Hello Nairalanders,
I felt i should not be like a dead sea receiving alone an not given out. I have learnt one or two things from this forum, i av also contributed a little in the past and recent but i think this will help a lot of us and also answer so many questions a lot of people me on fone.
I am currentlly running a project of a Block of four flat, about to round up the foundation, and i wish to share my experience, costing, estimate, frame structure process, challenges, joy and many more, though with pictures but i will be very discreet about the location, the client, the 3 D of the project. As a trained engineer we all know that an ongoing project should be treated confidentially. But i am veering of this becos i know my client is not an internet person.
Ok, sit back and let us take off. Contact abidoyventures@gmail.com 0r call 08023142108 for more info.

my friend, it is a good thing that you want to embark on; educating us.
But, also i need not lecture you on the ethics of the building profession. This you have already highlighted on; ''the privacy aspect''. Before, you display a clients' work ''to the whole world''(the internet), also obtain his express permission/consent. You dont know who ''might'' see your clients' work.
Even though the design (on paper) belongs exclusively to you, yet, the constructed does not. If your client accuses you of any ''breach in privacy'', and follows it legally, that would really be a smear on your personality and career.
Whatever you do, always apply wisdom and follow it professionally.

Thanks so much. I will hold on a while clear the coast before taking off. hopefully by the close of the day i w should know hw far

The coast seems clear so let 's go

The project commenced about 2 weeks ago with site clearing, setting out, material aqcuisition, but we came across a challenge. The site was aqcuired during a dry season and the site was very dry and firm unknowingly that laterite filling sand had been cut and sold and in the process the land was cut almost to water table level, therefore when we got there to commence work we found out that water was flowing on the land in some area. This is due to the fact that the land got saturated when it rained and it could no longer absorb the water again.
What problem does this pose?
Let me hear ur view before i will tell u what i did? we are learning no one is an island of knowledge.
I will be uploading pix intermittently as the tread progress but the actual cost will come when i am done with stage of foundation i will upload it.

where are u building the house?

this is nice.where are you building this house so we know to be careful when trying to purchase land,and also how was you able to overcome the water palaver,

Like i said i want to be discreet a little bit about this project, anyway the project is in one of the lovely estate along lagos ibadan express way. The land is not bad, not swamp and is not water logged, but just that the filling that was cut out of the area was too much and the level was almost taken to water table level.

The solution we profer:
After excavation, I dewatered the trench, and during the foundation concrete i applied DAMP PROOF ADMIXTURE and DPM Nylon. Also since the entire area has been excavated during cutting of the filling so i do not need to dig to far for my foundation, then we increased our foundation level as we are still going to fill the compund up to abt 300mm.

more pix

Thanks @Aventures for opening this thread, as a school boy learning, i hope to learn alot from uand other postes

Pls @Aventures, i have this question for u. Did u do a soil taste on this land before constructing?

@ Rastaman, We did not do the soil test. Just like i contributed to this type of discussion on brabus tread; The test is always very important if we have done the full site investigation we would have discover that the terrain has been cut almost to water table level. But i tried to do a physical investigation when i got to the site even b4 purchase. I saw the point at which the cutting of the laterite stopped it was almost abt 4m above the new natural ground level so this gave me the opporunity to run thru the soil profile and i found out that apart from the top soil which was abt 150mm the rest was firm red soil which from experience as structural engineer the soil bearing capacity of such profile is quite high and adequate to surport Pad and strip footing foundation. Just like i said earlier that the only challenge is that we are too close to water table level; though that does not really affect the bearing capacity, infact it was quite tough to excavate we excavated all thru with digger. We have just only Dampness as the consequence of being too close to the water table level but that we have taken care of.

@Aventures, thanks for that analysis. well understood.

Anothe solution profer to the challenge was to have our foundation depth to be very shallow since the entire area where the site is located has been excavated before. We did this so as not to get into more troubles of water if we should get to water aquifer. Thereby we made our foundation block to be very high in other to allow for filling of the compund and we will be free absolutely from this challeng. The pix below shows our block settin to fdn.

@Aventures, what is the height of the foundation?

rastaman20:

@Aventures, what is the height of the foundation?

Read Man read.

@op waiting for the total FDN cost

@ Rastaman the foundation height at the higest point is about 1250mm (1.25m) and at somepoint it 's an average of 900mm (0.9m). We used about 1700 blocks for this foundation ; the building dimension is about 25m long and 13m wide.

@sayso the final cost and material breakdown with labour will be uploaded later when i am done with the fdn, presently we were doing the infilling. i am holding on becos there are lot of variations which we encountered as a result of the preventive measure we putting now which we never envisaged.

Fhemmmy:

Another great thread for us to follow.
But if you dont mind, could you lay it down simple and paragraphed with the figures?

Ok i will adjust.

Laterite filling on going pix later.

Still waiting for the figures

Nice one there!
You can get across for the processing of your Building Plan Approvals and Titled Documents( C of O, Governor's Consent, Ratificatn Cases etc) within Lagos,Ogun and Abuja.
I work as a Town Planner/Consultant with the Lagos State Govt.
You can send a mail via select500@yahoo.com or call Mr.Muyiwa on 0802-350-0439, and my BB PIN- 3079A6DB.
Cheers!

Aventures, pls fire on. Why the silence?

Quite a while i sstop updating this tread. Time wasnt on my side. But now By God grace the project has gone far infact at finishing stages. From now on i will update you to from where i stop to the present stage. Question and critism are welcome. Thanks The pics below shows the stages of work to fdn german floor level.

more pics of fdn completion. For more info contact abidoyventures@gmail.com 0r call 08023142108.

Material Break Down for foundation:
Description qty unit rate amouunt
Cement 245 Bags
Granites 3 30 tons
Sharp Sand 6 20 tons
Y10mm Iron 15 lenghts
Y12mm iron 50 lenghts
Y16mm Iron 31 lenghts
Binding wire 2 rolls
DPM 13 rolls
Xypex admixture 3 20kg
Laterite Sand 23 20 tons
1 x 12 x 12 40 nrs'
Nails 1 bags
Blocks 2000 nrs
Plumbing Materials

After d completion of fdn. The consrtuction of columns follows. This aspect is technical because we are using the columns to define the spaces in d structure i:e rooms, living rms , kitchen etc. D first thing we do is to set out d kickers. The kickers is used in positioning d columns rightly b4 reinforcemnt , form work and concreting. Also we used plumb bulb to ensure d vertical uprightness of d column and we used levelling instrumen to set the horizontal level. Pix will follows shortly.

Pictures of columns.

what next? first floor slab, but b4 that i will do the material breakdown for the columns. BRB

What are d sizes of d columns, and hw many are they?

We ha 37 Columns on the Ground floor and 35 on th upper floor. We have 9 of this column to be round column and the diameter is 300mm while others are 23o x 230 mm square columns.

Material Break down for concrete columns of Grd floor@
1. 1x12x12 planks 60
2. 2x3x12 80
3. Nails (bag) 1
4. 16mm Iron (ton) 1
5. 10mm iron (lengths) 30
6. B/Wire (roll) 1
7. Sharp sand (10Ton) 1
8. Granite left over from foundation wrk
9. Cement 30 Bags

Next item of work now is first floor slab (decking). it comes soon.

We are learning!

The first floor slab was a quite tasking but intresting. the following pics will speaks more.