I have been reading the great info posted on the forum and would love to share our experiences as we start our latest building project.
At the moment, I don't have rights to post pics or links but will do when granted.
We are building a 280m2 house - 2 floors - bottom cement and top wood - in the area of CMU in Chiang Mai.
We bought a huge, 3 story teak house which we have taken down and will use some of it for the build - the rest we will sell when done.
It has taken 4 weeks to have the foundations dug, the rafts poured and then the columns. Tomorrow the ground floor beams will be poured - we are using CPAC for all the cement - 350kg.cm for the beams as this means we only need to let them dry for 7 instead of 14 days!!
As the house if off the ground, we will be using pre-poured slabs for the ground floor - the first floor is wood although the beams will be from concrete.
Yes - believe it or not, we have a great engineer overseeing the builder, who does everything by the book and code - speaks English and provides us with detailed technical drawings for every stage! - he even ordered a compression test from CPAC to check the quality of the concrete
We are using local builders, who are charging labour by the meter and we are taking care of all the materials.
So far, no hiccups - fingers crossed!!
I will try to post any info or ideas I have that may be of help to others in their building projects
Happy New Year and thanks again for all the great tips.