Land development with wall and house...photo thread..first effort.

[Roobarb]

Not everybody likes to ensure the build standards that we adhere to, mate...

What standards are you adhering to Betty...?

[Wasp]

And a happy New Year to you koman .

Wasp

[dustybookend]

Is this the top-layer of rebar on the precast floor planks? What's the diameter, because they look very thin on photo.

That's not rebar....it's just wire mesh.....all the floor area is covered with it to help the poured concrete bind....it's pretty heavy wire, but nothing like rebar..

It does look thin, nothing like as thick as the mesh used in slabs in Oz, in fact it looks like fencing mesh. Maybe just my eyes though since the standard of the construction so far is remarkable.

[koman]

^

This mesh seems to be causing some concern. It's not as thin as it looks from the angle in that photo. It is actually quite robust.

So here is the stuff from another angle and close up. You can also see the concrete spacers used to life it up above the base.



This is actually lite rebar fabricated into a mesh on site by my highly skilled and creative engineering department...

[koman]

The team had a bit of a bash on site yesterday evening .....all the Leo and Hong Thong has gone....and this morning bright and early they all headed back to their home villages for the local festivities. Just two (the foreman and his wife) have stayed behind to keep an eye on things and feed the various livestock they brought with them... They seemed very grateful for the booze and chicken.... two new years this year.....good deal...

Anyhow, with the various threads running and a good bit of discussion about building materials and suchlike. I though maybe it would be worthwhile posting a few pics of the things we are using to erect this monument to the Thai construction industry.

Not everyone is familiar with Q-Con block, but it's the preferred material these days. Developed in Germany, it's been around for quite a while now and is well proven. It has excellent insulation qualities and is very easy to cut and work with. The builders love the stuff.



This is Q-Con aerated block.....all our outside walls and most of the interior walls are built with it. It's very light weight too.....




This is what a cross section of Q-Con looks like close up. It has an internal structure not unlike coral....which is pretty tough stuff. All those little cavities give it it's insulation qualities.



...and your basic red brick...durable and cheap. Bathroom walls are/should be build with this... or anywhere that has a lot of moisture.




One item you can never get any general agreement on is roof covering. This is our choice....C-Pac cement tile. We have lived in two houses over the past six years which had this exact kind of roofing. It is extremely durable; reasonably priced and despite concerns about it's potential as a heat sink.....it keeps the house cool as long as you have a nice big attic space with really good cross-flow ventilation.....and in our case 3 layers of "Stay-Cool" insulation material.

This area gets some very high winds from time to time and this kind of roofing will stand up better than just about anything.



Steel beams for the roof. They were painted with anti-corrosion primer.....five coats of the stuff!!! It took several days to prepare them.....but we have to do all we can to stop them from rusting and having the place coming down around our ears.....



The insides were spray painted using a pretty decent looking compressor and paint gun.....



There's our head paint guy.....his feet were quite well primed by the time he'd finished too......must be really good for the skin that stuff...



The flat side was painted with brushes and rollers......



Pre-fabricated floor slabs. These provide the base over which the ready-mix cement is poured. You end up with a very strong floor which can accommodate several of even the fattest farangs per square meter.....

No building thread would be complete without a few pics of the sewage disposal system....



...so here is our splendid septic tank. 1600 liters....double chamber affair and guaranteed to take care of all the shit you can dump into it.....

...and as soon as the hyper-active bacteria in the tank break down all the shit and stuff.....you have a system of sewer pipes to carry the treated material off into the wilds....



This is heavy cement pipe....8 inch diameter...with the inspection boxes which are placed every 8 meters along the pipe.....so it can be opened up and flushed out if any blockage should occur.....although that is highly unlikely.

I'll do a separate post on the installation and expose the wonders of septic systems too all those who never imagined such extraordinary devises existed....................but I still have a whole section on roof beams, welding and things of that nature to post.....so next time we can get back to that...

Happy New Year to all TD'ers....even the ones who are not building anything....

[stevefarang]

...and your basic red brick...durable and cheap. Bathroom walls are/should be build with this... or anywhere that has a lot of moisture.




One item you can never get any general agreement on is roof covering. This is our choice....C-Pac cement tile. We have lived in two houses over the past six years which had this exact kind of roofing. It is extremely durable; reasonably priced and despite concerns about it's potential as a heat sink.....it keeps the house cool as long as you have a nice big attic space with really good cross-flow ventilation.....and in our case 3 layers of "Stay-Cool" insulation material.

Our house design uses Q-Con blocks for all the walls, even the bathrooms.

Your roof tiles look a lot like the ones we picked, same color as well. We could have gone with upgraded ceramic tiles, but decided to save some money on those. Sounds like we made a good decision. We have a large attic space, with 6" of fiberglass insulation (I plan to add more next year - pay some Thai guy to go up there and roll it out.). There's soffit vents but I don't see any real way for hot air to vent out. PD House says the gaps under the roof tiles allow for hot air to ventilate. We'll see. I'm still thinking a whirlybird on each end will certainly help that space "breathe".

I really like our roof truss system. All galvanized steel and screwed together. It seemed pretty solid when I tried to move it.

We've got two septic tanks (1600 & 2000 liters) each with overflow to 2 dry wells arranged in series. I haven't used a septic tank since I was a kid growing up in my parent's old house.

Happy New Year and thanks for all the pics.
Steve

[koman]

...and your basic red brick...durable and cheap. Bathroom walls are/should be build with this... or anywhere that has a lot of moisture.




One item you can never get any general agreement on is roof covering. This is our choice....C-Pac cement tile. We have lived in two houses over the past six years which had this exact kind of roofing. It is extremely durable; reasonably priced and despite concerns about it's potential as a heat sink.....it keeps the house cool as long as you have a nice big attic space with really good cross-flow ventilation.....and in our case 3 layers of "Stay-Cool" insulation material.

Our house design uses Q-Con blocks for all the walls, even the bathrooms.

Your roof tiles look a lot like the ones we picked, same color as well. We could have gone with upgraded ceramic tiles, but decided to save some money on those. Sounds like we made a good decision. We have a large attic space, with 6" of fiberglass insulation (I plan to add more next year - pay some Thai guy to go up there and roll it out.). There's soffit vents but I don't see any real way for hot air to vent out. PD House says the gaps under the roof tiles allow for hot air to ventilate. We'll see. I'm still thinking a whirlybird on each end will certainly help that space "breathe".

I really like our roof truss system. All galvanized steel and screwed together. It seemed pretty solid when I tried to move it.

We've got two septic tanks (1600 & 2000 liters) each with overflow to 2 dry wells arranged in series. I haven't used a septic tank since I was a kid growing up in my parent's old house.

Happy New Year and thanks for all the pics.
Steve

I discussed roof tiles with my project manager (who just happens to be a professional engineer with about ten years experience in construction) I looked at the new flat interlocking tile...the ceramic tile...and various other options. The interlocking and ceramic tile is quite a bit more expensive, so I asked him if it was worth the cost...."will I have a better roof".??....his response after a few minutes reflection was " No you won't have a better roof...just a more expensive one"

I followed your thread on the building of the "Chateau Rickfarang" and it's a very impressive place. You seem to be housing a good part of the Thai population there, so I'm not surprised that you have such septic tank capacity. There's just the two of us, so 1600 liters should do the job....being as the wife can only drink about half a can of beer in 24 hours....which leaves about 1599.5 liters of capacity for me.... We will have dry wells for the outflow as well....

That PD pre-engineered truss system is very good indeed. We looked at something similar but again for the difference in cost it was decided that the regular cheap old steel beam welded together would do the trick.....as long as the welds are done right and you lay on lots and lots of anti-corrosion paint. I'm just building a regular hours....not a Chateau.....

[stevefarang]

I discussed roof tiles with my project manager (who just happens to be a professional engineer with about ten years experience in construction) I looked at the new flat interlocking tile...the ceramic tile...and various other options. The interlocking and ceramic tile is quite a bit more expensive, so I asked him if it was worth the cost...."will I have a better roof".??....his response after a few minutes reflection was " No you won't have a better roof...just a more expensive one"

I followed your thread on the building of the "Chateau Rickfarang" and it's a very impressive place. You seem to be housing a good part of the Thai population there, so I'm not surprised that you have such septic tank capacity. There's just the two of us, so 1600 liters should do the job....being as the wife can only drink about half a can of beer in 24 hours....which leaves about 1599.5 liters of capacity for me.... We will have dry wells for the outflow as well....

That PD pre-engineered truss system is very good indeed. We looked at something similar but again for the difference in cost it was decided that the regular cheap old steel beam welded together would do the trick.....as long as the welds are done right and you lay on lots and lots of anti-corrosion paint. I'm just building a regular hours....not a Chateau.....

Chateau Rickfarang ? Who's Rick ?? LOL

I know people have commented on the size, but it was of my choosing. The wife wanted something smaller (and still grumbles occasionally about it). If I do decide to retire there, I want something of a good size that I can shuffle around in.

That house design standard is the 2 septic tanks, one on each end. While I fully expect her family members to hang around, I don't anticipate having to house them all. She has a pretty cool cousin that I get along very well with. He doesn't speak much English, but we communicate well anyway and he's always looking out for me. But he lives nearby in a house they built just last year. I'm expecting to house her brother and half-sister, but that's ok. I'd rather have them around anyway when I'm away. We'll also get my youngest daughter up from Hat Yai sometime next year. And we've got a little boy coming in late March or early April.

Happy New Year !

Steve (not Rick !!!)

[koman]

Steve (not Rick !!!)

Opps....sorry, not sure where the "Rick" came from..... so "Chateau Stevefarang" it is than.

[stevefarang]

Steve (not Rick !!!)

Opps....sorry, not sure where the "Rick" came from..... so "Chateau Stevefarang" it is than.

Yeah, I did see something the other day that the new in-thing for big houses in the USA is a moat.
Maybe we need a moat for the Chateau ???

You should see what an hold high school friend of mine is building (actually converting) in Morocco. People bitch here about the Thais, they've got nothing on the Moroccans. Nothing gets done unless he is there. He's hired foremen to supervise, nothing gets done, but his money was spent. Fortunately, he lives in Paris, so it's easy for him to drop down there. He's been at that project longer than we've been building our house.
He's slowly getting there, but I keep teasing him that his house design screams for cannons mounted up on the roof. It really looks like a Chateau, with high solid walls. When it's done, it should be pretty impressive and I look forward to going there one day to visit him.

[Koetjeka]

This is what a cross section of Q-Con looks like close up. It has an internal structure not unlike coral....which is pretty tough stuff. All those little cavities give it it's insulation qualities.

Yep, thats areated concrete. It's insulation qualities are 10 times as bad as normal insulation though. You can of course build walls with them but they are normally used in complicated situations where you want to avoid thermal bridges (example: the ends of a flat roof).
Were they expensive by the way?

There's our head paint guy.....his feet were quite well primed by the time he'd finished too......must be really good for the skin that stuff...

I'm actually surprised they paint the inside too, I've seen a lot of buildings where they don't care!

Pre-fabricated floor slabs. These provide the base over which the ready-mix cement is poured. You end up with a very strong floor which can accommodate several of even the fattest farangs per square meter.....

Nice stuff, where did you order them and how much can they carry?

[Marmite the Dog]

PD House says the gaps under the roof tiles allow for hot air to ventilate.

Apparently heat doesn't rise, water runs uphill and electricity doesn't run to earth in Thailand...

[koman]

There's soffit vents but I don't see any real way for hot air to vent out. PD House says the gaps under the roof tiles allow for hot air to ventilate. We'll see. I'm still thinking a whirlybird on each end will certainly help that space "breathe".

I think PD House is talking a lot of bollocks... You need decent sized gable vents to allow proper cross ventilation. I'm not sure what "spaces" PD is talking about.....the air can't pass through the roof tile and that's where it's headed when it heats up.

Soffit vents will allow some cooling air to be sucked in as the attic heats up, but unless the heated air can be moved through the attic space efficiently the heat build-up will be enormous in very hot weather. Obviously a thick layer of insulation material above the ceilings will help a lot but the cooler you can keep the attic space the better. Extractor fans are a big help too... and if you don't have any gable vents, they are probably essential in order to keep the air conditioning bills lower than the US National debt.....

[koman]

This is what a cross section of Q-Con looks like close up. It has an internal structure not unlike coral....which is pretty tough stuff. All those little cavities give it it's insulation qualities.

Yep, thats areated concrete. It's insulation qualities are 10 times as bad as normal insulation though. You can of course build walls with them but they are normally used in complicated situations where you want to avoid thermal bridges (example: the ends of a flat roof).
Were they expensive by the way?

There's our head paint guy.....his feet were quite well primed by the time he'd finished too......must be really good for the skin that stuff...

I'm actually surprised they paint the inside too, I've seen a lot of buildings where they don't care!

Pre-fabricated floor slabs. These provide the base over which the ready-mix cement is poured. You end up with a very strong floor which can accommodate several of even the fattest farangs per square meter.....

Nice stuff, where did you order them and how much can they carry?

Sorry, I don't know the exact prices because the project manager does all the buying and I have taken myself out of that part of the project. I think the Q-Con runs from about 7 or 8 baht per block up...depending on the thickness. They are quite a bit more than the standard cement blocks, but they are also a lot bigger, so you don't need as many.

The floor slabs are rated at 450 Kg per m2....and probably run about 200Thb each

.....the costs of all these things seems to change almost daily so anything you are told is quite likely to be obsolete by the time you read about it.... Even sand and gravel prices go up and down by 50 baht or so per m3 between breakfast and dinner.

[Marmite the Dog]

Even sand and gravel prices go up and down by 50 baht or so per m3 between breakfast and dinner.

Actually, prices seem to go up and down based upon whether it's a quoted price or what they ask you to pay.

[koman]

Now that we have all that New Year nonsense out of the way, we can get back to the serious business of roof building, sewer laying and other fascinating activities.

A couple of posts back, you saw photos of the early stages of roof building complete with glowing welds and acrobatic stunts high above the concrete floors... now we can continue....

The perimeter and cross beams have been installed. Now we have to erect the ridge beams and all the sloping stuff.

Before the ridge beams were installed the place looked like this. A shot from the driveway....complete with a model posing on the scaffold...





Here's some vertical beams going up... and the beginnings of the ridge beams.



There's a better view of the proceedings...



Welding ridge beams in place.



The roof ridge is taking shape now....



After a few days of cutting, welding and hammering we are getting quite a maze up there.



Not to be outdone by a bunch of welders, the block laying guys are showing off their stuff down below.




It's starting to bear some resemblance to a house at last.



....but it's hard for the block layers to compete with the kind of spectacle that the roofers can put on.... these guys hop around on the beams like monkeys....no fear, no safety harness...no brain??



In the late afternoon sun, the place taken on a kind of "Golden Temple" look.....



Ace welder number 1 checking his work....below the brick wall of a bathroom glows nicely.



....a last quick look around before quitting time.. we are nearly ready for the roof tile I think... that's another team of specialists who come all the way from KhonKaen. We think it best to bring in people who actually know how to do this kind of thing....roofs are important, especially during the Monsoon.....

[Koetjeka]

Wow that looks like a great roof in the making! It's a exactly like my neighbors' new house, which is a really nice house by the way.

Are those battens shaped like a hat? They seem to be similar to the ones I used, very cheap but long span is possible.

.roofs are important, especially during the Monsoon.....

Yes they certainly are important, 'luckily' it's not going to rain for another 6 months

//edit: I forgot another question, why didn't they connect the ends of the rafters with a small beam, like a so called "ring beam" around your roof?

[koman]

This is what they do to the rafter ends...



Those end pieces are then used to mount the facia boards.....



Like this....

Notice the guy holding up a level to check the vertical in that window space.....how Thai is that???

[Koetjeka]

Like this....

Notice the guy holding up a level to check the vertical in that window space.....how Thai is that???

Oh okay, I see. Looks pretty neat! Funnily it's exactly like my neighbors' house, really.

I've never seen a Thai using a spirit level!

[Bettyboo]

That is a work of art, and has no place on a Thai construction thread. Mods, please move this thread to the art subforum where it rightfully belongs.

[koman]

That is a work of art, and has no place on a Thai construction thread. Mods, please move this thread to the art subforum where it rightfully belongs.

Mods please disregard this request....BB is getting carried away.....it's just welding and a bit of block laying after all.........or were you referring to my creative photography BB ??....

[koman]

We just arrived back home from the local HomeMart. We were presented with a special gift reserved for only the very best customers:



A blanket fit for a King.... try not to burn up with envy...

I'll post some more roof and sewer installation photos later......I know everyone loves sewer pics..... but you will just have to be patient...

[koman]

The continuing saga of a roof build.....

After all the welding, cutting, and acrobatics. we are ready for the roof tile. This is one of those jobs that can be done by the local villagers but you may end up with your tile overlapping at the top instead of the bottom, so it was decided to import a roofing contractor from KhonKaen where they build the finest of roofs.



The first job is to get this lot up to the roof....and that's just one pile....there are 3600 of these things and no lifting gear....



...actually, the first job is to have breakfast. These work crews always arrive without breakfast for some reason... so a few fistfuls of sticky rice sitting out there in the dirt is the way to get the day off to a good start.



With a belly full of sticky rice it's time to get the show on the road. This chain gang approach works remarkably well....and they can move a hell of a lot of tile without all that machinery and crap that us farangs use.



In a few hours they are knee deep in tiles up there.. time for more sticky rice and coffee...this is heavy work.



The team splits up and works on different sections of the roof at the same time....progress is much faster than I every dared to hope.... The guy on the scaffold is building one of the 60 x 60 columns for the front porch.



When all the flat parts are tiled, on go the ridge tiles. This is a bit tricky. They are cemented into place and big metal troughs are placed under the joints at the bottom of the "valleys". Hopefully this will make it rain proof......which I think is a very good characteristic of a roof....



Another shot of the ridge tile going on.....if you look carefully at the bottom of that "valley" you can see the end of the metal trough sticking out.



Here a 4 man team is working on one of the longer ridges. It's quite a tricky job....this is why you bring in "roofers" who have done this a thousand times and hopefully figured out how not to fuck it up....



Lots of cutting involved along the seams... messy sort of work.



This is a member of the roofing team that completed the entire job in a day and a half. Last week she married one of the block laying guys.......things happen fast on my site.....

[Koetjeka]

It's a marvellous looking roof, sometimes Thai workers actually deliver a good job (not often though ).

I'm always scared the roof-tiles will fall off when they stack them up just before hanging the tiles, did all tiles survive the trip to the rooftop? Did anyone get one of those heavy bastards on his safety cap-less head or safety shoe-less foot?

[koman]

It's a marvellous looking roof, sometimes Thai workers actually deliver a good job (not often though ).

I'm always scared the roof-tiles will fall off when they stack them up just before hanging the tiles, did all tiles survive the trip to the rooftop? Did anyone get one of those heavy bastards on his safety cap-less head or safety shoe-less foot?

Thanks Koetjeka....I'm well pleased with it. Hope I can still say that after the Monsoon rains... The roofing team was very professional and worked very quickly and efficiently.

No casualties so far although I never cease to be amazed at how these folks survive. There have been quite a number of WTF moments for me... like seeing a guy casually strolling along a 4" wide beam 20ft up, in flip-flops and rolling a cigarette....they really are in a class all by themselves....