Does the floor where you stay affect the feng shui of your home? Which floor should I live in? These are a few very popular questions people ask when selecting an apartment. In this paper, I will try to answer these questions using a simple method to select the floor of an apartment.

Before the floor of an apartment can be selected, the Gua number of the homeowner must be calculated. This is a number derived from his/her year of birth. However, some may ask: There are a few members in my family, whose Gua number should be used? When buying an apartment, the person who pays for it is the owner and therefore his/her Gua number should be used. What if a few persons share to buy an apartment? In such a case, we will usually use the Gua number of the person with the largest share. If all co-owners have the same share, the Gua number of the person who makes the most money should be used. The logic is that the feng shui in the apartment affects everyone living in it. If the feng shui is no good, the one who will be affected most financially will be the person with the highest income.

The Gua number of a person is derived from his/her year of birth. It should be noted that the year used to calculate the Gua number is based on Hsia calendar (夏历), a calendar used in Chinese Metaphysics. A new year in this calendar starts on Li Chun (立春), the first day of spring, which can fall on the 3rd, 4th or 5th of February every year. Using the year of birth, add up all the four digits of the year until only one digit remains. For a male, deduct this number from 11 and if the result is a single digit number, it is the Gua number. If it is a two-digit number, add the digits to obtain a single digit number, which is the Gua number. For a female, add four to the number and the result is the Gua number. If the Gua number is 5, a male should use 2 and a female should use 8. Let’s show some examples to demonstrate this:

Using the Ming Gua obtained in Table 1, determine the element of the Ming Gua. Look for the branch with the same element as the Ming Gua in the He Tu (Figure 1) and use either of the 2 numbers in that branch as the floor of the apartment. For example, a person with a Gua number of 2 has the Kun坤 Gua, which is earth. In the He Tu, the numbers 5 and 10 are earth elements and therefore this person can buy an apartment either on the 5th level, 10th level, 15th level, 20th level and so on.

If the floor using the same element as the Ming Gua is not available, the second choice will be to use the element that produces the element of the Ming Gua. Using the same example above, fire produces earth and therefore the numbers 2 and 7 can be used, which means he can also choose levels 2, 7, 12, 17 and so on. The productive cycle of the 5 elements are as follows:

Some people may ask: Why don’t we just use the Gua number as the floor of the apartment? If you look closely at the Gua numbers in Table 1, 0 and 5 are missing. Therefore the Gua number itself cannot be used to select the floor of an apartment.

After using the above method to select the floor of an apartment, it is advisable to check if the element of the person’s Ming Gua is his/her favourable element using his/her bazi. If the element of the person’s Ming Gua is his/her favourable element, the floor selected satisfies both his/her Ming Gua and bazi, which will be very good for him/her. If the element of the person’s Ming Gua is his/her unfavourable element, the element that produces the Ming Gua element can be used. If the Ming Gua element and the element that produces it are both unfavourable elements, it is advisable to use a person’s favourable elements using bazi to determine the floor of the apartment. In such a case, use the favourable elements, which can be two or three elements, and read off the pairs of numbers from the He Tu (Figure 1). For example, a person whose favourable elements are water and wood, can choose levels 1, 3, 6, 8, 11, 13, 16, 18, and so on. Determination of a person’s favourable elements using his/her bazi is an advanced technique in bazi studies and is beyond the scope of this paper.