Can I hack or modify my household shelter?
No. SCDF's rules prohibit indiscriminate hacking or drilling of shelter walls, floor and ceiling slabs, modifying or removing the shelter door and frame, and tampering with ventilation sleeves. Limited works are allowed, such as floor tiles on cement mortar within a 50 mm total thickness, painting, and drilling the internal face up to 50 mm deep for removable fixtures. Under the Civil Defence Shelter Act, works likely to impair the shelter need the Commissioner's written permission.
From the RRD Field Guide, checked against the sources cited in Hacking Walls and Slabs in Singapore: Structural Elements, PT Slabs and Household Shelters. General information, not advice for your project.
The fuller picture
In Singapore you may remove or open a wall without BCA submission only if it is genuinely non-load-bearing, meaning it carries nothing but its own weight. Openings in reinforced concrete walls, beams, columns or most slabs need a PE's structural plans and a BCA permit before work starts. Household and storey shelters must not be hacked; only limited drilling and finishes are allowed under SCDF's rules.
More questions on this topic
- How can I tell whether a wall is structural?
- Do I need BCA approval to hack a non-structural wall?
- Can I core a hole through a floor slab for a pipe?
- Why are post-tensioned slabs so dangerous to core?
- What happens if structural works are done without a permit?
- Does a condo need to approve hacking inside my unit?
- Is scanning the slab enough before coring?