House near Rattanaburi, surin

[tertim]

Hello
Well here goes with the start of our build :-
I have now finalised our layout and it's completely different from my original ideas (posted in design and planning) wife is happy so i'm happy.

[/attachment]

Flew from Phuket on the 7 march to see wife's land for the first time, just over 1 rai with many trees and nice location just off the village road. Started clearing land the next day and it looks like we will need a retaining wall in one corner of our boundary and also there is evidence of severe water erosion on another boundary.

pop kan mia

[tertim]

Day 3
Tractor arrived to do some serious clearing then 70 loads of fill and levelling off very busy day.

[Marlon]

Design looks good mate. Are you planning on engaging a contractor for the job, or different crews for each section? Or sitting on it for a while.

[tertim]

Design looks good mate. Are you planning on engaging a contractor for the job, or different crews for each section? Or sitting on it for a while.

Hi Marlon
I am working with my wife and cousin and between the three of us hope to complete most of the build, I will engage extra labour as and when needed, also electrics and plumbing we will do ourselves. I will employ a subcontractor for the rendering but that's about it,

I am back in Phuket now to pack up our belongings and hand over the house keys to the landlord. We shall return to Rattanaburi around the 26 May to start phase 2 of our build, phase 1 :- ground cleared and filled, pads set out and dug, concrete pads, stub columns, septic tanks, back fill and level, land drains all completed. I will be posting more pics of phase 1 over the next few days.

pop kan mai

[tertim]

After much deliberation and the shaman's directions the final position of our house was established so now we could finally get on with setting out ( Overall size 14Mx8.6M ) and erecting profiles. The pads were marked out with cement for the digger driver and all we needed now was a machine, unfortunately that took a week to arrive so we busied ourselves with erecting our workshop and making the rebar.

Initial setting out.

Day off at the nearby Moon river

Marking the pads for excavation

Our workshop

Making 50mm spacers for the pads rebar

Straightening the rebar

Rebar for pads

[tertim]

Pipe for under entrance and poo rings

Bending jig

site entrance

Soil erosion

Boundary where retaining wall needed

More soil erosion

[pipoz]

Nice strong looking Bending jig

Can you bend a DB 16 bar on it

pipoz

[tertim]

Nice strong looking Bending jig

Can you bend a DB 16 bar on it

pipoz

I doubt it, would probably pull our workshop down!! I only made it for bending up to 12mm as that is the maximum thickness we are using. The bar is placed in the jig and a metal pipe inserted around the bar then bend, very easy and quick, we are making all the stirrups ourselves ( therapeutic )

Pop kan mai

[tertim]

Day 15
Went to the local office to arrange for a temporary electric supply, paid B6400 deposit which they explained would be refunded when our permanent supply was installed, said they would be along in 2 days to install meter and connect us.
Well 2 days later a guy arrived on his motor bike with a new meter, shimmied up the concrete pole made the connection and even helped to string our cable across the road to a convenient tree and then down to our cu fixed to a pole.
The water supply was even easier, headman told us to put the pipe down and he would turn off the water so we could make the connection ourselves!!!! So we dug a shallow trench along the verge and after many attempts managed to find the mains pipe, it was now 6.00PM and the sun sinking rapidly when Sahmrun (our one and only worker) decided that he would make the connection now, I queried the length of time time it would take for the water to drain out but as usual he replied NO PROBLEM. It's now 2 hours since the water was turned off and we're still waiting for the water to stop flowing so we can make a joint, the whole village has been without water for this time and people are complaining, I decided to make a diplomatic withdrawal and leave Sahmrun to take the flak, after all it was his decision!!!! Now he could blame the crazy fahrang for turning off the water at such a busy time!!!!!

Temporary electric supply

Water supply

Water meter

[tertim]

Day 20
Makro finally arrived and started work at 9.00 and then within minutes broke down, took about 2 hours to replace burst hydraulic pipe. All the bases were clearly marked so we let him get on with it whilst we did some other work. As it turns this was a mistake, we had to do quite a bit of trimming and cleaning up afterwards the worst base being 30cm off.

Good quality sharp sand free from the Moon river

Macro arrives at last all we need now is a driver

Keeping the dust down to appease the neighbours

first pad dug 14 more to go

Trimming the bases

[tertim]

Day 20

Concrete pipe under entrance

Cleaning out the well

Yes there is a guy down there no ladders or ropes just climbed down.

Blinding prior to placing rebar and concreting

Blocks to form shutter for concrete pads, if you look closely you can see column marked in red, had to trim a bit to get correct size.

[tertim]

Day 25
Yam (wife) went to see local shaman to ask about a lucky day to start building, after much consideration and peering at his charts decided 1st April was most propitious, so that was it April fools day!!!!
Well here we are 1st april not feeling foolish just totally bewildered, after much consideration the shaman decided on the two columns to be erected and to me it was total chaos there after. Many people mixing concrete (soup), steel placed, concrete poured I insisted on more cement to try and counteract the excess water, thank god we are only pouring two I will be back in charge tomorrow.
Bought some steel shuttering from Thaiwatsadu it was on special offer but when we went to pay they said that offer finished last month!!!! so why are the price tags still still showing the offer?? To cut a long story short we managed to obtain the offer price, much to my wife's embarrassment for me insisting that they should honour the offer, it's their fault if they forgot (lazy) to remove the price labels.

First pad completed

concreting the first pad

The shaman preparing for the blessing ceremony

Blessing ceremony

Our concrete mixing crew

First stub column

[olavhome]

Good luck with Your building project.
How about the man in the well, has he returned to surface?
If not, at least send some rice

[tertim]

Good luck with Your building project.
How about the man in the well, has he returned to surface?
If not, at least send some rice

Hello olavhome thank you for your good wishes we all need good luck no matter how capable we think we are.
The man down the well :- as soon as the blessing party was over the food and booze began to flow he shot up like a rabbit out of a hat and declared he had reached the bottom (8M) and all was well !!!!
The next day the water level had risen to 3M below ground giving us 5M of water about 2500L this being the dry season I was very pleased so now we have 3 sources of water Mains, well and rain water harvesting.

Pop kan mai

[olavhome]

Happy all well
Just remembered: If you take water inside a plastic bottle and leave it for a couple of days you will see it turns red/brown
if much iron.