Month: January 2018

5 acre land for sale, Karen, Mokoyeti road.

https://goo.gl/maps/EoxsNgx9bX82

Call 0721410684 for details

Highrise Apartments and Flats, Juja, Kenya

Apartment buildings enable land owners to gain maximum utility from their land when land size is constrained.
Juja area has mostly 1/8th plot sided lands available for sale, on which buyers close to Thika road opt to construct high rise apartment flats.

This apartment at Juja was designed by a4architect.com

County Approval regulations.

Juja is located within Kiambu County. The Planning department allows for high rise apartments up to 5 floor levels in Juja area.
Ground coverage is set at 50 to 80%.
Juja Sub county planning offices are located in Thika town within the Ministry of Lands Thika building.
Building plan approvals for Kiambu sub county are done online at https://edams.kiambu.go.ke

Foundation.

The whole of Juja subcounty area has got very shallow soil, around 500mm maximum depth, with soft rock starting from there. This makes it an ideal location for machine cut stone quarry sites. Juja supplies Kenya with good quality machine cut stones. This shallowness of soil makes it a nightmare on enabling drainage for foul water in septic tanks. The foul water doesn’t have enough soil for it to drain from the septic tank into the soak pit, hence problems in sewerage.

Conservancy tanks.

Solution is to drill deep into the stone or construct a conservancy tank where sewerage is stored then occasionally taken out using lorries and dumped into county approved dump sites, which is a costly affair.

Differences between poly septic tanks and poly conservancy tanks

Conservancy tanks are constructed more stronger than septic tanks since they stay empty longer due to frequent emptying. Also, conservancy tanks are more airtight than septic tanks since the waste does not get treated.

Juja subcounty buildings tend to be more stable since the rock start is not deeply located, hence its safer to use less steel and less concrete on columns in the apartments.

JKUCAT

JKUCAT University , proximity to Thika road have provided the bulk of population that has necessitated for high rise buildings in Juja, with demand for tenancy/rental apartments quite high.

Architect Francis Gichuhi Kamau.
0721410684

Bungalow house plans are mostly used where the land size is big enough to accommodate for horizontal building footprint spread at ground floor level.

1/8th acre land.

Lands that are in the 1/8th acre 50 feet by 100 feet or less are suitable for 1, 2 or 3 bedroomed bungalow sizes with small to average sided rooms. If the rooms are made larger, or more than 3 bedroomed are introduced, the space will begin to get squeezed, necessitating for a maisonette type where the bedrooms are stacked vertically upwards to form a 2 level house.

Staircase.
Bungalows of the same floor area with maisonettes tend to have more usable space since the space taken up by the staircase in maisonettes will be utilized as living space in a bungalow type house.

Style.

Bungalow styles come in various designs such as minimalistic types that look modern https://www.google.com/search?q=minimalistic+bungalow+house&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjV2daw87jYAhWKWRQKHS4lANIQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=623

European style bungalows are also a common style used in Kenya especially on the older houses that were built by the colonial settlers and later on by the Kenyans who were born in the 40s to 70s age group. https://www.google.com/search?biw=1366&bih=623&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=MEhLWu2wFcy5UafeuugI&q=european+style++bungalow+house&oq=european+style++bungalow+house&gs_l=psy-ab.3…113098.116063.0.116561.15.12.0.0.0.0.592.2333.0j2j2j2j0j1.7.0….0…1c.1.64.psy-ab..11.1.294…0i7i30k1j0i7i5i30k1.0.aupA9Wmkv54

The European style is mostly characterized by the steep roof slopes and use of rustic natural stone facades and timber.
This steep roof is designed to enable smooth flow of snow during winter in Europe, which over hundreds of years, has morphed into a characteristic design that is used elsewhere in other parts of the world regardless of the weather.
This is similar to the North African flat roof architecture style which is adapted to regions which receive low rainfall, hence no need to slope the roofs to enable faster rain flow, but the same style over hundreds of years has now been adopted and used in places where rainfall is plenty.

Architect Francis Gichuhi Kamau.
info@a4architect.com
0721410684