The Thai rainy season has been truly evident over the past couple of week. With the exception of 2 washout days, the rest of the working days were generally dry enough to work, with much of the rain still happening after hours & during the nighttime.

Seems the Thai workers don’t mind plying their trade in the rain. It is when the rain in drenching and there is danger in using power tools or being up high on steel, do they seek shelter to await the passing of the rain clouds.

While we generally stay around our temporary country house much of the time to monitor the building, look after our dogs and tend to the property, we also had a couple of day trips to Nakhon Phanom & Mukdahan for lunch and chores related to the house build.

House Build Week 14 (15 – 21 July 24)

YouTube Video Channel – This weeks video of the building activity provides a visual summary of the progress. (check out the video – click) – Week 14 House Build

During week 14 the various construction teams were doing a number of things concurrently. We had the roofing crew, brick layers & render bead team on site together.

The brick layers finished up the remaining block & brick work that was remaining to be completed. The kitchen double walls needed to be completed along with the double wall in the spare/buddha room. Aside from some minor works that need to be completed, such as some horizontal & vertical concrete wall beams, this work is generally done.

Top of the wall “Bond Beam” had work had begun, but more remains to be finished. The builders constructed a reinforced rebar & concrete beam that runs horizontally on top of the house walls. It provides resistance to shear loads and also helps distribute lateral loads throughout the wall sections, as illustrated below.

PVC render corner/stop beads on window & doors – these PVC pieces give a good strong clean square edge when render finishing the walls with the special concrete render. Stop/corner beads are used when rendering up to a window, door frame or need to end a run of render with a clean finish. Later & before rendering they will apply render meshing between the beads, concrete lintels and ACC blocks to ensure a good bonding for the render.

Finishing metal work & add facia boards – the roofing team continued with the metal frame construction, welding cross pieces into the two roof trusses & adding some further supports. They also did touch up with red oxide paint on metal structure welds or any exposed metal in the roof structure that had not been coated previously. Then the task of installing the fiber cement facia boards around the roof edge took place over a few days.

During this week the supply of CPAC teak brown, smooth cool, roof tiles arrived. A total of 11 pallets each holding 330 tiles plus the edge and peak finishing tiles. There was also a delivery of Profast roofing foil, dry tech seam systems for edges & associated materials.

On Friday we went to Homepro Mukdahan & met with the Kitzcho kitchen design representatives. We had decided that we would build a concrete Thai kitchen with the usual inserts & use the Kitzcho Zoul collection. It was a simple style but it has an elegance to it – in our view. Recently we had discovered their new colors and thought the “dark green” would add a unique style to the kitchen design. It was fun to work with the designer using the software to create the space that we envisaged. The plan is for a U shape kitchen with a narrow island in the middle, with space for stool seating.

In terms of floor tile Ace has decided he wants a pattern floor as shown below that is a cream/green theme. Trying to find the tiles that compliment this floor tile for the base and back splash is proving to be a challenge – it is a work in progress. What we end up with for tiles will be a mystery until it is completed. Here is a concept picture on the initial layout.

On the Saturday following our visit to Mukdahan, the Kitzcho designer and Homepro design representative attended our build site to undertake detailed space measurements and to also look at other areas for tiling purposes later.

House Build Week 15 (22 – 28 July 24)

YouTube Video Channel – This weeks video of the building activity provides a visual summary of the progress. (check out the video – click) – Week 15 House Build

This weeks main activity was focused on the roof installation, using SCG smooth cool teak brown tile. Due to the work on the roof the site construction foreman and his team were off site (for safety reason) working elsewhere while the roof contractors did their thing. They didn’t want the risk associated with tiles or other material falling on their heads. It didn’t stop the other trades who continued to work alongside the roofing team on other projects.

We had been speaking with our building contractor about having CCTV, Cat 6 internet cabling & air conditioners installed as part of the build so that wires, cables & infrastructure could be hidden away in the walls and ceiling with the control boxes being placed in our utility room, where required. We didn’t want to have it added later after the house was complete & run into installation challenges. The builder organised for a company he deals with to come onsite to do a survey, listen to our requirements to provide a quotation. We spent a few hours on CCTV system & placement, then onto installing an internet network of Cat 6 cables into various rooms & then discussed the type & placement of air conditioners. We are awaiting a quote from the contractor.

On the Monday there was a new team on site undertaking the installation of non shrink concrete grouting of the tops of the upright columns where the rebar was exposed just below the ceiling plates. This special grouting fills this gap to provide strength to support the roof plates and to cover the exposed rebar to prevent rusting. I have never seen the product used before. When mixed it is a very wet, runny consistency that is slowly poured into wood frames assembled around the top of the columns with a small scoop. There are 32 columns so that took a few days to complete.

The team was also onsite again this week to continue to install PVC render corner/stop beads on window & doors frames & exposed column edges. This was new construction method I had not seen previously & it was interesting to learn what this was all about. The older technician has been at this for 30+ years apparently & when you watched him & his son at work, it was evident. They use PVC strips designed to be installed on edge corners to provide strength when the render is applied. The team used string lines to precisely place these pieced at about 1.25 cm off the current cement casings. This allows for the application of cement render to this thickness on both sides of a wall to create a 10 cm wall. (7.5 cm block & 2 x 1.25 cm of render). Setting up the string lines and applying the mortar has taken all week long. They may finish by Saturday or Sunday of this week.

Roofing Tiles Installed – The major focus this week has been the installation of our roof tiles & associated works. The delivery last week of about 3750 tiles meant a lot of effort was required to get them onto the roof structure and to get them screwed down correctly onto the purlins, along with the eaves fillers & Profast foilex reflective roof sheeting.

Fun Fact – These CPAC smooth cool tiles weigh about 4 kg each, so with the total tile numbers, the roof weight will be in the order of15,000 kg or 16.5 US tons. That is substantial so you can quickly determine why the house foundation & steel roofing structure needs to be robust to handle this weight. There was a team of 6 & the boss undertaking this task.

Each tile was individually screwed to a purlin. They wanted to do only every second one (apparently standard practice) but we explained our experience with wind lifting tiles off our previous house roof, so insisted that every tile be secured. Under the tiles was installed Profast Foilex, a special aluminum fiber sheet that is used help reflect UV rays away from the ceiling space. It was a week long journey to manually move the tiles from their pallets onto the roof & then proceed to lay them down. Here a few shots of the tiling.

By the end of the week on Friday the roof looked like the finished product. We have been happy with the outcome. The roof team are off over the weekend and expect to return next week to finish off the gable roof openings with the vents & Shera wood siding & then tackle the Bluescope Colorbond roof for the back porch and the carport.

Week 16 should be more on finishing the gable ends of the roof & then attention will turn to cutting in the electrical conduit into the walls for plugs & light switches. Looking forward to reporting on week 16 & 17 in two weeks time. Week 16 is half way on the 32 week build schedule – not sure if will be in reality?