Preparing my former Home for a new Tenant

Winner of Capstone Projects 2016

     Starting last year, my department has a new lab design for final year students. The project is based on groups. Each year the themes are different. This year the theme are about Electronic Device for Campus Security Enhancement, Digital Agriculture, Digital Home, Digital Healthcare and Public Safety. Beside the themes, students are encouraged to focus on developing their own sensors, or Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

     There were 20 groups competing in those categories. My students' group is in Digital Home. They built a system known as Automatic Planting System (APS). Although the system was developed for an agriculture system, it was not meant for a mass production system. It is customized for home used. The main idea is to optimized space utilization especially if one has a small space home.In addition, the system was supposed to automatically watering the plants based on the configured schedule. Thus, home users can let the plant been taken care even though they are busy working or traveling.

In the same category, the competitors are:

Well, actually two of the above projects are from Digital Agriculture groups. I just put them together to see how huge differences between my students' project and them.

The Digital Home winner project is as below:

 

Winners from other categories:

The overall winner is my student's group!

Overall, students able to achieve the product development specification. However, some of the products' features are not really convenient, practical, solving user's problem and not innovative enough. They can improve the products further if they can get sufficient feedback on time. But, based on the jurors feedback they can improve the products further on their own or if there is any interested party to do so.

The most important thing is students learn multi-discipline knowledge and skills to complete the project. Congratulation!

Maintain Your Car Regularly and Correctly

This early morning, I am going to Mersing to send my son entering Politeknik Mersing. As a preparation, I sent my to a workshop to replace two of my car's tires. Based on my track record, it is time to replace the tires with new ones. I was shocked to find out that the tires were overdue already. They have worn out badly as shown below:

The wires are clearly visible. While they were attached to the car, I did not see any wire. May be, my vision is not so good especially when I am in hurry. Let's take a look closer:

 

The other tire:

 

Now you can easily see them. can you see them if I make them stand up?

At a distance, it is more difficult to see. Of course you can see them since I already pointed them out as above! But, it is a lot harder when they were attached to the car. Luckily, I have a regular schedule to do maintenance. Based on this experience, it is safer to check your tires earlier than your pre-dated maintenance.

When I think back a few months ago, I travel a lot in short distances to monitor my house's renovation. Even though the distances are short, in a day, i have to travel at least five times. When these are accumulated in a month, the distance is very far. This is why my tires worn out earlier than my schedule (I anticipate to change the tires in December).

So, for your safety and your family safety, it is better to have a regular maintenance and always do it earlier than the scheduled.

Next: Does the above is the only problem I found?

Managing Your Own Renovation

When my contractor ran away, I decided not to wait for long (after more than a month). I decided to complete the renovation on my own. The problem is there is not much money left to complete the renovation. Thus, I have to do almost everything on my own. I have to:
1. Find my own workers
2. Plan what to do, estimate the time and material to use
3. Buy materials on my own, sourcing is a pain especially when you have limited budget, have to make sure buy the same factory batch and brand, correct timing
4. Managing limited resources such as tools and equipment to be used
5. Make sure what to be installed are using the correct items and correct technique

I have to find or buy hand drill, grinder and electric hammer. I also decided to ask other contractors to quote the best price to complete my house's renovation. Based on the quotation, I should be able to estimate the fund needed to complete the renovation. Once the work restarted, the most difficult part is to ensure the work is within the limited budget (no cost over run), getting the best quality as originally intended, tasks planning so that no task have to be postponed while waiting other tasks being completed. It was painful, consume a lot of time, stress, and learning new knowledge almost everyday.

                        

Finishing is time consuming, especially when I do not want to compromise on the quality of the house.
Patient is important because you need to learn fast what are the working is doing, going to do next, and overall steps to be done. But the most difficult thing is to continue other people works without the detail knowledge of the current progress such as where are the supply were bought, any material were ordered before the job was abandoned and etc..

                       

            


Initially, I spent a lot of money to buy the materials to do the renovation. As the work progress towards the end of the renovation, the manpower cost is higher than the material cost. In the final week, I almost did not need to buy anything. It is human creativity and ingenuity versus material cost. To monitor the cost and work in progress, all transaction must have written document, key in into a spreadsheet, and salary must be paid within the week the works work. Most of the time, I paid every two or three working days.

     

Installing tiles are difficult and need a lot of patient. If it is done quickly, there are many possibility of errors such as the the tiles are not slanting to the edges to ensure water can easily flow to the drain. The tiling also depends on the creativity of the workers. I purposely bought tiles with difficult patterns to make them looks natural. This made the installation more difficult.

Some of the things to be done may be new to you and the hired workers for example installing the balcony wall glass. I have to seek for different quotation while learning how it should be built. I have to choose to appoint outside specialist to do it which will cost me more than RM3,000 or do it on my own. I was lucky to find a hardware supply who was willing to teach me a bit how it should be done. After discussing with my workers, two of them have a little experience to install the wall glass. It will cost me only about RM1,000 to buy the material. Finally, I decided to let my workers do the installation. It was really difficult and time consuming. I have also to make sure the glass being ordered are the correct size and quality. It cannot be modified at site. It must be tailored made by the manufacturer. The whole installation process took more than a day with four workers. I was really satisfied with the installation quality as shown in the picture.

After almost all internal tasks were completed, most of the tasks are the outside of the house.

The renovation work was restarted the week before Ramadhan. And almost all of the work were completed three days before Hari Raya. It was really a huge challenge to monitor a project during ramadhan especially the travel time, food arrangement, planning for the day and the following day, ordering materials and etc.. To make thing worst, I have to go to work at UMP Pekan Pahang on Friday during the month.

           

       

Three days before Hari Raya, my family moved into the house although there are still a few tasks need to be done such as one window installation need to be corrected, drainage, restrooms' door etc. But the hardest task was to clean the house. Due to limited time, the house was not 100% clean especially the floors were full with tapes, glue, outside tiles, table top etc. Anyway, the house is already a nice place to live in!

Cleaning the new house at night on 1st July 2016.

YES, finally, we moved in into the new house! It was a huge challenge to move in during Ramadhan because the moving process must be done during the day while muslims were fasting. Luckly, I managed to hire three people help me clean and carry many heavy furniture and equipment. I hired a 3 tonne lorry to carry the furniture and equipment. It took two trips to do it until the night of 2nd July 2016. My family moved in in the afternoon.

Although one of the windows was not installed, four bathrooms have no door and the painting was not completed, we happily live in the house and go back for Hari Raya three days later.