Crossy

http://www.reallynicerecipes.com/recipe/game/pigeon-pie

In the absence of an earth-resistance meter or loop-impedance tester you can do a quick-and-dirty earth test with a 15W light bulb (filament lamp).

Carefully connect one end of the lamp to your earth bar, the other end should go to a live point via some form of switch. Remove all vulnerable persons from the house just in case. Turn on the switch. The lamp should light if there is a half decent earth.

Andn where might that be ?

http://www.thaiwatsadu.com/location.html

I asked this a while back here some useful pointers although I never actually got around to buying one. Now we are actually moving into our new home will probably need to get one.

We are indeed supposed to sign that we have no financial interest in the land. Seems to depend upon the land office as our local office (Pathum Thani) were not interested in me in any way shape or form (Wifey does still have her Thai name mind, but they were fully aware of my existence).

Not sure about the taxes, we paid a significant sum when transferring TO the bank for a mortgage, it's possible that there is nothing to pay when transferring back at the end of the term. Hopefully others will chime in with their experiences.

Ah, the classic Thai NONE grounding system. The brass (earth) bar at the top should be full of green wires

Is the black wire at the left end of the earth bar connected to it, any idea where the other end goes? Could be that ground is brought to the box but not distributed around the apartment.

Depends upon the manufacturer of your distribution board, if it's Square-D with plug-in MCBs then HomePro have RCBOs for about 1400 Baht (IIRC). For other manufacturers you will need to visit your local wholesale outlet, they may have to order

Visit the manufacturer's website to get part numbers, pictures etc.

A post and replies to it have been removed, I'm sure you all know why.

Yup, that return address of pay_palalert[at]officeemail.net is a give-away, Google the address (with an @ instead of [at]) and you get literally dozens of hits regarding scams.

All my contact with PayPal has come from service[at]intl.paypal.com but I suspect there will be small variations depending where your PP account is based.

Unless you can see the funds by logging on to your PP account steer well clear, even if the funds are available it's not unknown for scammers to reverse the transaction once you've sent the item.

Many of the houses in that style that are located in the Bang Sai culture centre have tree-sized round concrete posts right up to the floor level, the teak beams etc are attached to steel plates cast into the top of the posts.

The posts are painted teak coloured and look pretty ok from a bit of a distance, not 100% authentic but keeps the wood away from damp rot and potential timber munching creatures.

Could be a way of satisfying local building regs too.

RGS and Dave, thanks for the advice, but I am happy with what I am getting for my money. I was only trying to let people know that finance is available even if you do not have a work permit.

No WP has always been a stopper in the past, it would be really good to hear of someone getting financing solely based upon a foreign income. We used my local income together with that of Wifey totalling 150k per month for a loan of 2.3 million over 15 years.

I don't want to rain on your parade but until you have the cash in your pocket nothing is a given, despite what your local bank manager says, as all decisions are ultimately made by Head Office

BTW, our place (shell only) cost about 13,500 Baht per m²

Yup, ants (especially the really tiny ones) seem to like electric fields, we've had them in gate openers, water pumps, even computers.

Probably the only solution is to leave some of the ant killer powder in each switch box once you've cleared out the existing residents.

Conduit on the tails in the roof space section would be smart, you have no service fuse to protect the cables (and your home from the subsequent fire) in the event of a rodent induced short.

PEAs own guidance book says 10mm² for a 5/15, 16mm² for a 15/45 (which is what we have, PEA supplied the cable and poles) and 35mm² for a 30/100 (all copper).

It certainly seems to be something of a lottery, we were visited once (on our second extension).

To our OP, there are a number of threads detailing the documentary requirements for a marriage extension (your wife forms part of the documentation so take her to immigration with you).

Would a capacitor work instead of batteries, hypothetically?

Yes, but it would probably end up being the size of a small planet

We got a building loan (50%) through Siam Commercial.

Be prepared for the long haul, supposedly stage payments over the build period as noted by saorsa, but it's taken nearly the entire building period (12 months) to finally get the cash in the bank (we've been financing the construction ourselves meanwhile), the paperwork is seemingly endless, and, in common with immigration, they never seem to ask for everything at once, in fact we had to re-supply our pay slips because the first lot were too old by the time the bank got their act together.

We ended up providing (with endless copies):-

My passport.

My work permit (in the past it was a non-starter without, don't know if anything has changed).

6 months payslips for myself and wifey (x2 as indicated above).

Wifey's ID.

Wifeys Tabien Ban.

Tabien Ban for the nearly complete house (I suspect that this is what's needed to get your final stage payment).

Confirmation of Employment from our respective employers (our contracts were not deemed suitable, they wanted dated and stamped letters).

Marriage certificate (you do apparently have to be married to use the combined incomes).

6 months bank statement for me as I don't bank with Siam Commercial.

Credit reference for me from the National Credit Bureau (x2 again because of bank delays).

Building permit with attached approved drawings.

Construction cost breakdown from the contractor.

Independent valuation of the house.

Construction status survey (x2 for us plus the completion survey)

Probably something I've forgotten, the bank file is a massive stack of paper

Signatures by the dozen and initials on what seems like a whole pack of paper.

UK regs require that metal back boxes be grounded so the screws cannot become live in the event of a fault.

If you have class-1 lighting fixtures (which have a ground connection) these too should be grounded, but many modern fittings are class-2 and do not require a ground connection.

In practice nobody in Thailand bothers with grounding lighting circuits, even my newly installed house has no lighting ground.

Sounds good then

A wire that is open at both ends can still bite by capacitive coupling.

more likely inductive unless the insulation is real thin and acting as dielectric..lol

having said that ,was reconnecting my satellite dish last week and got nice belts from the disconnected coax ....from the RF? ....go figure...

Remember on the dew line (distant early warning system) was told stay away from the huge dish as it would fry my naughty bits...

I'm not going to get into a technical discussion here, but it is most definitely a capacitive effect, you may be surprised how much capacitance 20m of twin actually has. The stuff we use in the UK is about 200pF per metre and there's always the possibility of poor insulation adding to the leak.

The tickle you were getting from the satellite co-ax is certainly originating in the receiver which I'm sure was still on the other end. Invariably these have switching power supplies which, despite them being class-2, can leak enough to make the co-ax outer tickle when it's not connected to the grounded dish / LNB (or even when it is connected and the dish isn't a particularly good ground). Yup, mine nibbles too.

Good thought Naam, he says it was cleaned recently but who knows

No real idea, but a few thoughts.

Is the unit oversized for the room? An oversized aircon will cool the room rapidly but won't have chance to dry the air much whilst cooling.

Has the A/C behaved in the past? Particularly was it OK at this time last year, you could simply be feeling the effects of the local humidity.

You could try running in 'dry' mode for a couple of hours, you won't get the full cooling effect but it will knock the humidity down and make you feel more comfortable.

RH.

NO, you cannot declare and pay at the airport, period!

In order to be able to bring in quantities over the duty-free allowance you need an import licence, I don't know the process but I strongly suspect that for a personal quantity of cigars you really don't want to go there, sorry.

Sadly there is no mechanism for paying duty on over limit items even if you declare them.

Either dump it, don't bring it or hope you don't get caught in one of the random x-ray bag checks.

If you get caught smuggling you will have all your tobacco confiscated (not just over limit items) and get a nice fine, the fine is something like 4 times the value of the undeclared items plus tax and duty (not sure about that but it's not peanuts).

More info here http://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Travel-g293915-c133772/Thailand:Customs.And.Duty.Free.Allowances.html

Joint accounts are generally not accepted for the purposes of extensions, you're probably lucky they are letting you use it at all

In the pub in the UK, I was unemployed at the time.

The mate I was having the beer with asked if I fancied a short (10 week) contract in Seoul. That turned into 2 1/2 years in Korea, never looked back, moved on to HK and KL then Italy.

Met the Thai wife in Rome, when the European contracts dried up we moved to Thailand. I didn't have a job, but still maintained my Asian network and got another short contract within a month, still limping along on short contracts and long holidays

Never been called Mou Yai although my Thai nickname is Mou (I'm year of the pig so it just fitted) and I'm pretty big