'Ive never seen a tile person use a stool or used one... I hope the person is using thin set on the floor as well as back buttering. IMHO the thinset put on the floor correctly and of the right thickness and freshness avoids the need for back buttering. Why not thin set a row of 8 tiles or better yet 2 rows and then lay them? Do they have the plastic spacers to use in Thailand? most pros and me use them.. they come in all grout line widths.

yes, you can buy the plastic spacers in almost every store selling tile in Thailand although your usual village tile layer doesn't use them..

Randall wrote:'Ive never seen a tile person use a stool...

You have now You learn something new every day.

I hope the person is using thin set on the floor as well as back buttering.

That depends on the position and varies between thinset, back buttering, and thinset + back buttering. As it does with any tile laying anywhere.

IMHO the thinset put on the floor correctly and of the right thickness and freshness avoids the need for back buttering.

It may

Why not thin set a row of 8 tiles or better yet 2 rows and then lay them?

Because the substrate is somewhat reminiscent of a sponge it isn't remotely water proof so that area of thinset would not be useable. An area of one or two tiles works if the base is moderately absorbent, otherwise back buttering is used to maintain the correct consistency of the thinset.

There are good reasons why tiling is done the way it is in Thailand. As there are for the way it's done in the west

Do they have the plastic spacers to use in Thailand? most pros and me use them.. they come in all grout line widths.

Did you look at the pictures? The answer is there in almost every picture Do you know that if you click a picture it usually gets a higher quality version?


However the longer answer is that Thai tile people all use spacers, most will use bamboo as it's abundant and free, while the plastic spacers will have a cost that in UK terms makes them £1.25 ($1.75) each or £65.00 ($84) for a bag of 50. So if they cost that much most pros and you would probably not use them, or at very least you would be thinking hard about the number of beers that they would be costing you
For them to have a similar relative cost to UK ones the would have to be priced at ฿9 per 1000 not the price they are.

Continuing the process of tiling
The workshop shower
The linear drain in the workshop shower
Preparing for posting at 12:13 Monday, 03 July 2017

Yet more tiling detail

The transitions between rooms use a different pattern
Badly cut tile that will be replaced
On suite shower and toilet
On suite shower and toilet pictures
Living/kitchen looking into the workshop
Our bedroom
Preparing for posting at 12:19 Monday, 03 July 2017

Looking great my friend, I will have to drop in and have a look at the finished job when i finally get my pension and get over there. Might pick up some names of good tradies to renovate our place in non sa at while there.

Fatone wrote: ↑

July 3, 2017, 3:38 pm

Looking great my friend, I will have to drop in and have a look at the finished job when i finally get my pension and get over there. Might pick up some names of good tradies to renovate our place in non sa at while there.

You will be welcome though there's only 1 local person who I would unhesitatingly recommend and 1 team from kumpawape. We have used a company Bann Boon 2012 to build and I would have no problem in recommend them.


Starting on the workshop tiles
We do not have enough of the water damaged tiles to complete the workshop so need three different patterns
SWMBO is now cleaning the tiles in the living-room/kitchen
Preparing for posting at 06:31 Tuesday, 04 July 2017

Project looks good and now the real cleaning begins once all the tiles are placed.

Goodluck with the finish.

On the 5th picture we can see that the little plastic spacers are being used. The next 2 show the tile cleaning, with just a mop ? Has any grout been applied in the joints ? Thanks.. Just curious...

the-monk wrote: ↑

July 4, 2017, 7:17 pm

On the 5th picture we can see that the little plastic spacers are being used. The next 2 show the tile cleaning, with just a mop ? Has any grout been applied in the joints ? Thanks.. Just curious...

Sure it has, it took one of the tile crews wives several hours per room. I just didn't show any picture of her at work, also there are 3 days between between those pictures.
Here is the ensuite shower showing that it's been half grouted

2.

SWMBO is cleaning the workshop, probably for the first and last time.
Bedroom lighting, we have colour changing and dimming the down lights.

Living room kitchen dimmable downlights and pelmet lights

Another view of the bedroom
The extractor fan for the workshop shower and toilet
The beginning of the big problems with the electrics
And night view of the house showing the light coming through top windows.
Preparing for posting at 22:01 Wednesday, 05 July 2017

A better idea of the living room light well showing the indirect lighting idea and warmwhite dimmable downlighting
Looking up into the top level ceiling area
Looking up into the top level ceiling area and where the in house water tank will go.
The one colour changing light outside the storage room and workshop.
The bedroom
My paint room and hot water producing area
The main electrical supply boxes and the electrical problem
Our electrical wiring installer subcontractor is probably competent at putting wiring and sockets in, his work as far as that went looked OK.

But after installing the 4 CU's (Consumer Units) when asked which breaker controlled which circuit his reply was that he didn't know and we could work it out ourselves. He has been onsite and working on the wiring intermittently for about 9 months so you can imagine we were less than happy with that answer. Much worse than that was that when any circuit was switched on, with or without anything plugged in after a random time the ECLB tripped. This meant that though we could have power to the house it was dangerous.

A couple of days later he called up and asked when he could come back to write the names on the labels, we suggested that he would be better to contact the building supervisor. We didn't tell him directly that he would never be coming back as his complaining and work ethic was too bad and that the departure at 1:00pm with the comments on labelling was the last straw.

We have been in Japan for the last 3 months but our builder has said that he's now got the house wiring working correctly, we will find out in about 3 weeks.

Preparing for posting at 00:03 Sunday, 09 July 2017

Looking brilliant stww, there is always a hiccup or two building in Los.

Fatone wrote: ↑

July 9, 2017, 8:01 am

Looking brilliant stww, there is always a hiccup or two building in Los.

You are right there. There have been quite a few that were caught in time as we were on site all the time.

The problem with the electrics is, that I don't know how to fix it. With all the other problems I knew what was wrong I knew how it should be done and I could tell them how to do it.

We have been told that the electrics have now been fixed. But whether this will be true or not we will be finding out in about 2 1/2 weeks time when we get back to Thailand. It was really rather depressing because it's similar to buying a new car and then the engine doesn't work at all, with no easy to understand reason. It also put on hold fitting of the fans that we've already got and commissioning our air-conditioners which have been installed for almost 9 months now.

However if the electrics have actually been fixed then it will be full steam ahead getting our fans fitted, getting the air-conditioning commissioned, and starting on putting in doors and security doors in the workshop.

We do have a little progress, the bathroom storage cupboard now has its doors fitted.

why so many breaker boxes ? in our small home i have 1 breaker box with 18 breakers ...
why divided to 3 boxes ? and what is a hot water producing area?..

kopkei wrote:why so many breaker boxes ? in our small home i have 1 breaker box with 18 breakers ...
why divided to 3 boxes ? and what is a hot water producing area?..

Because I can and it makes a negligible difference to the total cost, while having enough sockets and circuits so extension cords will never be needed it also means we can put any appliances anywhere and be within 25 to 50 cm of a socket.

In the picture above there are 46 sockets and that's less than half the workshop, I will never have to overload any circuit. My machines can draw 12 amps so big machines can go on different circuits while being close to each other.
The smaller box splits the house and workshop supplies the aother two have over/under voltage protection together with lighting protection and a workshop emergency stop system with the contactor it needs. It also supplies the outside power points.

I see no need to have a single breaker for all the lights, though they would probably easily go onto a single circuit, for example the living room could have up to 70 lights on and is still only just over 600watts

The hot water producing area is on top of the paint shop and will supply solar heated water.

Back in Thailand again the electrical system has been mostly sorted out, the continuing problem is that the circuits that are supposed not to go through the ELCB do at the moment.

We did have a situation where the air-conditioning circuit was supposed to be a 4 mm² cable was a 2.5 mm² and one of the light switches wasn't working correctly but that's all been sorted out now.

We went to SuperRich in KK to change money and lost about 2,700 Baht on the deal but we did have a fly through on AirAsia from Tokyo to Khon Kaen so overall it was probably worth the expense.

Just a heads up if you are flying through to Khon Kaen with international baggage it will all be x-rayed, however if you change planes in Don Muang and have a domestic flight up to Udon or KK them you have a good chance that your baggage will not be x-rayed in Don Muang.

We were shopping in DoHome in ThaiWatsudu and while we were checking out we saw these to mats and you can see why we decided we just had to buy them.
With the electricity sorted out we can finally get the helicopter fans up and functioning and I also put the TriStar up but we're not sure if it's actually going to stay there. We do need one more fan for the balcony but we will probably use one fan which was supposed to go in the living room and move the TriStar into the living room/kitchen.

I managed to find 12 watt LEDs which fit into the helicopter fans but the Tri-Star has less space so they don't fit there

Preparing for posting at 7:48 p.m. Monday, 31 July 2017 (Thailand)

We have found a 100 W LED light in Udon in ThaiWatsudu when we were shopping in March, the only problem was that we couldn't find the light fitting for it, it is an E40, however we found it in DoHome and so we now have one 100 W LED as a test in the workshop. You can see the comparison between the 100 W LED and the 2x12 W LED's that are in the helicopters
Today's activity was fitting the 16 9 W LED lights into the double-height ceiling area. These can be switched in 2 banks so allowing owner light levels without needing dimmable lights.
SWMBO is enjoying the new AC while I'm connecting up the lights.
Preparing for posting at 8:41 p.m. Monday, 31 July 2017 (Thailand)

Putting up one of the helicopter fans

A little assembly is required:


Threading the security wire and electrical supply
Wire stripping Attaching bootlaces terminals, this isn't necessary but if ever I need to move the lights it is more secure
Lifting the fan into position
Preparing for posting at 10:11 a.m. Saturday, 12 August 2017 (Thailand)

Continuing to raise the MrKen fan
Electrical connectors
2 x 12 W LED's fitted into each helicopter fan
Fitting the Security gate to the rear doorway and it's operation
Preparing for posting at 10:17 a.m. Saturday, 12 August 2017 (Thailand)