P K Arun

Hi, I’m P K Arun the guy behind this blog. Our family constructed a house in Bangalore and I thought to share our house construction experience with this blog so users can avoid those common mistakes they do while constructing their house. Read Our Story

Had a conversation with a friend and a structural engineer

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A few days back, one of my Dad’s and brother’s friends came to our house casually.

They are also staying near our house so they visited.

While my brother and dad were speaking in the first building hall, I was writing that day’s email and joined their conversation a little later.

I learned he is now a structural engineer running his own construction business when I went.

As soon as I got to know him, I asked him some construction-related questions. I just want to get some ideas and his viewpoint.

I noted some key points in my Excel sheet for the email ideas.

He answered all my questions, and he couldn’t answer some of them. Specifically, some rules-related stuff he didn’t know.

He informed me that he had started doing construction in the past 2 years, so he had less knowledge of the subject I asked about.

No problem.

He was sure about the construction-related questions I asked for.

I observed him… the way he sees house construction is somewhat different from what I see.

He is a professional. He speaks what he is trained for…

I write and share my experience living in a constructed house and common mistakes we make while constructing… these are small things.

I never saw those types of conversations coming while I was talking to him.

Professionals treat and think professionally. Users who face issues practically speak differently.

I’m on the user end.

My content and guides are shared on my daily experience of staying and noticing issues in the house.

My ideas & guides are in no way the same as what most engineers & contractors think.

I recommend you also observe the small issues you notice everywhere and try to solve those while doing your house construction.

Most of the time, your contractors or engineers can bypass those small issues.

Those small problems are the ones which annoy you a lot when you move into your new building.

Sometimes, it even costs a lot to fix those. Sometimes, you cannot even fix them.

If you want to learn from my point of view, the All-Access Pass is where I shared all such small findings.

Arun

No more breakfast

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All my family members attended our relative’s wedding here in Bangalore today.

Even though I was supposed to go, due to the seat limit in the car, I stayed at home.

If I had taken our car, I also could have gone… but I usually avoid driving in Bangalore traffic for new places. I’m a kind of safe guy who always likes to play safe games.

So I sent all our family members on Ola cab.

While booking an Ola cab, I noticed today that the trip’s price varies every minute.

Like 200rs to 800rs! For the same car, same trip. Never saw this happening before.

This is the first time I saw this in an Ola cab.

To get a lower price, Go back and search the destination again. Sometimes, the price will go back within a few minutes.

This is something I learned today. Maybe this could help someone who uses Ola cabs.

One more incident that happened today in the marriage is… Morning breakfast was over before 60+ people had their breakfast.

People were shouting because breakfast was over.

The cook they booked is the same cook who did it at our housewarming function.

Here, he executed the function successfully. But there… Food over before all get a chance to have.

My dad told me some heated arguments also happened there.

Based on our suggestion, they only went with this cook. But our relative did one thing wrong.

They ordered food like a material contract.

They told, morning XX no of plates. Afternoon XX no of plates. All materials are from cook.

They did this to save their time and energy to bring ration.

This is completely WRONG.

As soon as I learned they went with the material contract, I told them they made a mistake.

In marriage, there is a shortage of breakfast food in the morning.

The reason? Cook did only whatever they ordered. Not more, Not less.

After ordered quantity was over, the food was over.

It’s not a cook mistake. It’s the owner’s mistake. Our relative also got to know but couldn’t do anything.

Afternoon, they didn’t make the same mistake.

Keep in mind that doing any kind of function is not easy.

I shared some personal lessons about doing our Housewarming function inside my guide.

today we had a power issue (I didn’t get better title idea, lol)

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Today, while I was working in my home office, at around 4 PM, the light suddenly started dimming.

Without giving much attention, I continued my work.

Within a few minutes, my PC monitor also got turned off.

That time, I understood something was seriously wrong.

I immediately turned off my PC directly to prevent any further damage and went to our first house to ask my Dad what went wrong.

My dad is an electrical engineer, so he went directly to the second building meter box. And started checking Voltage in all phases.

That time, he told me in one phase, power was having some issues from the BESCOM. (I guess it is a single Phase, he told)

I asked if we needed to turn off the main power?

He replied, It’s better if we can.

But as he didn’t tell seriously, I didn’t turn off Mains.

If I turned it off, I again needed to go to turn ON.

So, I just informed all my tenants on our WhatsApp group to not use any important electrical appliances.

A few months before, we had a similar incident; the Neutral Wire got cut on the main pole. Within a few minutes, 3 chargers of our tenants were gone.

That time, my Dad immediately turned off the Main supply (ours has a different setup to turn off Mains) without thinking, or else even more damage could have happened.

When you order a meter box, you need to properly plan.

Just don’t listen to your electrical contractor. He always tells me what’s easier/standard for him to do the work. Not what’s best for you.

When the meter reader first came to take our meter reading, he praised the meter box setup. (credits goes to my dad)

In my electrical work guide, I shared a meter box setup best pratice so you could follow a much better setup than others.

A properly planned meter box helps during maintenance or when any issues happen.

Why I don’t offer Physical copies of my guides

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Yesterday, an HCG All-Access Pass buyer sent an email immediately after buying.

First email:

Sent from my iPhonei have paid 5000 kindly send me details

Within a few minutes:

If possible kindly send me hard copy to my address xx xxxxxxxx gardens pondicherry 605001
Sent from my iPhone

I replied to his second email.

99% of the chance, once anyone buys any of my products, they should immediately get an email containing product access details.

Looks like this user sent me an email without checking his email. He immediately realised he already received the details and is now requesting a physical copy of my product, if possible, in a proper way.

…
…

This is not the only customer requesting a physical copy of my product.

I do get a few such requests from some users. But I clearly say don’t buy if you are going to consume my guides in physical copy.

The reason?

All my guides come with real images I have taken in my building or elsewhere.

And I cannot attach all those images in a PDF guide.

I could have done that if it were just one or two images. In my guide, I usually refer to multiple images for better understanding.

I cannot show all such high-quality images if I add them directly inside the PDF. So, I link to my Google Photos, where users can click, zoom in, and view multiple images on the concept I’m talking about.

This type of experience I cannot able to give in a Physical copy.

Not just that…

Sometimes, I even refer to YouTube videos in my guide to show them practical.

I cannot do all these things easily in a physical copy.

So, if anyone contacted me before buying for such requests, I would say not to buy directly.

If they don’t know how to use a PC or Excel sheet or have a computer, I don’t recommend any such user to buy my products.

Clear and straightforward.

If you are one of them, please don’t buy my products. If not, go ahead.

Arun

PS: I attached some images to my upcoming Rental Property Guide today. I will add this guide to the members’ area soon.

Use this type of Bucket during your House Construction

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Last Sunday, I went outside to bring mutton. While on the way, I noticed a scrap shop where he kept paint buckets outside.

In our house, we have lots of paint buckets available. We needed to do something about those.

So I asked the scrap shop guy, “How much for a Paint bucket?”.

He told me ₹50 per bucket.

I was quite shocked listening to the paint bucket price. I was expecting a little bit more costly… Because I need to sell our paint buckets 🙂

Next, I asked him how much he would buy each bucket.

He said, “₹15 to ₹20, depending on the bucket condition.”

I told it’s in good condition. To which he replied, ₹20.

Ok… I replied and left the spot.

Why I’m sharing this?

The reason is… You need a few buckets for the construction work during your house construction.

** Coffee came. 5 min break**

The only buckets I recommend are Painting buckets. These are the only durable buckets suitable for construction-related hard work.

Whatever the other buckets you buy from the shop won’t last long.

If you have not yet started, buy paint buckets by asking a few scrap shops or on olx.in.

Even if it costs 100 to 200 per bucket, I recommend paint buckets.

I wish we could get these tips during our construction time.

We wasted a few buckets that we had bought from the shops.

After listening to the ₹20 per paint bucket, I better plan to sell all our paint buckets directly to the users on olx.in for a better price.

When I need to sell, I will put it.

Similarly, Whatever the tricks I used to ask for the paint bucket price, I used a similar strategy to find out the real cost of the cement bags.

Usually, most of them never think about it.

This is the kind of cement delivery secret I explored… at least to my knowledge.

After exploring this, I immediately saved ₹10 to ₹30 per cement bag.

I discovered this secret while constructing my second building after noticing something strange during the cement delivery time.

I shared this inside my Cement Pricing Secrets.

I’m not going to promise it will work for all. To my knowledge, it should work, but I don’t want to promise the moon and deliver something.

If it works, You’re gonna save a lot on cement. If not, you lose whatever price you paid for the guide. So, I kept the price of the product to just ₹299.

Read the sales page properly and buy if you are interested in this.

Don’t just rely on Waterman; follow best practices

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Like every month this month, the bribe-paying time came.

I saw our waterman going on bike backside of our house from my CCTV. He also goes slowly when it’s time to get paid.

Who doesn’t love to get paid? All love it.

I called him to come and collect his monthly bribe.

He came. As always, he opened our sump cover to check the water level in the sump.

This time, the sump was quite empty.

I asked him why you didn’t leave enough water this month.

He replied, “Bore is having an issue”.

I told him not to turn off the water to our line as our water level is low on our sump.

He also told Ok, inform me when your sump is full like he told me first.

He immediately realised we don’t get noticed when our sump is full because of sump automation.

To which I said, Yes. We don’t notice when the sump is full as it shuts off the tap automatically when the sump is full.

Ok, no issues. He took his bike and left the spot.

Yesterday and today, he left the water in our area, listening to my words, which filled our sump.

If we don’t pay him.. he suddenly create artifical scarcity and close valves.

We don’t have time or energy to deal with the government to fix the problem.

That’s why we promptly pay every month, and he also takes care of it without any issues, even when real scarcity comes.

One important thing you must remember is that no matter how much your waterman cooperates with you. You should follow some of the best practices to ensure water comes to the sump at a good pressure when the waterman opens the valve.

Many don’t pay attention to that point while constructing their house.

Once they notice that their sump tap water is not coming properly, that time they try to fix the problem.

Most of the problems they try are temporary solutions…It’s not a permanent solution.

And spend thousands of rupees fixing the water issue.

It happened in many of my neighbour’s houses. I already shared their stories earlier.

If you don’t want to make such mistakes, here are some of the best practices you need to do while constructing a sump and enjoy good water flow to your sump.

Arun

Don’t Let Misheard Prices Cost You — Our Story

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We were looking for Jali wood diwan cots. In sawmills, they were saying they don’t have jali wood.

After asking our carpenter, he suggested a shop where they use only Jali wood to make cots.

My dad wants to have cots with only jali wood because of the hardness of the wood, quality and cost.

We visited the shop once, enquired about pricing, and came back.

Today, my Dad and I went to order a bulk diwan cot for our rental property.

While negotiating the price, the seller quoted ₹3800 for the specification we requested.

We told ₹3400.

He said ok…

Because of the lessons we learned during our house construction time, we took one book to make it in writing.

We wrote 3400*16 on the book to calculate the 1st phase order cost.

The seller also saw the price as soon as we wrote the cost. And immediately informed us it was 3600rs.

No..we told ₹3400. “No sir, you told ₹3600”, the seller said.

This conversation went on for some time. It happened because of the sound seller probably couldn’t hear the price clearly and misheard what we said.

Luckily, we decided to put it in writing before placing the order. Otherwise, while doing the settlement, a problem could have been created.

That’s why I always tell you how important it is to have everything in writing or with proper proof.

When you are doing your house construction, you will be doing a lot of transactions. Having proper proof is highly recommended for all the transactions you do.

After learning some hard lessons in my first construction, we changed many things in the second construction to avoid disputes with contractors.

Luckily, my new system, whatever I adopted, helped in many cases.

I recommend every new house construction user follow what I shared inside my house construction tracking system to avoid the difference between you and contractors.

In that guide, I shared some of my case studies and how they helped me in problematic situations. So you will understand the importance of that guide.

Small changes in the system we follow can avoid many disputes.

Pujari knows the importance of LAN setup

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Yesterday, we went to a few temples far from my home.

When I was praying… the pujari in the temple was speaking on the phone loudly. The conservation caught my attention when Pujari spoke about the LAN cable.

Hmm….

LAN cable? I paid attention to his words while I was there.

The pujari said to the other person on the phone, “I need LAN cable in the daughter’s bedroom and other room (maybe the hall). The picture should come clearly… Cost no need to worry.”

Based on the conversation I heard, I think the pujari is trying to install a LAN cable on the existing building to watch movies clearly.

They are possibly doing it in the existing building.

It looks like Pujari understood the importance of LAN cable installation in their home (possibly). As the temple is located in Bangalore, I guess he also has a good internet service, so they are doing this work.

Do you know what?

They are hiring skilled technicians to do the job. This means they will be charging based on per-meter charges for this wiring and installation setup.

Not just that…

Per point, they will charge extra as well. Total cost depends on the service providers.

If they do this work after the construction, the wire/pipe will be visible wherever they run the cable. It won’t look good.

That’s why I recommend that everyone who is going to construct a new house must do their house with a networking setup all over their building.

It is definitely a worthy investment.

Go through my Electrical Work Guide and Internet Everywhere guide. You should be able to save on installation costs as well.

Just read both guides and follow whatever I shared there.

You will be thankful to me once you start using those.

Even if you don’t know what you are doing, do it.

One or another day, you will realise the importance of that, and then, you won’t need to spend anything on wiring costs.

Pujari realised the importance of LAN cables, but one of my engineer friends didn’t realise it while constructing his house.

My friend thought WiFi would do the job.

I don’t argue with him because I won’t get paid.

If you want to listen to my suggestion, implement what I shared in my Electrical Work Guide and Internet Everywhere guide.

Here, I can recommend best practice because I get paid for doing so…

The choice is yours, as always.

Planning for G+3+1?

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I’m writing this email today after having tea with a little more sugar, which my mom always does anytime she prepares.

Today, the construction building, which is happening right in front of my home office, did a material shifting and pillar work with the gang team.

This construction is happening in half site. Today, whatever the pillar work they have done is for the 4th floor!

Yup! G+3+1 construction going on.

This is the only residential building with a G+4 floor in our area.

I don’t know if the owner knew some rules regarding building height.

Even if he doesn’t know now, he will surely come to know when he applies for a permanent power connection.

When files go to the BESCOM office, they see the building size and come for measurement with a big team.

Almost 5+ people came to take the measurements in our building, and that too after duty hours.

Our building is on the border to their rules, so they came and measured every inch of our building for 1 or 2 hours.

They didn’t find any deviation and left.

For the G+4 building, they surely wait for their extra paycheck by telling rules and violations.

To my knowledge, this building is only for owner stay. Due to the small size site, they are building more floors.

Using stairs all the time is not an easy task. And maintaining unused floors is also not an easy task. Just imagine maintaining G+4 floors…

I will wait and see what happens in their case.

When constructing our building, we also planned for a G+4 floor building.

Planning was also done for G+4; before starting our construction, we learned a few rules through our engineer.

After getting to know them, we immediately dropped the plan and went with G+3.

I shared more details about this in my Electrical work guide.

Make sure to know what you need to know before starting a construction work.

Follow this tip before buying anything online

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I’ve been trying to order a wet grinder for my home from last month onwards.

As always, I placed an order on Amazon.in initially.

However, for the first time, I was not confident about placing the order because of the reviews and photos shared in the reviews section.

Most of the users commented on the product’s damage in reviews.

Still, after thinking a lot, I proceed with the order.

The product came as per the scheduled time.

This time, instead of blindly accepting the product, I checked the box condition… The box looks pretty old.

It had some damage to the box.

Instead of accepting the product, I decided to reject it.

I did a good job rejecting on the spot instead of raising return requests later.

After gaining a decent amount of experience, I have learned some lessons. These days, returns and replacement rules are quite strict.

We must properly verify the packages before accepting them, or later, we must spend time dealing with customer support.

For cheaper items, replacement happens easily. For costlier items, you may need to spend some time.

After seeing the box’s condition, my brother and I decided to shop in offline shops.

We also went to a few shops to see the product… but only a few models were available.

Again, we came back home to try placing an order online.

This time, we tried Flipkart.

We didn’t blindly order here also… because Flipkart is more dangerous than Amazon regarding replacements and refund processes.

Before placing the order, we checked the Seller’s History and his rating.

Believe me, whenever you are trying to order anything online, one of the important things you need to do is check the seller.

Never order any costly or important items before checking who the seller is.

I will pick the better one if they don’t have enough ratings and history. Even if it costs more.

I never think about paying more for a trusted seller than for a new seller.

I learned that painful lesson by buying one item online, which was required during house construction.

Because of that mistake, I’m still suffering even after 1 year.

I don’t know if it will be fixed or if I will continue to suffer because of the mistake.

When I learned about my mistake, I opened my order history and checked the seller.

The seller is no longer there on the platform. Product listing is also no longer on sale.

That time, I understood the importance of checking the seller before ordering.

I recommend you follow the same rule.

If you want to know what happened and what problem I’m facing… All that information is shared in my Electrical Work Guide in the 5.65 section.

Not just that… many first-time users’ mistakes they commonly make are all those shared inside my guides. These are not technical stuff.

These are simply tips many don’t give attention to during construction and suffer later.

Even professional engineers make those mistakes. I shared a few such incidents with my guides.

If this interests you, I recommend getting an HCG All-Access Pass to access all my current and future guides.

Learn from my mistakes and avoid doing those in your house construction.

By the way, Flipkart delivered our wet grinder in excellent condition. Waiting tomorrow to see the grinder performance by preparing idli batter.