What is the most important step in marking a Vastu map?
Taking the degree correctly from Google Earth and marking north correctly. If north is right, everything else falls into place; if it is wrong, every zone, devta and ati marma goes wrong. Almost every plot, house or factory is tilted, usually by about 10 to 20 degrees, so north must be measured with care.
Related questions
A client's location shows coordinates. What do I do with them?
Copy them and paste them into the Google Earth search bar, which takes you to the place. Then draw a straight line along a wall of the building to get the degree. A degree taken from the centre is wrong; the centre only tells you which direction a room is in.
How do we know that a tilted-looking map has been drawn to zero degrees North?
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.
If the ground floor is fully built and the first floor covers only half the roof with the rest as terrace, is the upper floor marked separately?
No, take the whole, including the terrace. Every place you can walk in and access is included when taking the centre; only areas you cannot reach are left out. Zoning only the built half can mislead, for example making a heavy store room look as if it sits in the North when the North of the whole is open, which is good. Large balconies and terraces of 200 to 300 sq ft are counted too.
Is there a rule to draw the Google Earth line from left to right or from right to left?
There is no rule. Drawn the opposite way, the same line reads 180 degrees more, for example 208.9 instead of 28.9; subtracting 180 gives the same answer, so a line can never give a wrong result just because of the direction in which it was drawn.
Should the client send a live location for taking the degree?
No, ask for the current location; a live location cannot be opened for this work. Copy the coordinates, paste them in the Google Earth search box and confirm with the client that it is the right property before taking the degree.
The kundli chart was shown with directions. How are those directions used, and what can a kundli tell about a house?
Go by the houses, not the numbers written in them: the top house is the 1st house (East) and the 4th house is North. If the planets on the North side are strong, the North direction is very good for the person. A kundli can even reveal where a person's house is, where its door is, how many windows it has and where a nearby river, pond or temple lies, so a map of the house can be drawn without seeing it.