Advice on building

[bladerunner2120]

if you dont know any better ....then you just dont know.
by all means give your opinion, ive given mine then just leave it at that i dont agree with you you dont agree with me...alls fine, have a wonderful weekend.

[bladerunner2120]

sorry if i sounded rude...i didnt mean to.
Your concrete slab might seem cool to you i dout it would to me. Reading one website about topical passive solar design, becasue of the humid and constant tempretures they claim it was dificualt to cool but there were a number of design options to help, they clearly showed diagrams of raised buildings shaded exterior walls etc, in the far north of Australia we have similar tropical weather to Thailand, so its not like i have no idea, my inlaws house concrete floor seemed fine at first to me and it was reasonable comfortable and perhaps in time i could get use to it if i did not have a choice, if i am going to build a place...then i do have a choice and concret is not an option.
I dont want to get into a slanging match over what residents living there think about concret vs timber floors, ive lived in both types of houses here and i got a fair idea on what would work over there.
I also am aware as i said earlier that solid construction in Thailand doesnt have to be a sweat box to live in....i think i can do better than that,in future i wont get drawn into the concrete is best that some may favor, i am more intrested in foward thinking design and materials ideas and options that maybe some forum member has tried or is aware of...thank you for your understanding and input so far.

[crazy88]

Bladerunner

Now that you have the toys back in the pram, I am sure, certainly in my case, that everyone would be interested in your knowledge and observations. After all that is what a forum is for.

Crazy 88

[ozuncle]

Some Australian what?

[miked]

splitlid,
with regards to your photo, what are you providing in the way of a damp course.?? effectively you are building at ground level and it is my understanding the damp can rise as much as one and a half metres. even if you cover the floor area with a damp course you still have the problem with damp rising through the posts.
miked

[splitlid]

hi Miked, actually finished floor level is about 400mm about ground level.
as you will know, rising damp relies on capilary action, this is common in porous materials which have direct contact with the ground, the 400mm of solid concrete acts as a type of physical barrier. the cement render is porous but, ive only ever seen damp in Thailand in areas which are shaded and dont dry out quickly after rainfall.

[splitlid]

as an addition: im not saying i wouldnt use it. its just not readily available in thailand.

[Khundon1975]

sorry if i sounded rude...i didnt mean to.

That's OK, but please remember, many people on this forum have extensive knowledge in the construction industry.
If you ask for opinions from people who have built houses all over the World, then that is exactly what you get.

Back to your problem, there are alternatives to the concrete slab/heat problem, whether they are available in Thailand, only research on WWW will answer that.

I considered building the beam and post system but instead of a concrete floor slab, I thought of putting in a "Lightweight" floor, using expanded clay concrete for the floor slab then covering it in teak flooring, my second choice would have been to use dense (non compressive, 150mm foil backed) polystyrene slabs with a screed then teak on top, and finally, I had considered polystyrene concrete (polystyrene beads, mixed with glue, sand and cement and laid like concrete) with teak flooring over the top, but I could not find anyone with the necessary skills or knowledge to use any of these 3 systems and I wasn't about to sweat my cobbs off doing it myself.

All of these systems still have the termite problem, as does raised timber construction.

TIT.

[Name Taken]

I can't really offer much advice on building materials, but if you are planning on building a house in rural Nakhon Nowhere Thailand here are some things that you should be aware of
1. There is no nightlife(working girls) available.
2. The rural areas of Thailand are a haven for criminals to go and roam around freely. Be careful
3. As a foreigner(farang) you will stick out like a sore thumb and become a target of aforementined criminals.
4. It's very boring.
5. You will be far away from your home countries embassy in Bangkok(Chiang Mai?).
6. You will frequently encounter thais that have a hostile and negative attitude towards you simply because you are a foreigner(farang, not thai). Thai people in the rural areas of Thailand have an extremely poor educational background.

Good Luck.

[bladerunner2120]

Hi specialist, no chance of me living in a rural outpost, i expect somewhere within the hua hin or 3hr radius from BKK area, i do need some creature comforts and i do want to socialize when it suites me.
My partner has warned me of being a possible target so all thats sitting in the back of my mind, also the biggest fear for me are the snakes....im just so uncomfortable just thinking about the blighters wandering around the property at will even waking up to one curled up on my bed...so if i were to build id be looking for somewhere established.
Khundon, intresting floor materials, where is that done? over here a popular way of doing a raised slab is what we call a "waffel" there polystyrene waffel pads, you start on a scraped level block of land, the exterior layout is formed with timber formwork, plastic is laid over the area and taped for moisture barrier, the waffels are laid out leaving spaces..beams bettween each bothways, steel (rio) is layed in the beams and tied together on plastic chairs (small cups that hold the rio approx 50 mm off the ground) steel mesh is laid over the waffels and beams on chairs, the slab over waffel is a finnished 100mm, popular in the western and northen side of melbourne due to highly reactive clay.
I have been thinking provided i could get steel purlins at the right size that a steel frame would proberly be the way to go,overhere most comercial and industrial buildings are steel framed with either a concrete tilt slab for walls or steel sheeting or a combination of both.
This is a picture of a typical factory down here, the principles in a much smaller scale could be concidered for a building there.
Steel stumps to suport steel purling bearers at whatever hight desired with timber floor joists bloted to the bearers. a timber floor then can easily be layed, as for termites i belive there are pest control buisnesses there that do termite protection.

[bladerunner2120]

there are a few pictures of what i was taking about, there are all local and could be easily adabted there.

1st is the waffel pad that is a common way of pouring a slab in the outer suburbs, i wouldnt concider it for thialand.
2cd is a steel sup floor in this case the floor joist are steel channel on steel bearers supported with either concrete or steel stumps with a brick veneer external wall.
3rd is a typical steel framed house that will be brick clad on a concrete slab.

takeing these principles and passive solar design and modefing to available materials and perhaps
by useing a light weight wall cladding appropriate insulation shadeing of walls and windows it maybe possible to build a comfortable house that isnt the tradional way and be comfortable as well.
one thing is that there isnt any material other than the steel to contain heat and since its not in mass it shouldnt be a factor.

[hhfarang]

Good luck getting any construction like that done here without importing your own builders and engineers...

[splitlid]

all 3 can be done easily in thailand, the hard bit is getting building approval. anything out of the norm needs convincing, however, it can be done, and as already noted, it will be more expensive.

ps. how do the move the swimming pools out of the factory and deliver to site?

[splitlid]

look into reverse brick veneer construction.

[barrys]

Hi Splitlid

That's really interesting.
In fact, it's a design I've been toying with ever since I saw houses built like this in the Perth area of WA.

I wonder if you could answer a couple of questions for me

Would the lightweight corrugated 8x4 ft sheets available here be an acceptable alternative to the colorbond roof sheeting?

What is the recommended depth of the battens, i.e. the gap between the masonry and outer cladding?

What is the recommended material for the waterproof wrap?

Is it not incredibly loud when torrential rain thunders down onto the roof?