The Land.

So now your all ready to build, well almost, most land is to low, ie the road maybe higher or as high as your land, this is really not a good thing during the rainy season unless you like boating, now the odds are that the road you are buying your land on will be redone about 3 times over the next 10 years, now here when the redo a road they just lay on top of the original lay, so over the next 10 years the road may have rised as much as a foot, that could mean that rain water will be rushing into your land as opposed to rushing out of your land and onto the road. not good huh, so in answer to that you will need to infill your land, now here in Pattaya its 650baht per cubic meter of infill, although out in the sticks its as low as 350baht per cubic meter, i might add here that a Thai cubic meter for some reason is a lot smaller than an English cubic meter, yes, i do realise that metric measurements are used worldwide but you try telling the Thais what a cubic meter of anything is.
Also now is the time to decide whether or not to have that swimming pool as the dirt from there can be used as infill.

Not everyone needs a marble swimming pool though.

Well now you are ready to rock and roll and get that house started, this is generally a period of tension between the builder and the owner, the owner will be spending his time trying to tell the builder where he wants plugs fitted and about earthing wires, while the builder is actually wondering whether to get a digger in to dig the footings, on a large house the wiring is like 3 months away, I find that it is mainly Americans that are fixated by this, I really do not understand why as I have not seen that many Thai products with a 3 pin plug.

OK, now I reckon some of you lot want some prices, now this is actually quite hard to do on a single home, I remember one place which was quite basic and a bungalow, it was 6,000baht per square meter to build, it was quite a nice farang style bungalow, but he wanted the 60,000baht toilets and not the 3,000baht ones, I mean you only use toilets for 2 things, so things like that will make your dream home cost more money.


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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.




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The Contractor.

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


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The First Steps

So, here we all are living in Thailand, and you finally got enough dosh to move out of that bedsit and build your own house.

But first you need some land, now manys the horror story I have heard where someone has purchased land from someone other than the owner, then the owner tends to get a bit uppity that you are building on his land, this is usually resolved when you pay way over the odds for the land to the proper owner, so now you have paid 2 times and more than 2 times the value for the land, not a good start at all.

So what you have to do, is first agree to the price, then drag the owner down to the land office with all the relevant papers and the cash in your back pocket, once everything is signed up and transferred then pay the owner, simple really aint it, well its not really cos you have got the hassle of whose name to put the land in or what company name to put the land etc etc.

Anyway while you are in the land office arrange for them to come down and stake out your land, this is mainly cos us builders get confused and build walls in the wrong place and that sort of thing, now here in pattaya they charge 3,500baht, it can take up to a month for them to come and stake it out though, but now your in a rush cos your all excited and that, well the good news is that for 3,500baht without a reciept they will also come and do it that evening,BUT, instead of using the little concrete round posts they will use wooden posts and bang them into the ground to stake it out.

Now you are on a roll, you got all that sorted out in less than 24 hours, so tomorrow you want the builders to start, well basically all the builders can do is build a perimter wall that is less than 2 meters high,yep, no house yet, you havent got planning permission yet, now the quickest way to start is to go to city hall with some rough plans and ask the nice gentleman there if they have someone that can draw up proper plans for you and sort out the planning permission etc, but now you are really rolling, doing it this way means you can start building the same day, ok this will cost about 40,000baht as opposed to 10,000baht doing it the long way, but your plans are guaranteed to be passed.

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