Thread: Chris's Villa Build in Phnom Penh Cambodia

Here are some more shots from the first floor:













Notice they put all of the penetrations for water, drainage, power sockets, air-con drainage through the floor before they poured the pad. This saves they turning you pad into swiss cheese with a core drill as an after thought:







And this is some new cutting edge technology imported from Japan, it's called a 'plumb line':



And here's some ISO certified scaffolding, which is always a big hit:

This is where the labourers sleep at night. I'm hoping they don't try claiming squaters rights when the build is complete, as it could be a tad of an eyesore:

Hi to all,

I am a long time viewer at TD but this is my 1st post. Just an observation but you do not seem to be using any method of tying the brickwork to the columns? Also I hope they are going to add more props to your 1st floor formwork (beams) before pouring concrete.

Tas

Originally Posted by Tassini

I am a long time viewer at TD but this is my 1st post. Just an observation but you do not seem to be using any method of tying the brickwork to the columns? Also I hope they are going to add more props to your 1st floor formwork (beams) before pouring concrete.

I hope they are too, if they leave it like that it will poor all over the floor ;-) They put all of the supports on last otherwise it's difficult to move around up there.

No I haven't seen them using any kind of ties between the masonry and the columns in any of the builds I've done, should they be?

I have an engineer doing some site supervision and he's never mentioned it.

Yes I am interested. Thank you for the great pictures.
Good luck with the house.

Originally Posted by nigelandjan

I hope the end result is a bit more refined than some of the bricklaying on display Chris ,, your probably too young to remember but in the UK there used to be a chain of shops called The Wavy Line ,they would have been proud of them.

Like you said bricks are nothing more than the cheapest form of wall fill. I think all of us who come from countries with load baring walls and masonry on display cringe when we see it. At home brick laying is a skilled profession here it's not, it's simply not worth paying someone who's on higher rates than a standard labourer as it offers no benefit what so ever in terms of presentation of structural integrity.

On the other hand in my office in the roof space I'm planning on having one wall with exposed masonry, for that area I'll definitely be getting them to take more care.

Originally Posted by ChrisInCambo

Another thing dont forget ur tv and internet cables to the rooms and make sure they run them in seperate pipes with the electric cables and also outlets on EVERY wall! Wireless sucks when it has to go thru brickes and in diferent areas of the house

Thanks for the tips on paint and separate power/tv conduits, two lessons I've learned the hard way previously.

I'm still planning on going wireless, I'll put one wireless router up top and a repeater on the bottom floor. All of the wireless routers are capable of much stronger signals but are restricted by the manufacturers to meet European and US broadcast regulations. They can easily be cracked and turned up to full strength, once done they won't only get through the walls they'll to the next village!

Just don't be surprised if emergency services can't get to you because their radio's don't work ;-)

Originally Posted by Phuketrichard

Chris, instead of buying up property in PP I would ( if i had the cash) be buying in Kep/Kampot and Shianoukville and then investing in 99 year leases on some of the islands. Once there are enough hotels in Shianoukville they will repopen the airport and that will be the time that the whole coast line explodes in Value.

I think Kep and Kampot, now is a great time, the new road is not yet complete and you can already get to Kep in under two and a half hours, once it's done it's easily going to be sub 2-hours, that's really going to open it up as a weekend holiday home place for people in Phnom Penh.

I still think it's going to be a fair few years before Sihanoukville is a destination in its own right. It's a shame the ports there, if the powers that be in the province weren't making so much cream from that, they'd probably care a hell of a lot more about tourism and the process would speed up no end.

I put it at 4-5 years till the Shianoukville-Kep-Kampottrail is ready for tourism so getting in now will pay off.

Victory beach is for sale ( currently owned by the Russians) think the going price is $1,000 /m2!!!

Hey Chris. How much space are you gong to have inside the walls for a garden? We planted trees all around the inner wall two years ago. Now, unbelievably, we already have mangoes on one of the two mango trees, as well as our first two big bunches of bananas, lots of limes, and guava is starting. Avocado is growing very slowly, but I reckon in a few years I am going to be able to walk out into the garden and pick a pretty decent fruit salad.

Originally Posted by ChrisInCambo

Originally Posted by Tassini

I am a long time viewer at TD but this is my 1st post. Just an observation but you do not seem to be using any method of tying the brickwork to the columns? Also I hope they are going to add more props to your 1st floor formwork (beams) before pouring concrete.

I hope they are too, if they leave it like that it will poor all over the floor ;-) They put all of the supports on last otherwise it's difficult to move around up there.

No I haven't seen them using any kind of ties between the masonry and the columns in any of the builds I've done, should they be?

I have an engineer doing some site supervision and he's never mentioned it.

They should be using ties for the connection of brickwork to columns. Without the use of ties the brickwork will be 'live' and cracking is a certainty in time. We are currently building our own house and when we poured the columns we put our ties in (6mm RB) at the same time. I will dig out a picture or two and post them later.

Tas

Originally Posted by Davis Knowlton

Hey Chris. How much space are you gong to have inside the walls for a garden? We planted trees all around the inner wall two years ago. Now, unbelievably, we already have mangoes on one of the two mango trees, as well as our first two big bunches of bananas, lots of limes, and guava is starting. Avocado is growing very slowly, but I reckon in a few years I am going to be able to walk out into the garden and pick a pretty decent fruit salad.

I've put the house in the corner of the plot so that will leave us with about 15x21 for the garden. I my wife has her way the entire garden would be an orchard, but I'm quite keen to squeeze in a swimming pool and some open grass area where I can play football and things with the children.

Here's a diagram I've been working on in Sketchup that gives a better idea of where the house sits on the plot:



The space to the left of the house isn't huge, but I think it should be big enough for our plans. I'm planning on getting a landscape gardener in to do something creative, want some high trees to block out the afternoon sun and neighbours windows and also do something to hide the carport from view.

The great thing here is that you can get quite mature trees transplanted into your garden for a few hundred dollars each. I'm not sure how old the mango trees I saw were but they had about an 8-inch trunk, they were $300 planted.

Originally Posted by Tassini

They should be using ties for the connection of brickwork to columns. Without the use of ties the brickwork will be 'live' and cracking is a certainty in time. We are currently building our own house and when we poured the columns we put our ties in (6mm RB) at the same time. I will dig out a picture or two and post them later.

Okay, thanks I'd like to see those.

^^That's more or less the way mine is laid out; don't know how much you could tell from the pictures on FB. We kicked around (briefly) the pool option, but have an Olympic-sized pool about a ten minute walk from the house (inside the housing community). I compared the $1 a day cost of using that, against the price of installing and maintaining my own, and went with the lawn and trees option.

Ah, just noticed I cannot post up pics until I have certain number of posts!

Tas

Originally Posted by Tassini

^^That's more or less the way mine is laid out; don't know how much you could tell from the pictures on FB. We kicked around (briefly) the pool option, but have an Olympic-sized pool about a ten minute walk from the house (inside the housing community). I compared the $1 a day cost of using that, against the price of installing and maintaining my own, and went with the lawn and trees option.

I only just saw the pics, I'm a bit of a facebook noob. Last time I checked I only saw two pictures, but upon double checking I realised one of the pictures was a folder!

Looks like a great place, lots of outdoor space and nicely finished inside. I hope mine turns out the same way!

^Yep, I almost never use FB. Too much BS. I'm sure your place will turn out very nicely; it's looking good already, and, like me, you appear to be bright enough to give your wife a pretty free rein. We looked at some more mature trees for the garden, but had had some bad luck previously in another house with transplants. So, we went with starters about 6" to 12". All coming up fast. With the soil around here, I think you could stick a pool cue in the ground and it would sprout. Only that one avocado is lagging behind. Off to do some research on avocado trees now.

I went and check the site again yesterday and things are still moving at a frantic pace, although we did have our first cock up.

The top of all of the windows and doors are supposed to be 260cm from the floor and the windowsill 60cm from the floor. Unfortunately the builders working on one side of the house forgot that the screed and tiles will raise the floor 5cm above the current level, and also that there will be 2cm of render applied to underside of the lintel. They made the lintel exactly 260cm from the current floor level when it should be about 270cm to be on the safe side.

Anyway the contractor admitted the problem, took responsibility and agreed to correct it. This is exactly why I went with this contractor in the first place, he just seemed the most professional and business like. There will always be cock ups, that's a given, the big question though is how they will be handled when they're identified. I'm not going to start singing the praises of this contractor quite yet as we've still got a long way to go, but so far so good.

The contractor who we were originally going to use, lost the job to build the house for arguing a cock-up. I like to give a builder I haven't used before a bit of a test project first so I can check them out, so I contracted him to build the outer wall first. As usual there was a cock up and the builder laid half a dozen wall columns 20cm outside of our boundary before the problem was spotted.

This guy didn't handle it well and spent an hour trying to convince me that it wasn't a problem and that my neighbour wouldn't mind, I called my neighbour and as expected, he did mind and that contractor didn't win the job to complete the house. He also went on to prove my doubts about his professionalism by doing a sloppy job on the last bit of rendering for the wall once he learned he wasn't going to win the house job.

Here are a couple more pics from yesterday.

My growing concrete sample collection, standards must be improving in Cambodia as during the pours on this build we didn't even have to ask:


The stairs are now going in which I'm very happy about as I don't think those ladders they make from left over bit of wood and nails are designed to hold a 90 kilo barang:



I've been watching the construction of the stairs very carefully, as I'm keen to avoid having the short first step and high last step which you see way more often than you should here.

Originally Posted by ChrisInCambo

I'm still planning on going wireless, I'll put one wireless router up top and a repeater on the bottom floor. All of the wireless routers are capable of much stronger signals but are restricted by the manufacturers to meet European and US broadcast regulations. They can easily be cracked and turned up to full strength, once done they won't only get through the walls they'll to the next village!

Do you really want wireless blasting through the house, strong waves as you state?
See:- Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution a health time bomb? - Health News, Health & Families - The Independent

^^ I still don't buy all of the scare mongering. Here are the words of a wiser man than me:

Of all the things you should or could be concerned about, the radiation from your WiFi transmitter is near the bottom of list. There are literally thousands of things that verifiably have a much larger potential to impact your health.

To start with, you should be much more concerned about your diet, the amount of exercise you get, the kind of health care you receive. I'd even be more concerned about the kind of dyes in my clothing, the kind of plastics used in my home, and how slippery my bathroom floor is than about my exposure to minute quantities of non-ionizing EM radiation from my WiFi transmitter.

Even when tweaked a wifi router is still very weak in terms of radio transmitters. You should see the bad boy we've got mounted on our office roof for our RDS GPS system, get within 10 meters and you can literally feel it!!

Just went out to the site, not a lot to take pictures of as all the builders are fixing the steel for the second floor pad. The builder originally said we'd be ready to put the roof on by Khmer New Year which is only 12 days away, I doubt he'll make that, as it will take the pad a couple of weeks to dry out. So I guess that means we're about a week behind, not bad!

Anyway as there's nothing new to take pictures of on site I thought I would share the design of my doors and windows which are currently being fabricated. The doors will use 2cm round steel bar for the pattens, whilst the windows will use 6x20mm steel bar. The doors when completed will be powder coated white to match the colour of the uPVC windows.

The Front Door:


Concertina Doors to the veranda:


Double doors for the balcony and granny annex:


Window bars:

I likey!

They just poured the second floor pad yesterday, just in time for the beginning of the Khmer new year holiday. All the builders have now gone home and I can look forward to 9 days or no work and no building sites, time to recharge my batteries!