Thread: Kurgens pool

Originally Posted by aging one

how hard are you sucking in your stomach....?

Im not

My mate was around, the fork lift driver

Fukk me, they're finished!

apart from some clearing up which will probably take them 2 weeks at the rate they work.

I suppose I'd best charge the camera up again.

Originally Posted by Ratchaburi

Great picture Kurgen what type of filter do you have in your pump house.

a blue one.

Originally Posted by Dillinger

Can I come, I just bought some new speedos.

Don't scroll down if your squeamish

Jasus!

I leave my thread for a week and it gets high jacked by the Blue Oyster Club !

aha, internets woken u

ok, RHS of the lounge

LHS

Bollox, I'll try again tomorrow.

Looks good Kurgen

Try again,
from outside (if it loads)


The bedloom

Guest toilet/shower




The pool toilet with my own urinal that I've always wanted!


The soon to be workshop


I'm going to buy the beer fridge probably today and put the TV and PS3 in at the weekend.
I've also got to order blinds and a thousand other bits.

Originally Posted by Kurgen

I've also got to order blinds and a thousand other bits.

You watch the cost of the project rise rapidly now. Finishing is the most expensive part.

Nice job anyway mate.

When's the monks coming?

Originally Posted by Kurgen

Looking good, needs a shrubbery however.

Originally Posted by Kurgen

Inc Jacuzzi, salt water filters etc etc total 780,000 baht.

Price aside, the 5 day start to finish guarantee sold it to me.

Apparently I'll be swimming in it Saturday evening. I've then just got to get the sandwash patios done next week, fingers crossed.

I'm really impressed with the company, thanks for the recc Pete.

Here's their website.

http://www.bellagio-thailand.com/en/...don-thani.html

Things may have changed from then Kurgen, as I was just reading this

A Rose With Any Name

mainly about teaching and building houses in Thailand


Swimming pools, buying and building in Thailand

Beware of scams when Buying a Swimming Pool in Thailand, Building a Swimming Pool in Thailand, or buying swimming pool supplies online. As pool owners here in Thailand, what we have learned over the years makes us winder why we don’t offer our services as pool experts.
Swimming pool scams abound in Thailand and sadly, in the swimming pool construction business they are conducted by expats as well as by totally unqualified local swimming pool builders. As you read on, we’ll tell you about some of the horrendous scams we’ve seen by companies such as Bellagio-Thailand, Waterworldthailand.com, poolworldthailand (who display non existent offices on their web sites) and the various J.D. Pools franchisees. We’ll also tell you about some of the scams practiced by online swimming pool shops in Thailand. Then we’ll tell you why we’re particularly fond of one pool company.
We have been involved with a few pools in a few different countries over the last 45 years from our own small 4 x 6 m domestic things in Europe to the design and construction of free-form concepts for a large commercial installations and water parks, to our own private pools that our team have had built over the years in our back yards and gardens here in Thailand.
One of the first things farangs will rush to do once they have decided to build a house is to want to build a swimming pool. But like this luxury pool engineered by a pool constructor in Thailand with a good reputation, constructed for less than ฿ 400,000 ($12,500) in 2007 instead of a ฿ 1.2 million quotation from a constructor of dubious repute, it’s a doddle here in Thailand. However, unlike the USA, Australia and Europe, there are no construction regulations for swimming pools in Thailand and it is easy to fall prey to unscrupulous pool firms or individuals who call themselves pool constructors.
So you have called for quotations, found out that swimming pools in Thailand are generally more expensive than you thought they would be, but nevertheless you have decided to to invest your money and spend your spare time in your own swimming pool.
If you live in Pattaya, Phuket, Krabi, or Samui, or any other traditional expat enclaves, chances are you are going to get severely ripped off on the price of a new pool. If the price looks reasonable, then look again, what you may be getting is a pile of junk that will burst at the seams as soon as it is filled with water , or the cheap Chinese pumps that seize and cheap plastic sand filters like the filters installed by Bellagio-Thailand and Waterworld that split open a day after the guarantee expires - assuming of course that there was a guarantee, or that the pool ‘professional’ who built the pool is still around.
Turn-key solutions include everything from digging the hole to finishing the decking (surrounding path or patio) and all the pumping, filtering and plumbing, testing and commissioning the plant. Most builders will throw in a free cleaning suction pole, a wall/floor brush, a season’s worth of chemicals, and with a great flourish, a plastic Ph and Cl tester worth all of 99 baht. They often offer 5 - 10 years guarantee, but if it is a Western company, how much guarantee do you get that they will still be around in 10 years? Most western firms based in Thailand WILL charge significantly more than a Thai company (often as much or more than a pool would cost in America) and unfortunately there really HAVE been more than a few instances where they have received a deposit or payment and not fulfilled the obligations of the contract, or simply built lousy pools that need to be repaired a couple of years later by the professional . Most however are perfectly respectable, particularly if they have been in business for several years, are authorised agents of the equipment they install and sell (important for guarantee service) and will readily agree to show you pools they have built and to meet their customers.

Pools are made generally in four different constructions:
• Concrete in-ground, tiled or vinyl liner walls and floor, or Beadcrete fininsh.
• Moulded glassfibre, in-ground, pigmented smooth surface finish
• Stainless steel frame, in-ground with vinyl liner.
• Above ground (like you see in council house back yards) Frame+Vinyl or Inflatable.
NOTE: Gunnite / Shotcrete is not widely used in Thailand and its cost would be prohibitive.
Two basic techniques are used to get the water to the filter and back:
• Skimmers (rectangular holes in the pool wall that the water goes down)
• Overflow & Balance Tank system with Perimeter Guttering or Infinity Edge. Once used mainly in professional/commercial pools but now used in about 90% of all modern domestic pools. This system allows the water to be level with the surrounding decking (without a lip). Slightly more expensive than a skimmer system, because it needs an underground tank with a water capacity of up to 10% of the volume of the pool plus some space for the water displaced by a by maximum bather load. A balance tank also helps catch the heavy rain during the monsoon season without the pool water overflowing into the garden (or into the house). A typical heavy rain storm in Thailand can put up to 30 cm of water in the pool - if it’s a 4 x 10 pool, that’s around 14,000 litres, or nearly a third of the pool’s capacity, and a lot of it will go out through the tank’s overflow,taking some your salt with it if you have a salt water chlorinator. Fortunately, you are of course using a salt water chlorine generator (aren’t you?), so the loss of salt is minimal compared to the loss of that expensive T.C.C.A chlorine you’ve been putting in the pool every month. Overflow pools are a great advantage where the owners are absent for long periods.
A few types of filter medium:
• Sand (usually fine silica sand, can be bought cheaply from most builder’s supplies, but it must be graded.), It should be changed every 3 years or so by a very messy process.
• Crushed recycled glass (usually marketed as glass ‘beads’ or ‘pearls’) is only marginally better than clean, graded silica sand, after all, it’s only industrially produced sand - glass is basically silicone dioxide, like sand, that has been melted to form other objects, and like sand, it should be changed every few years or so by a very messy process.
• Diatomatious earth, better than sand but very messy and it’s a wonder why manufacturers still produce these clumsy and maintenance intensive filters.
• Zelbrite, a crushed volcanic product, zeolite. It needs only 75% by weight than sand, is fairly expensive for the first load, does not need changing for very many years, excellent filtration qualities and perfect in combination with a salt-water chlorinator).
• Cartridge filters (Handy for very small pools but a total waste of time for anything bigger. Easy to clean, but the imported genuine replacement cartridges every 2 years are disproportionately expensive).
And four basic techniques for treating the water:
• Manual addition of chlorine, algicide, ph+ or ph- . (not accurate, time consuming, often wildly overpriced when done by pool maintenance firms).
• Automatic addition of the above pool chemicals using sensors and microprocessor controlled peristaltic pumps.
• Salt-water chlorinators for automatic and practically maintenance free function. The salt is a very low concentration and the chlorine it produces is imperceptible. Cost against buying chemicals or paying a so called pool maintenance firm is amortised in one or two seasons.
• UV and Ionisation systems for water sterilisation (only practical for very small pools or spas and more expensive than any other method).
Below are some links to local manufacturers and to the leading international suppliers of pumps, filters and water treatment equipment, they are mostly all manufactured in Australia and their products are sold worldwide.
A few Thai pool specialists all stock the same items but many add far more than a reasonable profit margin. Some just go completely crazy with the prices they charge foreign expats.
The best way to purchase pool supplies is probably through a genuine online pool shop - you don’t need to drive there, you (might) get a decent and friendly service, but if you get stroppy with them, it will be your own fault and they will probably prefer not to count you among their customers - remember, the old adage “the customer is always right” is in fact always wrong nowadays. The products may be available at interesting discounts, and the goods are delivered to your door in around three days (if you’re lucky). One (almost) household name for pools in Thailand takes orders over their apology for an online shop, accepts the payment, and then does nothing - not even acknowledging the order and payment. You sit back and wait for three weeks for the delivery man to come and then you finally phone the pool shop to find their phone numbers don’t work, they don’t answer their email, and the whole thing smells of scam. Of course there’s always a logical excuse - (Oh, we didn’t notice your 14 emails - for 3 weeks; the boss is in England/America/Japan). When they finally get round to shipping the order, they send the completely wrong product, and refuse to answer another dozen emails and a few faxes. The phones still don’t work.

• Never buy anything online if you are asked to deposit money in a private bank account
• Never buy anything online from a website that is not a genuine online shop software
• Never buy anything online from a site that is not owned and operated by a registered limited company
• Beware of claims of ‘Guaranteed lowest prices’ - such stores cannot process guarantee claims

Although each pool manufacturer/supplier will come up with the most convincing arguments for the kind of pool he specialises in, unbiased pros will all agree without hesitation that there is nothing better and more reasonably priced than a correctly constructed in-ground concrete pool with tiled walls and floor. They are more labour intensive to build than fibreglass pools, but we are in Thailand where labour just happens to be an extremely inexpensive commodity, and the basic construction materials are the cheapest. Which all makes the choice for concrete a perfect solution and is really the only choice too if you want to build it yourself. By doing so, it can easily cost you as little as 50% of a professional all-in estimate (see below).
Some special knowledge is required for DIY pool construction. The average house builder who can work with formwork (shuttering), bricks, gravel, sand, cement and rebar does not know about the special specifications for steel and concrete or the special way to lay tiles in swimming pools. A good supplier of pool equipment might give you these trade secrets if your order is big enough, but be aware that roughly 80% of pool builders in Thailand don’t know either
And if you are still queasy about the design side of the equation, a good swimming pool constructor will provide a perfect set of drawings based on your ideas, including a Bill of Quantities and where to buy. Their fees are negligible and will save you a lot of money, sorrow and frustration later. Sometimes they will provide a site manager at a small extra cost, and even if they don’t get the contract to build your pool, they may be able to organise the labour for you at the correct rate.
All the brochures for the equipment tell you exactly which pump/filter combination to use for the capacity of your pool and climate, and tell you the pipe diameters to use and the max/min depths / heads and flow rates. A good constructor’s web site or an online swimming pool shop will have all the brochures available for download.
Anyone who can afford a pool in the first place, is not going to penny-pinch and compromise on quality, to do so would be to court disaster; there is some really cheap and nasty pool equipment on the market to watch out for (filters rupturing, multiports leaking, pumps seizing - always when just out of warranty) that are sold in GlobalHouse and some other trash that is even installed by some pool companies. Prices differ only slightly between manufacturers’ products of the same performance and whether their pump housings are carbon-fibre, fibreglass, aluminium, steel or cast iron.
The first phase, digging the hole is the easiest, quickest and cheapest part of the whole operation. A JCB (backhoe) with driver can dig out a 5 x 13 x 1.7 m deep hole in a couple of hours and the price includes taking the dirt away. Get your wife to enquire about prices for the digging and insist that she NEVER mentions swimming pool, and never mentions that her husband is a farang - preferably she should say that her father wants a hole dug for water for his buffalo, otherwise the quote could be in the region of 60,000 baht! (Steve, Udon Thani, January 2007).
The major expenses are:
Formwork and rebar.
CPAC concrete with waterproofing additive.
Tiles and waterproof tile adhesive (or vinyl or Beadcrete, etc).
Decking (pool surround).
Pump and filter.
Salt-water chlorinator
A typical budget near Udon Thani for a 4 x 12 pool, average depth 1.20 m, with balance tank and saltwater chlorinator is about 300,000 baht including labour - less than half the next cheapest estimate. Even if it’s been underestimated by 1O%, and it usually is, it’s still a great price. Working flat out, the whole thing could be finished and swum in within four weeks. or even less.
PRICES: As a (very) rough guide to complete pool solutions, if your pool has an average depth of 1.20 meter, has a standard rectangular form, a skimmer based filtration system and standard (not gold plated) components, and you are quoted a price in 2016 of more than about 20,000 baht per sq. metre, the pool ‘firm’ is just operating a very greedy profit margin.
A couple of things to remember:
Free-form pools (irregular shapes, round, kidney, fancy) are often charged at up to 20 - 50% more than rectangular, L-shaped, hexagonal or octagonal pools all which have straight sides. This is mainly due to the complexities of the formwork (shuttering) and the need (recommended) for the slightly more expensive balance tank system and perimeter grating.

Even a small pool is going to be holding around fifty tons of water. Concrete may set hard enough to walk on within a few hours but it takes about 28 days to cure and reach full strength. Some types of concrete continue to cure for months. Shrinkage will take place during this period and when building a pool it is essential to hire a vibrator to compact the aggregate once poured to fill any cavities and expel air pockets. The water in concrete does NOT dry - it reacts with the cement and becomes part of it. To avoid any unpleasant shrinkage cracks it is therefore essential in a tropical climate to prevent it from drying. It’s a good idea to cover large surfaces of concrete floors and beams with sacking, then drench them well with a garden hose. Even after the shuttering (formwork) has been removed, keep it moist this way for anything up to ten days before carrying out any further crucial construction on it or laying tiles; you can use this waiting time to get on with building your pump house and installing the technical goodies - there is nothing more frustrating than tiles coming off AFTER the pool has been filled. Inspect the concrete carefully and fill any cracks firmly with a fine, waterproof filler. Tiles MUST be laid with special proprietary waterproof adhesive, and MUST NOT under any circumstances be laid the Thai way on a thick bed of cement..

When the tiles have been laid and allowed to dry - even if your pool is built by a ‘professional’ - tap every single one gently with a broom handle. There should be a dull thud. It will be obvious if there is a hollow ring to the sound, and there is no other solution than to prize the offending tile carefully up, clean out the adhesive and grouting and stick a NEW tile in its place.
All you need to know about concrete is on CoolThaiHouse here:
Topic #1027, Topic#672, and basic materials
Pool builders and suppliers in Thailand
Since we started this article in 2007, by mid 2016 many of the pool firms we have reviewed have already disappeared, some new ones have sprung up, and some have come and gone again faster than we could get round to checking them out.
In Pattaya we have seen (in Huai Yai) in some particularly unprofessional pump-filtration configurations on luxury pool builds by Home & Pool. British customers were forced to obtain the services of another company to go and sort out the issues where Home & Pool in spite of their impressive portfolio , were unable to figure out the correct and relatively simple routing for a tandem pump-filtration system , and to calculate the flow rates for gutters and balance tanks for overflow pools.
In Khon Kaen we have seen concrete pools built by JD Pool (Khon Kaen) where the tiles were so poorly laid from the onset that the customer fired the contractor after obtaining a second opinion and discovering that neither the pump, the filter, nor the salt water chlorinator bore any relation to the type and flow rates required for the pool.
In Si Bun Ruang, a fibreglass pool constructed by J.D. Pool (Udon Thani) had neither a maindrain nor a filtration system. The owner was told that with a saltwater chlorinator, no filtration system was necessary. The J.D. Pool franchise has a store in most large cities in Thailand but they are franchises only and these local stores enjoy little support from the franchising organisation. They have little or know knowledge of pool construction. They are forced to purchase fibreglass pool shells from JD Pool which is a fibreglass pool shell factory in Phuket. Overall, J.D. Pools suffers a very poor reputation throughout Thailand. The prices of the J.D. Pool branded chemicals and accessories are also extremely excessive.
In Pon Pisai (Nong Khai), a fibreglass pool installed by Bellagio-Thailand was billed as having been equipped with high quality Emaux filters and pumps. Within 14 months, the cheap no-name pumps they actually installed had failed, the filter valve had seized up, the substandard electrics had burned out, the skimmer boxes were loose, and the owner contracted a professional pool company at a cost of Baht 120,000.00 to put everything right. Bellagio -Thailand started on the wrong foot a couple of years ago by plagiarising one pool supply company’s catalog and presenting it on n their web site as their own. Now apparently specialising in fibreglass pools, they have rapidly gained a reputation for high prices, poor quality, and blatant scams.
In Chiang Mai (Mae Rim) we saw one pool constructed by Siam Pools, according to their slogan “Thailand’s best Swimming Pool Company”, that had developed developed a serious leak in the concrete shell, while other pools in the same area by the same firm had been equipped by wrongly matched pumps and filters. Other owners who were constructing their own pools asked for a second opinion on the advice on pumps and filtration systems offered by Siam pools, took a second opinion which proved yet again that Siam Pools appear to be not quite clear on swimming pool design and construction. Numerous other reports on expat forums suggest that while Siam Pools is not practicing a scam, its quality does not reflect the name they are trying to make for themselves.
In Krabi, especially in the Taling Chang sub district of Nua Klong, several pool constructions managed by Krabi Sunset alias Engchuan, both owned by the same Swede who was recently released from a long spell in a Swedish prison for blatant property fraud all along the Had Yao beach, had to be reconstructed by a professional pool company brought in from 1,500 Km up country because no firm in Krabi or Phuket could be relied upon to do the job properly. The professional company has now opened branches in Had Yao, Nua Kong, and Ko lanta.
In Surin, we did not hear anything negative about the pools built by IsaanPools, but we don’t know about anyone who has had one built by them. However, as of mid 2016 there are rumours that the company is operating illegally, and that their Thailand pool shop is at least a borderline scam, with blatant copyright infringements. Indeed they are selling branded products that they cannot possibly have in stock or even obtain, and many of the images and texts have clearly been lifted from The Thailand Online Swimming Pool Shop . When questioned by a potential client they even claimed to be a subsidiary of SwimmingPoolsThailand, which according to SPTpools, they certainly are not. Richard Miller and Paul Bodkin may even be the same person. With only a couple of mobile phone numbers for contact and ostensibly more to do with an apartment block in Surin, there is definitely something spooky about their organisation which claims to offer the lowest prices in the land. Quite obviously, anyone persistently price warring is going to end up with too little net profit to be worthwhile. One can only guess what this organisation is up to. Perhaps they will end up the same way as the ill-fated Pool Doctors who for a couple of years made a lot of noise about themselves but had some very odd ways of doing business - if in fact you could get them to answer their phones and mail.

A Rose With Any Name » Swimming pools, buying and building in Thailand

http://miathai.com

Fuck. That was quite a read. Hope kurgans pool worked out for him ok. I built a concrete one in Laos a few years ago now. Still loving it. We use it 11 months of the year. Kids dig it to. When you see a pool full of kids having fun then thats what its all about. Dont regret building that pool whatsover. Should of done it years ago. Oh, and i get to wallow around swirling beers.

My pool worked out great and am still glad I had it done. The kids use it most but I jump in occasionally and it's a great hangover cure, especially in January. Surprised to see Belagio in the hall of shame. Their after sales was pretty crap but all in all they did a great job.

^ you've jinxed it now mate, its gonna turn into a fukkin liver pool, it'll start blowing out hot air and be fucked by January

Originally Posted by Kurgen

My pool worked out great and am still glad I had it done. The kids use it most but I jump in occasionally and it's a great hangover cure, especially in January. Surprised to see Belagio in the hall of shame. Their after sales was pretty crap but all in all they did a great job.

Glad to hear it

Still not been invited around for a beer and dip.

Far cough Toy Boy, I invited you round for a coffee and you pissed on my sofa, fark knows what you'd do in a pool!