Home sweet home…
Building a home is dream for several of us, so has been mine & Lakshmi’s that we fulfilled in 2015. We had purchased a site in Haralur, Bangalore in 2005 and started thinking about building a house in 2013–14, started with our discovery phase of what kind of house? how much built up area? who will be the architect? etc., Both myself & Lakshmi wanted to build a house that was sustainable, environment friendly, that would breath life into the place around, limit the natural resources extracted to build / maintain the house.
Above questions with a few answers were used by Lakshmi to search for an Architect & stumbled up on Chitra Vishwanath’s firm Biome Environment, who specialise in architecting eco-friendly houses that adopted the below principles:
- Use local soil (if suitable) to make the bricks, and they are cured using water & doesn’t require to be burnt, uses less cement than a hollow block.
- Design ensures maximum natural light inside the house & will reduce the amount of electricity used for lighting
- Less usage of steel & RCC in roofing
- Walls that doesn’t require plasting, painting built using brick & mortar that uses less cement
- Traditional flooring options, less use of marble / granites
Architect — We started working with Biome’s talented architecture team of Raj, Sharath, Ana under Chitra’s supervision. We went through at least 4 or 5 sittings before we finalised the architecture / design to have double height in living, creating a view with backyard garden that has a fully openable door into the garden, accessible work desk from both ground & first floor, common portico etc.,
Using the design drawing, we created a model of the house using thermocol, I was able to do the model ground floor & upto first floor, this helped us in getting a virtual living experience, an understanding of space, confirmation that we are making right decisions on windows, doors etc.,
Contractor — Biome connected us with couple of contractors who gave us quotations for the construction & Sunil was selected as the contractor. We did the ‘ground breaking’ pooja at the site in June 2013, we learnt later that starting construction in monsoon season is a bad idea, especially if your site is in low lying areas as we had heavy water logging problem during foundation work.
Structural / Soil Strengthening — Architect & structural engineer suggestion was to have a standard stone based foundation & no need for pillars with an advice to compact the soil under the foundation area by using bamboo (painted). This phase of house construction was the hardest for the labourers & slow progress, because of labour intensive work to hit the bamboo inside the ground.
Building Blocks — Our house is built using ‘stabilised mud blocks’ — that is made using equal proportion of red soil, cement & quarry dust, that are prepared at the site and water cured for 45 days, bricks were made in parallel while the foundation work was going on.
It took 3+ months for us to finish the foundation work & come to ground level for starting the wall construction work. In the mean time required door & window frames using teak wood were made at our Jayanagar house & moved to the site.
Roofing — In order to reduce the amount of steel & RCC, couple of rooms roof we used mangalore tiles sandwiched with RCC, this also helps keep the room cool / less hot from top in the peak summer. I would strongly recommend even for the conventional house construction.
Structure Ready — 13 months into construction, July 2014 — structure was nearly ready & only pending work was compound & interiors, probably the most cash out phase of house construction!
Flooring — We used Jaisalmer Marble for the living area, and for the rooms / kitchen we did the basic red / grey cement oxide flooring that is prepared using cement coating & harden it using a machine… to get a flooring that is joint free! and in turn help mother nature for limited natural resource usage & best of the all in long term floor keeps getting better, needless to say these floors won’t become as cold as marble / granite.
Rain water Harvesting — we pretty much harvest 80% of the water that falls on our house roof & other areas, which is filtering naturally using gravel, sand & coal, this filtered water goes into sump tank & once it fills water overflows into the recharge well.
Name of the house — We decided to name the house as “Rthu” meaning ‘seasons’ in Kannada, to give a sense the house is good for all seasons! and did a creative way to make the name board. I had my 9yrs old son write the Kannada letters of the name on a piece of paper that we increased the font by photo copying, and cut out a thermocol of the letters that was used as mould to carve the name into compound!
We enjoy the stay at ‘Rthu’ — it’s as good as living in a vacation home, because of the pleasant weather & ambience inside the house, with a beautiful backyard garden. Most of the house is well lit with natural light including the bathrooms that have a skylight (instead of small closed window). All the skylights have a meshed vent to let the hot air out of the house.
Our first floor living area has a wood flooring, with a swing (partially seen) to relax on the hard days.
You get a sense of satisfaction, when you build your house even after all the hard / tough days you would have faced during the constructions, the joy of living in a house that gives you fond memory of every wall is priceless!
