The Thailand expat forum for Travel, Lifestyle and Fun.

WhiteLotusLane

Well if they do spend it on your wife then the money at least stays in the family.

chuckd

Looks like you have done very well with your plan. Please post more pictures as it nears completion.

Good luck.

blong308

Looks great so far. Look forward to seeing the construction phase pics and the finishing touches.

jaiyenyen

Your home looks great, and you come across as a very contented man.
Good luck to you, please keep posting, you give us all something to aim for.

a. boozer

Wetass

I like this thread, and will read it all in a bit.

At this point, I just wanted to let you know that you can now convert a Tourist Visa to a Retirement Visa here in Thailand at Thai Immigration. Go for it unless you enjoy the border runs.

Hey, seriously, good luck with the new house and your life in the village. I once considered the small village scene; but chronic health problems dictate that I remain near very good medical facilities.

sunsetter

whys that then? should let thae wife take control of the build and money much better idea

wichenburi

Money well spent. Contentment is worth alot of money. You have your own mansion. I wish you and your wife a happy life in you new home. I enjoyed your story very much. thanks

jedsez

been away on a visa run. thanks for the tips on conversion to retirement visa. i know, but that is no longer an option for me. tourist visas and visa exemptions are good enough and allow a day or two away, just enough to appreciate it all over again, and to load up on cheap dvds.

planning. ah well, there is that. but extemperaneous construction is always so much fun... and i will gaurantee that no matter how much planning is done, errors will crop up. my suggestion is that a home builder remain flexible. for me that is just a matter of accepting that what i have is better than what ever else i have ever had, so it is all good. but yes, if you can, do plan...

btw, i never generated any actual building plans. all i ever had was a 3D over view generated with a software program called Punch Home AS400. it was part of a software package that had several home design programs. this was easy enough for me to get something out of. but it had limitations which might be overcome, but which i just lived with.

also, and this is interesting, i have a wrap around deck/patio/balcony. in order to keep a view from inside i placed some of the roof posts outside the actual living area of the house. this was done so that the roof could extend well out and not drop down into the view area. this was a new concept for my builders. something i simply did not imagine could be true. i ended up building a balsa wood model of what i wanted so they could see it. lately i have looked around and sure enough, in thailand, roof support posts are integral to the living area and roofs generally only over hang about 1 meter because of this. mine extends 3 meters from the living area with no interference with the view.

some errors i have made, even with planning.

the balcony is only 2 meters wide. i would make it at least 3 meters if i were doing it again. the cost would be minimal and the extra area would be very nice to have. i think i limited it because of the length of the steel beams. or maybe there was no thought involved. could be ...

i chose to make a gable end roof line. this was to minimize the number of potential leaks in the roof. leaks always seem to occur at joins and a hip roof has many more than a gable end. unfortunately, and i did not think about this, the prevailing wind/rain comes in directly against one of the gable ends. as it is we have to scamper to close the windows along that side since the roof over hang is also minimal on the gable end sides. i seriously doubt if a hip roof design would have made any difference, but a shift of angle in siting the house would have been a good idea. check with the locals before siting the house.

this one i just noticed the other day. if you have aluminum windows have them put the screens on the outside. mine are inside and that means i have to open the screen to open/close the window. not an ideal situation.

there are more, but these are the ones i recall now.

images. these are from the design software program and constitute the total plans i provided to the builder. of course that meant i had to keep in touch with them to monitor and provide verbal direction. but i would have done that anyway. i mention it to point out that this is not the states. building plans, specs, and codes are flexible here.

we were living in chiang mai while the building was going on and would drive down about once or twice a month to check on things. nid's family is in the same village so they were able to keep an eye on things for us in the interim.

we would do the material ordering based on the builders requests. initially i questioned his requests but finally just went along with whatever he asked for. was there loss on purchases? probably, but it got built within my budget. (i have driven by the builders rather basic thai home and it hasn't been significantly upgraded since he started working on ours, so i reckon he didn't walk away with too much. in truth, i think he was basically honest and wouldn't hesitate to recommend him and his crew)

one of the biggest drawbacks of the design program were that i couldn't put the roof posts into the finished view, only the exposed view. and adding the roof over the stairs was just too much trouble to show. it exists in the house but not in the plans.

__________________

DrAndy

Jedsez, why not start your own thread and we can discuss your points?

seems like you have a lot! some quite interesting

baldrick

^ are you self medicating doc ?

this is Jedsez's thread he started about his house that he is discussing.

thanks for the 3D model views Jed and also the self critism

bobbysan124

Nice. Hope you and family enjoy.

Deck Ape

Jed that looks like a really good design. Don't beat yourself up about the problems with it, there IS always time to go back and fix it. Best of luck to you in your new country home.

DrAndy

damn, you are right

now where are those pills

sorry Jedsez

jedsez

every home begins with a place.

my partner's father gave her some land to build on. he also gave her some land to plant on. they are on opposite sides of the same village though so we had to decide what we wanted to do. for me it was a no-brainer. i have always wanted to build my own house.

as a wage slave in the west i was compelled to live close to where i worked. sometimes this 'close' may have been only a few miles but would chew up vast quantities of time getting to and from. i hated it.

after i developed a conscious and recognized that my life was being controlled by others and that it was rapidly slipping away from me i chose to just leave it all behind and go somewhere else and do what i wanted to do, just for me. i ended up in thailand with Nid. i could have done a whole lot worse and generally consider myself fortunate to have been in a position that enabled me to make that break.

for about $25,000 i have been able to build a very fine and livable home. this would not have been possible in the states. now if it were just a little bit cooler ...

here is the land before we started to build. notice the nice shade shadow cast by the trees 'papa' cut down while we were in chiang mai. grrr ...

but he did have a point. they very well might have dropped limbs onto the roof during a storm. and since moving here we have had some serious wind and rain storms. but still...



a few of the trees, which also blocked the view of the road.



looking out to my view before the corn was planted. i could have built over at the farm land, but this view and the shade were convincers.



next, i'll start the actual construction

DrAndy

The construction starts......

looking forward to it

oh, how did you meet Nid and "end up in Thailand"?

looks like a good decision

jedsez

hope that the up load of images is successful.

construction. began in late January and by end of January the support posts for the first floor/ main floor were in place and some of the precast flooring plates were in place.

interesting relationship between the various trades. at some points i would deal with one person whose specialty was, say, plumbing and the next with the carpenter guy. each appeared when i was speaking with them, to be the man in charge. i suspect this to be true and have decided they followed some sort of 'you're the boss for this, he's the boss for that, and i'm the boss for this' sort of
structure. i rather thought it was a good idea since the man with them most experience/ knowledge of a subject was automatically and generally assumed to be the 'boss' for that kind of work.

it wasn't a 'go to the plumber to ask your plumbing question', it was that the plumber was in charge of the entire crew for those aspects of the job for which he was responsible. so the general contractor worked for the plumber during those times. sort of thing ...

images:

the footings



each hole was about 1 meter deep and 1 meter square. then it was poured with about 50 cm concrete over heavy rebar. while i can imagine that there might be trouble in the future from inadequate footings, these seem to me to be reasonable and the soil here is solid clay.

building the forms.



generally this is going to be the way it is done on small jobs, or out in the country, over here. pour one or more columns, remove the forms, pour some more. all by hand. no pumpers came onto this job site.

the posts.



notice the guy with the bucket.

after less than one month the columns were in place and some of the first floor had been laid using pre-cast concrete plates.




the price of materials rose very dramatically during construction. cement went from less than 130 per bag to over 150. steel prices increased weekly. this, together with the rapidly falling dollar, caused some concern about my ability to complete the project. turns out we ended up within 1,000 Baht, (really), of my budget for the initial phase of construction. i consider that to be a positive re-enforcement of my plan.

i had a lot of trouble getting these images uploaded. don't know why, so it may be a bit before i can get another group up. be patient.

sunsetter

shaping up a treat, nice pictures mate, cant wait for the rest

jedsez

not much difference between Jan and Feb. the pillars for the first floor, the main floor, were completed and most of the precast slabs laid down. fresh concrete was poured over them. the total depth was about 10 cm.

the guy who made the precast slabs came to the site did his measurements and went away. some time later the slabs arrived and were laid onto the cross members already in place. all of this went on without my intervention. we came down as they were laying some concrete over to form the floor. i don't have a real good image of the slabs.

the stairs were also poured at about this time.

images:

the posts in place for the main floor. extensions ready for the roof support posts.



underneath. this is basically what ties it all together. notice where the concrete has dripped through between the slabs. you may also be able to see the lines where the slabs lay together.




slabs. not a good image, but look closely and you'll see them laid down as an under flooring. the concrete was poured directly on top of them.



water supply. i thought this might be of interest to those who aren't yet familiar with thai plumbing. this blue plastic pipe, 3/4 inch reduced to 1/2 inch for the meter then expanded again to 3/4 inch after the meter, is our supply from the village water system.



the trees. i am obsessed with the loss of the trees, but it all worked out. this is what became of them before they were ultimately used in the house. the trees were hauled by a couple of farmers on their 'iron buffaloes' to the local temple where a saw mill had been set up. they were sliced and diced and then returned. very green. when it came time to use them in the house we, nid's papa, traded them to someone else who had seasoned wood and we used that for the building.



notice that the wood was kept up and off the ground. it doesn't take long for the termites to find raw wood.

jandajoy

Good stuff mate. Well done and keep 'em coming.