Building a house

[migrant]

Good Morning All (at least here)

Planning on building a house within a year. From fellow posts I know that being on site is required, no problem.

Currently working on rough plans and would like to get input from fellow members on a couple things

1) Do I just draw up a rough plan, ie number of rooms, sizes, orientation, and then hand to a professional with perhaps other desired details such as materials, desired look?

2) While we have an idea of what we want I would hope the final designer will give suggestions to save money and work better in Thailand (perhaps I hope too much on this?)

3) Any recommendations on designers and approx costs? The building will be in Bang Saphan

4) Will be building within 50 meters of ocean

Thanks!

[Harmless]

I can just comment on getting the actual drawings and building permit done easily if you draw the floor plan and how the house should look from outside & how the roof should look like. Nothing else is mentioned about the materials than the construction type (steel + concrete in our case).

If the area you build requires building permit (likely) you can probably save a lot of trouble by getting the drawings done by someone who is sitting in the government office that gives those permits.

We have done this in Cha-am several times now, the cost of getting our house plans drawn into proper format and the building permit at the same time was around 40 000 Baht (150m2 house) and 60 000 Baht for 4 unit townhouse.
The prices we got from architects and design offices were multiple times higher and didn't include the building permit.

Edit: I wish we were living that close to the sea

[STEVE G]

We just got a plan out of one of those books of house designs that you can buy in most Thai book shops and gave it to our building contractor with a few modifications and they drew up the plans and obtained the building permit all within the basic cost of the house. (I believe the Thai owner of the company is connected to the land office so it was very easy for them to do that.)

[buksida]

Also built in Bangsaphan as you know. Did the layout and drawings myself then took it to the amphur office where their designer created a set of technical drawings and issued a building permit. Approx cost was 12,000 baht, house is 205sqm.

This website came in handy ... http://www.floorplanner.com/

Materials and other technicalities need to be discussed with the builder, he'll offer a basic construction cost (ours was 8,500 baht per sqm at the time, will he higher today) and you add on the extras you want.

Have hundreds of photos of ours being built so let me know when you're starting and I can show you some and offer some tips - it is a big learning curve!

You've probably seen it but this forum has more specifics for Bangsaphan: http://bangsaphanguide.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=11

[Gérard]

In the last few years, I have seen a few houses being built on the beach, not far from the Coral Resort - Bangsaphan

[buksida]

They are Thai owned bungalow resorts, there are only 3 private houses on the beach in that area.

[malcolminthemiddle]

Have you considered one of the Thai companies that provide a turn key design and build service?

They offer many different types of standard designs which can be modified to suit buyers specific requirements. There is a choice of finishing specification from standard to executive depending on budget.

Here are the links to two such companies.


http://www.royalhouse.co.th/th/hometype ... 105&id=175

http://pd.co.th/v6/en/index.php

[migrant]

Some great ideas thanks!

Buksida, I'll take you up on the ideas, over some drinks, of course!!