Building a House in Thailand

[CondomKing]

I just wrote a long reply to a post in the Buying a House thread in the Legal/Social section on the subject of building a house in Thailand. Not quite right for that discussion so I thought I'd start a new discussion here. If the mod can think of a better place to post this then please move it.

 

Right now I am in the process of building a house in Phrae and just wondering if anyone else is building, has built or intends to build so that we can share some helpful ideas and avoid some pitfalls. Thanks.

[dddave]

My GF and I built a 130 Sq/m, single story house in Udon at this time last year. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms with western fixtures, living room, semi-attached kitchen and a wide, front to back central hallway that serves many functions including dining. The floors are ceramic tile throughout, and the roof is tile. We finished it for under B500,000. The key was checking the builder out, including talking to his previous customers and inspecting houses he had built. We contracted him for labor only, we purchased and paid for all the materials ourselves. If your roof support is going to be steel, you may need to contract that separatly.

We were frequently able to find much lower material prices by shopping around, sometimes to fairly distant suppliers, something the contractor hasn't the time to do. We learned to always ask for the "delivered" price of the material which usually meant the delivery was free if the order was large enough. We also always made sure one of us was present when the materials were delivered, which were counted and inspected carefully. At first, quantities were often short, or lower quality items were mixed in. When they realized they couldn't get away with it, and only ended up costing themselves extra trips, they got much better.

If you are buying wood windows, window frames and doors, make sure you go thru them at the warehouse and pick out the individual ones you want delivered and put an identification mark on them, Quality really varies piece to piece and they will deliver shit if given the choice.

My GF, who had never done anything like this, quickly became a skilled negotiater, really surprising me with how well she handled suppliers.

As much as you can, store stockpiled materials covered and where you can keep track of them, especially at night. Wood especially is very expensive and will dissappear one stick at a time.

Get an "electrician" who knows what grounding is and watch him carefully making sure he does it, especially when putting in bathroom circuits.

Make sure you have a drainage plan for the rainy season, especially for water off the roof. Whenever they pour cement, make sure they put in re-bar if needed, always err on the side of caution. I made the mistake of not being there for a patio slab pour; they didn't reinforced it and eventually it cracked in half.

If the local water supply has as much silt as ours does, get filters. I found myself constantly having to clean out shower heads until I wised up.

 

Summing up, I'd say the most important thing is getting a good contractor, even if he cost more. It can cost a whole lot less in the long run. I've heard too many stories of farangs going thru three or four of them before finishing, loosing deposits along the way.

Speaking of deposits, we paid 1/3rd at the start, 1/3rd when the outside walls and roof were up, and 1/3rd on completion. We paid the roof framing separatly.

 

Good Luck

David

[SingaporeSteve]

Probably a bit late for your project, but my strongest recomendation is correctly drawn set of blueprints running to 12 pages showing everything down to electric sockets, where water pipes are etc. The cost of this is small, but the fact that you and the builder have a correct set of plans with which to reference will be critical. All to often I have heard of houses being built the way easiest for the builder and some walls being in wrong places etc - clearly visible against the blueprints and easy for this to be the reference point as against him saying no this is what you told me.

 

Also draw up complete specification in terms of finishing standard and pay attention to how they finish the walls and ceilings. Very visible areas once everything is finished and it is virtually impossible to get a truly smooth wall from cement and sand skimming which is 99% of the time how the walls are finished. You can now get a Gypsum wall paste which is very similar to plaster and with the correct application will make an absolutely smooth wall for finishing.

 

Also be aware of the fact that typically Thai houses walls do not go above the ceiling line - therefore, a guy could remove some particle board from your roof overhang and climb over the brick wall onto your ceiling and he is in your house. Same with removing tiles. So easy to do and far easier than breaking a lock or trying to get through window bars if you have them. Therefore, have the builder brick up to the steel joists around the outside walls and give serious thought to how you insulate the roof. Polyeurethane foam insulation is the most expensive but because its sprayed directly onto your roof tiles, its virtually impossible to break it once its dry without a sledge hammer and nigh on impossible to remove your roof tiles. This also has the effective of keeping heat outside the house and cool air con air inside the house so your electric bills will be lower. Often with a properly insulated house, use of air con is minimal.

 

ALso important point to consider is the basic construction style of a house in Thailand. No supporting walls per say, the roof is held up by pillars. These pillars are typically no more than 4 meters apart so for example if your living room is say 6 meters * 6 meters, you will have at least one pillar in the middle of your living room. Easy to design around it but you need to keep it in mind or be prepared to pay for steel joists to carry additional weight and they are not cheap. Also these pillars are typically 15cm wide and deep. Standard single block construction using either red bricks or concrete blocks are about 5 cm in diameter, even with rendering, that means you will see the pillars built into the walls. May not be important for you, but I prefer clean line walls and have gone for a double block construction with a cavity in between to ensure smooth walls. Added benefit of this is that it also helps with insulation properties.

 

Electrics - check if the electrics are being run through conduits or left exposed on the wall. Easy and cheap enough to run them into the wall - basically they build the wall as normal and then channel out gap and put plastic conduit into the hole and then fill it. All electric cable run through the roofspace. Also check what power supply you need. If you want multiple air con and high capacity water heaters you will need a 3 phase power supply. Single phase power only comes as standard in Thailand with a low capacity wiring which means high powered water heaters (e.g Seimans 12KW heaters) cannot run on single phase. Also whenever you turn on air con, your lights will dip as the electric cable cannot cope with the demands being put on it. Easy to rectify but best done at planning stage.

 

If you want dimmer lights, ensure that they use correct dimmer for the number of lights. eg standard here is 100w dimmer, which means it in theory can run a 4 light dimmer using 25w bulbs. However in reality most people put in 40 or 60 watt bulbs, therefore your overloading the dimmer socket and in time it will burn out or potentially catch fire - better off using 500w dimmers which are easily avilable just cost a few baht more.

 

LAso check on waste from toilets - technically it is now illegal to use old style concrete rings for your toilet waste. You should be using the plastic systems that go under the ground. However you need to look carefully at the levels. The soakaway needs to be able to soakway or it will back up and your toilets will not work.

 

Hope this helps

Cheers

[Nervous_Dog]

Deleted by me as link already given to Condom King in another post

[MisterBlonde]

you might find this link helpful www.thaicoolhouse.com

[CondomKing]

I've seen this site on another thread. It is very informative but the link didn't open. Try this one http://www.coolthaihouse.com/

[CondomKing]

dddave - I agree that the key is to carefully choose the builder. We did also talk to his previous customers and check out his work. As a side note the guy who actually introduced us to the builder owns one of his houses and now he is asking for a commission for bringing him our business. I suggested to my wife that he should take the guy out for dinner and her reply was, "Dinner OK, but he want some money also, sir!" Yes, she calls me sir when making a point. We'll have to see where this one goes.

 

Thank you for your other points, I agree with all of them.

FYI, the house we are building is two stories with about 250 sq. meters of living space. There will be 4 bedrooms upstairs, one w/master bath, another BR w/private toilet/shower, and an ajoining toilet/shower for the other 2 BR's.

Downstairs will be kitchen, DR, LR, and a guest room and a separate common toilet w/shower. The house is brick & concrete w/upstairs balcony, 26 poles, mostly 4 meters apart. Downstairs tile floor, upstairs wood floors, wood ceilings all around.

 

We had hoped to complete the house for 1.3 MB, but I think it will be closer to 1.5 (or more?). Labor deal is 400 K for the builder and as many of his regular guys as needed (15-30 on a daily basis) to keep the work going. He has guaranteed to finish within 120 days and we have asked him to shoot for 90. The crew has been working 6 day weeks and sometimes seven. BTW, while building this house we are also renovating a house nearby which we bought last year as a "base" to put the family and stage materials because of small land at construction site. For this renovation we are paying 130 B for labor and using the same crew, so that we are able to keep everybody busy "8 days a week". We are also using cannabilized materials from the old house, which we deconstructed, and building supplies purchased in quantity when ordering for the new house.

 

For the renovation we have replaced the roof on the wooden second floor structure with the 2 year old roof from the old house, moved the staiway which was in the "wrong place", demolished and rebuilt the bathroom and kitchen and constructed brick and cement walls between the downstairs poles to enclose the first floor. We also raised the first floor slab by about 10 CM. Doors and windows from the old house. We also had a cinder block wall built around the property. Total cost for the renovation will be 220-250K, including labor, so for this build, at least, I'm ahead of the game. More later.

[CondomKing]

Steve - Yes, I do have a complete set of plans. I drew the basic layout of what I wanted and then worked with a local achitect (my wife says "engineer"?) to refine and discuss and eventually come up with plans based on what I had in mind. This man is also the district surveyor (?) and and is in charge of the local land office(?). I wish I could be more specific but I leave the local politics up to my wife. Upon presentation of these plans we were also able to aquire a building permit, which my wife has told me the local authorities asked her to present for inspection just last week. She was very happy to comply and avoid having to come up with a payoff not to mention the work slow down that would have occured during graft negotiations.

 

I did mention to Mrs. CK that she should discuss with the builder the concerns that you mentioned regarding security and to be sure that the house is burglar proof. It was a good reminder to have her discuss insulation both for noise reduction between the first and second floor and to keep out the heat in the summer and cold in the winter. Since the house in in the north they do not typically insulate. Thanks for that.

 

Not too worried about cosmetic appearance of the columns on the walls or if the electric wiring is surface mount. This is my first house build and I have plenty of other things to worry about. Besides I'm not there until the end of this month and so I must devote the 30 minutes AM and 30 minutes PM that I talk with the wife every day to solving the current major problem of the day and putting out the numerous "brush fires" while also discussing the renovation of house #2 and I don't want to drive her crazy with too many details. As it is, I have to give the poor woman a break once in a while when she says to me,"Oh my God, now I'm dizzy from talk to you." That's when I know it's time to hang up the phone.

 

I noticed on the drawing that the sceptic tanks (bongs?) are placed in the four corners of the property around the edges of the house. The achitect and the builder had a lengthy discussion about where they should be placed and the original locations were changed.

[shygye]

Did they do a perk test for the septic tanks?

[CondomKing]

shygye said:

Did they do a perk test for the septic tanks?

 

I have no idea. First of all, what is it and is it something that is usually done in Thailand?

 

BTW, I'm in the US monitoring and making suggestions and decisions by phone. I know it sounds crazy but Mrs. CK is more than competant to run the show until I can get there at the end of Dec.