Thread: Watery Construction

Some wise words are much needed .
Please .

Missy has a daughter . The daughter needs a house of some sort constructed . A very simple thing ..... and so is the house .

The only place this can go is into their lakey thing . It's too large to be a pond but it's not a lake .
It's an ' expanse ' . About 3 feet deep . Full of fish and undoubtedly poisonous rubbish .
The small amount of land is Government-Owned and at some point they will come through with a road .

So the only place she can go is into the water .



That pathway ( if the photo worked ) will need to be 3 metres wide and about 10 metres long . Then at the end will be a dirt base maybe 12 metres square on which to be able to park a vehicle and have a house 10 metres by 10 metres .

I'll post this now just to see if the photo worked .
I was one of those that got devastated by Photobucket .


Wasp

Well ...... looks like it worked although the photo is hugemongous !

Now ..... I am not in Thailand . My Bahts will be going there to get this started but I won't be there .
To get started I am being told I will have to buy many truckloads of soil and accompanying rubbish to be tipped into the water . Many loads until it reaches out maybe 20 metres and then many more to make the platform for an eventual building . This of course has to be at a height to come above the 3 foot depth of the water .

My problem --- is that I am being told that this is all that's required . It will settle . It will be helped a bit to settle . But that's it .

I don't believe this can be true .
SURELY - Yes it will settle but it will also slide sideways and sink ? And will never stop ?



Surely it needs supporting ( or blocking ) Left , Right and all around ?

" No . No . This is Thai Way . Iss fine ! "

But we can see ' Thai Way ' everywhere we look and its not encouraging .


Wasp

I don't know a great deal about construction ..... especially in 3 feet of water and onto a slimey muddy base ....... but I would have thought this was needed -

Better to do it with piling surely? Dropping rubble and big stones would not shift that much, but by the sound of it they are planning to fill the thing in. The contractor will if they get a cut per each truckload.

I read somewhere that Thais expect their constructions to fall apart after ten years !
But I don't want to spend money on this and then hear that the base has all slid sideways and outwards .

The Thais - " Iss fine ".

But I --- think not .

I'd greatly appreciate any knowledgeable guidance on this.


Wasp

Originally Posted by pseudolus

Better to do it with piling surely? Dropping rubble and big stones would not shift that much, but by the sound of it they are planning to fill the thing in. The contractor will if they get a cut per each truckload.

Well .... I couldn't explain what 'piling' means . Thumping concrete columns into the mud I do understand . But how far down ?
And are they spaced apart so you make a wood or concrete platform on top ?

If they are spaced apart ...... how far apart do you think ?
I'd like to work out how many pilings and cost .

Also pseudolous --- does it need a big pile driver ramming them in ? How does it get out into the water ?

Are you saying DONT follow that plan of just tipping dirt in all on its own ? Nobody has ever said anything about rocks and rubble . Just loads of dirt .

And thank you .


Wasp

One thing you should consider is - who owns the lake ? If the land all the way around it is government land, the government must own it. It is highly unlikely that the person you intend building a house for owns the lake, I think.

Originally Posted by can123

One thing you should consider is - who owns the lake ? If the land all the way around it is government land, the government must own it. It is highly unlikely that the person you intend building a house for owns the lake, I think.

Funnily enough they DO own it . They own this area as a family compound and they even owned beyond that stream up to an old road .
So yes they own it . But one idiot grandfather gave the land across the stream to the local school . God knows why ..... though he did get a visit from 8 monks to say " Thank You " . Then at some point the Government simply took ownership between the lakey and the stream .
One day they will turn up and make a road there .
The daughters present hovel will get bulldozed.


Wasp

I am genuinely pleased that they own it. I have visited a beautiful home for sale in Thailand. It had been built with no expense spared on the wife's land. Sadly, it was discovered after the build that the wife's family had no legal title which allowed them to sell the land ,the wife being completely ignorant of land law. To her it appeared that the land was theirs but the poor man had wasted well over two million baht by listening to her without checking first. It would have been perfect for us as it was less than ten miles from my wife's family. All very sad.

Originally Posted by Wasp

Well .... I couldn't explain what 'piling' means . Thumping concrete columns into the mud I do understand . But how far down ?
And are they spaced apart so you make a wood or concrete platform on top ?

If they are spaced apart ...... how far apart do you think ?
I'd like to work out how many pilings and cost .

Also pseudolous --- does it need a big pile driver ramming them in ? How does it get out into the water ?

Water is 3ft deep?



It is Driven Piles (sounds painful) you would need as that pushes the dirt to the side, increasing pressure on the pile thus stability.

https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Driven_piles for your information.

It's not unknown tech in Thailand...



I reckon it might just be cheaper than filling in the lake and then putting foundations on top of that. A job lot quicker as well. But you would need a soil sample done first to check suitability.

Nice pictures .

I can see the sense of piles . Though really I just want to establish that pushing truckloads of dirt into the water is NOT a sensible plan .

Driving all those piles out into the water ....... sound expensive .


Wasp

Originally Posted by Wasp

pushing truckloads of dirt into the water is NOT a sensible plan .

No current, then arguably the mud will not distribute too much but it will a little. Tell the Somchai to get out in his truck and never come home each day without the back of it full of rocks.

As Pseudolus says, and was my immediate thought, why infill when piles would do a better and quicker job? and why 20 metres out? Driven piles, concrete slab, wooden shack on top.

Originally Posted by Maanaam

why infill when piles would do a better and quicker job?

Cost trade off and/or availability of local pile driver expertise. Coincidentally, we built built a longer 3 meter wide "road" just like this 5 years ago. Dirt fill only. Very common when one wants a separator between rice paddies. However, not on exisisting lake.

Hey Wasp good to see you back.
Why doesn't Missy build the house on her block down the street from her place or has she sold that?
I am very reluctant to give you any advice on how to build who you (Missy) are suggesting in the OP as that advice would be very simple, "Don't do it".

Several reasons.
To just fill in the access and house block to the dimensions you gave would require at least 600 cubic metres of fill which is allowing for about a metre above the water line so if a truck load is 5 cubic metres then 120 truck loads not cheap and probably unsuccessful in the long term.

The fill would most likely over time become waterlogged as you have said and therefore sink/slump. If you want to explain this it you maybe able to explain using concrete as the example to show what happens when too much water is added it "flows". There are several ways to decrease the impact of this and one is to make the access track much wider so the "core" stays solid. Or build a rock (large rocks) wall along each edge.

As for the "house block" if you built a 10x10 house on a 12x12 area then there wouldn't be much room for the car and it would probably end up in the water when they were trying to turn it around, unless of course they reversed all the way back and then they would still probably end up going off the edge into the water. For a house of 10x10 I would think you need at least a 15x15 filled area.

In order for the house construction to stay stable you would need to drive pylons through the fill down into the solid ground below (how far?).

Of course you could always just donate the money asked for and laugh at the end result in 5 to 10 years.

You need to come back to Thailand so I can come and have a chat again, I need a laugh.

Cheers

There’s a 4 storey hotel in Mahasarakham built that way.
Buy swamp, dump fill, wait for compaction (10-15 minutes I’d say), build structure.
The building’s walls are cracking low down ....

The owner was having a breakfast bar / cafe being built on the road frontage.
Needing a house builder, I asked him if he could recommend the crew he had on the job which was almost finished.
“Well this is the fifth lot of builders I’ve had on this job” (he’d sacked the others ...).

As Norton says, dumping fill will work but don’t build too quickly until the fill stops moving.
And make the filled area much bigger than you think you’ll need.

Being an Engineer and reading these fascinatingly expensive and complex ways to build a house over water. I wonder if you have considered a cheaper and much simpler and may I say novel engineering alternative?
I believe the technical term is a fooking boat .

Spoken like a true engineer ;-)
Boats are a hole in the water into which money is thrown.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

Being an Engineer and reading these fascinatingly expensive and complex ways to build a house over water. I wonder if you have considered a cheaper and much simpler and may I say novel engineering alternative?
I believe the technical term is a fooking boat .

Pontoon base is not a silly idea at all.

Originally Posted by Hugh Cow

Being an Engineer and reading these fascinatingly expensive and complex ways to build a house over water. I wonder if you have considered a cheaper and much simpler and may I say novel engineering alternative?
I believe the technical term is a fooking boat .

Have to be a barge if they want somewhere to park the car. The simplest solution is to find somewhere else to build the house.

Let us get this straight

You want to buy some land, and then move it...... ?

My two cents of advice: A land filling is a usual way in Thailand, just negotiate a good price per truck (a hokloor - 6 wheel truck, 5 cbm is a wish, 500 - 600B), and calculate the estimated area. Sometimes there is a somebody who needs to dig a pond, so make a deal with him. Now, it's a good season for such works before new rain comes in April May.

And it surely will need a time for settlement, the time frame not easy to estimate, depends on the soil quality. Mostly it is a clay that after settlement is quite compact and stable against a water penetration sidewards. For an easy house, it is not so much to worry (unlike of the 4 stories house), a foundation ring with reinforcement will do.

For this small area it would be surely not cheap to organize a piling stuff - especially if it is in the water. Then, you will need to bring the hundreds of soil trucks anyway. And the settlement time either...

Originally Posted by Maanaam

Pontoon base is not a silly idea at all.

If enough cheap sealed plastic drums could be strapped and decked then yes but there’s always the risk of drum failure.

Originally Posted by baldrick

Let us get this straight

You want to buy some land, and then move it...... ?

Post of the day.


Anyway how much land is on the outside of the lake that can be used. Build on that and expand a wood deck into the lake for outside space?