In simple words any new construction specially on a greenfield site (where there were no buildings before) has a negative impact on the environment (scroll down for why?). But the reality is that we need buildings and implementing green building practices help us in reducing the impact of the building activity on the environment.

How does building activity impact the environment:

• Buildings consume large amounts of material and energy during construction and generate waste

• Buildings continue to consume energy, water and other resources during their lifetime along with continualy generating waste (domestic waste, solid waste and water waste)

• A building on a previously vacant greenfield site changes the land and its relationship to the surrounding environment:

  • buildings change the natural landscape of the site by reducing existing vegetation, changing natural topography, and water flow patterns

  • buildings create concrete barriers to absorbtion of water back into the earth thus increasing storm water runoff (leading to flooding of low-lying areas and additional burden on existing infrastructure) and fall in underground water table (due to reduced recharge)

  • Loss of natural landscape also results in the loss of habitat for animal and bird life

  • Materials used in a building have a direct correlation to the health of its residents

Most of the above reasons are fairly well understood in the building community then what are some of the reasons that green building practices are relatively inaccessible to the everyday builder? even when they are driven by common sense and reflected in many traditional construction practices. We have found that:

• There is increasingly a lot of superficial jargon surrounding green buildings that needs to be shed

• It may be easier to start from our backyard rather then wait for top-down government led infrastructure development and policy formulation

• There are available green certification processes than can offer a system of checks and balances but sadly the industry is disillusioned about them or find them too tedious and expensive

• Project planning is the key to success. It is vital that at all stages of design and construction; the builder makes choices that minimize the impact on the land, reduces use of energy, optimizes use of water resources, prioritizes reuse and recycling instead of use of virgin materials and reduces waste.

We have been at final finishing stage for the last three months and at this point I feel like I can see the finish line, feel it but just can't reach it... so here is me venting...big time....

We have had a major exodus of labor at Diwali... All labor went home for the festival and we are left with 2 labor + 2 painters on our site for the past 3 weeks ++ our electrical sub-contractor has been sick, has had a surgery and has disappeared with zero contact... Add to this inefficiency from the landscaper, a slow plumber and stubborn painters... the result is that we are just weeks away from completing the project before FF&E but just can't seem to wrap it up.

FF&E stands for Furniture, Fixture and Equipment, in our case that includes the kitchen and closet cabinetry, movable furniture and equipment. Only once we complete the messy construction phase can we move to the next. Most light fixtures are already on-site waiting to be fixed and most furniture has already been bought and is waiting in warehouses to be delivered....And that makes the situation even more frustrating... when we have planned ahead and made sure that all pieces from our end are ready, but we just can't move ahead ....

The other frustrating aspect of this situation is my inability to control the situation.. I had no inkling that labor would leave, and now have practically no control in the time it takes to get them back on-site. Lessons learned, more control, more communication.... ?? is that possible ?

Below are pictures of the spaces as they look now. I almost feel like picking up the paint brush and broom and clean the place up myself.

LIVING ROOM INTERIOR @Nov. 2012:

BEDROOM INTERIOR @Nov. 2012:

BATHROOM INTERIOR @Nov. 2012:

MASTER BATHROOM INTERIOR @Nov. 2012:

PS: there is a surprise element above the wash basin counter in master bathroom... which we hope to reveal soon !

15,000 miles in 4 weeks

In the last week, I have been to Singapore, attended a wedding in Mumbai, a funeral in Ajmer (Rajasthan) and entertained friends in Goa. If I include three more weeks then I have also been through New York, Germany and Delhi. While I was traveling some 15,000 miles across 3 continents, 4 countries and 10 cities, my team back in Goa were continuing their efforts to move along the design and construction on-site. Thanks to the "flat world" brought to us by information technology, I was able to run my job-site seamlessly amid all the travels. We continued our project meetings through Skype and construction monitoring through bi-weekly digital photography.

What got left behind were my regular construction blog posts and I hope to make up for it in the coming weeks.

I like this photo a lot as it shows how the fully built structure of the house is completely hidden by the exiting foliage on site. The pool pavilion structure on the left is designed as a light structure built completely in wood and steel.

Here is an update@ week 45? There has been good progress and have completed the steel framing for all the openings and the wood rafters for the sloping wood and tile roofs (above LHS guest bedroom and master bedroom). In addition to this we now have a large team of carpenters who are busy preparing lovely teak wood for the fixed louvers and sliding doors.

Pool pavilion as seen from the living room in the main house

The pavilion block is shaping up really well too and the steel frame structure is almost completed. This structure will then be topped by wood rafters and then a sloping roof membrane.

All this while, the electrical points, plumbing and waterproofing is also being carried out. The site in general is buzzing with activity with civil work, woodwork, electrical and plumbing all happening simultaneously.

Fruiting Tamarind tree on-site

The weather in Goa has already turned to it's annual best. Winter weather in Goa can be compared with Spring or early Fall weather in New York. One is treated each morning by a clear blue sky, light filtered sun that makes everything shine and a cool soft breeze. This is a time when we can now conduct our project meetings on-site at the deck area offering a glimpse to the glorious moments the house will present once it is ready for use.

Tamarinds from our tree ! 

In other news, the tamarind trees on site are fruiting and there are countless tamarinds on-site. We have 2 full grown tamarind trees on-site. There is also a tree on-site that gives a fruit called Tehfa. This fruits smell and look like tiny lemons first and then breaks open to produce black peppercorn like seeds. The fruit is used specially to cook a special Goan Mackerel curry. The one tree on-site has enough fruit to feed curry to the entire village!

The framing is going up for the skin of our extra large 11 meter wide living room openings.

View of the entrance courtyard, part of deck and pool pavilion

We have a small milestone to celebrate this week. We are completing 32 weeks into construction at our project site. With a projected total of 12-14 months as our construction timeline, we are close to the 60% milestone. The real reason to celebrate is that we have completed 60% of construction on-site and are almost on-track to finish within our projected schedule. For anyone who has built in India, this is quite a considerable feat. Projects in India are ridden with unexpected and often unexplained delays mainly due to the unorganized construction industry, loose legal frameworks and maybe skewed priorities among builders and contractors. While design is all glamorous and intellectual, the construction process is where one needs to get down and dirty with all kinds of details of sourcing the right materials, controlling quality on-site, meeting deadlines and coordinating with the various professionals involved. Our team deserves a lot of credit, they are working hard and have a common unique trait (that is central to our hiring process but sadly not that easy to find), they all "take pride in their work".

Last month, we had the privilege of a visit from two prominent architects from Delhi to our site. They left with two comments. First - "Finishing a project in India in 12 months is only possible if it is regular building, it is very difficult to finish a project in that time while building the way you are building". I guess they were referring to our load bearing stone wall structure that require much longer to build than a typical concrete structure, plus the large size of our rooms with high ceilings and possibly to the fact that we have very large openings and not little pigeon hole windows and doors. Their second comment was, "If the talent exists then how come we do not see buildings in Goa built in even half as conscientious manner as you are building." This is the best compliment we have received so far and I was joyous to hear this observation.

At our 60% milestone, we have completed nearly 90% of our civil works, electrical and internal plaster. Civil works for external landscaping is almost 50% complete. We are now busying ourselves with the internal and external door frames, plumbing and flooring.

Sketch rendering of our elevations and opening design

Since, we keep talking about our extra large openings, it is clearly evident that they are critical to our design proposition. We have gone back to our drawing boards many times in order to perfect the design of the fixed and movable doors and windows. The final design looks like the rendering above. All openings will comprise of fixed glass windows on top with wood louvers and movable sliding door panels below. The movable panels will all have a fixed shutter on one corner with wood louvers. All the remaining sliding doors when opened will stack behind this fixed frame. The louvers are designed such that they provide an interesting play of light and shadow within the room at different times of day. Louvers reduce direct sunlight and glare into the rooms. On the other hand, louvers also reduce the visibility to the outside. Keeping this in mind, the openings have been carefully designed with a balance of louvered panels and ones with clear glass.

Sample of a fixed louvered section of the opening built on-site for review

Another interesting functional design feature in our external opening design is that the fixed louver panels will actually be fitted with mosquito nets and have a sliding glass door behind them. This is our proposed solution after various design iterations to address the following conflicting factors that influence living in Goa:

- the ability to keep the doors open for as long as one can to connect with nature

- the insurgence of mosquitoes at dusk specially during monsoons

- the ability to allow for cross ventilation at all times of day even when there are mosquitoes, or if it is raining, or for any other reason the doors need to be kept closed

- the need to make the space air-tight if the use of mechanical air-conditioning is needed

Attention to details such as this comes only from living in a place through the seasons to know peculiarities in climate and livability. Trust me, I wish I had mosquito nets in the openings in my house that allowed cross ventilation, did not block my view, were easy to clean, not stuck with velcro, did not obstruct my ability to open and close my windows and most importantly kept the mosquitoes out but the breeze in.

Another key success of adding nets to the openings is enabling cross ventilation at all times and reducing the need for mechanical air-conditioning at all times of the day throughout the year. This reduces the energy requirement of the house and the pressure of added development on the land.

As a result of our opening design, 100% of our living spaces are daylit. This is based on the math that shows that 100% of our living area has a daylight factor of at least 2%. (Daylight Factor = Window Area/ Floor Area X Actual Visible Transmittance X Constant)

In addition, 100% of our living spaces have access to fresh air ventilation. This calculation is based on the area of openable windows as a proportion of the living area of each room.

Both these statistics far exceed the standards for Indoor Air Quality as mandated by leading green guidelines as being critical to healthy living.

So far so good. looking forward to more happy discoveries and experiments in the remaining 40%. 

We started construction in late January 2011 and are projecting a construction timeline of 12-14 months which according to most is very optimistic considering that we are not building using standard structural design, materials and details.

Most people would probably agree that there is no such thing as construction schedules in India. But being foreign-returned project managers, we have at countless occasions pushed for detailed schedules. But these  quickly get thrown out of the window due to religious holidays, strikes, weather and/ or personal events in individual’s extended families.

April 2011: Soon after pouring the first floor concrete slab for the right side bedroom

Early May 2011: Beginning shuttering for the main living room roof slab

Late May: After pouring concrete for the main living room roof slab and beginning excavation for pavilion block

End of June 2011: Raw living room space without shuttering

End of June 2011: Pavilion Block masonry up to sill level in the foreground

The biggest deadline that we were chasing since the start of the year was the expected start of monsoons in June. Goa receives 3000mm of rainfall every year and most of that rain in concentrated in the months from June- August. In Goa, ‘when it rains it pours’. This makes it nearly impossible to carry out construction activity in the open. It specially makes it difficult to do concrete work as it would not set due to the rains. So our aim was to have all our concreting work done before June along with the other wood and tile roofs. Then while it was raining outside then contractors would work indoors on the internal walls, plastering, woodwork, flooring, kitchens and bathrooms.

It was an ambitious plan and we nearly made it. We were able to finish all the concrete work for roof slabs but hit unexpected delays and have not yet completed our wood and tile roofs (that go over two bedrooms). The pavilion block (a two-story structure with the staff quarters below and the pool pavilion above) has only reached sill level (maybe 4’ from the ground). The delays were caused by:

1) Restriction by the Goa Government on extraction of sand from its rivers in May. The ripple effect was a transportation strike. The people against the imposed restrictions were not allowing any trucks with construction material to pass through. They were vandalizing the trucks, busting their tyres and not allowing them to move forward. The result of this was that no material could reach our site for almost 3-4 weeks.

2) Early in May one of our contractors, Ram Kishen met with a terrible accident. He was hit by a car while he was on his way back from a suppliers office. He had to be rushed to the hospital and needed immediate surgery. He is recovering now but must stay in the hospital for a total of 2-3 months. At that time his partner, Binod Arya was in Kolkata attending the funeral for one of his relatives and could not return to Goa to personally take over the sitework where Ram Kishen had left off. As a result no new item of work (such as wood and tile roofs, steel structure for pavilion block) could be started on-site.

3) Meanwhile, there was more material shortage once the rain started. The laterite stone (main local building material in Goa) suppliers were claiming that the quarries are filled with water and they could not quarry any more stone. My question – don’t they deal with this every year? They should know that the quarries will get filled with water and that the suppliers should stock up before the rains start? Apparently they do know that and as best business practice, they sell their stored supply of stone in black for many times the regular market cost....sigh...

But all is not lost. Our entire team has agreed to pull up their socks and work efficiently through the rains (as much is possible) and avoid future delays. What lies ahead is challenging. Completion of the civil work for the pavilion block would have typically taken 20 days but is now scheduled to be completed in a month and a half (projected deadline end of July) and the wood and tile roofs would take at least 3 weeks (projected deadline mid-July).

Fingers crossed with a game plan in place, we march ahead.