Best Posts in Thread: 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

 

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

 

Last of the pics...

 

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

 

Took awhile to get the glass for the windows and doors in; everything is basically done. The wife did decide to re-paint the exterior of the house and fence so a little bit left on the fence.

Shawn

 

Dave...in the interest of everyone I will also mention that I do build for a living. I agree that the metal studs I used are not a structural component of the house (load bearing) but are quite well intended for the use for the hardiflex and supporting windows and doors. They are standard sized that I've used in many different countries, actually quite common in construction.

Beam and column construction is very common in many places around the world and you are basically left with hollow block (quality is really bad here), EVG, metal or wood studs. Block is what most folks on the residential side have experience with here so that seems to be the norm. EVG is and will always be my first choice followed by metal studs and hardiflex.

On this renovation we went with a contractor and agreed to a set cost for manpower and we buy all materials; a bit easier from the management standpoint as neither myself or the lovely wife has the time and I'm heading out if a few days.

Our contractor used rivets for securing the metal studs together...hard to find the self-tapping pan head screws here...I have some but other than time I have no problem with the rivets. They initially wanted to use rivets to secure the hardiflex for reasons I cannot fathom, that ended quickly and we are using the proper screws that are easy to find.

I won't be as blunt as Dave, but there are challenges building here and fortunately I was home for a good bit of this renovation. I'm still at a loss that I've never had an electrician pass by my house (from building to other renovations) that has a clue; obviously I came up carrying a tool bag as an electrician but WOW. I was also very disappointed in their "easy" plan to tie in the stairs from the second to third floor; easy to catch as I was here, would have caught it from pics but more difficult to explain the correct way to connect to the existing the rebar if I wasn't here. It took a full 8 hour day X 2 guys to do it correctly...wonder if I will get hit with a change order from the contractor?

There are different construction techniques, most have their own merits based on experience, convenience or cost. I've never planned to put anything out to say "do it my way or you are wrong" and I hope I haven't presented myself that way; I've built things here that are done correctly to the standards that I do in my professional life...well the Nipa guest house doesn't come with specs but that thing is solid.

When the typhoon passed by I was never in doubt about my house...was more worried some neighbors roof would come flying over, many did lose their roofs but fortunately didn't hit our house.

Shawn

 

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

 

When we initially built our house the steel studs were not easy to source, with our current renovations they are much more available. Looking at around 180 peso per stud but is another quick install compared to block, I'm a huge fan of EVG panels but for this renovation it really wasn't an option in the shorter time frame.

I have not gone down the lane for prefab stud wall or trusses, we hired welders on our initial roof build, to the design of the roofing contractor; saved a bit. Metal studs are super easy once you get the guys on board.

Shawn

 

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

 

Pedro...good you are asking questions; you'll probably get a bunch of opinions. Since I was the OP on the 3rd floor addition to our house I can put some info out.
When we designed our house as a 2 story with roof, we went code for the area for both wind and seismic requirements. Spread footers and grade beams that exceeded the requirements.

With the knowledge we are putting additional forces on our house going up another story we went to structural engineers with the blueprints from the original design and the calculations for the foundation and had the designs done for the 3rd floor deck; fortunately the foundations were designed well and we were able to push forward with permits and construction.

It was a fun build and the end result could not of ended up better.

Take care and enjoy the journey!

Shawn