Raising Land - whats the score?

My wife has some land which we plan to build on but she wants it raised approx 1 metre so it will be the same height as the neighbours land to one side which they have also raised, last thing we want is to be swamped by their water run off when it rains hard.

Have looked at a few threads and get conflicting views on how long to leave the land to settle - one person says 6 mnths, then someone else 2 years. To confuse things even more my wife phoned a thai friend who had land raised and he said as long as the supporting pillars are driven deep enough you can build straight away....

So what is the best time period to let land settle? The land isn't massive - approx 60 ft x 150 ft and will be used to just build a house and have a nice garden (with no chickens....crowing away at all hours, they will be on the BBQ when the time comes :)).

Thanks

6-8 months will suffice.

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Originally Posted by kebabman7

build a house and have a nice garden (with no chickens....crowing away at all hours, they will be on the BBQ when the time comes ).

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If your in the country the chickens & or ducks are very handy for keeping away creepy crawlies...

Timeframe could be reduced a bit and stability increased ,if you use well decomposed / granulated laterite as the medium and get a compacter in to compress it .
Layers of .25m, well dampened, compacted, and left for a week before the next layer is placed, and the process repeated, should give you a solid platform that will not move any more!
Have done this on 3 tennis courts and have had absolutely no movement- first one was 4 years ago !

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Originally Posted by kebabman7

To confuse things even more my wife phoned a thai friend who had land raised and he said as long as the supporting pillars are driven deep enough you can build straight away....

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This is correct, the pillars support the building, not the land, and has been said before

so you can build then put the extra earth, or put the extra earth, then build

the land will settle, and you may need to add more later, but the building will stay in the same place!

if you want to use the land under the building, it may be worth compressing the earth there first so no gap appears under the concrete, although that is just a small nuisance

Driving piles in at least 6 points 8 is better is a more sure way that your house will remain crack and seperation free, they do not seem to do a very good job of compaction even under the best of roadways here.
I see no=None, houses that do not show some cracks after a few monts being finished.

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if you want to use the land under the building, it may be worth compressing the earth there first so no gap appears under the concrete, although that is just a small nuisance

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If you were going to use the land under the building for anything other than holding the building, I would suppose that you would need a fairly large gap to access it thru??

The "gap" under the building is sometimes very high, as the pillars raise the house up 3m or so, so that it can be used

mine does as do many others

the land under the house (the new earth) is not for holding the building, the foundations do that

the standard method here is to put in footings and pillars; most places do not need piles, which can be very expensive. As long as the footings are big enough, there should be no cracking

Thanks for your replies, being a n00b to building a house its nice to be able to pick someones brains who have more knowledge/experience :)

We're not intending to use the land under the house, just build on it so its good to know that if the land does settle we can just fill it in abit more. Will probably leave the land to settle for 6 mnths before the build starts.

If you have the time, that would make life easier

:sssh:

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Originally Posted by Happyman

Timeframe could be reduced a bit and stability increased ,if you use well decomposed / granulated laterite as the medium and get a compacter in to compress it .
Layers of .25m, well dampened, compacted, and left for a week before the next layer is placed, and the process repeated, should give you a solid platform that will not move any more!
Have done this on 3 tennis courts and have had absolutely no movement- first one was 4 years ago !

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While this is true, it is based on the land you are starting with being stable. If you are adding weight to land that is swampy, or underlain by compressible soils (loam, peat, etc), then the additional weight will cause the underlying soils to settle over time. You should experience most of the primary settlement quickly (the 6 months someone else advised is good), but understand that you will continue to experience long-term secondary settlement for many years (should be minor and you may not realize it). All that being said, placing granulated laterite in shallow, moist, compacted layers is a great way to proceed!:)

It really depends on the fill that you are using. I know that I am not answering you question...

A crappy fill, full of loose stuff might take a year or more to settle down. However, good fill, that is tightly compacted might be ready to go anywhere from 3-6 months.

What about the neighbours chickens crowing?

What about the WAT Crowing at 0500 or the Full Volume Monk, Wedding and Funeral Partys?

Sure ain't nothing else in this world eat your lunch quicker than life in the Village.

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Originally Posted by blackgang

What about the WAT Crowing at 0500 or the Full Volume Monk, Wedding and Funeral Partys?

Sure ain't nothing else in this world eat your lunch quicker than life in the Village.

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i hate chickens (used to kinda like them before i came to thailand), but the monks!
christ, if i had a choice between monks and chickens i would choose chickens anyday!
back on topic:
compacting the earth layer by layer as you fill with a plate compactor or roller will do a better job than waiting years for the stuff to settle.

throw your foundations before you start to backfill, then build up to floor level, then fill and compact.

different soil conditions need different types of foundations/construction methods.
in some soil conditions you can get away with a simple, unreinforced 6oox3oo concrete foundation, with no concrete pillars, other soil conditions may require pilings, in others, a simple concrete raft foundation.

do NOT let your builder mix the concrete himself.
get the readymix truck in and do NOT let the idiots add more water to the mix.
i never saw a thai builder who had a fukkn clue as to how to work with concrete.
standard practice is to add water until it sloshes around like a slurry, then work it with a straight edged aluminium, allowing it to settle to an even, level, very impressive looking , weak slab consisting of a lower layer of stone, with no cement to bind it, a middle layer of sand (the wrong type, too- they use plaster sand in their standard mix, and an upper layer of nearly pure cement powder. all guaranteeed to crack and crumble in no time at all.

don't even be tempted to assume the village idiots understand the first thing about construction, even tho they will come highly recommended by your thai inlaws and the other idiots who live in the village.
they may be able to put up a satisfactory thai hut but the problem is that most of us do not want to live in a hut and they think that if a hut is good enough for them it is good enough for us but most of us prefer to live in a house that will not crack or fall down and the electrical work will not fry us one day and the tiles will not fall off the walls and they will give you a written guarantee and it will be worth shite when you try to get them to come back to fix the rotten ballustrade and the roof leak and the electrical short circuits.

starting to get the picture?
good luck

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Originally Posted by tsicar

do NOT let your builder mix the concrete himself. get the readymix truck in and do NOT let the idiots add more water to the mix. i never saw a thai builder who had a fukkn clue as to how to work with concrete. standard practice is to add water until it sloshes around like a slurry, then work it with a straight edged aluminium, allowing it to settle to an even, level, very impressive looking , weak slab consisting of a lower layer of stone, with no cement to bind it, a middle layer of sand (the wrong type, too- they use plaster sand in their standard mix, and an upper layer of nearly pure cement powder. all guaranteeed to crack and crumble in no time at all.

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You have been here and been someplace where they know Cement.
I had the same shit when I was new here and started a house, but soon learned to call CPAC order what I wanted and made the driver listen to me and not the crew on the ground, I had 0ver 50 years in Construction when I came here and my start in construction was on a D handle scoop shoveling sand and gravel to a hopped mixer on large construction sites.

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Originally Posted by kebabman7

My wife has some land which we plan to build on but she wants it raised approx 1 metre so it will be the same height as the neighbours land to one side which they have also raised, last thing we want is to be swamped by their water run off when it rains hard.

Have looked at a few threads and get conflicting views on how long to leave the land to settle - one person says 6 mnths, then someone else 2 years. To confuse things even more my wife phoned a thai friend who had land raised and he said as long as the supporting pillars are driven deep enough you can build straight away....

So what is the best time period to let land settle? The land isn't massive - approx 60 ft x 150 ft and will be used to just build a house and have a nice garden (with no chickens....crowing away at all hours, they will be on the BBQ when the time comes :)).

Thanks

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It's nonsense like this that puts people off building.

Thais have land filled for 100"s of years left it for 2 or 3 years slapped a concrete slab on top, crossed their fingers and hoped they don't get any subsidence mostly because it's a cheap way to build and stops flooding


If you landfill 1 m deep then a couple of weeks later or sooner if you are compacting it and then piling meters deeper or going down 1.5 to 2 meters deeper than the landfill with footings what is the landfill supporting other than you?

Builders certainly don't wait 2 years more like 2 days and they are off and running.

We waited 2 weeks then the guy came along and dug 32 2.5m deep holes with his backhoe and off we went.........no cracks no movement and that was 5 years ago

^ I suppose that as it’s Easter it is appropriate that you do a Lazarus act and resurrected a thread that has been dead and buried for 10 years .......