Thread: A "not so Grand Design" in Ubon Ratchathani

^according to Feng Shui, that's a bad position of bed. Head of bed should be against a solid wall so that you have a solid foundation as you sleep. (or so they say) If no other way but to place the bed by a window, put a big headboard so that you have something solid behind you. Also close the windows or drapes/ blinds.

If your bed is on the side where the door is, you can't really see when someone (an assassin/ intruder) comes in. Thus, you have a feeling of unease and contributes to bad sleep. (or so they say)

Desk or bed should be in "command position" so that you can see who enters the room. Also if on computer, so they can't see if you're doing something NSFW. Lol.

I think in many gangster movies/ shows, they also show the importance of the "command position", example if in a restaurant - so that they can see whoever (an enemy) comes in.

****
I've been watching feng shui vids the past weeks and I've changed the position of my bed. Not really due to FS but the old layout felt cramped.

But I knew some FS already from before, e.g. entry door shouldn't be opposite exit door bcos luck will just enter & exit your house. Etc etc

Day #11
The first ground beams, for the laundry/workshop/storage (henceforth to just be the outbuilding) were poured today. Not 100% happy about the process, as the builder had said he would phone us before pouring any concrete but didn't. I was at the site in the morning, out watering the back garden when they started erecting the formwork, and had a quick look but they had only done about 25% when we left. The guys were bracing the forms nicely, and the women were lifting the rebar and fixing it off the soil. The foreman told the wife that concrete was booked for a 4.30 pour, so we came back at around 4 and found concrete truck already there and the job was half done already !
Wife asked why he hadn't phoned, the answer was I had already inspected it that morning .... no buddy, you were still working on it then ! The concrete wasn't as bad as many I've seen on Youtube videos, but still a bit on the watery side. The formwork had been built too close to one section of rebar for a corner column, with easily less than a centimeter of concrete cover so I had them lever the upright rebar over a bit. They ran out of concrete, with one section of beam a few cm shallow, so the workers had to mix up a small batch by hand to get the right 40cm depth. I later realised that the beam across the back, which is not a load bearing beam and is just to cross brace the columns, had been built with 40cm formwork so was about 35*15 instead of the specified 30*15, so that's possibly why they ran out of ready-mix.

Not the neatest of formwork but it all held together...and it probably didn't help that I had drawn up the plans without worrying about standard sizes of shuttering
The upright rebar nearest camera is the bit they had to move over, now they have to straighten it up again !
As I said before, not 100% happy but I'll give them a provisional pass depending on how it all looks when the forms come off. And they know that I'll be checking before they do the house beams !

Day #12

Just two women on site this morning, one misting down the concrete ( tick !) before joining the other one fiddling with the rebar on the house section. Meanwhile I collected a few kilo of rebar offcuts that the workers had left in the grass in the back garden where they had stored the rebar. I might be able to use that for something, or sell it for scrap, and I certainly don't want to hit it with the brush cutter later. I'm sure the lazy buggers will not be picking it up, the wife was already worried that the neighbour might not like all the plastic bags, bottles and other rubbish getting thrown on her land so she gave the workers a couple of old rice sacks for rubbish bags in their shed...waste of time !
A fairly cool and partly cloudy day here today, good for curing concrete. The wife asked why they didn't pour early in the morning so that the concrete would dry quicker in the heat of the day, I had to explain that quicker is not better in this case.

Ok, yesterday was working day #16, and a day off for the crew today which I used for a good look around without peering over peoples' shoulders or treading on any toes. All the ground beams were poured a few days ago, as were the columns for the outbuilding, so a big day with all hands on deck. I had nagged the wife into "casually" asking the boss about a vibrator for the concrete, so he made a big show about using it.

I asked the wife if she wanted to use the vibrator when he had finished but she didn't "get it" until hours later, when she punched me in the chest..."too big!"

My whinge of the week...when the concrete trucks have finished, why do they insist on washing out the last of the concrete on what will be the lawn when there is a dirt track that could do with some concrete in the potholes ? Why not empty the dregs of concrete out there ? Too logical ?

There is another house under construction on our way home, which is a week or so ahead of us. I stopped and pointed out the pillars wrapped in plastic so The Wife asked K.Ae if he was going to do that..."of course we are". Typically Thai she was reluctant to cause possible confrontation but i keep telling her that we are paying the money so we are entitled to ask questions.
The shuttering for those columns was taken down saturday morning and sure enough they were wrapped. The youngest guy on the crew had the job of climbing the ladder and wrapping them, he had done about half the columns when the ladder moved and he was left hanging on to the rebar sticking out the top of one of them. Luckily somebody was nearby and grabbed the ladder to save him...Thai OH&S !
But he did do a good job of it :

the crew started removing the shuttering from the ground beams in the afternoon before half of the guys were diverted to another job, so I guess the rest will come off on Monday. I had thought that they would then start on the "sao" for the house but when I was out at the land this afternoon there was a pickup loading up to take away the column shuttering, so now I don't know what's happening. The house columns are the same 20*20 size, maybe they are longer and need different shuttering ? I cannot tell from the plans, but I'm sure we will find out next week.
A couple more progress pics from day #16 : rear view from back garden

Looking in through the "front door" :

@peciacake There is already a well in the back block, from the previous owner. I've tried lifting the pipe up and it feels heavy so there may be a pump attached but it won't come all the way up, something gets stuck after lifting it about 4 meters. No power cord or anything attached though. a neighbour has told us that the water flow is slow because a water bottling factory about 100m away takes all the water, I'll worry about that after we move in.
ah, the walls...a contentious point at the moment. We were supposed to be using AAC but people have been having a word in my wife's ear ..."don't use those white bricks, they are no good. Stick to red bricks". These are the same people that convinced her to tell the builder to change the septic tanks to concrete rings, because "plastic will fall apart under the ground". She didn't tell me until the concrete rings were in the ground, so I was not very happy about that. I can live with that, after living and working in Outback Oz for many years and using long drop toilets and stinking portaloos the concrete rings are acceptable (just) but red bricks are not. Anyway, the builder is going to take her for a look at another of his projects using AAC and talk to a few satisfied customers before we get around to the walls.

We have a higher priority at the moment...The Leaning Column of Ubon. As today was the crew's day off we had a good look around, the columns have all been poured over this last week and one of them stuck out like a sore thumb. Very obviously leaning ! Got my tape measure and spirit level and found that it is leaning by 2.1cm over the length of a one meter spirit level. To make things worse this column is on the corner of the house, at the front porch, and it is leaning outwards. If I have read the plans right, the soffit at this point will be 3.5m high. And 2.1cm over one meter equals approx 7cm at soffit level by my calculation. So this column is going to be sticking out 7cm right at the most obvious place where you approach the front door, that's not something you can hide with an extra coat of render.
The wife was straight on to the phone to complain, never mind that it was 5pm on a sunday ! Anyway the builder will be on site tomorrow morning to come up with a plan.

Our town house is made of that white brick and the insulation is poor. I would definitely pay extra and go for the red bricks. Obviously you are full detached but still, you want some sort of sound protection and trust me, those white bricks do not cut it. I think he probably wants to do the white bricks because they are bigger and therefore it takes less time to lay.

Shame they have made a mistake already and it speaks volumes to being onsite daily whilst the build is ongoing.

Fine with me, just speaking from my own experience with both. Old house I rented before buying had red brick and it just seemed quieter. I would also just add that that is a western site which used western made AAC blocks I assume. The AAC blocks made in Thailand are probably not as good or genuine if you will.

The AAC blocks on both those sites look markedly different and thicker to the ones I've seen in LOS. No way is the average Thai AAC that thick.

Anyways, I think in the OP's case it won't matter too much as his house is detached and the wall around his house will offer further sound insulation. Our AAC blocks block the noise from the soi quite well but the party wall noise insulation is very poor especially if tiles are then added to the wall.

My house is red brick mainly because when I built it 20 years ago AAC was very expensive and couldn't be found in Roi Et. Frankly, I have no problem with heat insulation but having trees shading the walls all around likely the reason. Sound no prob either. I live in a very quiet village.