#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Construction in Thailand >  >  > Building in Thailand Famous Threads >  >  Building your own swimming pool in Thailand

## dirtydog

Well here is how to build your own swimming pool in several easy steps.

Now first off you need to dig a great big hole, and believe me this aint easy, best to pay some Thai guy with a digger to do that, anyway this hole obviously needs to be bigger than what your specified swimming pool size will be.

So lets say you want a pool by 10 meters long and 5 meters wide for arguements sake, well it's not for arguements sake actually but it just so happens that is what we are building at the moment, ok so the pool is 1.8 meters deep in the deep end, but you need to dig deeper than this to get the old footings in there some how, so lets say we go 3 meters deep for the footings, these we chuck in every 2 meters, this is cos swimming pools are really heavy and fat people jump into them, should swimming pool owners charge fat people a surcharge?

Anyway here is a nice picture of a hole.




As you may have guessed we got this job half way through it's construction due to the Thai contractor doing a runner with the money, yep this is the job before we started, he has actually done quite a good job and all we changed was the wiring for the lights, but that was due to the customer buying high wattage lights, and we have to extend the rebar as most of it is too short, yeah I foked up there as I didn't notice that when I quoted for the job, still, must be able to slip that into his bill somewhere  :Smile:  at least I foking hope so.......

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## dirtydog

This pool has the problem that all the side steel work is completed, well the Thai guy assumed it was completed, but he didn't check with a level, now this causes us the problem of doing the form work, normally we would leave 80cm tails from the floor to tie up with the wall steel work to make it easy for us to do the exterior form work, now we got to fok around trying to lay blocks for the form in a tiny little space,cnut.

Anyway as you can quite clearly see in this next picture the steel is double layered, this is cos swimming pools are heavy and fat people jump into them, did I mention that before?

This rebar is 12mm, I personally would have just stuck in 16mm rebar just for my own peace of mind, 12mm is ok for this size pool but for the extra expense it is worth going for the bigger stuff, but then again customers can be cnuts and keep asking can it be done cheaper, infact all customers should be executed at birth, but then I wouldn't have any work  :Sad:

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## dirtydog

You maybe wondering about all those pipes, well I do wonder about them quite often, I mean if one of them has a hole the the pool is foked cos the water will leak out of them, infact as I sit here typeing away I am wondering if the Thai guy done erm right.

The black rubber thing you can see in the above picture is the thing that you hope saves you from leaks, your ground pour of concrete goes like quite a way up that and then 10 days later your wall pour of concrete goes in, trouble is it don't always work, that's when you got to start foking around with waterproofing cement, although all you have ever ordered is water proofing cement and the foking stuff don't work.

Back to the pipes, these you chuck in between the layers of rebar, the yellow ones are for the electric runs for the swimming pool lights, on this job we had to change all the foking wiring, luckily I guessed this already and didn't quote for this so I aint gonna lose on that one...

The blue pipes are for the pump to pump in water from the resevoir, I really don't like this set up as they have like 3 runs connected and coming out as one pipe, you know in 10 years that at least one pipe will have a problem and then you could just cap this pipe, but the way it is set up you would have to cap 3 pipes, if customers weren't so cheap then each run would be a seperate run and you would just cap the one pipe and get a few more years out of your swimming pool, but of course customers are cheap and then they complain, anyway here is a nice picture of the pipes coming out of the form work  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

Next up you got to pour the concrete for the base, now you got to remember this takes a lot of weight and pressure, so it has to be pretty strong, especially if you have obese american friends, this also has to be poured in one go, there aint no foking around with this, it has to be one go, we need it strong, this has to be done with the old lorries that supply concrete, this aint something you can mix up yourself, we need consistencey and we need quantity, but fok they really do charge the money, hell you wanna pool you got to be rich so stop your whinging.

Well here we are going into our first pour, it should have been 10 cubic meters of concrete but worked out to 12, who the fok is gonna pay me for the extra 2 cubic meters I might ask? actually I shall measure the cnut of the pool tomorrow and see if the customer lied to me...

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## dirtydog

The problem with the lorries is that you have to supply your own means of getting the concrete to where you want, lucki;y this place is a building site, so we borrowed somebody elses pipe, it was either that or build our own  :Smile:

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## Dougal

Thanks for this DD. A couple of questions if I may.

I take that the footing were already in when you took on the job - was more steel used there or is that just a big concrete raft?

You mentioned a reservoir somewhere in the thread; is that already built or will you be building that later?

Can you expand on the use of the rubber strip; it isn't clear to me how it stops leaks.

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## NickA

And there's some **** on here saying this place ain't informative!!!!

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## Texpat

Shall we also charge Dogs extra for pissing in the pool?

10x5x1.8 -- pritty big swimmin hole; how much?

Good stuff dd, cheers.

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## dirtydog

> I take that the footing were already in when you took on the job - was more steel used there or is that just a big concrete raft?


Yep, the footings were already in and also the goundbeam, the ground beam is to support the sides, obviously there is rebar in the footings and the ground beam.






> You mentioned a reservoir somewhere in the thread; is that already built or will you be building that later?


Once we have the walls up for the concrete pour we need to let the walls harden up a bit for when we do the pour, that's when we shall start digging out the reservoir.








> Can you expand on the use of the rubber strip; it isn't clear to me how it stops leaks.


the wall pour will be done in about 10 days, by this time the ground poor will be pretty hard and pretty dry, sometimes the old concrete doesn't stick as good as you would like it, also the concret nearest the floor will dry quicker than the rest and there could be srinkage, the rubber is just another precaution to help against leakage.






> 10x5x1.8 -- pritty big swimmin hole; how much?


From start to finish about 6 to 800,000baht.

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## mad_dog

impressive DD... Do you still "get your hands dirty" these days or do you delegate? I find laying bricks therapeutic, you know "is it plum" and all that. 

Do you work mainly for farangs?

How many "dream homes" have you built for old sex tourists only for their Pattaya "lady" to turn around and turf the t.wat out and install their Thai husband of 10 years?

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## Thetyim

Dougal, are you considering building a pool  ?

If you are, then please speak to me first and I will put you right on the cons of having a pool.

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## Dougal

Tell me the bad news then Thetyim.

I should explain that the main motivation for a pool is that one of our sons is autistic and needs watching like a hawk to make sure he does not escape and wander off. As he is part fish we hope that at least with a pool we can contain him in one place.

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## Marmite the Dog

> As he is part fish we hope that at least with a pool we can contain him in one place.


I'm sure a fish tank would be cheaper.  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

> Do you still "get your hands dirty" these days


Of course not, na it's too bloody hot.





> Do you work mainly for farangs?


Last few years has just been for farang customers.

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## mad_dog

What about the wh.ore wives question... you must have some tales to tell DD

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## dirtydog

Not on this thread mad dog, this thread is about building your own swimming pool  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

Well we had to take all the steel apart and bend it down to do the exterior form work, this is just done using cheap blocks, today we got most of the exterior block work done but now we have to retie all the rebar back and then start on the interior form work, should have all that done by the beginning of next week hopefully then it's back to hole digging time for the reservoir, probably get a mini digger in for that as the ground is rock hard, in the top right hand side corner you can see a circular type of hole, this will be a 60 cm deep sitting area in the pool, if it was my choice I would chuck a jaccuzzi pump in there and make a bit of extra dosh  :Smile:

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## Thetyim

> Tell me the bad news then Thetyim.


Well its like this Dougal.
I 've got a 7 x 12 pool and it is the curse of my life.
If you are rich and can afford a servant to attend to it each day then fair enough but if you are poor like me then you will have to do all the work yourself.
You would not believe the ammount of crap that drops in the pool everyday  and just one leaf floating on the surface makes the whole thing look bad.
Everyday you have to spend two hours in the sun 'vacuum cleaning' the bottom.  Filters must be cleaned  every two weeks, thats a real messy job and you have to monitor the water condition and add chemicals as needed.   I would never consider having another pool it just isn't worth the effort.

Obviously your situation is different because of your son but If I HAD to have one then it would be an indoor job or at least fully covered.

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## dirtydog

I think here pool keepers charge 3kbaht per month plus chemicals, also if you can buy a machine thingy that monitors the chlorine/salt content and this adds it all itself.

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## Dougal

> Obviously your situation is different because of your son but If I HAD to have one then it would be an indoor job or at least fully covered.


We've tried keeping him indoors Thetyim but he just climbs out the windows.

Can't keep him covered either.



Thanks for the advice. I'm not rich but I guess it will be cheaper than buying a house on the beach.  :Smile:

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## Thetyim

> I think here pool keepers charge 3kbaht per month plus chemicals


That sounds quite reasonable.
Problem is, as soon as the attendant walks out another leaf will drop in the pool and you will be taking them out for the rest of your life

Dougal, do you have your own bore/well 
If not then you will be paying per meter of water, and a pool uses a lot of water everyday because of evaporation.

The filter pump is a big drain on the electric and has to be run several hours every day.

All these things will mount up.
Work out your monthly running costs carefully.

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## Marmite the Dog

> Originally Posted by Thetyim
> 
> Obviously your situation is different because of your son but If I HAD to have one then it would be an indoor job or at least fully covered.
> 
> 
> We've tried keeping him indoors Thetyim but he just climbs out the windows.
> 
> Can't keep him covered either.
> 
> ...


What a wonderful picture, Dougal!

(I'm not sure what GoW was doing at your gaff though....)

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## Dougal

> Dougal, do you have your own bore/well If not then you will be paying per meter of water, and a pool uses a lot of water everyday because of evaporation. The filter pump is a big drain on the electric and has to be run several hours every day. All these things will mount up. Work out your monthly running costs carefully.


Thanks Thetyim I will look at it more seriously when we are out next month. I am told that salt is the best way to go rather than use chemicals.

A bore hole should be no problem; the neighbour has one and we are at the bottom of the range of hills, I know one chap who supplies about 10 houses from his land which is at least 300m higher. Leaves shouldn't be an issue either.

I will report back later and you have my full permission to say 'Told you so' if I make the wrong decision. :Smile:

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## Thetyim

Yes you can have a salt water pool but then you will have corrosion problems with anything that is not 100 percent stainless steel.
Another option is an ozone machine which halves your chlorine consumption and makes the water a lot more pleasant.

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## Eliminator

Thetyim, since you already have the pool in, you might think of just roofing over with a clear or even tinted sheeting to cut down on your leaf problem. It would seem to kill a few birds with one stone.

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## Thetyim

Yep, I thought about covering it over and went to look at other pools.
If you use plastic it gets covered in dust/bacteria after a short while and looks ghastly.
If you use the  sun netting it sags and frays.
But I will admit it has one big advantage, you can use the pool during the day instead of just dawn and dusk .

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## Eliminator

You're just making it hard to come up with a solution for your situation. Why don't you just fill it in and then you won't have anything to whinge about.  :saythat:  Would help if you had pics and then maybe someone could give you some better ideas. Just a thought.

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## Thetyim

Yep, quite right.

Problem is the pool is hardly ever used.
It is a pain in the arse.
If I roofed it over would it get used more ?
Just don't want other people like Dougal to make the same mistake.

I might end up keeping fish in it.

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## dirtydog

jesus thetyim, my livelyhood involves making swimming pools for people and earning a bit of dosh, and here you are telling em not to get a pool, right thats you banned for 30 years, and I should add that you deserve it....

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## Eliminator

DD, There's a pool down the road from me that hasn't been finished and was wanting to know if I got some pics to you, could you give me a quote? It's in a subdivision and I think the guys that were buiding it ran outta money for the project. Long story. Thanks

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## Thetyim

DD, I don't know how you found out  my christian name but please don't post it on the forum.

Thanks for the ban,
I will have time to learn how to swim now.

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## Dougal

> Problem is the pool is hardly ever used.


I think that judging the amount of use is the key thing Thetyim. If I tell you that here in the UK my son spends 50% of his time in the bath you will appreciate that we expect him to use the pool quite a lot.

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## dirtydog

elimantor take the pics and i will give you an estimate to finish it, i got to admit I got a bit stiffed on the pool I am doing now as all the steel work is 30 cm to short, but my customer is good and this he will pay for, well I hope he will  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

Now it really is looking like a swimming pool  :Smile:

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## Thetyim

> Now it really is looking like a swimming pool


No it doesn't.

It's not full of water and dead leaves

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## dirtydog

well it has people playing in it  :Smile:  also a good way to stop leaves falling into your swimming pool is to chop down all your trees, problem solved  :Smile:

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## Thetyim

> down all your trees, problem solved


Not an option I'm afraid.
The garden is built into the side of a hill
We own  the hillside but need to have trees (mostly teak) to stop any landslides

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## Eliminator

so you built the pool in the wrong spot then. :dev+ang:  Really now, take some pics and maybe one of the brains here can help solve your problem.

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## Dougal

> Not an option I'm afraid.


Drain the water, build up the sides a bit higher and call it a squash court. Or maybe a very large coal bunker.

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## DrAndy

a clever bit of walling can solve leaf problems

make an attractive wall barrier, with maybe a nice moongate in it

or something else

My friend did that and it made a lot of difference...if you have the room for it

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## dirtydog

Anyway getting back to my swimming pool that I am building, today we have been working on the spa area, should be quite a nice area to spend a lazy afternoon getting smashed out of your head on cocktails  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

Now we have all the sides shored up ready for several tonnes of concrete to be poured into the form.

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## dirtydog

As you can imagine we spent loads of money on crappy old bits of wood to shore up the block work  :Smile:

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## Eliminator

thetyim is always on about leaves in his pool and got me to wondering why Thais don't build ppols that have a runoff to take the suface stuff of the pool into a easy to use basket that you could empty. I haven't seen a Thai pool yet that has this feature. 

DD, will your pool have this and if not, WHY? Seems most pools in the US  have a multiple system for catching this trash. 

 DD, I took a bunch of pics of that unfinished pool project and will have them back tomorrow and will post them then. No luck though on finding any cobras but sure there could be some under the building there. My knees aren't good enough to go crawling around under there looking for em, so gave that part a miss. LOL

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## Marmite the Dog

> thetyim is always on about leaves in his pool and got me to wondering why Thais don't build ppols that have a runoff to take the suface stuff of the pool into a easy to use basket that you could empty. I haven't seen a Thai pool yet that has this feature.


Most of the pools in the Sukhumvit apartments have that feature you talk about. My condo is a bit older, so it doesn't. Pigeon feathers are the biggest problem here.

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## peterpan

> Yep, I thought about covering it over and went to look at other pools.
> If you use plastic it gets covered in dust/bacteria after a short while and looks ghastly.
> If you use the sun netting it sags and frays.
> But I will admit it has one big advantage, you can use the pool during the day instead of just dawn and dusk .


The only reason the netting here sags and frays is that it is crap. In my condo in Queensland they have had a tensioned membrane shade cover structure over 10 years old. It still looks like new. The Shade sail cloth was manufactured in South Africa. Sadly the import duty into Thailand for the material is high.

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## dirtydog

Anyway it was now time for the concrete poor, the pool room is nearly finished.







As you can see here, the second lorry was in a rush and poured way to quick, this collapsed part of the block that was being used for the form, had to shore it up with ply to continue the pour, now we are chipping out the damaged block and we will have to stick a real big coat of render on it to bring it out level to the original block.

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## lom

> As you can imagine we spent loads of money on crappy old bits of wood to shore up the block work





> As you can see here, the second lorry was in a rush and poured way to quick


Som Nam Na  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

Well we are all back at work again, although not all my staff have returned, only to be expected I suppose.

Now we are making all out straight edges using cement which is extremely time consuming, this has to be done before we can render off the inside of the swimming pool, in the first picture you can see that we have stuck an extra pipe in, got to admit we nearly forgot that one due the previous builder forgetting it, this is for the vacum cleaning of the pool, ie it is normally closed off, but every couple of days you need to get your slave to run the vacum over the bottom of the pool.

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## dirtydog

Today is the start of the rendering day, we will do one complete wall of render perday, yet again we are using water proofing in our render mix, if you look to the right of the pictures you will see loads of squigely lines, this is to give us a slightly rough finish for when we tile to give us better adhesion to the render.

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## Airportwo

I had these included in my pool construction and have to say they were bloody good value for money   :Very Happy: 




> if you look to the right of the pictures you will see loads of squigely lines, this is to give us a slightly rough finish for when we tile to give us better adhesion to the render.

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## dirtydog

Here we have an aerial photograph of the pool.

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## Dougal

Will this pool have 'sandwash' around it DD?

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## dirtydog

Dougal by sandwash I assume you mean colored cement with tiny little stones in that the water runs over and then drains into the runoff and back into the resovoir, yes it will  :Smile:

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## Dougal

^ That's good, I've never seen how it's done. By the way what is the steel sticking up in the air in the corner for?

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## dirtydog

There will be a small retaining wall there of about 30 cms in height to seperate it from the main pool, the steel is just for us to attach the rest of our rebar to to keep it strong.

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## KID

thetylim, my mom used to have the same leaf problem with the pool she had. i ran across some used netting that was used at a baseball diamond to catch the fly balls. i took flexible pools and built a kind of dome over the pool then attached the netting using plastic pull ties. worked out great and even provides some shade. i wish the netting would have been just a little finer but it kept all the big leaf's out and cut the work load on the pool in 1/2

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## dirtydog

Well we started tileing the old pool today, most pools are tiled with 10 by 10 cm tiles, the reason for this is that it looks nice when going round curves and also makes the inside of the pool less slippery, the only problems with this is that takes 100 poxy tiles to do one square meter as oposed to say 11 nice big tiles.

The video is of the digger we hired to dig out for the resevoir, the git charged me 1,000baht for half hours work, but if I had got one in specially he would have charged me about 3,000baht, he is working on the same building estate as us.

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## dirtydog

For those poor people that are not members of this board and cannot view the exciting videos here, well here is a couple of nice pictures of the digger digging out a big hole that we shall turn into a resevoir.

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## dirtydog

Well the tiling is going on at a snails pace but they are also working on the resevoir.

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## dirtydog

Here is the resevoir, as you can see they are tyeing the rebar up at this present moment in time, once it's done it should hold 5,000+ litres, I would have prefered it a bit bigger but there really aint enough room.

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## aging one

Why can I connect to an hour porn show in 3 seconds but these little babies take 15 minutes to download and buffer?

Well it was really only about 2 minutes.

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## The Gent

Haven't seen it mentioned in any Thailand-related forums talking about pool construction where the pool company comes in with a truck and the form is done with 'shotcrete' or 'gunnite'?

Is that available in Thailand?

Cheers,
BM :Smile:

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## Bluecat

Swimming pools are like girls.
They're too expensive for the time you spend in... :saythat:

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## Tippaporn

I can't believe I just sat here and read 7 pages of "How to build a swimming pool." I _must_ be bored.   :Very Happy:  

Now that you have my enthralled attention how long before this picture novel is concluded?  When do we get to see the finished product?  And how long does it take start to finish?

BTW, 6-800,000 baht seems high for a swimming pool.  I mean, who am I to know, but can't you buy a house for that much in Isaan?   :Confused:

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## RandomChances

> BTW, 6-800,000 baht seems high for a swimming pool. I mean, who am I to know, but can't you buy a house for that much in Isaan?


Not if it's got a swiming pool

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## Tippaporn

> Not if it's got a swiming pool


DD will definitely have to come down on price. Either that or I could only afford to live in one or the other. Living in a swimming pool doesn't sound like a good prospect. Advertising "no leaks" would _not_ bode well during the rainy season.

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## dirtydog

> how long before this picture novel is concluded?


Should normally take 6 to 8 weeks at most, but that is working days, due to loads of holidays and now rain everyday it will be a bit longer.

As we can see the tiling is coming along nicely.






The spa area is now nice and round.






The resevoir is now being rendered off and tiling on that can start tomorrow.

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## Tippaporn

I'll grant that this beats watching television.  It's always nice to get deserved feedback, so enjoyable stuff, DD.

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## dirtydog

Actually this is my way to stop future customers hassling me over what my staff are doing, you really wouldn't believe the amount of phone calls I get from idiot American customers asking me what the fok my staff are doing, this I can then refer them to and then they will know wot the fok my staff are doing and not waste my time with their idiotic questions, no offence to americans here on this forum but you are the customers from hell  :Smile: 

I remember this joke and it really does run true;

10 bucks to fix your tap

20 bucks if you want to watch us fixing your tap

100 bucks if you want to advise us on fixing your tap

I mean if you could fix or build it yourself then foking fix or build it yourself, don't get foking involved  :Smile:

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## Tippaporn

They want to make sure it gets done "the American Way."  Do you have to provide them with MicroSoft Project reports, too?  555555555.

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## Eliminator

DD, if you watch over your workers ALL the time they are doing things, then I don't think you would have the problem of people asking questions of what the heck your workers were doing. Since MOST of the construction, wiring and plumbing I have seen being done by Thais is poor, I for one will be at my next place whenever work is being done. We all here stories of customers being told that their requested materials would be used, they get replaced with second rate so the builder can make more money. 

 I have a 3 year old place and the roof still leaks, plumbing is just nuts with the constant gurgle effect whenever someone flushes the toilet, the wiring looks as if a 10 year old was running the wiring around ( I can see wiring across my sunlight), the parkay flooring is popping up and countless other problems. 

  You might run a reputable biz that stands behind their work but there are a lot of companies that do not do this and in the end HAVE to watch what's being done. I don't think I have EVER seen a squared up door or window in any building.

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## Marmite the Dog

The thing is, if you're paying for a westerner to do your construction work, you shouldn't need to stand watch over it. 

If you want to be a pain in the arse, hire your own crew. I think after 15 or so years constructing in Thailand, DD should've found a decent foreman.

Funnily enough, I've just been doing some design work for an aussie guy and his Thai missus. The missus is a right pain in the arse, as she wants to change things just to show that she is the customer, not because it improves the design. In the end the guy just said 'go with it - I'll take the flak' as he understood what she was playing at.

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## dirtydog

Eliminator, do you have a child or children? if you did would you goto school with them each day to make sure the teachers are teaching them correctly? Which is more important, your childs education or your house? Obviously to your mind it must be your house, strange priorities you have there Eliminator  :Smile:

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## Eliminator

DD, Sorry if I stepped on your toes there and I'm sure you have a fine crew that you do NOT need to watch over. I am also sure that you are an honest person that would not cut corners to make higher profits. I wish you had built my place instead of the ones that screwed mine up. I meant to say that most crews that you see in Thailand don't do a very good job and you do have to watch them to make sure they do it right and don't cut corners or materials to make higher profits.

I think you would have to agree that there are a lot of slipshod guys out there (including farang), that do not do a satisfactory job and that everyone should make the effort to find out more about the construction company doing the work. This can be done many ways: specs and pics of previous projects done, get a list of satisfied customers, check for any complaints (is there a Thai office like this here?), go to ongoing projects and many others.

  If I had children then I would not be watching the teachers on a daily basis but I sure as hell would check the school and teachers out before letting them go to it. I made the big mistake of NOT checking the construction company before my house was built. I saw them building all the other places and made the wrong assumption as to their capabilities, won't happen again, I assure you.

  I don't think I will ever buy another house in a subdivision again (many reasons for this) but if I did, would it be possible to get my own choice of construction company to do the work?

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## dirtydog

> I think you would have to agree that there are a lot of slipshod guys out there (including farang), that do not do a satisfactory job and that everyone should make the effort to find out more about the construction company doing the work.


I quite agree, but you have to remember that is also all over the world, most things are never one hundred percent perfect, and here it doesn't help using such low quality materials.






> I'm sure you have a fine crew that you do NOT need to watch over.


Alas I do have to watch over them, but I don't expect the customer to, I am there to tell my staff what to do, not explain why we are doing things a certain way to the customer.

I remember one job was to renovate a 40 square meter condo, we had 2 weeks to complete the whole lot, first day I got 15 staff in there, tilers, ceiling people and electricians, we wern't allowed to start until 9am, the customer, who obviously cant speak Thai wanted to know what each person will be doing, I mean don't you think I got more important stuff to do on such a tight time frame than explaining in detail the work each person will be doing.






> I am also sure that you are an honest person that would not cut corners to make higher profits.


No point in cutting corners and using lower grade materials, can't make a decent looking job that way, the A grade materials are hard enough to work with.




> would it be possible to get my own choice of construction company to do the work?


The place where we are working now is a sub division, the guy I believe had to pay a deposit to the company of 100k baht to be able to use other contractors otherwise his house wouldn't be finished this year.

For the last 5 years or so I have been really lucky, ie in the fact that the customers don't live here, so at least that way they don't see the mistakes that we have to rectify  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

Well we have had a few days of rain so no one has been working, but today we are back in action, anyway as you can see 99 percent of the wall tiles are now up and we are just about to start on the floor.

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## aging one

So there are not any pool builders in Thailand using gunnite?

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## dirtydog

> So there are not any pool builders in Thailand using gunnite?


Not as far as I know of.

Well as you can see the top has been poured on the resevoir, there is now at this moment some Thai guy inside there finishing the last few tiles, yep we were 13 tiles short, and tomorrow he will have the joy of staying in there allday doing the grouting, would you do that for the princely sum of 250baht perday?

Anyway once the top has hardened off enough we can chuck some dirt on top of that and it will be part of the lawn with only the access hatch showing.




How to make your own Dolphins for your swimming pool;
First up take some 3 mm ply wood to your local artist, get him to paint a dolphin outline on it, cut that out with the old jigsaw, chuck that on the floor of the swimming pool, draw round it, chuck a load of cement all over it, place your dolphin shape on top of that and take away the excess cement with a trowel, you need to give the cement a bit of time to harden so you can get nice edges.

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## hillbilly

i love the dolphin photo. now I know. thanks... :Smile:

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## peterpan

I think the drowned Dolphins lying on the bottom are a very tasteful touch.

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## dirtydog

Well as this picture shows we are nearly finished, should start grouting in the next couple of days  :Smile:

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## dirtydog

Well here we have most of the walls grouted.





Next up is we got to put a nice finish aroung the edge of the swimming pool, this we shall leave until we have finished welding up the roof next to the pool, don't want burn marks on it.

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## Dougal

Do you get one of your own people to do the sand wash or sub-contract? This is something I've never seen done and have no idea of the steps involved.

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## Boon Mee

> Next up is we got to put a nice finish aroung the edge of the swimming pool, this we shall leave until we have finished welding up the *roof next to the pool*, don't want burn marks on it.


Are you going to have a roof over part or all of the pool DD?
Been thinking I when I build mine, gonna have a partial roof.

Is your pool going to be fresh or salt-water - don't think I've seen a reference to that so far?

Cheers...

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## dirtydog

My own staff do the sandwash, actually that should make for some interesting photoes.

The roof is for over the bbq area and extends out to the pool, well it will do when we build the bloody thing.

The pool will be fresh water, although I believe now that salt water pools are the most popular here in Pattaya due to less maintenance.

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## dirtydog

Well if it hadn't rained yet again today the pool would have the inside finished, A word of advice here, don't start building a pool during the rainy season, poxy bloody weather...........

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## Cobby34

The rubber strip is called water bar,its used when you have a cold joint (in this case where the wall will join the slab) its normaly used where water can penetrate the concrete,the reason it is used is to stop the water travling through the cold joint.



> Thanks for this DD. A couple of questions if I may.
> 
> I take that the footing were already in when you took on the job - was more steel used there or is that just a big concrete raft?
> 
> You mentioned a reservoir somewhere in the thread; is that already built or will you be building that later?
> 
> Can you expand on the use of the rubber strip; it isn't clear to me how it stops leaks.

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## Cobby34

DD how much do they charge for m3 of concrete in LOS?

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## dirtydog

1,500 baht to 2,000 baht plus depending on the strength.

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## Cobby34

That is cheap.



> 1,500 baht to 2,000 baht plus depending on the strength.

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## Dougal

How is the pool coming on DD? Have you done the sandwash surround yet?

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## dirtydog

Just finishing off all the roofs at the moment, mid next week we should be back on the swimming pool.

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## Dougal

> Just finishing off all the roofs at the moment, mid next week we should be back on the swimming pool.


Any progress?

I've got this bloody great hole in my back garden and I'm waiting for 'step 9'.

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## dirtydog

Onto the sandwash, all this is is cement, sand, little tiny stones and some synthetic yellow iron oxide to give it the color, mix it all together in a big tub and pour it onto your concrete base, give it a quick go over with your renderer and wait for it to harden up a bit before you give it a final rendering off.

As you can see the swimming pool is now absolutely filthy and they are at this moment cleaning the bloody thing out.

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## Dougal

Can you get different colours to put in the mix other than the yellow?

I am sure somebody had mentioned to me using acid as part of the sandwash process.

I didn't ask them to elaborate but just assumed that acid was used to cut back the top bit of cement and expose the stones more - did I misunderstand?

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## dirtydog

I think they have the 3 primary colors so from those you can make any color you want.

Here what is normally done once it is nearly dry is to chuck rough sand in a thin layer on top, as people walk on this this brings the stones out a bit more, most places we couldn't use as acid as it would destroy their gardens.

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## dirtydog

Finished at last, now that dont look too shabby does it, you just can't beat haveing your own swimming pool in Thailand.

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## Marmite the Dog

I'll have one of them in my back yard - add it to the list please.

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## jumbo

Hi DD,

A little off topic, I am just about ready to start a new build just outside Patty. The problem I have is that there is no town water, several bore holes have been drilled in the area but no water :Sad:  . Should I try another bore hole at the cost of 100,000 baht or go for under ground concrete tanks for deliverd water and collected roof water.
I look forward to your advice.

Jumbo

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## dirtydog

Normally it is a no water no pay situation, try a differant drilling company.

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## dirtydog

Well here is a great big swimming pool I saw today, to my mind it seems a bit dangerous due to the depth, the steps leading into the pool seem to be at a depth of about 1.8 meters deep, ie no steps into the shallow end  :Sad:

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## Driventowin

IMO Should definately have a ladder in the deep end... I also agree that the steps should be moved towards the shallow end a little more..

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## DrAndy

naw, it will be fine until they fill it up

I suppose the steps will give a choice of which depth you want to go into

turn left if you can't swim

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## SEA Traveler

> naw, it will be fine until they fill it up
> 
> I suppose the steps will give a choice of which depth you want to go into
> 
> turn left if you can't swim


I C it the same way.  Looks as if one could step out from the deaper end right onto the steps.  I sort of like this feature.

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## SEA Traveler

> IMO Should definately have a ladder in the deep end... I also agree that the steps should be moved towards the shallow end a little more..


Somehow I think it was in the design to have an option to go toward shallow or deep ends.  Good observation though.

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## Lee4Life

I'm curious as to what you used to cover the reservoir intakes?

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## byownerthailand

We are looking for a pool company that wants part of the market in Pattaya.  If you are please contact me at info[at]byownerthailand.com 


We are also looking for anyone else in any phase of construction.   We are not looking for employees, we are looking for Independent contractors that just want to expand or break into the Pattaya Market.

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## byownerthailand

I thought that it's common place to go off the deep end here    I guess the steps are a new concept to an easier landing....

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## Nawty

DD....did you feel repulsed and dirty building something that you can wash in ?

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## Hans Graf

I was looking with interest at your pool construction and the most important part the wateproofing did NOT get a mention.
Is your pool still holding water???
I have found that most pool builders bypass this little bit of important action.
We have nothing but problems where we live until we used Drizoro Waterproofing.
Lucky it is in Bangkok.
Let me know how youir pool is going

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## unjustlyaccused

Very nice description of the whole process. I guess I won't ever do that now.

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## jabir

Inviting advice from the experts, probably not worth a new thread, but reason enough to bump DD. 


A neighbour recently had a pool makeover, small, c8m by c4m, took about a week with 6 workers, stripped and replaced everything, looks sweet, and it's fully automated in respect to water quality, ph and whatever. Some things will always need to done manually, fex removing leaves from the bin, but most people could handle that on a good day, and I think he may have overpaid a bit at 100k, but that's not critical.


Meanwhile, we pay 1500bt/pm and the lad pops in 3x weekly for general care and maintenance, and for the most part this system works; when something goes wrong he'll fix it at extra cost, fex a recent pump malfunction. 


There's probably stuff I'm overlooking, but for now are these automated systems efficient and reliable, I can worthless guarantees for stuff born in China involving expense/inconvenience when something goes wrong, and what's your take on paying 100k to save 1500bt/pm, allowing for the value of an entirely new pool?


tia

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## jabir

Mods: This is not a doghouse thread, so why can't I format spacing?

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