Thread: Chris's Villa Build in Phnom Penh Cambodia

Hi guys,

Been reading the forums for a while getting ideas for my own build. Although I'm based in Phnom Penh Cambodia, the building techniques, materials and challenges are all basically the same.

My wife and I are building a 4 bedroom villa for our family on a 650m2 block a few km's outside of down town Phnom Penh, the place is already a couple of months into construction and I was wondering if anyone was interested in following the build?

If so I'll start posting some pics and reports. As I'm interested in getting feedback and there's no comparable construction forum for foreigners in Cambodia.

I'll also have to build up 5 posts as it seems I can't post images until I've done so.

Cheers,

Chris

bring it on

Okay cool, I'll just go and get my first five posts in and then get some pics up.

Okay so I've now hit my five post tally, so let's get some pictures up to give you all an idea of what we're doing.

I'll start with the plans, it's a custom design done by a local architect here in Phnom Penh, here's the 3D render:



There's a fair bit of artistic license at play here, I'm far more debonair then the bloke in the picture and I drive an S-Class not an E-Class, but apart from that it's spot on. Joking aside, there have been some small changes since this render, the columns from the front balcony now extend all the way down to the ground floor and we have also added a second floor in the roof space.

Here are the floor plans:

Ground


If you are wondering about the split space on this plan, the area on the right is a granny annex for my mother in law. She's effectively part owner of the house, as the sale of her house is funding part of the construction. Previously we had separate houses in different parts of the city, but would all end up staying at her house or all stay out our house, so decided it was stupid having two houses, so both sold up to build this bigger place. Pretty sure Thailand is the same deal as Cambodia, you also marry the family.

First Floor - much more space here as the granny annex is only on the ground floor.


Second


And here's the current state of play at the site, as you can see we've just put the slab down for the first floor:





I've got pictures going back to the start of construction, which I'll start to post if there is interest.

Originally Posted by ChrisInCambo

I'll just go and get my first five posts in

games room seems to be the place for that

Post your five here.

Okay I can see there's 11 people looking at this thread and a couple of replies, so now I've confirmed that I'm not talking to myself, I'll go ahead and post some more pics.

Seems I've lost the memory card with the pics of the exterior wall going up and foundation work, so we'll have to start with the first floor beams.


Here's Dad after walking around site telling everyone how it should be done:




Here's my wife and me (in my most masculine t-shirt) doing some praying and making some offerings. You can see they're getting ready to pour the ground floor beams:




Here's the steel work going up for the ground floor columns:




There the 'custom' formwork being put in place for the columns:




A tidy site is a safe site:




Some of those child labourers you read about in the papers:




Everybody, tools down. The foreman has spotted a possible health and safety infringement:




An elevated shot:

Lookin' good, Chris. I'll be following with interest. Thanks.

keep em coming, welcome to teakdoor BTW

Can a foreigner own land in Cam? How much would a house like this cost to build there?

Nice pictures, thanks!

Got another one watching, Chris. I built a place in Batangas, Philippines a few years ago. 612m2 lot. Six bedrooms, 6 1/2 baths. 260m2 downstairs; 280m2 up. Came out perfectly, and in the two years since we completed it, we have had no problems at all. Biggest thing is you need to be on site - every day. Best of luck, and I'll be following along with interest, as the memory is still very fresh in my mind. My twins were about 8 or so when we were building, and I think they enjoyed messing around on the site more than I did.

Originally Posted by Scandinavian

Can a foreigner own land in Cam? How much would a house like this cost to build there?

Nice pictures, thanks!

A foreigner can own condo's but not land, there are ways around this with some legal gymnastics, such as registering a company where you own 49% a group of strangers organised by a lawyer owns the remaining 51%, then the company buys. Or there are 99 year leases with 99 year extension clause. Anyway I don't need to worry about any of that as my wife's Khmer so we can just put in her name as we've done in the past.

I'm budgeting about $100k (3 million baht) for the build. I'm hoping I'll get change from that but I won't hold my breath.

^^Don't hold your breath. You can more or less compute how much it will cost to put up the framework, depending on fluctuations of prices on rebar, cement, and such. Where your costs start shooting up is with the finish work. That, of course, is up to you and depends on taste (and budget) but marble, tile, bathrooms, electrical fixtures, etc can kill you. My place, which is probably a fair bit bigger than yours, cost me about 250,000 - not including the land. And, we really didn't go crazy on the finish work - just solid, nice looking stuff that would last forever.

Originally Posted by Davis Knowlton

^^Don't hold your breath. You can more or less compute how much it will cost to put up the framework, depending on fluctuations of prices on rebar, cement, and such. Where your costs start shooting up is with the finish work. That, of course, is up to you and depends on taste (and budget) but marble, tile, bathrooms, electrical fixtures, etc can kill you. My place, which is probably a fair bit bigger than yours, cost me about 250,000 - not including the land. And, we really didn't go crazy on the finish work - just solid, nice looking stuff that would last forever.

I've learned that lesson the hard way before!

This is the forth construction project for my wife and I in Cambodia, so I'm pretty sure I won't get burned because we haven't thought of something, but like you say prices fluctuate and finishing is a 'how long is a piece of sting' type proposition. We've already seen the price of bricks go from $230 to $310 for 10,000 this dry season and I've just managed to talk myself into UPVC windows which will add $2.5k.

I've always imagined that it would be cheaper to build here than in Thailand, mainly because labour is cheaper and labour costs drive the price of everything.

^I'm in the semi-rural Philippines, about 90 minutes south of Manila. Labor here is dirt cheap. My biggest problem was that several huge projects in China were buying up all available steel bar, everywhere, as well as cement, and prices just kept going up and up. Of course, just about the time I got past the cement and rebar stage, the projects in China concluded and the prices of stuff I didn't need any more dropped. Also, I get paid in dollars, and the exchange rate was going up and down like a roller coaster during the nine months we were building. Had a 37-man crew on it, six to seven days a week, about ten hours a day. Hard-working, great bunch of guys, many of whom still drop by for a drink every few weeks.

Yes, nice pics Chris and welcome to TD. Good progress already as you don't appear to be struggling with workers/helpers.

Looking forward to regular updates

Why is the roof space not ventilated ?
I think you will need to vent the hot air out

Originally Posted by Thetyim

Why is the roof space not ventilated ?
I think you will need to vent the hot air out

Thanks for pointing that out, this is the type of feedback I was hoping for.

In this case there are vents in the elevation drawings, there's a few details from the architectural plans that didn't make it into the 3D render. Guessing the render is a pain to update.

Here are the elevations:

Wonderful report and a great looking place. Keep it up.

Originally Posted by nigelandjan

Thanks for sharing with us Chris . I shall be doing the same on here one day when we build .
I am never quite sure about the far east,s facination of having a toilet so close to the kitchen or in my MIL<S case part of it ! We will defo be giving that aspect a miss.
BTW do you live there full time or half and half ?
Good luck to you and your family in your new home cheers !

I live here full time, I've been here 8 years now and can't see myself going anywhere anytime soon.

Originally Posted by nigelandjan

Thanks for sharing with us Chris . I shall be doing the same on here one day when we build .
I am never quite sure about the far east,s facination of having a toilet so close to the kitchen or in my MIL<S case part of it ! We will defo be giving that aspect a miss.
BTW do you live there full time or half and half ?
Good luck to you and your family in your new home cheers !

I know I'm not too keen on that either, on the first plan the toilet door opened into the main living area but apparently in Chinese culture having the toilet door face the front of the building is bad luck, so had to put the toilet door in the utility room or be blamed for every negative event to ever occur for the rest of my life.

Okay looks like lots of people are interested in this, so I think I'll give you all a quick run through on how construction works here for comparison.

The first big difference is the role of the contractor, from what I've read on here the usual way to build in Thailand is for a building firm to take the plans and give you a price for a finished house.

Here the usual practice if for the contractor to give you a price for the labour excluding the roof, steel work (doors, gates etc), wood work, plumbing & electrical. You then source all of the materials yourself and hire separate sub-contractors for the other parts.

If you're lazy to source the contractors yourself or have built a trusting relationship with the main contractor, the contractor can usually source sub-contractors for you.

Sourcing materials isn't nearly as hard as it sounds, you make a relationship with one of the numerous local family owned material supply shops and then when you need something, you phone them and they deliver it to the site, you then go and settle up the account every few days or at the end of the week. These shops have 90% of what you need and you only really need to go elsewhere for specialised finishings or uncommon plumbing/electrical parts.

The next big difference seems to be labour, we average about 20 people on site at a time, the most I've counted is 30. Here nearly all construction happens in the dry season, the reasons for this are two fold, the first is that it's easier building during this time of year, the second reason is that most of the rice paddy in Cambodia produces only one harvest per year in wet season, this means that huge amount of labour comes online every dry season when there's nothing left to do on the farms.

The contractors want to complete as many projects as they can during the dry season so will literally put as many labourers on site as possible. The unskilled labourers are rarely from the local area, they come to the urban centers during the dry season in crews and live on site during the construction.

My wife runs the project day to day and I just show up a few times a week to check on progress and check everything with my spirit level ;-)

Interesting build. Good luck with it.

^^^That is precisely how mine worked. It would have cost me 30% more if I had just contracted it out. My wife handled payroll, all purchases of material, and was on site all day, every day. I wore out two lawn chairs and a beer cooler or two 'supervising'.