many outlets, if I bring separate line for washing machine and separate line for rest of the house? Will it cause any problems in future?
Question 3: Where should I install the pressure pump? In case of a power cut, will the taps still dispense water?
Question 4: If Solar Heater gets water via pressure pump, I need to buy a Pressure Pump Compatible Solar heater, which will shoot up the cost. Would prefer not using pressure pump for Solar water heater

To add more headache, I am told that a whole house water softener is needed as well, which needs to be placed before water fills into the first tank.:Frustrati

Sorry for so many questions, confusions and complications!

Edit: If the question is why two tanks are necessary, it's because it's a requirement from the Solar Water Heater provider. He insists on having a dedicated water tank for the Solar heater.

I would suggest this - Keep the 1000L tank around 2.5 feet above the top of the Solar heater tank. The gap between the top of the solar heater tank and the bottom of the Sintex water tank should be around this distance. The top of 200L solar tank is around 5 feet from ground. So, the Sintex tank stand should be around 7.5 feet from the ground. Now from the single tank you can supply water to solar tank, laundry room and the rest of the house. No need for 2 separate tanks for solar and rest of home

Regarding outlets from main tank. Make one outlet of 1.5-inch Dia. From this outlet take one inch line to each for home, laundry room and solar tank.

If you install pressure pump, you need to do it for Solar and rest as well. If you install pressure pump only for cold water line of the house, the showering experience will not be good since the hot water line is at lower pressure. You may face mixing issues of subsequently inconsistent hot water temperatures.

We have a roof tank. We also have pressure-pump bypass piping for those times. But it still very much less flow than the pressure water. Which is the whole point of it, I suppose!
Whilst our tanks are higher than our solar water heater, the solar water heater is fed by the pressure pump.

Otherwise, one would need two pressure pumps: one for hot, one for cold. For a big house and/or large family, this would be the way to go.

Yes, you do need a solar water heater that is made for pressurised system.

Why? You don't want lovely-pressure hot showers? Probably it is more expensive, but we went this way from the start so don't know.
Probably a nice idea, but quite a big added expense. Your solar heater should have have an anode to protect against galvanic degradation (check yearly!) and, not sure, but I think it also helps to prevent scaling.

Why? Make him justify that. There are so many suppliers he has to compete with that he can't insist anything if you don't want. You can very easily go to another.

Don't rely on these people to know technical stuff. Even our solar water engineer had no clue about galvanic action and did not know about the anode. He was actually happy to learn, and ended up searching the company godown for spares for us.

PS... Do plan your tank, pump, piping, etc for minimal bends. It is not just pipe diameter that slows down the flow, it is also going around all those corners (friction). I wish I had thought properly about this before our stuff was installed. Lesson learnt to not just trust an "engineer" contractor!

I saw this part of your post now, hence replying late.

There is no need for a seperate water tank for Solar input. It is good to have but not must have. And no, the provider cannot insist on this! There is no regulation as such to have a dedicated water tank for solar.

Regarding softener. I would suggest you have a 500 litre tank in your ground floor that is connected to the Borewell. Have a 0.25HP pump from this small tank to the softener. Finally, the output of the softener is fed into the sump and a pump will push the softened water into the overhead tank. Do not directly install softener in line with borewell pump. It will damage the pump due to back pressure.

Borewell -> 500L tank -> Inline Filter(s) -> Softener -> Sump -> Overhead tank.

This is what we have in the apartment. Although the tank size is 1000L owing to greater number of houses. We also get Municipal water which is soft directly into the sump. This way the bore water will not contaminate the municipal soft water. Also, the bore water can have a lot of sediments. So, an inline filter is needed between the small tank and the pump to ensure these are trapped.

Hello all,

I came across BuildNext (https://buildnext.in) that seems to offer an end-to-end design+construction service. This is quite appealing to me as I don't want to deal with multiple people for different things during construction. They mention that they will give timely updates via their app on how the construction is going along with following a comprehensive quality checklist. (Also, the construction site is next door to where I stay, so I can keep a regular watch on how things are going)

I was wondering if anyone have availed their services?
Would like to hear feedback/advice in terms of things to keep in mind, if I were to proceed ahead in engaging them.

Thanks.