3rd floor house addition

When I designed and built our house I wanted to include comforts that I was used to, the openess of the flat roof I found in older Korean homes as well as incorporating a dirty kitchen upstairs.

Fast forward and I'm not feeling certain things. The views of having an open second floor is great and allows for quite a number of folks to come over for a BBQ or event. The problem is when the rain comes in sideways the dirty kitchen "area" can get quite wet. I was never a fan of having such a high pitched roof over the area but the wife said it was the "style". Even though we went with the thickest gauge of metal roofing we have had leaks from things failing and was to the point we would need to replace it anyway.

So the final decision was to close in the dirty kitchen area, with lots of windows and a sliding glass door to the rest of the roof as well as another concrete roof slab for that half to give us a third floor.

Only a few days into things and am pleased with the progress from this contractor. Hopefully the forms and scaffold will be pulled by the time I get home next month.

Attached are a few pictures and a rendering on what we are planning.

Shawn

 

Attaching some pics on where things are. 3rd floor slab placed and 2 weeks cure time so the forms are mostly removed. Tying into the beam and 2nd floor slab for the stairs landing. I actually had hoped we could drill and epoxy the bars in, but there is just too much rebar so we are going to have to tie into the existing rebar. Just much more time consuming, even with the jackhammer. There are 2 columns that the stairs will pass by so hopefully we will be able to drill and epoxy into; these stairs are "floating" so getting them properly supported is kind of important.

The new second floor ceiling will be grinded smooth as we can get, then skimcoat, sand and paint.

The view is going to be nice once done and am really feeling this over that metal roof before. I plan on building a couple smallish houses at our farm and will probably go with concrete roofs coated with elastameric or what similiar product is available here. A much better use of space, maybe not as great for heat dissipation, but will see how that plays out. The wife plans that the second floor is going to be all windows so we aren't losing too much of the views and breeze we enjoy on the second floor.

Shawn

 

A few more pics on how things are starting to come together. Fairly pleased, bit of a challenge to get the guys up on how to do the reinforcing for the stairs but they came out pretty good.

Ended up extending my time off until the 11th so hopefully I'll be able to handle a few more things while here.

Shawn

 

@ShawnM I've always wondered how you run the electrical when CHB is used to fill in between the concrete columns. Even the dropped ceiling presents some issues with the cross beams of concrete. I imaging you put conduit in the wall, but what if you want to add electrical after the fact or you have an electrical issue with in the wall. Looking at your construction makes me curious.

 

Really good question; a bit of a longer explanation so please bear with me. First I did not use CHB but EVG panels but very similar in planning things out when you are going with a beam and column plan. For the first floor plan, the grade beams and columns are placed, after your compaction and rebar for your first floor slab is where you run you conduits, not looking at many horizontal runs through your future walls. You are looking at all your conduit coming either up or down. We call most things "stub ups" where you receptacles and switches will go.

For the concrete ceiling/roof you will have to really be solid to match what is coming up from your slab to the second floor. Our original design made it simple to have things up above the finished ceiling. Some conduits were run through columns and beams to pop up above where the ceiling was; all lighting and fans for the first floor were above the ceiling we put in.

For the addition enclosing the second floor and a bit for the third floor was pretty much taking the conduits that were stubbed up to the second floor ceiling area and putting them into the 2nd ceiling slab for all the new lighting and fans and running power up to the 3rd floor.

Hopefully that makes some sense...perhaps not; I planned for how I wanted to do things as an Electrician and as our home I put in a larger panel (amperage and space wise) so that I can upgrade if needed. I ran dedicated conduits for each circuit, so if I need I can put additional wires to expand things.

The 3rd floor, with a small electrical load is still covered from my original plan.

The things is that electrical is normally embedded so not easy to show after the fact...

Shawn

 

What about when you need to do something unplanned? An example might be to run electrical in to a bathroom for an instant water heater that was not originally in the plan. Would it be easier to put an external water tank in and let mother nature do the heating?

Another might be a flush plug in the middle of the floor if the room was both a dinning room and living room and you have tile so a bit of a mess to break the concrete. I would guess a plastic wire cover across the floor, although ugly might save a lot of headaches?

It seems like modifying existing wiring in either the floor or the wall is going to be a major pain.

 

If you have to add on an existing house and can't pull more wire to the closest box then you are busting up a lot of cement and block...concrete if you have to pass through a beam or column.

Floor plugs would be a huge pain to install, not impossible but you are removing floor tile and chipping out the slab. Depends on how the tile was installed, I've seen a lot of tile just installed with cement instead of tile adhesive.

For the showers...depends if they ran a hot water line or not. If so, you can put in an external water heater, if not you would need to put in the small flash heater in the shower. They pull quite a bit of amps so you would need to run a circuit back to the main panel. Most local homes only run one water line to each fixture. I have an external tankless water heater that only goes to the 2 showers on the first floor. Mixing valve and good to go.

If I was to add receptacles in an existing house it would be snapping a couple chalk lines, right angle grinder to cut in and a hammer drill to chip the cement out. Install conduit and boxes and cement render.

Shawn

 

Shawn: You spend so much time working abroad then you come home and work on your house - still finding time to give information and advice here. What a guy.

 

Shawn looks like its coming along nicely.

Are light gauge studs easy to buy in Pi and do any company's make prefab stud walls and trusses.