Construction quality of Lodha's 3.5 Crore premium flat

Nothing new, the quality of Lodha flats has been apparently on the decline. We skipped them while buying a new flat.

Additionally, it is normal for most idiots to send a C&D letter. This is what happens when the lawyers are jerks and think with their dicks and not brains. Hoping this blows up aka Streisand effect.
 
I saw the last video and I can't find anything wrong with the construction part. This is the new way of construction which apparently people are not aware of. Most houses in US are constructed like this with walls made of sheet rock and a wooden frame filled with insulation. In India, we are using MS hollow pipes instead of wood as it is sturdier and cheaper. This method of construction is much quicker and helps by reducing the weight of the building. You can even build load bearing walls with this method. I was actually looking for this kind of fabrication when building my house, but couldn't find the right labor at my rural location and had to go with old method of masonry.
I would have preferred cement board instead of Gypsum but that's mainly for outside. The Nagarjuna group makes these cement boards by the name of Bison Panel and you can get your whole house fabricated and installed by these guys and it will barely take 2 weeks for the house to get built. They have made whole townships for govt institutes with those boards among many other projects.
 
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Gypsum Drywall is used for cheap and fast construction, but more importantly because it easy to tear down when required and remodel or renovate. It's commonly used in office spaces for the same reason. My own office is made that way. Even in other countries its used for the same reason because houses there are meant to be less than permanent compared to India.

The bigger issue here is the shoddy work they have done even with those choice of materials. I definitely cannot punch holes with my fist in my office walls because there is sufficient steel reinforcement to prevent that. How is somebody supposed to even have any wood work done if the walls have such poor structural integrity.

There was even a place where you could punch a hole into the house from outside because there is no external wall. There is little reinforcement inside the walls and they apparently used drywall even for toilet walls. For many owners, the walls were getting damaged due to leaks even before hand over. Couple that with shoddy electrical work and walls that could catch on fire with only a fire resistant coating preventing it for some time and you have a fire and electricution hazard.

The worst bit is that for this pricy flat of 3.5 crore, choice of materials being used is no where mentioned in the specs. I doubt how many people would have willingly bought them for that price if they knew before hand that would they would not have concrete walls even for the entirety of the external walls.
 
Personally, due to having recently built my house, I could never ever buy an apartment. The shoddy work, like you have mentioned is definitely not worth the money. However, if done right, this type of material use is definitely not just for temporary construction. Of course, this being India, construction standards aren't enforced properly. All these drywall boards come with specific gyidelines for constructing the frame, which, like you pointed out, seem to have not been followed in this case. In US, the joists cannot be spaced more than 16 inches apart.
I don't get how people can just hand over 3.5 cr and not get all details beforehand in written. Even for the simple 30L construction we recently got done, all specifications were mentioned beforehand including brands etc.
P. S. - Even in US, the bathrooms are constructed with drywall. However, they cover that with waterproof membrane and then tiles.
 
Personally, due to having recently built my house, I could never ever buy an apartment. The shoddy work, like you have mentioned is definitely not worth the money. However, if done right, this type of material use is definitely not just for temporary construction. Of course, this being India, construction standards aren't enforced properly. All these drywall boards come with specific gyidelines for constructing the frame, which, like you pointed out, seem to have not been followed in this case. In US, the joists cannot be spaced more than 16 inches apart.
I don't get how people can just hand over 3.5 cr and not get all details beforehand in written. Even for the simple 30L construction we recently got done, all specifications were mentioned beforehand including brands etc.
P. S. - Even in US, the bathrooms are constructed with drywall. However, they cover that with waterproof membrane and then tiles.

The very purpose of drywall as they market it (Saint Gobain for instance) is that it makes it cheap and fast to build flexible and light weight internal partitioning. They are lighter by a factor of 10 compared concrete/masonary walls. So, it allows the builder to compromise on reinforcement of the building and save costs there too. It was never meant to be a solid construction material. It can be used for permanent construction, but it does not mean its a solid construction. It is a compromise to use less material and employ less labor. Never for a moment do companies like Saint Gobain market it as anything more than that.

Here is what Saint Gobain has to say
  • Drywalls consume 95% less water than masonry construction.
  • Drywalls are easy to put up and need less labour, to be precise, drywalls can be executed 3 to 4 times faster than masonry construction.
  • Drywalls are eight to ten times lighter than masonry walls, reducing the dead load of the structure. This assumes significance especially in high-rise structures, resulting in not only structural cost savings, but a reduction in the burden (both ease and cost) of moving up heavy material. Studies have shown that drywalls lead to structural cost savings of as much as 15%.
  • Drywalls are very flexible when it comes to creating and dividing spaces, allowing easy customization of interiors.
  • Drywalls deliver high acoustic performance, capable of delivering sound insulation levels of 70dB+ as they work on the principle of mass-spring-mass.
  • Drywalls can be built to give fire resistance of up to four hours for stability, integrity and insulation. This means that if a fire breaks out, it will be contained to the compartmentalized area for four hours, giving occupants enough time to vacate the premises.

Also, there is no point in comparing with other countries. Different countries use different materials for different reasons. In countries where disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes etc are common, light weight materials are used both to save costs and also to minimize damage if/when they do collapse. We also need to consider other things like safety standards as well. For example, in case of a building fire, what is the expected response times in India compared to more advanced countries like US?
 
Lodha. Less said the better. Just read up on the various forums on the net about Lodha.

Thankfully I have little time left to go before I exit the investment with them and luckily the rates have appreciated significantly so I haven't lost out.. Else that would have been a total disaster
 
These walls are hard to maintain. Seen lots of youtube videos on this. Those hollow spaces have no supporting struts - horizontal or vertical between those aluminium or steel structure. So there is no support to install even something light like a LED TV. Screws will go right though and tear up the board and it will fall down - LED TV, wall shelf or anything else.
This is very horrible quality.

Lodha group should be sued collectively by all the flat buyers for 1000+ crores.
 
These walls are hard to maintain. Seen lots of youtube videos on this. Those hollow spaces have no supporting struts - horizontal or vertical between those aluminium or steel structure. So there is no support to install even something light like a LED TV. Screws will go right though and tear up the board and it will fall down - LED TV, wall shelf or anything else.
This is very horrible quality.

Lodha group should be sued collectively by all the flat buyers for 1000+ crores.
Mere pass Amit shah / bjp hai. Tumhare pass Kya hai
 
These walls are hard to maintain. Seen lots of youtube videos on this. Those hollow spaces have no supporting struts - horizontal or vertical between those aluminium or steel structure. So there is no support to install even something light like a LED TV. Screws will go right though and tear up the board and it will fall down - LED TV, wall shelf or anything else.
This is very horrible quality.

Lodha group should be sued collectively by all the flat buyers for 1000+ crores.
Like I have pointed out above, the wooden vertical joists used in US have to be spaced 16 inches apart. Even there, if you have to hang something, you first find the joist with the help of a magnetic device and then hang whatever you want, on the joists. If you know it is a drywall construction, then you are being foolish trying to hang anything without finding the joist first.
 
Like I have pointed out above, the wooden vertical joists used in US have to be spaced 16 inches apart. Even there, if you have to hang something, you first find the joist with the help of a magnetic device and then hang whatever you want, on the joists. If you know it is a drywall construction, then you are being foolish trying to hang anything without finding the joist first.

Yeah, but how many in India know this? This is the first time Indian people have come across this type of construction while buying flats. Typical houses always had brick walls in them. Most people will not know about wooden joists or costly stud finders. They will just hammer stuff into the walls and damage it. Once damaged such boards need to be replaced whole. Even the thickness of those partitions looks like 6 inches instead of 8 inches or 1 foot in old homes. How many plumbers, electricians, etc know about working with such type of walls?
 
High court has given a gag order on him to prevent him posting any more videos. But Streisand Effect in full swing over this now. Reddit is spreading it far and wide.[DOUBLEPOST=1548228287][/DOUBLEPOST]
Real estate in India is prime example of greater fools theory. You won’t believe how many people try to sell me on the premise that it will double in two years. :eek:

Any limited resource with demand will increase in value. But yeah, people tend to go overboard with property as an investment option thing.

In my case, we have a couple of plots that have increased in value 80 fold in 20 years.
 
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In Hyderabad also All the constructions have a dispute.

Right from Lodha Paradiso -- Where 40% of the Flat owners were given small parkings -- Owners went to high court -- They had to build a multi storied building for Car parking.

Kukatpally Lodha Bellezza : - 3Cr Flats with a 13 acre area only for premium flats but what they did is build a 60 lakh flats Lodha meridian in the open space allocated to the original premium flat owners.

https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nat...dhas-trickery-ends-up-in-fight-over-wall.html
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nat...917/lodha-bellezza-wall-declared-illegal.html
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nat...hyderabad-high-court-to-lodha-developers.html
More ... to come!
 




http://thebravepedestrian.blogspot.com/2019/01/lodha-groups-defamation-notice-to.html

Lodha group is close to BJP and is apparently using political influence to prevent any media group from reporting on it. They also apparently filed a 100 crore defamation suit against the owner of the flat and other people seen in the videos.
I've been following this dispute on YouTube. ReRa dead?

Mirror now covered the whole event and did not even broadcast it on their Channel. Vitamin M works well with Media.
 
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Based on the latest videos, even the high court Judge is supposedly in cahoots or at least totally sympathetic to lodha enough to accept every thing and didn't even listen to their own lawyer. He listened to only lodha lawyers argument and decided that only the concerned owners flat will be checked by an architect and any pointed out issues will be resolved.[DOUBLEPOST=1548771228][/DOUBLEPOST]They painted the whole episode as a malicious black mail attempt and it was accepted by the judge without question and without giving any opportunity for their lawyer to talk.
 
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