Thread: Marty's New Home in the sticks

Originally Posted by FatOne

She hasn't quite worked out that the sun should be behind her, but

You must start hoping that she never will. Having the sun "behind" you is seriously bad photo technique and should be avoided where possible. You end up with flat dull colours and a lack of contrast. The sun (light source) should be either behind (backlit) or to the side of the subject (oblique) .....That gives the photo depth, contrast and brings out details that get burned out in the flat lighting you get from having the sun behind you....

Pass this on and you may end up with National Geography quality pics form the site.....

Don't like the look of that wall collapse. Better get that sorted out before the heavy rains come otherwise you are going to have a lot of your fill spread over the neighbourhood.. Looks like there was a lot of soil piled up behind that wall....too much obviously... Once the soil becomes saturated during the rainy season, it becomes very heavy, so you need to really beef up the retaining walls.....

Really enjoying your thread FatOne thanks for doing it.

I don't think the foil is designed to be any kind of water barrier... It acts as a radiant barrier...

Also will protect everyone in the house from being bombarded with mind control rays... But will not stop spirits from entering...

Well the tiling work is well under way, but they've run out of tiles!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't believe they couldn't work out how many tiles they would require, but then again who knows?
The builder has quoted 50,000b to fix the retaining wall and I have asked them to get on to it straight away, had to fork over 30,000b for materials yesterday so I guess they are doing it.

Just another pic because I had it!

Another pic of the foil underlay, I hope this shows them doing it the right way around! The tiles don't look to bad colourwise from these shots, look pretty much light grey. Maybe we can keep the original colour scheme of blue paint, but I think Kung has other ideas! Now she's seen the pink, probably her original plan, agree with whatever I say, then change it later.

We seem to have overcome the 1 metre overhang problem, if you look closely the roof now has a decent overhang. I'm not putting guttering on at this stage, but will have a 1m wide cement path around the outside of the house so that run off doesn't undermine the foundations.

Originally Posted by FatOne

We seem to have overcome the 1 metre overhang problem, if you look closely the roof now has a decent overhang. I'm not putting guttering on at this stage, but will have a 1m wide cement path around the outside of the house so that run off doesn't undermine the foundations.

Yes, we did something similar. I have an old British ex-pat friend who has lived in SE Asia for at least 17 years. He strongly advised me against gutters, as I was keen on them. So we'll see how this works out.

Steve

Originally Posted by stevefarang

British ex-pat

Originally Posted by stevefarang

He strongly advised me against gutters,

Never listen to anything the British tell you....

Just bear in mind some of these same British ex-pats are against urinals, nice colours in the kitchen, mosaic, and anything else that would lift your residence above the level of an Amsterdam public lavatory. Brits thrive on austerity. Even indoor plumbing is considered a bit too progressive.

They only discovered central heating and proper plumbing in the 70ies FFS.

Notice how well the better run colonies did... after they broke away from the Mother country......

Of course Americans are at the other extreme with 7000 watt water pumps when 250 watts would do....and multiple septic tanks....search lights....velvet window coverings........

Installing gutters will not do much good if you just let all the outflow run out the bottom of the downspouts. You have to have the downspouts connected to a proper drainage system otherwise you may as well not bother.

You can also collect and store a lot of good water from your roof runoff. Buy a few big concrete storage jars of 1600 liters or so. They run about 750 to 900 baht each and make for an excellent backup water supply.....or just do like the Brits and let the place fall into decay. Decay is considered quaint and is suitably eccentric for a Brit ex-pat...; but is this what you fought your war of independence for????....

Has somebody British upset you today K ?



Wasp

Originally Posted by koman

Originally Posted by stevefarang

British ex-pat

Originally Posted by stevefarang

He strongly advised me against gutters,

Never listen to anything the British tell you....

Just bear in mind some of these same British ex-pats are against urinals, nice colours in the kitchen, mosaic, and anything else that would lift your residence above the level of an Amsterdam public lavatory. Brits thrive on austerity. Even indoor plumbing is considered a bit too progressive.

They only discovered central heating and proper plumbing in the 70ies FFS.

Notice how well the better run colonies did... after they broke away from the Mother country......

Of course Americans are at the other extreme with 7000 watt water pumps when 250 watts would do....and multiple septic tanks....search lights....velvet window coverings........

Installing gutters will not do much good if you just let all the outflow run out the bottom of the downspouts. You have to have the downspouts connected to a proper drainage system otherwise you may as well not bother.

You can also collect and store a lot of good water from your roof runoff. Buy a few big concrete storage jars of 1600 liters or so. They run about 750 to 900 baht each and make for an excellent backup water supply.....or just do like the Brits and let the place fall into decay. Decay is considered quaint and is suitably eccentric for a Brit ex-pat...; but is this what you fought your war of independence for????....

Sheesh, someone is in a cranky mood today !

He may be British, but he's an excellent engineer, which is why I take heed to his advice. He's not some old babbling sod sitting in a bar and banging any thing that breathes.

7000 watt water pumps ?? Surely you're not talking about my little abode, with it's 250 w pump. LOL, I had no say in the curtains and am still not sure if I really like them, but the wife likes them. I'm sure you know the saying, "A happy wife means happy life".

I did consider the idea of collecting the run-off when I was thinking of gutters . I know it's commonly done down under. But I don't want a bunch of concrete jars around my house to collect the water. I also don't want them to be mozzie breeding grounds. And I don't want to spend more money to somehow tie them into my plumbing system. Although thinking about it, maybe have them somehow gravity feed into our in-ground water tank might be possible.

Cheers !!!

Steve

Originally Posted by stevefarang

Sheesh, someone is in a cranky mood today

No, not at all. I'm actually feeling quite up-beat today. Just making a last ditch effort to try and correct the erroneous thinking some people seem to have about roof drainage.....

Originally Posted by stevefarang

I had no say in the curtains and am still not sure if I really like them

Originally Posted by stevefarang

but the wife likes them

Ahah.....game, set and match then... Better convince yourself that you like them too....

Sorry Koman,
His experience is empirical based (17+ years in SE Asia) and I do value it, just as I also consider what you and others have to say about the subject here. For now, we'll forego them and see how things go.

And yes, I am trying to like the curtains. It's just not what I would have done and I hate to think about the difficulty in cleaning them once a year (or whenever).

Steve

Before you buy a water pump I recommend you search past forum posts... The wattage is irrelevant...It is the color of the pump you will be judged by...

Ah! Some interesting comments! I have a friend in Seka who is a Pommie, and he reckons he avoids other pommies like a plague because all they do is whinge about how much better it was at home! ( for the uninitiated a pommie is an Englishman) I know many fine people from the mother country, I am a mixture of pommie and Italian myself as are many aussies, but there are a few that fit the label pommie whingers!

Originally Posted by FatOne

he avoids other pommies like a plague because all they do is whinge about how much better it was at home!

Well it's hardly surprising, for a start we have proper gutters there - and if there's one thing us poms should know about it's dealing with rain.

Steve - I'm intrigued as to the reasoning behind not having gutters in Asia - I'm convinced there must be sound logic behind it () but I'm struggling with working out what that logic might me.

Originally Posted by BKKKevin

Before you buy a water pump I recommend you search past forum posts... The wattage is irrelevant...It is the color of the pump you will be judged by...

Yes, we've got a white one but it seems to cut out from time to time. I'm considering painting it yellow but I'm not sure if that will make things worse or not?

You don't need gutters... Stupid things, stupid design, worthless, pointless leaf accumulators... What are they for anyways?

Yellow, pumps should be yellow; Koman and Roobarb got white ones, so they'll have no end of issues with them.

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

You don't need gutters... Stupid things

Agreed, the IQ of an average bit of PVC guttering is a little low.

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

stupid design

Not really the fault of the gutter though, it was born that way.

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

worthless, pointless leaf accumulators... What are they for anyways?

Accumulating leaves and/or other stuff that falls out of the sky?

(although I should add, before the theorists latch onto the idea, that this is unlikely to include MH 370)

Originally Posted by Bettyboo

Yellow, pumps should be yellow; Koman and Roobarb got white ones, so they'll have no end of issues with them.

Hate to admit it, but for the second time in a post you might actually be right here too

Originally Posted by Roobarb

Originally Posted by FatOne

he avoids other pommies like a plague because all they do is whinge about how much better it was at home!

Well it's hardly surprising, for a start we have proper gutters there - and if there's one thing us poms should know about it's dealing with rain.

Steve - I'm intrigued as to the reasoning behind not having gutters in Asia - I'm convinced there must be sound logic behind it () but I'm struggling with working out what that logic might me.

The argument against gutters is that tree leaves and other such debris, surrounding a house, can play hell with the gutters, plugging them up. Granted, we don't have any tall trees next to us, yet. But I did rent a house, years ago, over near Don Mueang airport and we had leaves all over the place. I could easily see gutters getting clogged up with them.

While we have gadgets that you can install, to keep your gutters from getting clogged up, available here in the USA. I seriously doubt anything like them (that truly work) are available in Thailand.

I also just don't have it in me to go climbing up a ladder, that high, to clear them out as well. We have the concrete pad surrounding the house, so we should be fine. The raised land seems well settled as well, having been there through several years of rainy season, including the floods about 2 years ago. My wife's family had to stay in the shell of our house, as her mother's place flooded out.
Maybe we'll add gutters down the road and some type of water catch/storage setup. But I don't see it as a priority right now.

Steve

Steve ... we have loads and loads of trees near our homes in England .
And every single house has gutters .

Why would anyone expect you to clean out gutters ? Nobody expects you to go pumping out your septic tank .
No need at all for you to be climbing up anywhere .

When your house was being built what was the rate for a whole day for a labourer ?

350 Baht ? 400 ? 450 perhaps ? Cleaning out your gutters is two hours . 200 Baht would be quite a good payment . 500 would be phenomenal .


Twice a year .



Wasp

As I've said before somewhere in my own thread, I've had gutters on every house I've lived in for the past 40+ years and never had a problem with them. They do however prevent all kinds of problems caused by the excessive runoff from a large roof that has nowhere to go except to turn the house surrounds into a quagmire.

If the place is surrounded by deciduous trees you might have to brush some leaves out once a year after the trees have shed their summer coats, but it's an easy job and does not take long. As Mr Wasp quite rightly points out, it might cost you a whole 200 baht a year in Thailand to have the whole thing taken care of.


I've also had several white pumps and have never had a problem with them either.
Yellow pumps are for attention whores, Padites (usually one and the same..) and are far too gay for any man with red blood in his veins.... If for some reason, I ended up with a yellow pump, I'd paint the fucker white or hide it under a tarp....

There's a house down the road from us....occupied by four ladyboys and of course their pump is yellow.....as one would expect. The retired Admiral who lives 2 houses away has a white pump and so does the very successful district loan shark. Enough said.


This campaign against sensible and very practical gutters seems similar to the one launched against white pumps, urinals, colourful kitchen features, mosaic and anything else from the post Boer war period......

Great stuff here. So now my questions are 1) any problem with installing the gutters a year or so later? (when I have more money); 2) is it OK to put gutters on just 1/2 of the house? I'm assuming no problems, but . . . : and 3) since my trim will be white, how about white PVC (or whatever plastic Windsor uses)? The only real problem I see with the white is that it'll be hard to keep clean. BTW, can you rent pressure washers here? (I guess that's #4)