Sapthaswarangal sits on 5th Street in Ram Nagar North Extension, a residential lane a short walk from Velachery MRTS station. We built it, and we know the streets around it well. If you are weighing up living in Velachery, this is what an ordinary week looks like from here. Every distance below is measured by road. Mornings: school, then work SAN Academy is 700 metres from the gate. Orchids The International School is 1.3 km away and Sunshine Chennai Senior Secondary School 2 km, so the school run stays short whichever one your children attend. Velachery sits between Pallikaranai, OMR and the city, which helps when two people in the same house work in different directions. From the building, Velachery to Tambaram Main Road is 150 metres, Velachery MRTS station 300 metres and Vijayanagar Bus Terminus 500 metres. The airport is 9 km. We have not given travel times. Traffic here changes by the hour, and you will judge your own commute best by driving it at the time you would leave. What living in Velachery is like after work Grand Mall is across the main road, close enough to walk to with a shopping bag. The DMart inside covers the weekly groceries, and the PVR is there for a weeknight film. Chennai Silks is next door to the mall, and McDonald’s and California Burrito are close by for the evenings nobody wants to cook. For bigger shopping trips, Phoenix MarketCity is in Velachery as well. Kora Karnival, the food court beside Velachery MRTS station, is walkable from the building too: rows of food stalls, and a play area where the children can run about while you eat. Walking back, you will notice the trees. Velachery’s residential streets have kept them, and the lanes off the main road stay green and shaded. If someone falls ill Prashanth Super Speciality Hospital is 1.2 km away. With young children or ageing parents at home, that is a distance worth knowing before you buy. Does living in Velachery mean dealing with floods? Velachery has flooded twice in recent memory, in 2015 and again during Cyclone Michaung in December 2023. Storm water drains have been built in several parts of Velachery since 2015, and in an ordinary monsoon the more common problem is waterlogging after a heavy spell. How long the water stays depends on the street. How much it affects you depends on how high your home is built. We have set out the 2023 figures for our own street, and how we built Sapthaswarangal after it, in a separate post: Velachery flooding: what has changed since 2015. Homes on 5th Street If living in Velachery suits the way your family runs its week, Sapthaswarangal has six ready-to-move 3BHK homes of 1,470 and 1,477 sq ft built-up, two to a floor. Prices and the full specification are on the project page, and you are welcome to come and see the homes.

Ask a Velachery family about rain and you will hear two kinds of story. One is about 2015, or December 2023, when water came into homes. The other is about a road that stays under water after a heavy spell, and how long it takes to drain. If you are buying a home here, both are worth understanding, and the second is the one you are more likely to live with. Velachery flooding in 2015 and 2023 December 2015 brought one of the worst floods Chennai has seen. One Velachery resident told The News Minute that on his street, the water crossed the first floor. Since then, the Greater Chennai Corporation has built storm water drains in several parts of Velachery. They were in place by December 2023, when Cyclone Michaung brought more than 20 cm of rain in a day. The India Meteorological Department recorded 29 cm at Perungudi and 25 cm at Alandur in the 24 hours to the morning of 4 December. The News Minute reported four feet of water in most residential neighbourhoods of Velachery on 5 December. One resident told the paper they had expected the new drains to cope, though not with that much rain. What most monsoons look like A flood on the scale of 2015 or 2023 takes exceptional rain. What Velachery families deal with more often is waterlogging: water standing on the road after a heavy spell. Two things decide how much it disrupts your life. How quickly the water drains away depends on your street. Whether it reaches your home depends on how high the building stands above the road. What Velachery flooding looked like on 5th Street Our plot is on 5th Street in Ram Nagar North Extension, and Ramnagar was among the neighbourhoods The News Minute named in 2023. At the time an older building stood on the plot. The water on the road outside it reached about 2 to 2.5 feet. How we built Sapthaswarangal after 2023 We demolished that building and built Sapthaswarangal in its place. The plinth is 3.5 feet above the road, a foot to a foot and a half higher than the 2023 water. The ground floor is for parking only, so there are no homes at ground level and the lowest flat is a full floor up. The top of the sump is raised a further six inches, to four feet above the road, to keep floodwater out of the water supply. So when the road waterlogs, the homes sit well above it. The inconvenience is a street you may not want to drive through until it drains. What to ask at any home in Velachery Ask how high the plinth is above the road, and what the road did in 2023. Ask whether anyone lives on the ground floor. Then ask the neighbours how long the water took to clear last monsoon. At Sapthaswarangal you are welcome to measure the plinth yourself. See it for yourself If Velachery flooding is the question holding you back, come and look at the building with it in mind. Sapthaswarangal has six ready-to-move 3BHK homes of 1,470 and 1,477 sq ft built-up. Book a visit through the form on the project page, where the prices and full specification are listed. To hear from people who already live in an Abimaan building, you are welcome to walk in at Shashti Avenue in Vandalur and speak to the residents. For the rest of the neighbourhood, schools, shops and the hospital, read our guide to living in Velachery.