don’t shop online till

After having a good tea sitting under a 2-speed Atomberg BLDC fan in my Home office, I’m writing today’s email.

Today, email about saving money on your online shopping.

Who doesn’t want to save money on online shopping? everyone does…

If you also do, then don’t buy anything online now. Wait a few more days.

Amazon India and Flipkart will start the year’s greatest sales next month. You can expect a good discount if you shop on those shopping days.

My younger brother and I waited almost a year to shop on those days to get better deals on some bigger and non-urgent items.

  • Sellers offer discounts
  • Bank offers discounts
  • Shopping sites also offer discounts

Combining all or a few of those allows you to save money by shopping online.

Make a list of items you plan to buy online and keep it somewhere. Once sales start, I will send an email so you can grab all those required items at an amazing deal.

If you are not an online shopper, I still recommend try buying at least small items to experience online shopping.

From small items to big home appliances, we order online and save.

Here are some of the product categories I recommend buying online instead of offline shops to save more if you are constructing a new home:

Arun

Ugly electrical boxes in the beam/wall

A few days back, all our family members attended our relatives weddings.

In one marriage, we had to stay in the rooms available in the function building.

It’s quite a good and a new marriage hall, to say.

We got 3 room keys for our family. In one room, I noticed something that happened in our first building.

That is, some unskilled electrician did the electrical work on that building, which affected the finishing look of the room.

I wish I could have taken some images of that spot.

Anyway, the same thing happened in our first building as well.

We unknowingly hired some unskilled electrician to do the electrical work. Because of this result, the same kind of issues also happened in multiple locations in our first building.

Hiring cheap or unskilled labourers always costs more than skilled labour.

The first building’s electricians used many more electrical materials, like pipes, wires, etc., than our second building’s skilled electricians.

It’s not just about the money…

Those unskilled electricians put electrical boxes in beams/walls, etc., which cannot be hidden. We have a few such spots in our first building.

I initially thought that our first building electrical contractor was the only one who was unskilled to do such electrical work.

I felt wrong after seeing the similar work in that room.

So, I just added another point inside the Electrical work guide regarding How to Pick the Right Electrical Contractor in the 1.5 section.

Go through that point, see the image, read the tip, and follow all the instructions while picking an electrical contractor for your building.

Not all contractors/labourers do the same standard work. Keep that in mind.

Choosing the right contractor is very important to get a quality output in your house construction.

Arun

A ‘wired’ network issue…

From last month onwards, we had a strange network problem in our building (both).

Because of this problem, most of our tenants and we could not connect to our WiFi router.

Anytime we connect, it keeps on disconnecting.

We never had an issue with a wired connection. 

This only happens on our sub-router, which we placed in our tenant’s house (in Access Point mode). In the main router, we never had any such issue. So this is something within our house network and has nothing to do with the internet service provider.

Usually, any kind of network issue happens in our house, I was the one who handled it. 

For some reason, I wasn’t able to fix this problem. All tenants keep on complaining about internet issues. 

This time, I decided to try a professional network engineer to fix this problem, and he also arrived at our house and asked how we did the wiring and how we connected…

I answered.

He also observed and noticed the same and informed everything you have done right. 

He also tried to do some tests by ping and all… and also tried checking wire connections.

He also didn’t understand the problem and tried to call some of his network friends, but their suggestions didn’t help.

He suggested one more solution: changing our unmanaged switch to a managed switch. Which cost around 12K per switch and we need two such switch. 

I’m fine with that solution. But our current switch is going to waste. I still agreed to his suggestion… but he didn’t promise it will 100% fix the problem.

I don’t have any other option, so I’m okay with experimenting with his suggestion.

He left home, informing me I would come next week with a switch.

One day, I got some free time and was playing with different router settings to fix the issue.

While experimenting with the setting, I found something wrong and fixed the setting. Immediately, the WiFi connection and disconnection issue was fixed.

I double-checked whether it really fixed the problem or not. It was fixed immediately….

I called that network engineer and informed them to cancel my switch order, and I paid 1K for just coming to visit our house. 

He also agreed and cancelled my order. 

If he had bought and installed a new switch in our house, it could have cost around 30K just to check…

Thankfully, I got the solution to the problem at the right time.

Now, we need to update the same settings for all the subrouters (which are used in Access point mode). I guess almost 20 routers we need to make changes.

It almost took half a day to make these changes in all routers. 

Now, we have zero issues with our network. 

All users (almost 50+ active devices) use a single internet connection without issue. 

That’s how you should design a network setup when constructing your house. 

Consulting a professional network of engineers is a costly thing.

Most electricians don’t know how to do proper wiring…

If you need internet service in every corner of your house without speed drop, WiFi signal issue, or any router limit, read my Internet Everywhere Guide.

I shared all my practical knowledge… which I implemented in both my building and using it successfully. 

No theory. Only praticle.

Arun

1 more floor on 20 year old building, is it ok?

Yesterday, I got the following question from one of my customers:

Hi Arun, my house is a 20 year old constructed property. It’s a 2bhk independent house with 1200 sq. ft in ground floor. 

Do you think it wise to construct the 1st floor and terrace with a pent house now and give the ground floor for rent?

I am going through all your materials and it’s really helpful.

Regards,
Dileep

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rent not getting paid for 6 months+

Today my mom brother came to our house. While discussing, I generally speak about business stuff more…

While speaking with them, I asked how their rental property was doing. 

They shared that our saree weaving business is down, so our tenants staying at our rental property are not paying rent.

Most of their tenants are labourers of saree weaving, and when saree is not in demand, owners also stop power looms. So, labourers don’t have work, and they don’t get paid.

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how to plan during rainy days

Today it’s raining here…

If you are constructing your house during rain, it causes a lot of disturbance, especially during plastering time.

I remembered one of my personal incidents during rain. Due to limited knowledge, we did not plan properly during the construction of our first building. 

We were simply going with the standard construction flow.

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went extra mile in securing materials at a best price

The guy who contacted me a few days ago on the phone who is going to start his house construction soon is smart.

Why?

He does many extra things that most homeowners don’t get such an idea for the first time.

He has done a lot of groundwork on securing important house construction items at a much cheaper price. 

When he called me, he discussed how to find such suppliers, what their minimum order requirement is, and the price he will get, etc. on the short call.

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