The Trinidad and Tobago Building code

Ahhh

Didn't know we had one? Me neither! But we do and its VERY comprehensive and VERY detailed. Now you don't HAVE to read the whole thing cover to cover, but if you REALLY want to be up to speed on what's right and what's wrong with the construction of your building, this is a good starting point. Mind you some things only a draftsman/architect/contracter would REALLY understand, but its good to have nontheless.

Since the Haiti earthquake and now (as of writing) the Chile Earthquake, and taking into consideration storms like Ivan in Grenada, we HAVE to build according to code. So knowledge of what is required is important.

I'm not going to go into details, suffice to say that the code IS online so do bookmark it. ALSO you can BUY a hard copy from the Bureau of Standards in Macoya (see google maps here) After you come off teh highway you turn into the street opposite Fireone Fireworks and then turn left. Its at the end of the street with a sign. The price of the book is $300. Not a huge investment on your part to be up to speed.

You know what they say in the OPDM ads: Better to be safe. . .

Working on the plan

So been using Live Interior to get a feels for what the draftsman drew up. It became apparant in the beginning that talking to an architect was NOT going to be "in budget" (oh didn't I mention that before? You need a budget even BEFORE you start building a house! That is, how much you can borrow etc.) Thank god we got a draftsman who is passionate about design and so we didn't need to go through an achitect who, ineveitably, would have charged 10% (yes that's right 10%) on the cost of the house as his fee!

Whoa!

So using Live Interior helps with spacial obsevation, how close a door is to another door etc as well as the all important walkthrough that shows HOW one would access certain parts of the house, as well as the all important lighting and furniture placement. If you have the budget, invest in Live Interior or some other sort of simple 3D program (I use LIve Interior becasue the learning curve is VERY low!)

Then there's the initegration with Google Sketch Up where you can add the roof (the learning curves a BIT steep but once you've got the hang of it you can download elements from Google Warehouse, and put stuff around the house. Why?

. . . because of the next step, once you've done that you can THEN import it into Google Earth! Then if you have the EXACT coordinates of the space, you can PLACE the image of the house onto the property and get a feel for sun movements and terrain (to a point) and so on. You can even stand up next to the house and look around!

Who says technology can't help?

To use Sketch Up with Google Earth see these instructions:

http://sketchup.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=36241

Prelims

What you need to begin.

1. Money
2. Land
3. Plan
4. Contractor
5. Material
6. lots of Panadol

So I have not gotten one yet (because you can't get a mortgage until you get number 3)

We have number do, however, have 2. Its located in this development +10° 42' 48.37", -61° 27' 26.53" Not a bad piece. Its actually VERY flat, far from any flood prone areas and we seem to have nice neighbors.

So right now we're in the process of drawing up a plan. When that's completed I'll post up.

BTW I have LOTS of Panadol!

The Plan

What's this about?

Well I'll tell you. This is my wife and I's journey to build a house. Now I'm not going to put EVERYTHING in here, CERTAINLY not the private stuff concerning our inevitable struggles to move one door 2 inches.

No what I am doing here is simply chronicling the process in case there are other Trini people out there who are in the process OR want to build themselves.

Also its a chance for me to keep a record for posterity. I won't promise to post EVERYDAY, but when there are major events I will try to post it. (Discipline people, discipline!)

So if you know ANYONE who building a house in T&T send them over and maybe they can symphathise with my increasing amount of grey hair!