House Building
It is hard to know where to start on this subject but perhaps the fairest thing to say is the quality can vary tremendously and you may not always get what you asked for even if you provide detailed drawings!
We recently had a house build by one of the wives brothers and a gang of farmers from his village and while the estimated 3 months to build actually took 6 months, we got there in the end but for those 6 months it was an on-going battle to make sure they were doing things the "right" way (as per the drawings provided).
The warning signs were present right at the very start. We bought our land a couple of years earlier and used it as a recreational location, somewhere to escape the city and relax so we had a toilet and small storage room built. This is where the first mistake was made, I let the wife discuss it with her brother. One thing you need to bare in mind is that when you buy low lying land you need to raise the soil level to prevent future flooding and when you dump the soil 1m high it slopes around the edges unless you build a retaining wall. We did not have a wall so the sides of the soil sloped and my wife, in her wisdom, wanted the building placed quite close to the edge which I always said should not happen. Alas it happened and my words of wisdom were lost in translation and discussions between her and her brother.
About 18 months later I drew up the house plans, which were going to incorporate the original building which was to become a shower and toilet. So the big day came when the foundations were to be marked out and this was duly done on the day they said it would be done (promising start) so the next day I visited the land to check the marker posts only to discover they were 1m short in width. Okay, not a massive distance I know but when the room effected was just 4m wide it was a significant amount. After lots of pointing and measuring I eventually convinced them some of the markers were in the wrong place and between us we got them where they should have been.
A typical Thai house foundation consists of concrete posts that are generally placed 4m apart and the walls are built between the posts, tied with steel rods and this is what we opted for as it works perfectly well providing the ground below is stable. Once all the posts are in place the roof is then constructed, the walls do not act as supports to the roof, just the posts. Once the roof is in place then the concrete floor beams and walls are put up and this is where Thai logic seems to fall apart when building. Where there is a gap in the wall for a door frame to be positioned, they build the wall in full and then knock out the hole for the door and frame - why? For the life of me I do not understand this and more so when they left gaps in the walls for the windows! It is a really bizarre thing to witness and you start to believe they are like to make work for themselves. What I did notice very early on while the walls were being erected was they never used a plumb line or spirit level to see if the wall was vertical or horizontal. I asked about this and much to my dismay the response was - it's how we do in in Thailand and it will be okay. Okay to a Thai is the wall will not fall down and they are probably right but when it comes to mounting European style cupboards on the walls in the kitchen (something Thai's rarely do) you need vertical walls. Our kitchen walls are not vertical and I needed some cunning ingenuity to make the cupboards appear flush with the wall.
Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about the house, the house is fine and there is little room for complaint I guess but the way they build and the apparent lack of common sense are quite unbelievable. Drainage from the house for a Thai house will normally just consist of a PVC pipe placed in the wall and out in to the garden and that is fine as long as you can be sure you can get all the water away from the house (which we have done) but I tried to get them put the drainage inside the house, under the house and out through the raised foundations - they just could not get to grips with the concept as they had never seen, let alone built such a drainage system.
We recently had a house build by one of the wives brothers and a gang of farmers from his village and while the estimated 3 months to build actually took 6 months, we got there in the end but for those 6 months it was an on-going battle to make sure they were doing things the "right" way (as per the drawings provided).
The warning signs were present right at the very start. We bought our land a couple of years earlier and used it as a recreational location, somewhere to escape the city and relax so we had a toilet and small storage room built. This is where the first mistake was made, I let the wife discuss it with her brother. One thing you need to bare in mind is that when you buy low lying land you need to raise the soil level to prevent future flooding and when you dump the soil 1m high it slopes around the edges unless you build a retaining wall. We did not have a wall so the sides of the soil sloped and my wife, in her wisdom, wanted the building placed quite close to the edge which I always said should not happen. Alas it happened and my words of wisdom were lost in translation and discussions between her and her brother.
About 18 months later I drew up the house plans, which were going to incorporate the original building which was to become a shower and toilet. So the big day came when the foundations were to be marked out and this was duly done on the day they said it would be done (promising start) so the next day I visited the land to check the marker posts only to discover they were 1m short in width. Okay, not a massive distance I know but when the room effected was just 4m wide it was a significant amount. After lots of pointing and measuring I eventually convinced them some of the markers were in the wrong place and between us we got them where they should have been.
A typical Thai house foundation consists of concrete posts that are generally placed 4m apart and the walls are built between the posts, tied with steel rods and this is what we opted for as it works perfectly well providing the ground below is stable. Once all the posts are in place the roof is then constructed, the walls do not act as supports to the roof, just the posts. Once the roof is in place then the concrete floor beams and walls are put up and this is where Thai logic seems to fall apart when building. Where there is a gap in the wall for a door frame to be positioned, they build the wall in full and then knock out the hole for the door and frame - why? For the life of me I do not understand this and more so when they left gaps in the walls for the windows! It is a really bizarre thing to witness and you start to believe they are like to make work for themselves. What I did notice very early on while the walls were being erected was they never used a plumb line or spirit level to see if the wall was vertical or horizontal. I asked about this and much to my dismay the response was - it's how we do in in Thailand and it will be okay. Okay to a Thai is the wall will not fall down and they are probably right but when it comes to mounting European style cupboards on the walls in the kitchen (something Thai's rarely do) you need vertical walls. Our kitchen walls are not vertical and I needed some cunning ingenuity to make the cupboards appear flush with the wall.
Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about the house, the house is fine and there is little room for complaint I guess but the way they build and the apparent lack of common sense are quite unbelievable. Drainage from the house for a Thai house will normally just consist of a PVC pipe placed in the wall and out in to the garden and that is fine as long as you can be sure you can get all the water away from the house (which we have done) but I tried to get them put the drainage inside the house, under the house and out through the raised foundations - they just could not get to grips with the concept as they had never seen, let alone built such a drainage system.
Construction of our house
The outline plan of the house is shown below. The toilet and shower at the top left was the original outhouse building and at a slightly lower level to the rest of the bungalow.