Build Your Home Q & A

By Dr.Mohamed Elreedy

Building your home can be very easy and less cost if you will do it in proper way. There are a lot of questions in your mind when you start to build your home, as it is unique step in your life journey. You will hear a lot of terminology from the consultant and the contractor. You need to know exactly what these definition mean as it reflect to a money at the end. I try to collect all the questions that i receive from engineers, owners contractors from practical life and from Quora also. I answer it in simple way, as there are many qustions such as how can i calculate the amout of steel?, the quantity of cement?; what i need to follow it up ? and what i need to avoid. How can i calculate the cost ?and what is the best deal with the consultant and contractor ? and how i can mange it properly. In addition to technical issue in selecting the contractor and engineering firm, the best layout by rule of thumb. It will be helpful for owner, junior engineer from consultant and contractor side and really for engineers in other discipline rather than structure or civil engineering. This book will cover wood, concrete and steel structure. The target is to do build your home with lowest cost and highest value and maintain durability for your building along its life time. This Q&A book will cover all stages from start the idea, choose the land until occuping the house.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dr.Mohamed Elreedy
• Release date: May 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393849520

Dr.Mohamed Elreedy

Mohamed A. El-Reedy's background in structural engineering. His main area of researches is reliability of concrete and steel structure. He has provided consulting to different engineering companies and oil and gas industries in Egypt and to international companies as the International Egyptian Oil Company (IEOC) and British Petroleum (BP). Moreover, he provides different concrete and steel structure design package for residential buildings, warehouses and telecommunication towers and electrical projects with WorleyParsons Egypt. He has participated in Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) projects with international engineering firms. Curently, Dr. El-Reedy is responsible for reliability, Inspection and maintenance strategy for onshore concrete structures and offshore steel structure platforms. He has performed these tasks for hundred structures in Gulf of Suez in the red sea. Dr. El-Reedy has consulted with and trained executives at many organizations, including the Arabian American Oil Compnay (ARAMCO), bp, Apachi, Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA), the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and King Saudi's Interior ministry, Qatar Telecom, EGPC , (SAPIC) , the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, and Qatar petrochemical Company (QAPCO). He has taught technical courses about repair and maintenance for reinforced concrete structures and the advanced materials in concrete industry worldwide , especially in the Middle East, malaysia and singapore. Dr. El-Reedy has written numerous publications and presented many papers at local and international conferences sponsored by the ASCE, CSCE, ACI, API and in technical committe for OMAE conference sponsor by ASME.He has published many research papers in international technical journals and has authored four books about total quality management, quality management and quality assurance, economic management for engineering projects, and repair and protection of reinforced concrete structures. He received his bachelor's degree from Cairo University in 1990, his master's degree in 1995, and his Ph.D from Cairo University in 2000.

Book preview

Introduction

When you start to build your home you have a dream and many expectation and hopeful; what is the house shape and how it will be comfortable to your life.

In real life this is not an easy project but it needs to have some special information clearly but not in deep to manage this project or manage your dream.

Q: Who do what?

A: It is the first question that should be known by you clearly to define what is in their mind for the people that you will are working with.

You should know that all look at you that you are just a bag containing money and their target how to open this bag quickly and large opening.

Architectural engineer is responsible for the layout of the house and he will provide you the distribution of the room, reception. The structural or civil engineer are the same and have the same knowledge but in the market structural engineer who perform the structure analysis for steel, concrete and wood structure but the civil engineer responsible for landscape, road, tunnel and so on. The structural engineer is responsible to design for you the foundation and the building by another word he will define the thickness of your slab and how many steel bars on it. In case of the steel or wood structure he will define the dimensions of the wood or steel beam, column and design the foundation. Geotechnical engineer he has the knowledge of civil and structural engineer also but he is focus on the soil only so he will take the soil sample and define the capacity of the soil to carry the building load. Then the contractor who is responsible to follow the engineering drawings and specs to build your house. In most cases the electrical and plumbing activity is done by the office team may in some cases have a part time electrical engineer.

Q: How can I start?

A: The very important thing is to define first what you need know and in future, so it is very important to ask yourself how many room you need how many toilet you need what about the kitchen are you have a special request. It is very important to define how many floor you will need now and for future it is very critical question. Please take your time to ask these questions and have a definite answer. Japanese said thinking slowly and executing fast.

As when you sit with the engineer and define your requirement should be clear and be sure he understands what you need. Any change after that it will cost you a money  but if during the construction the foundation any change can cost you a very lot of money be sure it will be out of your budget.

The second step you should select the engineering office carefully based on his reputation not that he has a beautiful secretary or a beautiful office. As k and ask many time about his experience and the work he did before.

Q: what are Types of the buildings?

A: There are mainly two types of building the first and old methodology which is the load bearing wall so there will be a wall of masonry and the roof from concrete may be from steel or wood so the wall is very important element as it transfer the roof load to the foundation. This type of building is cheap and fast but it can be used for one and two floors and maximum 4 floors building. If you have this system the main problem, that the opening for the door and windows is very small in the minimum and you cannot distribute the rooms again or change the location of any