Questions and Answers

Into four: the outer pishach bhoomi (pishach veethi), then the manushya bhoomi, the dev bhoomi and, at the centre, the brahm bhoomi. This is not the division into padas; it is the first division of any land, plot or flat.

Zone the complete plot. Almost the whole plot is in use and even the small strips are being used, so the full plot is taken for zoning and for the degree.

Tilt means tedha or tirchha: how far the true North is turned from where it is assumed to be. People who do not know vastu simply say their house is North facing, but a careful degree reading may show that it is turned, say, 5 degrees.

Compare it with the nearest cardinal direction. South is at 180, so 216 minus 180 gives 36 degrees: the South has moved 36 degrees to the left. Do not measure it from West (270), which would give 54 degrees and shift the whole zoning.

To the left. The drawn line reads 2.4 and North is at 0, so North lies 2.4 degrees back toward the left.

Google Earth with the ruler works only on a laptop or PC. On a phone you can use a photo editing app instead: take the chakra image in PNG form, ask the client for a photo of the map and overlay the chakra on it, which needs some photo editing skill.

Draw a straight line upward from the centre. With a Shakti chakra, which has degrees printed on it, place it so that 2 falls on that line; North then lies two marks behind automatically. With a plain protractor, place it at the centre, count 2 degrees back and mark that line as North.

Not necessarily. A magnetic compass shows North directly, so its reading can be stated straight away, for example North 30 degrees toward East. Google Earth and the mobile app only show the heading of the line you draw, and North has to be worked out from it; a heading of 2.39 means North lies 2.39 degrees to the left.

Open the location in Google Earth with North set at the top and compare. If the plan looks identical, it is drawn at zero degrees and is zoned without rotating the chakra; about 90 percent of such tilted maps are drawn that way. If in doubt, rotate the map until one straight side is straight and take the tilt from that side.

Ask the engineer who draws the basic plan to show the surrounding roads, straighten the road in your map and take the road's degree. You can also use any parallel neighbouring building, since parallel buildings always read the same, ask the engineer which line the house will follow, or visit the spot.

If the plan came tilted and was not drawn to zero degrees, rotate the paper until one straight side of the plan is exactly straight, checking it against a straight line. Do the full zoning in that position, and only then turn the page back as it was.

A pad is one of the equal sections into which a plot is divided. For 81 pad vastu a house, for example 90 by 90 ft, is divided into 9 by 9 equal sections and each section is one pad; the larger grids, such as the 1000 pad grid, divide the plot into many more equal sections. Some areas such as the Brahmasthan cover several padas together even if the drawing does not show their inner divisions.

In a regular plot you can set the zero directly at 350 degrees when drawing the straight line. It is easier to think of it as a 10-degree tilt and set off 10 degrees, because that method works from whichever side of the plot you start.

No. Zoning is done the same way everywhere; only the measured tilt differs, and it has to be taken for each site.

No. Each map has its own tilt, 10, 12, 20 or 25 degrees, and North can be on any side. Measure the tilt with Google Earth and find which side is North at the site, from the client or from the North mark that most plans carry, although the tilt itself is not written on them.

Exact North falls on Soma (N5), with Bhallat at N4. The North zone is made of half of Bhallat (5.625 degrees), the full Soma (11.25 degrees) and half of Bhujang (5.625 degrees); North falling between Bhallat and Soma belongs to the 64 pad grid. The North-East zone is half of Diti (5.625 degrees), the full Shikhi (11.25 degrees) and half of Parjanya (5.625 degrees).

Exactly as for any plot; flats, industries and every other building follow the same method. Finding the centre of a flat can be hard, so use AutoCAD or the paper method for irregular shapes. Only a temple differs, because it uses the 64 pad grid, where North falls between N4 and N5.

Only the area that is actually built on that floor.

North-East, South-East, South-West and North-West fall exactly 45 degrees from the main directions. Where they fall in your own flat becomes clear once you do the zoning.

The method is the same. Take the degree of one wall on Google Earth, draw a line through the centre parallel to that wall, set off the tilt (for example 20 degrees towards West, that is 340 degrees) to get exact North, align N5 of the chakra with it and mark the zones. The centre of an irregular plot can be found only with AutoCAD or by cutting the paper plan to shape and finding its balancing centre.

Both, for different purposes. The whole plot inside the boundary wall is used for the boundary gate and for placing parking, servant quarters, pet shelters and guard rooms, while the house is zoned on its constructed area alone, which decides its main door and rooms. If the house is built almost up to the boundary, leaving about 3 ft, take the whole plot; if 15 to 20 ft is left around a 30 by 50 ft house, zone the 30 by 50 ft area for the house, otherwise half of its zones are lost.

Where to construct is taught later; for example, on a North-facing plot the building is placed in the South and West part. The pishach bhoomi is always left open on all sides. People abroad leave space all around and keep large backyards and live prosperously, while many people here leave no space at all for energy to come in.

No. In 81 pad vastu exact East falls on E5 (Surya); East between E4 and E5 belongs to the 64 pad grid, so correct it. The reference is in Vishwakarma Prakash, with the page number given in the previous class; the Hindi translation from Sanskrit by Krishna Kumar Jugnu of Udaipur and the edition of Maharshi Abhay Katyayan give the same.

Yes, always by degrees; reading directions without degrees was a mistake, and only the degree method shows the actual zones.

If the N1 pad is available, place them in N1.