Thread: Japanese House

Well, it's been a long and empty 3 weeks. The workers are away preparing the rice paddies just below the house, this week. They came back after a 10 days stop, this time to pick their hot peppers. They concentrate on the space North of the house, between it and the hole for the swimming pool, an area susceptible to erosion as soon as the rains start!

The steel is attached to the reinforcement already poured.
These plateaux are poured in two stages.

The next day, cement completes the job.

During that time, the roof contractor's team has installed the 16 posts and started welding the pig house roof supports.



But the house site is deserted for the last week, and I've got just 12 days before I leave Thailand. A wedding in Champagne, France will certainly take my mind away from the building;-) and money is fast running out... So, I hope things will pick up with the arrival of the tiles, due around the 10th of June.

There will be land stabilizing works easily done even if I'm not there around the house, rendering the underside of the second floor, and even the round water tank construction by the Thaiai team, I trust them enough.
The floor and walls of the pig house can and must be built as soon as possible, the pigs are in "temporary" quarters, even if they enjoy this environment!

Comin along very well..It has been one excellent story to watch grow. Am keen to view pics of the finished house and pool. I guess I would like to build a 'getaway shack out in the sticks somewhere to escape the city but it wont be as extravagant as yours OM thats for sure. One thing is for certain....and that is that I am learning a huge amount following these construction threads on TD....cheers

I have really enjoyed reading this thread,outstanding.

Re: Pond, i mention this in another thread and Dilbert suggested it may be of use to you. I dont know if barley is grown in Thailand but weighted bales of barley straw will keep your pond clear, given time it will also clear a pond that has already gone green.

In Africa mint is planted around pools to disuade ants from nesting and undermining the concrete shell= no cracks.

If either of these dont work for you in Thailand there is still no harm done and plenty of mint for pimms around the swimming pool!

Good luck to you.

Originally Posted by Old Monkey

Cold pressed, it has a very high value in healthy fats, almost no saturated, a very pleasant light almond flavor, will keep for more than six months. You could compare it to olive oil for its health benefits, without the strong taste and low degree of burning, I mean, I cook fantastic french fried in it.

Dont you mean Quebecois fries?

Originally Posted by Bower

I have really enjoyed reading this thread,outstanding.

Re: Pond, i mention this in another thread and Dilbert suggested it may be of use to you. I dont know if barley is grown in Thailand but weighted bales of barley straw will keep your pond clear, given time it will also clear a pond that has already gone green.

In Africa mint is planted around pools to disuade ants from nesting and undermining the concrete shell= no cracks.

If either of these dont work for you in Thailand there is still no harm done and plenty of mint for pimms around the swimming pool!

Good luck to you.

Nice hints.

Doubt barley straw anywhere around here......any other old wives recipes for clearing dirty water...ie muddy

What a work you have donn!!!! I like it... Respekt!!!

Thank you for the suggestions, barley tho, does not grow here, it's a culture for cold climate. But there is another one I put all my hopes in, this is moringa. this is a fast growing tree, the fastest, I believe, it will give seeds in 8 months. Once the oil is extracted, the "cake" is a perfect water purifier and floculator. I want to plant 1000 this year.
There is no end to the benefits from Moringa Oleifera. I could talk about it for hours. I have a very good friend from USA who lives in Chiang Mai and who attributes his longevity to the 60 gr of moringa dry leaves he eats daily. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer, with one year to live, 14 years ago!
The dry leaves have 4-5 times the amount of vitamin C as oranges, 4-5 times the calcium found in fresh cow milk (once pasterized, it's got 0 assimilable), more caroten than carrots, more protein than soja bean, and more...
It's the answer to malnutrition and desertification.
It's all eatable... The oil keeps its viscosity forever, it's the only acceptable oil for Swiss watchmakers. And the cake is a water purifier. I like the young leaves in salad.
I got some seeds and started plants, I have a goal of 1000, but it's a matter of time before I get to 10 000. Oh, I forgot to say : it fixes the nitrogen of the air into the soil too!

This is last year tree, I prune it severely to keep it low and full of branches.

When 2-3 years old, it is in flowers twelve months a year, nice white blossoms, the seeds come in a thin pod, looks like a drumstick.

The pig house is starting to look respectable!

The structure is almost complete

There is still a bit of welding

The profile is in continuity with the part we want to keep.

The covering can now start. This should go quickly.

Nothing is happening at the house building site. First because the roof tiles are not going to be here before the 10th, and the master welder is sick. Second, because everybody is busy seeding the rice, us too :

Everybody does it at the same time, and I found out why at my second year farming in Thailand, when I seeded my rice one month later than the rest of the district... and all the birds of the district ate the production!

So you cast the seeds in some flooded paddies and you let the water go out. This year, we're using seeds from Africa given to us by a WWOOFer last year, 500 gr, this gave 4 bags, it grows very well with the SRI method and people like this long red grain. We offered the interested neighbors to come and get the germinated plants in a few weeks. We will transplant as soon as the paddies have been plowed and leveled, hopefully in 10-15 days... I want some sticky rice, but it will be just a little, Lisus do not eat much glutenous rice, contrarily to other hill tribes who eat only sticky rice.
Hopefully, the work will start again in 4 days at the house. There is not much time left.

I'm new at this, started this tread 2-3 months ago.
Who's Kingwilliam?
How do you get sent to jail?
Who's the judge?
What can't you do that you would be sent to jail if you did?
Is there a trial?
Petition possile?

I guess these people founded this tread.
I understand about majesté comments, we're in Thailand, no use hitting a wasp nest with your foot, one must respect in public what is most valued in the host culture, and there are lots of other possible targets more worth hitting upon.
But for the rest, the criterias and the rules should be clearly posted, maybe they are, but I did not see them.
Come on, you guys in power, breathe by the nose, open the jail door!

Nawty, what does it mean "boxed member"?

Some pictures before I drive to Chiang Mai to buy a pick-up load of tree plants, keeping the 1000 tree a year mark in mind. There is a lot of room left, a lot of orange trees were sick this year, and the sprinklers are still there. A lot of tree plants were started from seed, a future hedge of sour tamarind, moringas.
Here is the pig house roof, in continuation of the 12m X 10m building used as a fattening zone.

The rest should go rapidly.

I like this staight line.

Originally Posted by Old Monkey

Nawty, what does it mean "boxed member"?

I used to be kinda fat and live in a box.


Piggery looking good.....how many pigs do you need to be self sufficient for a small family ?? Do you have someone to slaughter them ?

old monkey just looked at the pic of the piggery and your roof is not the normal join at the top but sort of open and overlaps, am i right in assuming that this is some form of ventillation ?

scotty

Originally Posted by highlander

old monkey just looked at the pic of the piggery and your roof is not the normal join at the top but sort of open and overlaps, am i right in assuming that this is some form of ventillation ?

scotty

Yes Scotty, you're right. Warm air rises. If the sun hits the roof, it warms up, by conduction, it warms the air, this rises and goes out, creating a draugh, thus ventilating rather than killing the pigs with too much heat. The overhang assures that the rain does not come in. And the animals get a few hours of sun light in the morning...

Originally Posted by Nawty

Originally Posted by Old Monkey

Nawty, what does it mean "boxed member"?

I used to be kinda fat and live in a box.


Piggery looking good.....how many pigs do you need to be self sufficient for a small family ?? Do you have someone to slaughter them ?

It depends on a few things, like this family's way of life, if they eat local foods or only hamburgers in an air-con house...
Also, this is what makes the difference, what proportion of the food can you produce and what you have to buy.
A 100kg pig is between 5 and 6 months old. The last month, it eats as much as during the rest of its life. It sells actually live at 65tbh per kg.
So, if you've bought all the food, you make around 1200tbh.
I produce about 90% of the food, corn, niger cake, rice bran, rice, vitamins and minerals(purchased).

I find your thread most absorbing.
How did you meet your wife and, I assume she is a "Lisu" as with the people around you there. I have never heard of this ethnic group but then again, there seem to be so many different peoples in Thailand. It makes for an interesting mix of racial types. You also mention "thaitai" (is that the correc term you use?). I will look them both up on Google and learn more about them.
So many people warn against buying land in the spouse's name for fear of losing it all and maybe, even your life, if she wants it all and you were just regarded as a dumb stupid sweaty old falang. Surely those incidents are in the minority and yours is a sweet caring woman who is happy to have your children and accept you into her family and community.
You seem to put a lot of thought into the projects you take on and quite a lot of time and money, if I may say so.
I hope this thread goes on for a long time as I learn so much from it. The contributions of the other members also, for the main, are interesting to me and sometimes amusing also.
Keep that green thumb, engineer's mind and builder's level nearby.
p.s. This is not intended to be a "brown nose" post.

Thank you, Grasshopper. In the North Thailand, there are Hilltribes, 8 of them. This part of the country is very different from the rest, by its geography, the beginning of Himalayas, the source of the five rivers that irrigate all the rice paddies of Thailand.
The close proximity with Burma explains that most of these hilltribes are in fact refugies from the longest civil war, more than 60 years, a war waged without pity by the burmese army against the people of the "autonomous Shan State". The oldest refugee camps (1949) in the world are just this side of the border, hundreds of thousands of people with nowhere to go, with mines by the thousands in nearby Burma, and no legal way to get a job in Thailand.
There are private armies profiting from and protecting the drug production of this ostracised by all nations neighbor, some simply defending their autonomy and their life, others making heroin and amphetamin. They regularly force children to become soldiers, practice genocide, kill without consequences, hell on earth.
Lisus are one of the Hilltribes, peace loving and hard working, hunters and gatherers, without country, semi-nomads, the ones who always establish their villages at the highest parts of mountains, always trying to be better, with the most beautiful women of Asia, and half of them christians.
I see them as the cheap labor of Northern Thailand, the ones growing the food, like the mexican field workers in USA.
There are also Akas, Karens, Loas, Thaiais, who form the majority of the local population, and others I will mention as soon as I remember them. There are also lots of chinese, descendants of the Nationalist army of Chiang Kan Check defeated by Mao Tse Tung's Communist army.
Most people do not have ID papers, except a kind of working permit limited to the district and not anywhere else.
I do not know many Thais, I refuse to learn the language since I saw how they refuse to make the effort to hear a wrong tone in the mouth of a falang who studied it for 10 years. I make myself understood, with lots of gestures, sometimes I get screwed, but that's unavailable here, even if I did speak... I prefer not to understand the stupid reasonnings, at least, I can imagine.
The expats I met seem unanimous on their views of the thai culture, there must be cultural reasons, I'm simply not interested in the aggravation.
So, because I'm still in love, in fact still in honeymoon, after seven years, because I appreciate the beauty of the paysage, and the climate, and because I can leave and come back to the land of smiles, because I found here the freedom to act that was lost in my country in the past 25-30 years with safety rules and municipal regulations, because I could realize an old dream of self-sufficiency, I dared putting all my eggs in the same basket, and I will never be sorry about this decision, no matter what happens.
I use Internet to keep in touch with my business, and to keep contact with you guys, I indulge in my passion for building and farming, what more could I ask for?
We will be leaving next week for France, and 3 weeks later for Quebec, my brother in law will keep things going here with the help of his tiny wife, construction of the house will be slowed down, the pig house will be ready in a couple of months, and plants will explode with the rains. I'll be back in December.
Let's keep in touch.
I'll put photos on before we go.
I'm looking forward to a 5 days long spanish family wedding in Champagne in the company of my 4 lovely helpers flying from home. First holiday together in 20 years. I'm excited. Life is not only work!

Old monkey
I like/admire your attitude and hope you live long enough to fulfil your dreams.
I love reading your posts on this thread. I hope one day that I can convince my missus to take a long trip up your way and maybe you'll let me pay you a visit so that I can see that the photos you post are in fact real.

I don't know if you have seen this before but in my wanderings on the net I came across this video of a hillside on the move and thought about you and your comments about fortifiying your hillside against erosion.

http://sorisomail.com/email/42722/ja-viram-desmoronar-uma-montanha.html

Anyway enjoy your trip and the wedding etc. make sure you return safely to Thailand so you can post more pictures.