Thread: Building a house in Nakhom Pathom

OK, we spent a long day out at the house site.

Inspecting some of the concrete walls, I discovered things were not all lining up with the frame nice & flush. I was told that the house frame is not truly straight. Needless to say, I'm a little peturbed and will be bringing this up with PD House.

But block work goes on. Most of the upstairs is 80% complete. They are now staring the ground floor.

So here are some more shots of the work.

Upstairs looking south-east from the master bedroom:


From the other side looking back at the master bedroom:


This is a different perspective from what I normally show. I walked down the road and shot across the rice paddy.



A shot looking through some of the trees we planted almost 2 years ago:


This is from what will be the driveway:



And a view of the work crew, on the ground floor:


And the work continues...

Originally Posted by stevefarang

Inspecting some of the concrete walls, I discovered things were not all lining up with the frame nice & flush. I was told that the house frame is not truly straight. Needless to say, I'm a little peturbed and will be bringing this up with PD House.

Sounds worrying Steve ,, lets hope its sorted soon and to your standard.

Thanks for the updates mate

Feeling for you Steve, lets hope you get it sorted, and as Nigel said thanks for the update.

Thanks guys. We'll get it sorted out. I'm still really psych'd about the house. It's really starting to look good and now I can envision walls and layout of things.

Still alot to do. I need to give them room layouts of all the lights, switches, plugs, ceiling fans, etc. Hopefully, it will be finished in February 2013.

And I've been rethinking that wooden front entrance issue. I might stick with UPVC after all.

O M F G,
Walls that are not perfectly plumb and true, in Thailand ?????
Other than that great looking build.
Mak

makmak456 could you please tell me who the expats wife who died in pattaya i hope it was none of the 332 club can you pm me please thanks

So we spent the afternoon out at the property, with some people from PD House, to go over some issues and concerns that I have with construction. Never having had a house built for me before, it's an interesting process. We also went over the electrical layout and I think we've got that all worked out.

More walls on the ground floor are going up, my office area walls are up, as well as the ground floor guest suite.

Afterwards, my wife and I and some of her family, hung around and enjoyed some food and cold beer. We brought my dog with us this time, so it was fun to have him there, even if we had to keep him on a leash. I can't wait until we have the property walls up so he can run free.

This was the first time I've stayed out there until after dark. Needless to say, I was very popular with all the mosquitoes and other flying critters !!

Not too much progress to show since the visit this past weekend. It turns out the workers left early in the week for some holiday and will (supposedly) be back on Saturday. They were putting up concrete block on the ground floor. It was good to see my office area all walled in. It will be a nice space when the windows are in.

Anyway, from the northwest corner, where the entrance drive will eventually be:



And this is a close up of the ground floor guest suite and west wall of the house, with my office in the back corner.



And finally, my dog, guarding the kitchen area already:

Thanks for the update Steve,I am watching with interest and thinking whats coming next due to my very similar experience, just a quick comment as I have heard it many times before and caught my builder not telling the truth (there's a surprise) regarding builders going for a holiday, sick, deaths etc, I found the real cause is if there is work else where and they will earn more they will go no matter how nice you are to them on site, at the same time if your builder PD has other projects and getting pressure to finish they will use your people, I think you need to put pressure on these builders big time, think you are being too nice at the moment Steve, I was at the beginning!.

Cheers
Pete

Also keep in mind that Saturday, August 12th is the Queen's birthday- National Holiday here in Thailand. I would be surprised to see workers show up, not trying to be a downer, just FYI.

Edit:

Sorry, my mistake, Sunday the 12th. Perhaps you'll have workers after all! I'm loving the pics! I am now looking into the building company you contracted for a future project- nice selection of houses. Congrats and best of luck.

Originally Posted by jons557

Edit:

Sorry, my mistake, Sunday the 12th. Perhaps you'll have workers after all! I'm loving the pics! I am now looking into the building company you contracted for a future project- nice selection of houses. Congrats and best of luck.

No worries Jon. I am very aware of the holiday, as it is my youngest's (currently) b-day.

To be fair, the crew was working over the Big Buddhist holiday last week. I am doubtful if they really show up to work Saturday. But we'll see. At least we have some progress, instead of staring at a concrete frame and birds nesting up under the roof.

Jon, be forewarned, unless you have a thai speaking partner, dealing with them will be tough. I know of only guy, in the whole company, who seems to speak english and even then it's not always smooth sailing. And he acknowledges that a lack of english speaking staff is going to be a problem for their success/expansion.

Steve, thats a great looking little dog, is it a particular breed or of the Heinze variety.

Originally Posted by UdonThani Pete

I found the real cause is if there is work else where and they will earn more they will go

Same in the UK mate ,, had this prob myself during various builds over the years ,, could give you a copy of the book of excuses

Interesting thread Steve, I will be sure to follow your build progress.. Best of luck BTW.

^ Keep your pecker up mate I'm sure you'll get there

Steve

The house looks great and I'm looking to build later this year up in Pichai near Pitsanalok. It worries me a little using PD when I see this piss poor wording on the web, yes I know they build houses they don't give English lessons. What is your overall impression now you are nearly finished.

"PD HOUSE" is devote to serve you every procedures in biulding your dream house on your hand.Our wide selections of house designed are ready to be the house of your choice.We have many solid teams of staff with more than 14 years experience to build the same quality house to your satisfactions.
For The home construction has many procedures and relate to many government office involve to the work such as registration for construction permit, Application for electrical and water supply , registration for home address , application for telecommunication , running process for home morgate from finance Institute and also warrantee , consultancy etc.
We are fully understood this complicated procedures. We appreciate to serve those processes for you to minimize your expenses as followings.

Chris, we are almost halfway through. They still have all the interior and finish work to do.

Yes, if it was me alone dealing with PD House, I'd be driven to drink. Having my thai wife usually talking with them has helped. They have been responsive to any of my concerns, including meeting with us both in Bangkok and at the house site to go over my issues.

I've had a talk with the english speaking guy and he acknowledged that having english speaking staff is a shortcoming for PD House. His english is not the best and I suspect he wrote/contributed the english version of their web site.
I'm still impressed by the quality of the build, especially compared to other house projects where the owner used some local guys to pour the concrete, tack weld roof trusses, etc and had to be at the site every day. I don't have to be there daily.

I would suggest you try to talk with them but wait on a decision until we are further along. I'll probably have some other useful, constructive advice for you at that point.

Originally Posted by stevefarang

Inspecting some of the concrete walls, I discovered things were not all lining up with the frame nice & flush. I was told that the house frame is not truly straight. Needless to say, I'm a little peturbed and will be bringing this up with PD House.

It looks great. I know you met with them over some issues but you didn't mention the flush frame issue. Was that resolved to your satisfaction?

Originally Posted by MrG

Originally Posted by stevefarang

Inspecting some of the concrete walls, I discovered things were not all lining up with the frame nice & flush. I was told that the house frame is not truly straight. Needless to say, I'm a little peturbed and will be bringing this up with PD House.

It looks great. I know you met with them over some issues but you didn't mention the flush frame issue. Was that resolved to your satisfaction?

Yes, it was. In fact, I even tried to knock the wall down (I weigh a mere 105 kg), and it was solid. And they've not yet added the top reinforcing bit. And they are going to move a wall ~2cm so it is symmetrical with the upstairs balcony and flush with an adjoining wall. A visitor would probably not pick up on the symmetry, but I did and it's been bugging me.

PD House is going to build a second wall, flush to the main wall, in the master bedroom to have an aligned area for the bedroom door. With this extra wall, we get a little more sound isolation in the master bedroom.

Here's a shot of the wall. The plans have it flush with the wall on the right, but alignment issues required them to shift it over to the left and leave that air gap. The master bedroom door is supposed to fit up with the wall on the left. But now they will fit it on the wall on the right and the new wall they will build in the master bedroom.





And here's a shot of the other end of the wall against the outside column. As you can it's not flush, which was really bugging me.



So shifting the wall and elminating the unexpected air gap, will align it again with the column and give me a little extra room in that area.

I will say that PD House has met with us several times, recently, to discuss issues and concerns that I have had. Their e-mail communication skills remain weak, but they do meet up with me when asked. Even the engineer was at the site with us last week. I wanted to make it clear that I do pay attention to detail.

^ Jeesus wept mate that is worrying ,, hope the rest is of a better standard

Originally Posted by nigelandjan

^ Jeesus wept mate that is worrying ,, hope the rest is of a better standard

Apparently they have some Thai standards of deviation and everything falls into this standard (of course ). But yes, this one really bothered me, however they have come up with a fix that is acceptable. Especially when I mentioned about the loss of symmetry to the balcony, something a casual visitor may not notice but I will.

Again, I have been generally satisfied with the work. I really do like the pre-cast concrete frame structure, but I guess it can be tricky to align all the pieces. I still think it's stronger than some guys pouring concrete on-site and using red brick (like they are doing in a nearby area).

If someone else decides to use PD House, this might be a stipulation to put in the conttract, although I'm not sure to word it properly other than to say "Make it right dammit !!".

Thanks, Steve. Glad to hear it's structurally sound.

We're making our plans now (on paper) to bring to whoever we hire to write up the engineering specs and do the construction. So far it looks like either PD or NKD. I have to work out the exact translation for "Make it right, Dammit", but I will, whichever company I use.

Today was "Pick out Sanitary Ware" Day, yippee !!!

So off we went to the PD House sanctioned home superstore.

We checked out the standard for the house specification and then spent quite a bit of time looking at a wide range of toilets, sinks, showers, floor and wall tiles, etc. The wife has picked out a real throne for the master bath (No, not one of those Toto washes & dries your hiney" toilets). We are generally happy with the other choices made.

However, one of my wife's extended family members (a pretty good guy in my book), who was driving us around, suggested we stop and look at stone floors. The main advantage is that the stone doesn't have as large a seam between the pieces, which my wife really likes. And they were about 1/3 the price of the granite floor pieces we had picked out at the home superstore. They also had a bathroom tile arrangement that really appealed to me for the master bathroom. And they had some nice decorative floor tile pieces that I want to have fit into the ground floor tile arrangement.

So...does anyone have an opinion on stone tile floors ? I think we have to buy a sealer (they had plenty on their shelves) and probably re-apply it every year or so. My wife is even talking about using it in the covered car park area.

We also swung by the house, but I didn't bring my camera. New crew now on site and they seem nice. I liked the fact that one of the ladies was actually sweeping up debris from the 1st floor. More of the walls are up and they are working on adding the last meter or so of block to all the walls on the 1st floor.

We'll be going back Saturday, will get some pics then.