Hi again Pipoz. Yes, I paid the same price. There is a large hardware shop on the LHS of the Nong Khai Road beside the Udon Thani Christian School (I think) a few hundred metres before the ring road. The shop and the block plant are owned by the same people. I suspect the outlet you bought from has the same ownership. I know that you paid quite a bit more for your first lot some time ago (and my previous - read sacked - builder tried to put that on me too), but these are a great product. I used them for the bottom four courses of my retaining wall filled with concrete and 12 mm reo vertically in every second block and horizontaly in the third course.

Hi again Pipoz. Yes, I paid the same price. There is a large hardware shop on the LHS of the Nong Khai Road beside the Udon Thani Christian School (I think) a few hundred metres before the ring road. The shop and the block plant are owned by the same people. I suspect the outlet you bought from has the same ownership. I know that you paid quite a bit more for your first lot some time ago (and my previous - read sacked - builder tried to put that on me too), but these are a great product. I used them for the bottom four courses of my retaining wall filled with concrete and 12 mm reo vertically in every second block and horizontaly in the third course.

And hi too as well to STWW and my other commentators. In my design I am guided by the materials and sizes that were specified for the construction of my house on the Gold Coast circa 1991. I hand drew the floor plan and elevations, and after a few builder interviews, my selected builder had them profesionally drawn and specified and approved by the GC City Council.
I know they will be strong enough, particularly when braced laterally at only 2.4 m, and longitudinally at up to 6 m centres but with heavy guage 15 cm C-purlins. The things I am not so sure about (and still seek comments on) are about partially filling with reo concrete, and in particular, anti-corrosion measures. I have never used steel posts with concrete block fill walls before. Plaese comment on these and any other factors (eg. tie wires into the mortar etc.).
Thanks in advance
John

Another whirlwind trip to do some work on the house. On site at 8 am Saturday, back in BKK 2 pm Sunday. Really achieved a lot in that short space of time though. First up we checked a couple of measurements and marked out a lot of levels - this was so that I could revise the plans (Sketchup) in the light of reality when I got back to BKK. We got a couple of things not quite right, but nothing too major. I had drawn the plans with a 12.5 deg roof pitch, but after roofing the garage, this has come down to 11.7 deg. And with single spans of roofing sheets, this won't be a problem. Just need to adjust the plan so that the the main house roof has the exact same pitch.
As my pickup is in BKK, we got the foreman to use his to pickup to get some stuff in Udon (25 kms) - hired a vibrating-plate compactor for the weekend, next call Global House : four HD 15 cm x 6 m C-purlins for some more top plates, primer to paint same, lightweight purlins to go under the garage rafters to support the rolls of foil-sheathed FG insulation we bought, a 2.1 m aluminium stepladder, and some lengths of 25 mm electrical conduit.
Back to the village, and painted the top plates.
After lunch (as pre-arranged) we took on 8 10-wheeler tippers of fill and the neighbour (who was severely hungover) came with his tractor to move it around the site. He did a very good job under the circumstances, manouvering his machine even within the confines of the garage frame. Meanwhile, the foreman had found a new toy - nobody else got a go on the whacker packer. We used this to compact the areas that would be slab-on-ground - the garage, kitchen and bathroom cum indoor garden. The rest of the house is elevated (five steps), and the outside area will be compacted by rain during the wet season. Sunday the tractor man came back for a final trim, my three-man team finished the compacting and returned the compactor, picked up some more gear from GH, then back to the village. My missus sent me a photo and video of the aftenoon's work, and the under-rafter purlins had all been welded in place and the insulation installed. The rafters are three inch deep box sections 1.2 m apart, accommodating two parallel rolls of the two inch insulation perfectly, and allowing for a one inch air gap on top to obviate condensation and mould. I intend to use the same method in the house proper, with four inch rafters and 3 inch insulation. In case you're wondering, the garage is going to be my motel room as well as lock up storage during construction.
The place is even starting to look like a building site now. Cheers, John

Quick update. I've been back the last two weekends. Have welded some small guage gal mesh to birdproof the top of the outer wall of the garage. Over the two weekends, we dug 40 x 40 trenches for the footings for the inside and back walls, poured a 5 cm concrete bed, laid 6 cm blocks x 2 high as (permanent) formwork, made luk buns, fabricated 15 metres of 30 x 30 reo with 6 x 12 mm deformed bars, and finally poured the footings along the back and inside walls of the garage. The inside footing will support a double skin wall, with 14 cm wide concrete blocks on the inside, a 7 cm air gap, and a 9 cm AAC wall on the outer side (being the internal wall of the house proper). Remembered the conduits for power (X2) and comms, but forgot about the laundry at the back of the garage. No probs - will run pipes under reo in the floor to exit right, under the (elevated) main house sub-floor.

Well done ajarnudon.
Cover your pipes with some plastic to keep em clean and free from rubbish.
Pain in the rectum later to try and get em free of crap.

Just a few more weekends and it will be all over.

Well, the garage will be virtually complete - which is a huge step. It will give me secure storage for tools, welder, materials etc, and somewhere to sleep on the odd occasion - although at 300 baht a night, the local resort with air con might be attractive in the hotter months.
We have been spoiled with the beautiful weather over the last couple of months, but it has come to an end. Had the first big storm of the season in NE BKK yesterday afternoon.

H John,

Looks you got a good thing going!!

Like many farrang I like to get a house build.. but how to find a good contractor!!!

I live about 15 km from Phen, towards Laos.
The people I found till now... no good at all!

I can not PM.
Don't know why..

All real help would be fantastic!

Don't know if they are available in Thailand but using long radius bends on your encased condiuts make for much easier pull in of cabling. Less chance of damage to the cables as well.
Cheers Jorgo

Also glue male side of joint to stop glue going inside bend and obviously use glue to stop concrete water entering conduit which can leak in via an unglued or poorly glued joint and harden inside making conduit useless.

Hi Bluejets
Thanks for the info, and duly noted. I learned the hard way - the 25 mm conduits that I ran thru the footings for my elec mains were useless because I didn't use large radius bends. But fortunately this wasn't a large problem as I am using cavity walls to a large extent, so just brought them up the wall cavity without any problems.

Hi Fhorst
Welcome to the forum, and welcome to the problem. I had a contractor for the first stage of my project - a very substantial retaining wall. and had to supervise it myself - the workers wanted to take all sorts of shortcuts, and the contractor only spent 15 minutes a day on site. I am now fully supervising the whole project - nothing gets done if I am not on site. I am fortunate in that I have found a local crew (4 guys, 3 ladies) trhat can cover most trades, and we have a good working relationship. But again, I am the construction supervisor - and soon with the oncoming wet season, they will become rice farmers again.

ajarnudon wrote: ↑

April 23, 2018, 10:57 pm

Hi Fhorst
Welcome to the forum, and welcome to the problem. I had a contractor for the first stage of my project - a very substantial retaining wall. and had to supervise it myself - the workers wanted to take all sorts of shortcuts, and the contractor only spent 15 minutes a day on site. I am now fully supervising the whole project - nothing gets done if I am not on site. I am fortunate in that I have found a local crew (4 guys, 3 ladies) trhat can cover most trades, and we have a good working relationship. But again, I am the construction supervisor - and soon with the oncoming wet season, they will become rice farmers again.

Same problem my wife had, contractor over extended and so she became foreman/contractor. She did get to keep his scaffold though as he owed her some materials

Bringing anything up the cavity can have it's problems as well.
Care must be taken to ensure whatever it is , is secured to the inner surface. Any contact with the outer surface ( or closer than about 10mm) can cause water to migrate inside the dwelling with no idea where it is coming from.
Also, with the spate of white ant reports lately, any track from the natural ground through the concrete will be a white ant highway.
Outer surface as well as inner.
Cheers Jorgo

Hi bluejets

Total concrete and steel construction make it termite-proof and fire-proof. Not a stick of timber in the whole place. At least not yet - looking for a couple of solid 8 x 2 s for the top of my workshop bench.

Good one...works for me.
Thing is they eat a lot of other products also..... even seen them have a crack at wiring.
Didn't seem to like it a lot though. Maybe the copper gave 'em a toothache.

Build looking good.
Cheers Jorgo

Been working onsite pretty well continuously for six weeks now, and been too busy building to write. Here is a long overdue update (to the end of March).
A lot of progress has been made, at the expense of a large dent in the bank balance. Over the past several weeks we have averaged 7 workers onsite per day. The priority remains to get the garage/laundry/toilet to lockup stage so we have a secure storage area for tools and materials. The inner garage wall going up. The first three courses were backfilled with concrete and reinforced vertically every third core, as well as horizontally in the fourth (cut the webbing out of the tops of the blocks and laid D12 bar across before corefilling). Each core beside a post was reinforced full height in the same manner and reo tied into the post every second course above #4. Garage ceiling going up. Fill in place, laundry plumbing and power roughed in. Fabricating the reo 9mm mesh for the slab. Can't buy sheets of mesh in Thailand, so you weld up your own - my experience in Udon anyway. Start of the 44 sq m X 12 cm (= 5.5 cubes) pour. Reo in place supported by luk bun. 24 steng. Told the missus she was daft - whatever she planted wasn't going to grow there Kept it wet for three days - weather was perfect, never got over 29 degrees. One of two 2 cm control joints cut with a diamond saw in the 11 m slab after 36 hours. After four weeks I am very happy with the result. No signs of cracking, and a nicely finished surface - no powder. I am sure that the curing process is aided by having the roof up before the pour - will use this same strategy for the house proper.
Will continue in episode 2.
Cheers, John.

March 2018 Episode 2. Next we had the macro in - dug the holes for the ten central pillars for the house, and installed two sseptic tanks. One of the reo cages on luk bun at the bottom of the 1 m X 1 m X 1 m post holes. Minimum of 5 cms clearance from reo all round. Rendering the outer garage wall, inside and outside. Painting the guttering - suay suay. The rear of the garage houses my workshop, as well as the laundry and a toilet. As we had already poured the 40 X 40 cm footing for the rear wall, a toilet with an S-trap wouldn't do. We needed one with a P-trap (no pun intended) with an exit thru the back wall. Only ones we could find were a few 'American Standard' brand (made in Thailand) suites, which are usually used in multi-storey buildings. So we bought a THB 5K version, but when shopping we fell in love with this Chinese made suite (S-trap, one peice, low tank profile, dual-flush, soft close etc.) @ THB 2.4 K and bought it for the upstairs (in our split-level design) ensuite - and it came with a free wash basin! Haven't decided yet on the downstairs main bathroom toilet, but thinking that the Chinese one will win out (haven't poured footings there yet). There is a lot to describe in this picture. Firstly, this inner garage wall will have a 7 cm cavity between it and the main house southern wall. The bottom four courses of the house wall will duplicate those of the garage wall , with reinforcement etc. for load-bearing capacity. The breathing holes visible in this wall will be duplicated in the house wall to provide sub-floor ventilation under the pan poon floor in the house upper level (raised 80 cm). Our ladies did most of the block laying, and as these 15 cm blocks are extremely heavy, we pay them a loading of 10% whenever they work with these blocks. But the course the guys on the left are laying was just too heavy for the ladies. This course forms a bond beam (just like course #4, with the webbing cut out of the top of the blocks. However, to stop concrete simply falling thru the cores, we placed 26 blocks on a plastic sheet and filled the cores with 5-6 cms of concrete on the ground in the morning. In the afternoon, it had set enough to lay them in the 17th course, then the 12 mm steel bar was laid across the top, tied into the posts with epoxy and welded to the vertical reinforcing steel, after which the blocks were core filled with concrete. To my mind, this is the simplest, most cost-effective and efficient way to make a bond beam in a masonry wall.
Above this we went down to 9 cm blocks, the second course containing 18 glass blocks, and finally a cut block to fit flush with the house top plate (not in place at time of the picture).

More soon with an April update.
Cheers, John

Hi again. Here is an update on what we did in April, either side of Songkran.
Episode 1. Firstly, we moved the distribution box from the temporary pole setup to its home inside the garage. It was getting a bit crowded inside the box, so we moved the mains switch to a separate box which also houses a solid brass bar for all the earths to link to the main earth - the latter is a 1 1/2 metre copper stake driven into the absorption trench of the first septic (don't know why the forum doesn't like the word 'septi#'- changes the word to hash symbols) effluent tank, ensuring moist ground and a good earth return path to the pole MEN at the front of our land. Moving the mains switch to the separate box also provided room on the DIN mounting bar for another 32 amp breaker, so we now have 4 x 32 amp, 1 x 20 amp and 1 x 16 amp circuits. Three double GPOs in the workshop area, and lights going in. Laundry and toilet (left) area at the rear (western end) of the garage. The window is a 120 x 60 cm casement window mounted horizotally rather than vertically. This is the size window I wanted, and the only option without a substantial lead time. I used 7.5 cm steel angle as lintels for the 9 cm masonry blocks here. Water inlet and power for washing machine to the left of the laundry tub. This tub, a H'a'fele sink unit, has proved very disappointing. Twice the price of comparable units we saw later, it continualy has small rust spots coming up on the 'supposedly' stainles surface. They come off with a bit of rubbing, but is not what I expect for the money I paid. Needless to say, no other H'a'fele product will find its way into our home. The 15 x 15 cm x 6 metre central steel columns in place. So glad I went down this path - straight and true (unlike the concrete posts on the outside), easy to align, and easy welding. Lengths of 12 mm bar welded on provided supports all over the place, and were easily ground off after. Concrete posts don't provide this option. This is the proper way to do a septik tank. The inlet (right) is of course set higher than the outflow. With this design, a crust forms over the top of the effluent water which isn't disturbed by water flow either in or out. Grey water from the laundry tub joins the slotted pipe in the absorption trench after the septik tank (doesn't go thru it). This flows down to where our garden will be.
More soon. Cheers, John

Bit of a tip for future reference.
With your circuits, instead of using 1 safety switch on everything, much better to use individual combination safety switch/ circuit breaker on each circuit. Cost is about the same for combo's and the safety switch shown in your photo can be replaced by a cheaper circuit breaker.( say 60Amp...depends on mains size)
Outcome is if a fault arises on one circuit it is much easier for you to track down AND you do not loose power to everything in on hit.
The combination units come in single pole so no worries about needing extra space on the board.
They also show a different colour tag when tripped to show whether the fault is an overload or an earth leakage fault.

# note that the earth stake is not a fault return to the pole via the ground as you stated above.
What it does is pegs the neutral at ground level so the supply does not float above earth in an MEN system.
Earth cabling within the building does indeed carry any fault current but only as far as the MEN point, then the fault current is carried by the neutral return to the transformer.

Cheers Jorgo ( electrical contractor)

Well done John.
All looking good and coming together. I’m sure you and the missus are happy, as I was with my build, when you start to see some real progress other than concrete drying.
Jorgo has some good advice for all on the individual circuit earth leakage and MEN system.
At least you have protection in place and made it safe.
Keep up the good work.


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