Coolthaihouse Photo Gallery

The ceiling is a full 3.2 meters from the floor. It is nice to have high ceilings, but 3 meters or less is sufficient. At 3.2 meters, the ceiling fans are little too high to get the air circulating and changing a light bulb can be challenging. The drywall sheets come in various grades with one grade suitable for damp areas. In this house, a good grade is used, but not the one for damp areas.

There was a specialty company that came by to tape the ceiling. In the meantime I did have a chance to observe an specialty company that does nothing but ceilings. Their prices were quite low and they did really nice work quickly. For example, on one house I looked at they did a multi-level ceiling which looked very nice. On future projects I would look to use a specialty company for the ceiling.

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GRC (glass reinforced cement) sheeting is applied to a wood foundation to form the underside of the roof overhang (eves). The wood is 1 1/2" by 3". This section covers the grc sheeting throughout the outside of the house, including the carport ceiling.

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The approach for the kitchen was to build a nice comfortable kitchen inexpensively. This kitchen measures 3 meters square. Upon entry to the left is an open area in which the wall mount water heater is installed. Then there is the sink area. In the middle portion there is an open area in the counter to allow a stove to be inserted. The counter goes all the way around to the right and on the right hand wall facing the sink the counter ends prior to the wall to allow a space for a refrigerator. There is an exhaust fan and ceiling fan.

Aside from a few minor glitches the kitchen construction progressed smoothly. Towards the end of the project a specialist tiler was hired who did the tiling and plumbing in the kitchen. The materials cost for the kitchen, not including the hot water heater, would be around 17,000 Baht as follows, ceiling fan = 1,000, exhaust fan = 1,000, tile = 4,000, sink = 3,000, cement = 1,000, hot/cold faucet = 2,000, plumbing = 1,000, cabinet doors = 4,000

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One of the early problems with the bathroom is that the foundation base which is poured around the outside should be about 10 centimeters lower than the base of the house. In this case it was poured about equal, to give extra strength. This led to the necessity to reengineer a bit on the inside. That led to the floors being only a few centimeters below the floor level of the house, where the normal difference is 10 centimeters. As it turned out I like the small difference better, 3 centimeters is fine. The only other misstep is the sink in the large bathroom is fitted in the cabinet a little too close to the wall and this necessitates bending over a bit when using it.

Central water heaters are a little new around here and it was a learning curve to get this one installed. Normally houses use a small water heater for each shower, but in the end this turned out really nice. The electrician did the copper pipe work, which is fitted within plastic PVC to carry the hot water. The water heater is a 75 liter wall mount unit.

Another thing which you don't see all that often are shower enclosures. These are gaining in popularity here. This one is made with safety glass which is easier to clean than the acrylic types.

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The original guy doing the electric wasn't too knowledgeable about electric. Finally we found a electrician within the neighborhood who turned out to be a great help. For a small project like this there is a lot of electric components.

First off, the house uses grounded electrical throughout. This isn't the standard yet, by in large part due to the fact that most electric appliances don't come with the ground plug. However, now they are starting to require that all new houses install grounded electric. When the electric department inspector came to inspect the electric to give the OK to switch on the permanent city power, the inspector was asking questions about the ground. He wanted to know the size of the ground wire, the size of the metal with is to earth and how deep the metal runs in the ground. In this case; the metal rod runs into the ground 1.8 meters, it is 4 hun, the ground wire (grounding electrode conductor) is size 16. In any event he approved the electrical, and then went to do other houses which I know for sure were done without grounded electrical. These got passed also, but who knows if payola was involved. In the last rental house I was in, if I wanted to plug in a USB cable to the back of my computer I would switch off the computer and then turn off the power. Sometimes I would still get a shock which always puzzled me. In any event, here the computer can be touched at will and there is no shock!

There are 35 recessed lighting receptacles and 5 ceiling fans on the ceiling. Each ceiling fan is controlled by its own control box which has separate off/on and rotate switches. In the main entry area the lighting is controlled by 2 dimmer switches. There is a wall mounted reading light in the entry area that is controlled by its own switch. There are two three way switches, one controls the patio lighting and the other controls the lighting in the back of the house. These switches work in combination with an inside and outside switch, and I can say this is a really nice feature. For example, when you come home at night you can switch on the outside light from the outside, but they can also be switched on or off from the inside. There is lighting on the front and the sides of the house all controlled by separate switches. There is also a security light in the front of the house, controlled at the main switchbox upon entry to the house. The perimeter wall lighting is controlled by a switch at the main switch box.

The two water pumps have an outside switch box, but both feed into one station on the circuit breaker. The circuit breaker has eight stations as follows; kitchen, hot water heater, small bathroom (along with the outside lighting and dining area), office, bedroom, large bathroom, pumps and finally the entry room.

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