From skipping the soil test to picking the lowest quote — fifteen decisions that turn a 40-year house into a 12-year one, with what each costs to fix and a one-page checklist.
Most of the houses we are asked to repair were not built by bad contractors. They were built by decent contractors for owners who made one of the fifteen decisions below — usually to save a little money or a little time, usually in the first two months. Every item on this list is something we have seen cost a real family real lakhs. In the order they tend to happen:
₹8,000–15,000 for an SPT bore feels like money for a piece of paper, until the footing designed for “normal soil” meets Yamuna silt in Noida Sector 128, fill in Greater Noida West, or rock in Ranchi. We have seen a builder floor in Indirapuram settle 40 mm on one side because the plot was old riverbed and nobody checked. Fixing it cost more than the house’s entire foundation. The test tells the engineer how deep and how wide; without it he is guessing, and he guesses in your money.
“Sanction later” is the most common phrase in NCR construction and the most expensive. Noida Authority, GNIDA, MCD and MCG all issue stop-work notices and, increasingly, demolition orders on unauthorised construction. A house without a completion certificate cannot be sold with a bank loan and cannot get a permanent electricity connection in many colonies. Sanction takes 4–8 weeks; do it during the monsoon, before the site starts.
A bill of quantities lists every item — excavation, RCC, steel, brickwork, plaster, tiles, doors, fittings — with quantity, brand and rate. Without it, “the rate” means whatever the contractor decides it means at each stage. With it, every argument is settled by a document. We do not start a site without one, and neither should you, whichever contractor you choose. Our turnkey page shows what ours contains.
Moving a bathroom at plan stage costs nothing. Moving it after plumbing is roughed in costs ₹40,000–80,000 and a week. Moving it after tiling costs ₹1.5–2 lakh and a month. The pattern repeats for windows, kitchen platforms, staircases and balconies. Spend the extra two weeks on the plan; walk it in 3D; make the family sign off. Then freeze it.
Steel is 12–15% of the cost of a house and the only thing standing between it and an earthquake. Two ways owners get it wrong: accepting re-rolled bar from a local furnace instead of Fe500D from Tata, JSW or SAIL (it looks the same; it is not), and letting the contractor thin the reinforcement — 8 mm where the drawing says 10, 10 where it says 12. The saving is perhaps ₹30,000 on a G+1. The cost is a house that cracks at the beam-column joints in year three and cannot take an extra floor in year ten.
Concrete gains strength by staying wet for 14 days after the pour. A slab left dry for three days in May loses 20–30% of its design strength and develops shrinkage cracks that leak forever. Curing costs a tanker of water and a labourer with a hose. It is skipped on more sites than it is done. Ask who is responsible for curing and how it will be recorded; on our sites the site engineer’s daily log includes it.
OPC 53 for RCC — columns, beams, slabs, footings. PPC is fine (better, even) for plaster and brickwork. Cement older than three months, or bags with lumps, into the bin. The mistake is either using PPC in structural concrete to save ₹20 a bag or accepting a dealer’s old stock. Check the manufacturing date on every delivery; it is printed on the bag.
Every terrace, every bathroom floor, every balcony and the outside face of every plinth. A chemical membrane costs ₹90–160 per sq ft on a terrace and ₹150–300 in a bathroom — perhaps ₹1.5–2.5 lakh on a G+1. Seepage repair later, through tiles and plaster, costs the same and never fully works. We water-test every terrace for 48 hours before tiles go down; if your contractor does not, ask why.
40% advance is a contractor financing his last project with your money. Payments should follow work you can see: booking, foundation, each slab, brickwork, MEP, finishing, handover. If a contractor cannot fund the first fortnight of work, he cannot fund the last, and the last is where houses get abandoned.
A mistri is a craftsman, not a supervisor. Someone has to check bar spacing before the pour, slump before the concrete goes in, level before the tiles, and coordinate the plumber and the electrician so they do not cut through each other’s work. A site engineer costs ₹25–40,000 a month and pays for himself in the first month of avoided re-work. On a turnkey contract he is included; on any other contract, hire one.
Houses built for two ACs now run six, plus an induction hob, a geyser in every bathroom and an EV charger in the stilt. Under-sized wiring and a single-phase connection mean tripping MCBs and, eventually, a rewiring job through finished walls. Plan for 3-phase where the load will exceed 7 kW, FR copper wiring sized for the AC points, a proper earthing pit and conduit routes for future cabling.
Especially in Delhi and Gurugram, where stilt + 4 rules involve neighbour consent and shared walls. A dispute over a common wall, a window overlooking a courtyard or a drainpipe on the boundary can stop work for months. Talk to the neighbours before the JCB arrives; get the common-wall arrangement in writing; keep the setbacks the bye-laws require even if the neighbour did not.
Tiles bought because they looked good in the showroom light, in three different sizes for three rooms, with 8% wastage because nobody drew the layout. Sanitaryware chosen after the plumbing was roughed in, so the outlets do not match. A finishing schedule — room by room, item by item, before the first tile is bought — saves 5–8% on finishing and every one of those “it does not fit” conversations.
Setbacks exist for light, ventilation, fire access and the neighbour’s rights. Owners who “gain” a foot by building to the boundary lose it when the completion certificate is refused, and lose the natural light on that side forever. The bye-laws in every city we build in specify the setbacks by plot size; they are not negotiable and we do not draw plans that ignore them.
Every item above traces back to this one. The quote that was ₹200 a square foot cheaper was cheaper because it left out the soil test, the site engineer, the waterproofing, the Fe500D and the curing water — and then charged for them as extras, or simply did not do them. Compare quotes on the BOQ, not on the rate. Ask for the address of a house the contractor finished five years ago and go and look at its terrace after rain. Ask for the warranty in writing. The people who run GharVistaar would rather lose a job to an honest competitor than win it against a number that was never real.
If you want a second opinion on a quote you already have, send it to us on WhatsApp. We will tell you, honestly, what it is missing.
Columns and footings sized only for G+1 mean the G+2 your son wants in 2036 needs jacketing at ₹3–6 lakh. Designing for one extra floor now costs ₹1–1.5 lakh in steel and concrete.
Overhead tank on the wrong corner means a 20 m horizontal run and a weak shower. Underground tank under the parking means a cracked lid in year two. Tank positions belong on the plan.
₹8–15,000 at foundation stage; ₹1–2 lakh of ruined woodwork later. Every plinth gets pre-construction treatment on our sites.
UPVC and aluminium windows need exact openings and a 3–4 week lead time. Ordered late, they hold up plaster, paint and handover; ordered wrong, the plaster is cut.
Ten years later nobody knows where the conduit runs or which wall is load-bearing. We hand over marked-up drawings; keep them with the sale deed.
A good contractor answers all seven without hesitation. A great one has already brought the documents.
Yes if the plot is fill, riverbed, black cotton soil or near a canal; on known hard ground a G-only house can sometimes rely on a neighbouring bore report. Ask the engineer, not the contractor.
Then concrete strength is not achieved here either. Curing is IS 456 and non-negotiable.
3.8–4.2 kg for a G+1 or G+2 with isolated footings; 4.5–5 kg for stilt + 4; more for rafts and large spans. Under 3.5 kg on a multi-floor house is a red flag.
Foundations and slabs, yes; interior finishing under a roof, no. Plan the calendar so the structure is done by June.
If it gives you peace of mind, yes; ours will share every test result with them. A good contractor welcomes it.
GharVistaar makes its living building new houses, not repairing old ones. But the repair calls teach us more than the new builds: they show, one cracked slab and one seeping terrace at a time, exactly which corner was cut and what it cost to uncut it. If this list stops one family from paying a 40% advance or accepting furnace steel, it has done its job. Share it with whoever in your family is about to build; the person who reads it first usually saves the most.
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