Cess Pits.

Yep, the bane of Thailand, you get to keep your own shite, Although there was a case last year when a Doctor chopped up his wife and put her in his cess pit, I will be the first to admit that some women nag too much but this is quite an extreme way to make use of your cess pit.

Anyway the best cess pits are the soakaway types, basically a big hole with concrete rings in, these do need a breather pipe for gases to escape, was it in Turkey a couple of years ago that a load of sewage pipes exploded?

Also you do need to flush down the toilet everynow and again some yeast to help break up the solids.

Here is a picture of the main secondry set of cess pits, Now this house was built on a high water table and the main house has seven bathrooms, there is no road drainage there so all water has to be fed into the cess pits, and this guy does not want city hall round every week to empty his cess pits or have problems with toilets backing up, so as you can see it is quite large.

Above is the before picture and below is the after picture.


Anyway in Pattaya you can just phone city hall on 038 429 374, and for a small 300baht fee they will suck the shite out of your cess pit.

Warning; beaware of the fly by nights that walk about housing estates with a lorry following them to suck out your cess pits, this will prove to be a very costly experiance as they are just rip off artists out to stitch up farangs, they will say something like 300baht and show you their nice measuring stick, then once all is finished it will be explained to you that it is 300 baht per inch or something like that and then demand 4,000baht, on this sort of thing you have no recourse at all and will have to pay the money.


Building A House In Thailand

Windows.

Now windows are quite important for non vampire type people, I think I shall start with window frames.

1: wooden window frames.
now wood does look nice and it is traditional, but it has its drawbacks, the wood here isnt seasoned so it tends to warp, also being so humid it expands and contracts and cracks, also it needs continual maintenance.

2: Aluminum window frames.
Now these are nice, low maintenance etc but about three times the price of wooden window frames, yep these guys work on a 100 percent profit margin.
3: Plastic frames with double glazing.
WOW, are these expensive, but then again the best always costs the most, if your into 24 hour aircon then these are the windows for you. Also they are extremely good for sound insulation.


Hmmm, now onto glass, now glass comes in many widths, starting from 3 mm upto 12 mm.
now generally a contractor will use 5mm glass, but for the extra 2baht per sq foot you may as well upgrade to 6 mm glass, now clear glass is the cheapest and doesnt retain as much heat as smoked or tinted glass, if memory serves me correct that blue glass is the most expensive, but its pretty damn sexy.

I hear the shouts for how much does this all cost, well using aluminum frames and smoked glass you can reckon on 1000baht per sq met, thats pretty much the cheapest you will get, If you budget for 1.500baht per sq met then you might get some change.

I suppose i should add mossie screens to this section, reckon about 200baht per sq met or a little bit less if you get lucky, This is for swing type mossie screens, The price goes up from there.


More About Thailand Here

Your House.

Now the most important rooms are the living room, the kitchen, your bedroom and your bathroom, the kids and that can live in 4 meter by 4 meter rooms and can share a bathroom, also you can buy crappy old furniture for them as the nasty little brats destroy everything.
Now obviously in your own bedroom you will want fitted cupboards etc so allow space for them, sixty cm deep is the standard depth, but that really isnt enough.
Now your bathroom is the most important room, now I personally would recommend a seperate shower area away from the bath or jacuzzi, I hate having a shower in the bath and you only need an extra 3 sq met of space.
Also twin sinks, yep splash out that extra 200 quid and make it look classy.
Anyway when you are doing your plans concentrate first on the areas that are most important, ie the areas that you use the most.
anyway heres a few pics .






Pictures Of Beautiful Houses In Thailand

Pictures Of Beautiful Bathrooms in Thailand

Thai scaffolding.

Yep, it looks real dangerous, probably because it is.
Normally its done using bamboo, this house we used proper wood as we had it spare, yep wood and nails, tomorrow I shall take some pictures of our lovely scaffolding at the new job.

Ok, heres a picture of the job we are doing now,(im sorry Issan Alex, i did give it a good shake but he held on)

Here is a picture of what in Thailand is considered a secure fixing, amazing what you can do with some old rope and a twig.





Thailands Dangerous Building Practices Here

The Guest House.

Well here we have a picture of one I made earlier, now obviously a guest house does not need to be made as luxurious as this one, this was originally going to be the maids room, but as the jacuzzi and granite floors were fitted it was realised that this was way too nice for a maids room, also the 250,000baht kitchenette was probably a bit much for a maid when all she would need would be a table and an electric wok.

Those lovely big red bricks come from Salabury, there they cost 19 baht each, here they cost 35baht each, makes quite a differance when you need a few thousand, the mortar we used between the bricks we colored with red dye and left a rough finish.

the wood for the balconey was taken from the old shack that used to be on this land, it was probably about 20 years old and was as hard as rock,I must remember to speak to the owner about compensating me for burnt out circular saws, still at least it was his router we used.

To the left of the picture is the new maids room, yep with the vegetable garden in front of it.

The ground floor of the main guest house is just a garage for parking the car, underneath that is the resovoir for the swimming pool.

But do you really need a guest house? its all more expense, especially if done to this standard.



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Another guest house here, which is really the maids place, has probably the best view of the grounds, Wouldn't you like to get up to this every morning?

Insulation.

Before even thinking about insulation make sure your roof area has a lot of height and is well vented, at midday your roof tiles will be damn hot and this heat is transferred into the loft space, the smaller the loft area the more heat build up.

Foam insualation, this is actually very good although its quite expensive at 400 baht plus per sq met, it also makes it extremely difficult for burgulars to break in through the roof, this is sprayed onto the inside of your roof tiles.

Fiberglass wrapped in foil, extremely good and very cheap and quick and easy to use.

Plaster board with a foil liner, this you should have anyway, the cost is miminal and it is reasonably good.

Insulation blocks, these are 35 baht each and are used instead of bricks, they are very good but I think cost wise they really shouldnt be used to build the whole house, if you have a main wall that has a lot of sun on it during the day then it maybe worth using on that side of the house, although you could always plant some trees on that side of the house to stop the sun hitting it.


More On This At our teakdoor Forum

Paint or wallpaper?

Wallpaper, Now this does look nice and hides all those imperfections in the walls, trouble is it is quite expensive here and after a few years due to the humidity tends to lift, wallpaper starts from about 200baht per meter length fitted, the shops selling wallpaper actually include the fitting in the price.

Paint, now Thailand is renowned for its low quality paints, also the Thais for some reason have a tendancy to mix in black paint with the white paint which then turns it grey, I have absolutely no idea why they do this.

A good quality Thai paint is TOA, a 5 gallon tub of it costs about 1,400baht, this is the exterior stuff, a lot of Thai contractors will take the tubs of paint home and then refill them using a cheaper paint, ie sefco or temco which costs about 500baht for 5 gallons, so explain to them that until the painting is finished all empty tubs stay on site, The Thais all want these empty tubs for some reason so when the job is finished let them have them.


An Ongoing Saga At our Thai Forum

Electric points.

Electric outlets, many people spend way too much time trying to figure out where to put sockets, well as most houses here have beams every 4 meters just stick them every side of every beam and also in every corner in each room, the only ones you actually have to worry about are the ones in the kitchen and the ones that are for tvs as tvs are generally stuck in between posts, yes, some of these sockets you may never use, but as they probably only cost about 10 quid per run you may aswell have them fitted during the construction phase so the cables can be hidden rather than having it done afterwards where they have to angle grind into your freshly painted wall, then rerender it, this rerender you will see everyday that you are in that house as it will not match the original render and you will hate it.

Also while your at this stage, remember to run tv cable to each room, yes you may never have tvs in each room, but for the extra 800baht it costs for 100 meters of tv cable you might as well do it.

As you can see by the above picture this kitchen uses a lot of electric, just in that area alone there are 2 ovens, 1 microwave convection oven, an electric hob, 2 deep fat fryers, and a 3 phase extractor fan, for this kitchen we ran 5 sets of mains cable to it, 2 runs are kept as spare if ever a cable burns out or something like that happened.

How to run your electric cables. And what cables to use.....
1.5 is lighting cable
2.5 is mains cable for general plugs
4 is for high usage stuff, shower heaters and small aircons.
6 for the big stuff.
So you have decided where the mains from the street will run into your house, this you will connect up to a breaker box, sqaure "D" is very good, now for a 3 bedroom bungalow run from the breaker box two runs of cable 6 to each room just inside, and a seperate run for aircon, now one cable 6 run you will not use, this is your spare, make sure each run to the room is a continuos run and not made with bits of cable or joins, the box inside the room can just be covered with a facia plate, now from the cable six run spur off it for your lighting and plugs etc, yes it will probably cost an extra 2000baht per room for the spare run which isnt being used, but how much would it cost to put in later?


Wooden Houses In Thailand

Security grills etc

Well we all need to secure our properties, now this can be done three ways.

Iron grills, some of these can look quite fancy, but they do need painting every couple of years so expect paint to be dripped all over the place, if you reckon on a cost of 1,200 baht per sq met for iron work you wont go far wrong.

My favourite, but alas is way out of my price range is stainless, if you reckon on 6 to 8,000 baht per sq met you can guesstimate how much it will cost for your palace.

Of course my favourite which only costs an initial 10,000baht and a miminal amout per week are these.

Here is a picture of some ermm, well I suppose to some people, some extremely tastefull security grills, now thankfully I can hold my hand up and say that this job had absolutely nothing to do with me, but each to their own I say and good luck.



Fetish Bars In Thailand

Flooring.

Which flooring to choose?
I personally would recommend marble or granite, on big jobs I order the granite or marble fron Salabury, marble starts at 350baht for one sq met, thats 30 by 60cm slabs and granite 550baht per sq met, thats 40 by 80 cm slabs, obviously the larger the slabs the more expensive the stuff is, the swimming pool pictured earlier was made using 10 by 20cm pieces, these cost 100baht per sq met, we had to use small slabs as the swimming pool has curves in it, these small pieces do not look very good in a room as they are too little and look bitty.
Also using granite or marble helps to keep rooms cooler which is a main consideration when living here.

Ceramic tiles, now these seem to be the mainstay for most houses, although with them costing around 170baht upwards, I would personally spend the little bit more on marble.

Carpet, dont be ridiculous....

Wooden floors and parquat, yep these look great, parquat starts from around 450baht laid, WARNING, do not use grade "B" parquat, in the end you will hate the finished job and probably have it redone.
The main problem with parquat though is that it tends to lift outside of bathrooms and other areas where it may get damp, also it is quite high maintenance.


Low End Thai Restaurants/cheap eats, mainly insects :)

Doors and door frames

ok door frames are shite here, but what do you expect for 500baht, now these can be clad with a nice hard wood surround and they can look quite good, but your still using a door frame that basically looks like shite, are you willing to pay more money to make it look good? think about it when you deal with your contractor, are you willing to spend that extra 400baht to have it nicely sanded down? will that take you over budget?
generally most farangs expect wood products to be in a good state when they buy them, sadly its not true, in thailand the wood products are basically in a very bad state.

the doors here havent been seasoned, so buy them at the beginning of your house building and store them.
Now you can buy a nice hardwood door for about 2,500baht, yes ok teak goes up to 8,000baht per door but most of the cheap bastards on the net dont go for teak.

Here is a pic of some teak doors we bought in Chang Mai, 13,000baht for the pair but they were actually seasoned, well either that or old stock, they both still needed 2 days worth of sanding down though to get them up to scratch so to speak.


So now we are thinking of fittings, well all that brass shite looks good for about a month, then it discolors and scratches, so we learn that we really should go with stainless stuff, also most thais use 4 inch hinges, now these look massive on a normal door. so tell erm to use 3 and a half inch hinges and put more on, 4 hinges on a door is ok...


Come and have a look at our great forum

hmmm, what not to use.

OK, we are back to wood again, this is something you do not want in your roof or holding up your ceiling, yes, the contractor will lie to you saying that the insects wont want to live there, but they havent told the insects that yet, you really want as little wood as possible.

Now most roofs are made using iron, infact I believe its cheaper than wood now, although we still charge the same price, jees welding is a skilled job, although I have to admit that most Thais wouldnt be able to get a welding job overseas, hey, you think its too expensive? then get up on that roof yourself and weld it up, jees you cheapskates.
Ok, roofing costs: cheap cement board tile roofs about 600baht per sq met, these are the 60 cm by 120cm tiles. the monier tiles which are damn heavy and thick need a lot more steel, so your looking at 2,000baht per sq met at least.

Ahhhh, the ceilings i here you ask, ok just use "c line" its alloy supports and real quick and easy and costs about 220baht per sq met, but upgrade it to the lined stuff that reflects the heat, yep it may cost you and extra 20baht per sq met but its worth it.


Some Funny Reviews On Farang Food In Thailand

Lighting

Now you have got to live in this house and half the time the world is dark, so you need lights, Now you could stick one light in the middle of each ceiling and make your lovely home look like a typical Thai slum or you could be creative, electric cable and lights are not expensive here...

Now this last house we done, the living room has two main areas, so we set up each area with 3 sets of lighting, uplighting for those romantic evenings when your not sure whether you will get her upstairs to bed or not, picture lighting to highlight all the pictures etc, and wall lighting for general use.

Now light bulbs come in white, which are perfect for an office or kitchen, or warm white, which is a nice soft white suitable for a house.


Actually I shall add to this as lighting and garden lighting is so important


The Ultimate Guide To British Pubs In Thailand

Windows

Now windows are quite important for non vampire type people, I think I shall start with window frames.
1: wooden window frames.
now wood does look nice and it is traditional, but it has its drawbacks, the wood here isnt seasoned so it tends to warp, also being so humid it expands and contracts and cracks, also it needs continual maintenance.
2: Aluminum window frames.
Now these are nice, low maintenance etc but about three times the price of wooden window frames, yep these guys work on a 100 percent profit margin.
3: Plastic frames with double glazing.
WOW, are these expensive, but then again the best always costs the most, if your into 24 hour aircon then these are the windows for you.

Hmmm, now onto glass, now glass comes in many widths, starting from 3 mm upto 12 mm.
now generally a contractor will use 5mm glass, but for the extra 2baht per sq foot you may as well upgrade to 6 mm glass, now clear glass is the cheapest and doesnt retain as much heat as smoked or tinted glass, if memory serves me correct that blue glass is the most expensive, but its pretty damn sexy.

I hear the shouts for how much does this all cost, well using aluminum frames and smoked glass you can reckon on 1000baht per sq met, thats pretty much the cheapest you will get.

I suppose i should add mossie screens to this section, reckon about 200baht per sq met or a little bit less if you get lucky.


Our Thailand Photo Gallery

Footings and load bearing walls

Now in the UK bricks are baked, so then they are extremely strong and can hold up a lot of weight, here unfortuneately those little red things that Thais call bricks are sun baked and these cannot withstand a lot of weight, so generally everything is supported by concrete beams and posts and the bricks are just used for infill, ie making the walls and that sort of thing.Anyway here is a nice picture of beam work.


Now generally for the footings these will be hand dug out, ie a dozen Thais with shovels, yes it does take longer than using a digger but it saves at least 500baht, so for that day you have lost the contractor has made an extra 500baht, a wheeled digger costs 2,500baht per day, and the big beasty track macro 7,500baht per day, hey now dont start complaining as that 500baht could usefully be used down soi yodsak, yes even us builders have needs.

Ahhh, I nearly forgot to mention an important aspect about making walls, in good old blighty we would render and then plaster the walls, it gives a lovely smooth finish, but alas here, the walls are only rendered off, yep it just dont look as good.
although in Sri Lanka they use white cement to plaster the walls and that seems to work fine and gives a nice finish.

Well I have been looking for a nice picture of a hole to post so you can get the feel of what a hole for the footings should look like, well I shall try to explain it, for a two storey house reckon on a one meter deep hole about 1 meter wide, anyway here is a nice picture of a hole that we put marble in and made into a swimming pool.



Learning how to cook Thai food

Contractors

Well now you need someone to build your dream home, the nightmare has just started, now Thai builders are quite good, but alas they are using Thai materials, now I am not going to say use me, mainly because we have to use Thai materials aswell.

The first thing to do is get three quotes, one of these you will find is a rip off merchant, he will most likely be fifty percent more expensive, he is probably not your best choice, the other two will most likely be quite close in price so choose who you feel most confident with. a good test is always to hand the plans to the builder upside down and see how long it takes him to turn them the right way up.

As the job progressess you will most likely add extra jobs to the list of things you want, please try to remember that these are not included in the quote and will cost more, and if your an old git with a dodgy memory write it down or pay for it straight away so there is no confusion on billing.

Now I could post pages on the lack of materials and tools in Thailand but i wont bother, I will just discuss ceramic tiles, now 5 years ago they used to sell all the grade "A" tiles here, now all the grade "A" tiles are sold to foriegn countries and the grade ":B" tiles are now sold as grade "A", yep, things dont look good, how good a job of tiling a floor could you do if there is upto a 3mm differance in tile size, actually I shall keep this thread here on tiling, now in the UK we would have nice level floors and walls and would just use tile adheshive,damn its a quick way to make a few bucks, but unfortuneately here nothing is straight or level, so we have to use cement, we are then looking at about 10 square meter of wall tiling per day per guy, and before people start this is in bathrooms so there is a lot of cutting, now a good tiler will charge 140baht per square meter for an easy job..

Anyway back to the most important stuff, this is the time to decide on what stuff is undergroud, phonelines and power cables are a good start.


A special note to Americans, shouting at the Thai contractor will not in any way help him to understand English any better whatsoever,yep, believe it or not the louder something is shouted will not make the language that they do not speak easier to understand, also calling them Thai monkeys will not help in anyway whatsoever.
actually it is probably best if Americans dont even consider building a home here in Thailand


Gardening In Thailand