Building Your Own Shophouse

[dirtydog]

Yep this thread will teach you how to build your own shop house in several easy steps.

This block of shop houses is down near my land and has just been started on.

Anyway first off you need some scraps of wood, these you need to whack into the ground to run your lines from so you can get all your posts in nice straight lines, with this job as it is quite a big one they got a digger in for the day to dig out for the footings.

[dirtydog]

Next up you can chuck some concrete in the bottom of the hole and then use breeze blocks to make the form for the footings, here I believe they just cemented the blocks to the dirt, normally works but sometimes the form breaks apart.




Now your ready to start tieing all your rebar together, here they have used I believe 16mm ribbed rebar, so this one is going to be a 3 storey building probably.

You see all those square pieces of steel on the post? yep you have to make those yourself, thousands and thousands of them you need and it is mind numbingly boring to do, then again I suppose most jobs are boring, well I shall be down there later this week to see how well they are doing with the ground beams, actually it will probably take them about 15 days before they are ready to do the ground beam pour

[buadhai]

Footings look kind of small for a two story shophouse. How big are they?

Neighbor here in Korat just built an elevated house on well compacted ground. The footings were a meter or so deep and at least a square meter or so in area.

[dirtydog]

Looking at the blocks I would guess the footings are 85 cms by 90cms, not sure how deep they go, but probably 80 cms deep at least.

[marklatham]

Footings are critical,when you think about it.
It all depends on the compaction achieved on site.
Do you have an engineeer?
A real engineer is critical ,duay.

[dirtydog]

Ahhh, it's not my job unfortuneately, but normally one of city hall engineers would come round once per week to check on things.

[klongmaster]

Originally Posted by dirtydog

this one is going to be a 3 storey building probably

Originally Posted by buadhai

Footings look kind of small for a two story shophouse

if it's 3 storeys makes it even worse...

a squat dunnie BH...don't know how you do it...oops ..on the other thread but you understand..

[buadhai]

Compare the six floor mansion with my place in the first five or six shots here: http://www.mgnewman.com/Korat_1/

<edit> ooops, wrong thread....

[dirtydog]

Part 2 of the exciting thread on how to build your own shophouse ;


Well they are now rushing along sorting out all the rebar for the ground beams, looking at the steel sizes I would say that these will be 4 storey buildings, think I personally would have done the footings a bit bigger, but maybe they are only 3.5 meters apart, and no I aint gonna measure them, they are wondering why some crazy farang is taking pictures of their work.




This bit here is ready for the pour trouble is they got loads more ground beams to make up before old ready mix gets called in...

[Dougal]

DD Am I correct in thinking that in the picture above the cement footing is only as thick as the single course of blocks that I can see?

Did they then build the column shutter out of more block courses up to ground level and backfill the hole with sand?

[dirtydog]

Yeah they back filled the hole to stop it collapsing before they poured the footing, it will be at least 4 blocks deep, 20 cms per block plus a bit for the mortar between each one.

[Dougal]

OK. I am calling the footing the pad at the bottom that is about 2 blocks by two btw.

Seems an odd way to go about it. I would have thought it was easier to dig a smaller initial hole and use the sides as the former for the footing and then use wooden shutters around the rebar - I suppose speed isn't really an issue is it.

[dirtydog]

Wood is too expensive here, materials are expensive here, labour costs are rubber bands and dead animal prices

[dirtydog]

Well these guys are moving along at a fine pace, they are actually building 2 blocks of shop houses, and from this picture we can see that the first block has had the ground beams poured already, as you can see the beams are wet and there is a hose in the background, yep everyday they will hose the beams down to stop them drying out too quick, concrete reaches 80 percent hardness in about 30 days.

Anyway tomorrow I shall be starting a thread on how to build your own swimming pool with exciting action pics of my staff digging holes and other great stuff like that, actually the footings for the pool have already been done....

[Dougal]

I will look forward with eager anticipation to the pool. The missus has been nagging me to get a pool built this year. Lots of pics please.

[dirtydog]

Well these guys are moving along at a fine pace, here we can see the form work for the wall beams, here they have used 10mm ply wood and 2 by 1s to reinforce the ply, looking at it they maybe ready to do all the pours for them tomorrow.

[dirtydog]

Also you can see that the area has now been infilled to the level of the ground beams, I am really not sure if they will start on the rebar for the floor soon or not, the wood for the posts needs to stay on for a couple of days really, I think the sensible thing would be to do the wall beam pour, then the next couple of days sort out for the ground beam pour on the other block of shophouses, that way they dont need so much wood for doing the wall beams, I suppose it depends a lot on their profit margin.

[Eliminator]

Since all of these beams seem to be the same size, I would think it would be better to use metal forms and then use them over and over again but, TIT

[dirtydog]

In first world countries the forms would be metal, here due to so many poor people and the value of metal it would be stolen and sold for scrap

Anyway the form work is now off of most of the posts and they are starting to put the supports in for the floor beams pour, for this they place wooden supports every 80 cms, the cross beam at the top is generally 120cms, don't forget they got to work on this tieing all the rebar together up there

[dirtydog]

Well today I nipped down to the land, and on my way stopped off here, They are rushing along with the work, anyway here is the rebar being tied together for the beam work.