coolthaihouse.com blog

A good while ago we were in the process of buying and subdividing some land and had some need for a legal consultation + help in doing the transfer. Today would not go the lawyer route. At that time I stopped by a recommended Thai lawyer who was in the area, just to ask some basic questions. The land was already under contract and was scheduled to close in about 1 week. At the time before engaging the said lawyer (who was recommended by some acquaintances doing a large project + others on various other forums) I asked what the costs would be for the envisioned services….. the response ‘not much, don’t worry, not expensive’. (more…)

Our Thai friend has been looking for an affordable house for a while. While I thought something fairly close to Pattaya was cheap if it was around 1 million baht, I have learned there is a whole lot of houses cheaper than that around. However, you must be careful when looking at something that seems like it would cost more to build than the asking price. (more…)

Here is an update on steel and other prices since that runs from the beginning of 2008 through the beginning of 2009, the figures represent actual purchases. As you can see from the following table, it was a massive roller coaster ride, much as what was seen with the price of crude oil. Since steel prices are set internationally and determined by global factors, the amount of price fluctuation is large compared with products produced solely within Thailand, for example, cement. (more…)

It has been an amazing ride this year! First, commodity prices were going up at an obviously unsustainable rate. Now prices material prices (internationally) have crashed. One easy example, copper, which was selling for 4.01 dollars per pound is now under 2.00 dollar per pound, gas which was up to 150 dollars per barrel is now down to around 65.

How does this impact the price of raw materials that we need to build a house? If you remember the previous post here Inflation in the price of building materials in Thailand we have been concerned about the recent price run up. Well, of course what goes up must come down! (more…)

It’s funny how I often get asked about the cost of living here in Thailand, not as to how much I, you or the typical expat spends, but the minimum cost of living. Rob writes me ‘Hi Dozer, I’m currently a Vet student with another 2 years to go before graduation. I have a chance to take a year off and ‘travel’ – or I should say ‘pick a place and go there’ as there really isn’t a travel budget. Just to check the feasibility of the whole thing – can you tell me what it would cost to live there, say for a year, just basic lifestyle not including any extras?’. (more…)

One thing about it – it has been an absolutely horrendous year for anyone building a house. As you have heard there has been a tremendous explosion in the cost of basic materials here in Thailand, from cement used extensively in cement block houses, the actual cinderblocks, red bricks or Qcon blocks, wood used for formwork, sheetrock gypsum board using in ceilings, and on and on and on – prices are up across the board. Two of the big budget items for a concrete block house (more…)

submitted by Dougal BJust by chance I picked up a free copy of the Bangla Mirror from outside the mosque in Brick Lane London. I thought that you would appreciate this scan of an advertisement for houses in Sylhet Bangladesh. Regards, Dougal B

Interesting…. The cool thai house has gone international! Click the pic for an enlarged view.

submitted by Peter M Well it took a while but here is the first batch of pictures for my house. I hope things are going well with the column. My energies late has been devoted to reigniting my biz which took a big downfall after putting so much ENERGY and ATTENTION in my house (located in Bangkok). Definitely, I could write a book of how to get it done in thailand. If you don’t have a contractor and your building from scratch….pay someone to oversee your job. I did it all myself…got obsessed by it and lost many valuable opportunities for my biz. Now I have a great house, my wife and family are EXTREMELY happy about the transition (the neighbours are great, location great, value of the house great). But its been a battle to go back up hill. Only now, almost a 10 months later am I starting to get back on my feet financially. (more…)

Submitted by David S. I am now in a position to update you on the developments since my last report back in October 2005, where we had acquired our land in Naklua (just outside of Pattaya, Thailand) and were trying to get a building permit and bank finance.

Firstly, at City Hall we met one of the planning department officials who said he could arrange to get everything done in three weeks for a sum of 40,000 Baht. (more…)

I think the preface to any ‘rip off ‘ worker story must be that normally the workers are pretty good and honest – but times they are a changin’ in good ole Pattaya, Thailand. There are some sleazy folks out there waiting to pounce at the first opportunity. I do consider myself lucky to still be able to count the times I’ve been ripped off on a single hand.

The prerequisite to getting a shifty contractor is 1.) being in a real hurry to find someone. 2.) finding someone you haven’t worked with before. In this case the work at hand was pretty easy no skilled required stuff. Move some blocks, rocks, and coconut stalks. (more…)

Some things here just seem inefficiently done. Many years ago when the building boom first started to hit Pattaya, Thailand there was great demand for fill dirt. But where to get it? The answer of course was ‘way out in the boonies’ where the land wasn’t worth anything. But how far out in the boonies? If too far, transportation costs would be too high. If too close, the land sacrificed would be too costly. So the right answer was: just a fair distance from the edge of development.

And of course what happened? The land was stripped down, dug into a big hole in the ground, only later to have the wave of development move on by it. (more…)

If there is one critical area of any house project which can go oh so wrong in so many ways — it is the roofing. The ubiquitous Thai construction crew is fairly skilled in many aspects of construction, but one common shortcoming is in roof construction. As it turned out here, the roof valleys were done totally inadequately. If you think about it, roof valleys would often not come up in up-country construction, where houses commonly have no roof valleys. In future projects (if I knew then what I know now), I would definitely farm out the roofing to a company which specialized in them. (more…)

David S project continued The house is going to be a 2 storey, 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom house, the enclosed area is 11.0M x11.0M with integral car port/garage.

We are still awaiting the building permit from Pattaya City hall, this has taken 6 weeks so far, however the man keeps saying “nearly ready can have next week”, but which next week is unclear. We have cleared the site, and it is ready for backfilling, but first I need to get a soils report to determine the allowable ground bearing pressure (for foundation design). Do you know of any geological or engineering consultants that could handle such an investigation?.

On the subject of budget, (more…)

From David S

We have finally bought some land in Naklua (Pattaya, Thailand area), approximately 200TW, just off Soi xx in Naklua, After contacting several real estate agents and not finding what we wanted we eventually, or rather my wife asked a few of her friends to see what they could come up with. We went to see 4 pieces of land and decided on the one we have bought. It is slightly on a slope and will need some infill before building, and also three large trees will have to be removed. (more…)

Lot of building going on right now in the Pattaya, Thailand area. Subdivisions are springing up like crabgrass after a good rain. Here was a caption of a billboard around here that caught my eye, ‘Rise Your Happiness’. If this is your motivation for buying a pre-built subdivision house, you might take a cold shower and think again in the morning. Plenty of less expensive alternatives along those lines can, fortunately or unfortunately, be found in the land of smile. (more…)

Here was a sure sign land prices are falling. 1 Rai land 2km. from Sukhumvit on Soi Siam Country club, must sell, 900,000. This ad caught my attention at the foodland, so we went for a drive to check out the land. As an additional sales point the owner gladly pointed out that there was not problem with any drought in this neck of the woods! As you can see the entire 1 Rai is totally under water. Shouldn’t the ad read ‘pond for sale?’

Here is the digging rig that pulled up to bore the holes for the electric posts. As I see a lot of electric posts around town listing at about 30% angles, this would seem to be an improvement over the hand dug method. The holes are dug to about a 2 meter depth. Only problem here is that the holes were dug one day with no immediate plans to put in the posts. Consequently rain run-off has filled most of the holes.

Here is a very unique design of a farang house built to conserve cash. The idea is eventually there will be roll-up doors (like the type used on shop houses) where you see the openings. Therefore the house will be ‘open air’. The house is built of red brick, poured foundation columns and synthetic roof sheeting. (more…)

This is a shot of the road project from h**l in front of the coolthaihouse (which is located in Pattaya, Thailand). As an update, the road actually as evolved by it self pretty well. If you remember, one neighbor didn’t like the slope, so he came in an hacked the road without asking anybody, drastically altered the water run-off flow. After that came the wondrous application of road gravel (hin-kuk) which keeps the road from getting muddy even if the road sits in water and the sub-strata isn’t ideal. (more…)

My confidence level hasn’t always been so high about the accuracy of land office surveys as done in Thailand. On a happy note however, during a recent land survey done by the land department, I was pretty impressed with the accuracy of the survey equipment. Here is the setup: On a fairly large parcel a couple of the official border posts had gone missing. So the surveyor was trying to estimate where the original post should have been, there would need to be a temporary marker put there. On one side is the surveyor with the survey box and on the other side is someone holding up a marking panel. The surveyor was setting the distance and telling the worker with the distance flag to move in 3 centimeters and then move forward 1 centimeter until the distance was just right. Then he inserted a temporary metal marking stake. The distance was about 70 meters. When the worker dug the hole to insert the temporary post he found the original border post buried under the ground at that exact location. I thought that was a pretty good hit. (more…)

There are a lot of brown outs here, where there is a sudden and sustained drop in the voltage being output. It can last from just a second to several hours. Before I got the UPS system, I had all kinds of weird problems with the computer, like freeze-up and other bizarre and erratic behavior. These apparently were being caused by short term temporary voltage drops, the UPS has solved this problem. During a brown out there is an indicator that the battery back up is in use, sometimes these can just be a second or two. (more…)

A few more thoughts on raft foundation construction. Raft foundation construction is typically used overseas and is starting to migrate here as a ‘better way to do it’. It is one of the first decisions to make when planning your house. As we track the progress of Attila’s house, he has graciously supplied a step by step photo journal showing a raft foundation being constructed in 8 steps. Simply put, the foundation is laid down as the image shows, allowing the structure to ‘float’. (more…)

This just in from one of Cruzing’s friends in the USA, it is the story of the rebuilding of a house which was lost by natural disaster — her house was lost in a big fire almost 2 years ago that destroyed many homes. Even though it doesn’t involve anything to do with building in the LOS (land of smiles), it does show that sometimes things go wrong even in other places with regards to the rebuilding.

The house is coming along still slower than molasses. Lots of problems along the way. The new builders told us maybe by Christmas the house may be completed. In the mean time our insurance living expenses will be cut off exactly 2 years to date Oct. 26 the day of Cedar Storm Fires. (more…)

As far as lighting goes, I have some reflections after living here for a while. Here the ceiling is 3.2 meters high, which is typical. I like the look of recessed lighting, so I had it installed throughout. (more…)

Sometimes observing Thai workers can be fun. There is a two story building going up across from here. They now have the columns framed on the second story, which reach upwards about 3 1/2 meters. The columns have been poured.

This morning a worker wanted to wet down all the columns, about 15 of them. So he took a small pail of water and climbed up the first column and carefully poured it slowly inside the framing. He did the same on the second column. (more…)