Swelters

Howdy,

My transfer from BofA to BBL arrived today, April 3. The system is working again .... at least for me it is ....

wallyc

My B of A from Pennsylvania seems to back working too. In the meanwhile let me recommend a surefire way to go that charges no fees or transaction costs as far as I can tell. Just go to the foreign exchange desk with your passport and ATM card and ask for up to $10,000, you'll get a heap of cash in no time at all. I ask them to deposit it for me, I don't like to be handling big money even with a bank guard a few feet away.

There is really little point in taking a position on this matter, either way.

Better reflect on what is going on here, for our own benefit. I have two ideas:

1. Thai authorities including such as grade school teachers and shopowners and even sales people in some establishments, think of themselves as authorities, demanding high respect. Public flaunting of this custom is an extreme challenge not easily shrugged off. Of course this attitude can be very annoying to westerners.

2. The slightest raising of the voice is not infrequently taken as close to uncontrolled shouting suggesting the person is out of control of themselves or seriously lacking in good sense. This could be confirmed by threatening movements, glaring, etc. A barechested passport photo would finish the diagnosis of "complete insanity" to most Thai.

Nothing said in this forum is going to change this.

A determined thief will get in no matter what you do. Especially if you are not at home.

Having someone live in the house while you are away may help. But you would need to trust them or you could be employing a thief.

Probably best not to have too many valuables. And secure what's worth keeping away when not at home.

Thanks, we are not worried about loss of valuables, but more break in when we (and presumed cash) are present and harm being done by say an armed intruder(s) who panics or wants to eliminate us as witnesses. I put a stout stick like a baseball bat handy to deter someone breaking through a window (second floor, they would have to make some noise getting to it) and as a second thought wrapped the business end with some barbed wire to prevent it being snatched away. The cheap plastic little alarms don't inspire confidence. A very loud car alarm powered by battery and activated by bedside switch with appurtenant floodlight would seem ideal but so far haven't seen anything like that though I can probably engineer it along with the artificial dog.

Maybe we are overly concerned about this but the incidence of this sort of thing seems fairly high in the region, and it seems likely that the fahlang household, always presumed infinitely rich, would be a temptation.

We live in an Isan village, pretty nice on the whole, but we've had cases of night breaking and entering from recalcitrant drug people, the last of which ended in a shooting of the offender by the house holder (all Thai). My wife worries that as a fahlang our house is an obvious target and I wonder whether people have thoughts on this topic. Once seen, the story goes, the criminal may resort to extreme acts to avoid identification.

I've done a couple of things that might help, I'm wondering if others have ideas. We are not attracted to the dog option which is a good one because we are on the property only part time.

Please, no gun debate here.

Swelters

ow about a gun that shoots blanks? Not a joke. Most householders in our village have guns so they are not especially hard to find even though the village is not especially dangerous. However most places also have a crazy drug addict or two who can be expected to make an effort to steal money including sometimes breaking and entering occupied houses a night. Most people would not care to kill anyone with a gun, including a burglar. But a frightening deterrent would be useful.

As usual when talking about currencies and financials, I totally agree with Naam !

Devalue against what ?

the problem with Thaivisa is that any Bill, Buck, Hank or Joe can make any statement as he pleases and if nobody checks and contradicts even the most ridiculous statements based on pure ignorance and/or wishful thinking will be taken at face value by those readers/members who are inexperienced but eager to inform themselves.

:D

Come come now, Nam you're having a weak day. Aren't the experts with bisyllabic names the ones who got us and themselves into all this trouble? Isn't it really a bit of a laugh to hear MBAs ( the best credential for sheephood ever) criticising Obama for his supposed "mistake" in invoking that obviously ridiculous notion of PE ratio? I think or hope that he deliberately did that, and I applaud.

Swelters

Quite an interesting topic, this. What is a friend? I've been here for some time and think that Thai relations are pretty much "family" with family expanded in some degree to include government cadres and university classes. "Church" is irrelevant as is the neighborhood pub. In the village one often feels that say recent immigrants though seemingly Thai are not even considered to be people. I was once talking with an Armenian in Hollywood US who had lived for years in a neighborhood called Thaitown with about fifty percent Thai. He told me quite sincerely that he had never heard of such a people.

Swelters

My goodness, sure a lot of mean-spirited posters on his post. Deserve this, deserve that.

Imagination would call for a fresh attack. Why not criticize the guy cause he's Irish? Maybe he's a catholic, those guys deserve all the bad stuff they get.

Try a session at Suan Mokh, boys, add a year or two to those angry lives.

Swelters

The university of Hawaii, [my university] has been working with tropical avocado cultivars for decades and have come up with a few winners....my favorite is the 'Sharwil' and have wanted to graft them over here on my 4 pet avocado trees just to have future grafting stock. I'm sure they will do well here as they were developed for tropical conditions.

'Sharwil' avocados have small seeds and greenish-yellow flesh with a rich, nutty flavor. In Hawaii, many consider 'Sharwil' to be superior to California cultivars and believe it should be marketed as a gourmet item. 'Sharwil' has green skin when ripe, which is a problem where consumers rely on black skin as a sign of ripeness. It is the only Hawaii avocado authorized for shipment to Alaska and the US mainland in compliance with USDA/Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) requirements. Avocados destined for these markets are required to be packed in a fruit fly-proof, APHIS-approved and -inspected packinghouse.

Is anyone here working with this cultivar?? and would be willing to share grafting stock??

We like the avos we buy when available (not often) at Villa here in BKK at about 25 baht each, they are pale green smooth skin (not Haas like the imports at 60-110 baht). I'm told they come from Pak Chong. This was mentioned in a post here, anyone know where the nursery is in Pak Chong? We have land, sandy hillside soil and good water at about elevation 250 meters in the foothills south of Pak Tong Chai Korat and would like to try to grow avos, any tips or basic references appreciated. My wife is a farmer but I don't know if she knows about grafting and such.

Swelters

This Loei area looks very nice and we have enjoyed village time there. There is a definite hilltribe and Lao feel to the rural areas. I commend the hardy enthusiast who can live there. But it is pretty far.

I hope it is not too far off topic to suggest that the ring of fair sized hills 100 km northeast of BKK that stretch from Pak Chong east are also high enough to bring some relief from heat and some interesting agri-opportunities such as grapes and avocados like Loei, while being accessible by bus within three hours and not at all overrun by tourism or alien influence. I don't include Wan Nam Kheo in this suggestion.

On the issue of living in the wife's village, there are two schools of thought.

a. Absolutely good thing.

b. Absolutely bad thing.

Both supported by ample data.

Swelters

I went through this with BofA several years ago when the ACH, outside the bank, transfer facility became available. After validating the trial transactions, they froze that authorized account. An e-mail explained that since the account it outside the US, the ACH provider would not allow it.

I always assumed the ACH provider had a women in charge of this states accounts whose husband had left her and moved to Thailand. As stated in this thread, other people with accounts in other states have been able to do this for some time until now. Maybe this woman is now in charge of all the transfers.

This is as good a theory as I've heard and I would applaud it as an act of deranged courage if true. but I rather think these people are low level folk who spend most of their time worrying about their jobs and mainly feed scripts and have no authority to do anything. The bank doesn't want to lose all the Thai expat business in LA so they let this BB transfer go on for while until some MBA discovers that they could be charging big fees on this then they pretend they are concerned with fraud, security, etc all the usual pusillanimous 9/11 crap. My conclusion is that we should all stop and think next time we are tempted to criticise "corruption" in Thailand and note that almost every corporate pronouncement in America is a lie and it's going to be some time til the public wakes up to this..hopefully with a taste for rage and revolution.

Swelters

At $40 per transfer, you must have been doing a SWIFT transfer. SWIFT transfers seem to be pricey at the great majority of financials institutions (in the $25-$50 range...and I think Bank of America currently charges around $40-$50 per SWIFT transfer). However, the Bank of America to Bangkok Bank "Automatic Clearing House" transfer function/method--which no longer works--only cost $3 for a transfer for a three business day transfer and $10 for a one business day transfer. Too bad some fraudulent activity (according to Bank of America) removed this Bank of America low cost method of transferring funds...then again, maybe this low cost part is the real reason.

An old story here, B of A and BB New York. The transfer deal didn't work then happily it worked for years then was cut off a couple of weeks ago. I believe the main fraud going on is B of America's representations on the matter. They charge 3% fee (!!!) on ATM withdrawals overseas. If you call bangkok bank NY you get a real person with a New Yauk accent and she might tell you what's going on. Let's hope it gets restored but I'm not holding my breath.

It may be that wise people don't worry much about middle-class aspirations (white, credentialled, english, etc) and it may be that the current collapse of western values raises good questions about the value of such things. I would suggest that parental reading of the Hobbit, Shakespeare, etc to english speaking kids and putting them in the company of people of good character, never mind the social class or language, will produce results to be proud of. I see no reason to think that the people in my village are any less happy or successful in life than my former University and venture capital friends in Palo Alto California. My oldest kids, now in their forties, were cared for by two Isan girls and I don't think any fahlang kids that I know ever received more love and attention for the first couple of years of their lives.

Swelters

So Swelters what have you found works best in your traditional Thai house? After abandoning expensive modern tiles we are back to traditional clay tiles for our place. Looking up at the tiles butts seems preferable to looking up at silver reflective surfaces, but we do want to be as cool as possible. We have allowed extra big windows, large sized vents in each end of the roof cavity and trees as near as possible. The plants will come after construction finishes...anything else that Thai farmers haven't already discovered?

Plants grow quickly, esp banana trees.

Tiles are going to be the same thermally, though your small tiles may allow more ventilation. You're going to suffer in the daytime, best you can do if you have to be inside is open everything up so you get air change every few minutes, and have some kind of roof sandwich with air in it--for example I'm looking up at teak planking which looks very nice and now, at 10 pm in Bangkok, is 30 C same as floors and walls and still a degree or so warmer than outside. But my wood windows are closed because by this time of night, and certainly later, the humidity outside is building up when at 30 you really need a bit of sweat to dump your body heat so humidity is a killer.

But my wife has some Isan lullaby on the CD and the woman is pretty good and I,m happy enough to be here and not back in some California tract house ever again. Over time things like "comfort" and "luxury" mean less to me and their absense does not detract from happiness as most of the non-westernized Thai well know. Drink more water.

I finally broke down and put in an old aircon unit and I may turn it on for a while to dry things out a bit and my wife does turn it on when she occasionally hangs around the house in the daytime.

Actually mosquitos are more of a problem than heat, they are devilishly clever at getting by all screens and traps.

Swelters

The basic thing you're trying to do with attic insulation is to keep heat from entering your living space through the ceiling. If you're opening the windows that means you'd like the ceiling to be the same temperature as the outside air. So you have to get the attic the same temperature as the outside and a good way to do that is with the foil hung from the rafters with the shiny side down AND good attic ventilation. Without the ventilation the attic is still going to heat up, just slower. If you don't have ventilation in the attic then you'll also get some benefit from putting fiberglass batts on top of the ceiling to stop the heat from coming through. In the rental houses I lived in before I built my house I didn't hang foil but I would put in ceiling insulation in the rooms I used most during the day. Even without the AC on you could tell a difference walking from a room with ceiling insulation into a room without.

If you are going to be using air conditioning, then you'll get benefit from ceiling insulation even if you have a ventilated attic with foil. Ceiling tiles or sheetrock have very little resistance to heat flow so as you cool your room lower than the attic temperature you'll still get heat coming in through the ceiling.

As for cost/benefit analysis you'll have to do that yourself because there are too many variables and some intangibles. To me it was worth it, even in the rental houses, because it was less than a couple of thousand baht per room and I felt like I got payback within a year. Besides the energy savings from not having to use the AC as much the rooms were more comfortable when the AC was on. With a hot ceiling, even if the AC cools the air down, you still feel the heat radiating from the ceiling and it's just not as comfortable.

Agree with all this.

Swelters

Swelters, a good series of posts. Like many, when I first saw foil "insulation" I couldn't believe it would actually do anything and thought it was just a marketing ploy. Then I did a little research, started using it, and now I know that it really does work.

In the house I just built I laid it under the tile battens, shiny side down. The house has a conventional attic with flat sheetrock ceilings and I put 4" of fiberglass batts on top of them. The eaves are 1 meter wide and vented and there are vent stacks in the roof. This has worked great. Even during bright sunny days the attic space doesn't get all that much hotter than the outside air. And with the ceiling batts essentially none of that heat enters the living space.

We're in Issan and have only been in the house about 5 months so we haven't seen the real hot season yet. And, I put in double block exterior walls with 2" of fiberglass in between so it's kind of hard to separate the insulating effects of the walls from the roof. But the net effect is that, so far, on hot days the air inside the house has been enough cooler than the outside air that we actually keep the windows closed when it's hot outside. Last week I measured the outside temperatures at 35 to 36 degrees but inside it never got above 27 to 28 degrees. I'm sure there won't be as much difference as the nights get warmer and the mass of the house doesn't get as much chance to cool down at night. So, sooner or later we'll have to start using the ACs but so far we haven't needed them.

I think I saw the same article you mentioned from the University of Florida. http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/publications/ht...31-01/index.htm Very worthwhile reading for non-beleivers. I thought 15% power saving was kind of low but then I noticed that these houses started out with R-9 to R-30 attic insulation. So for the typical Thai building method with no insultation the power savings should be a lot more.

You have done your homework and seems to me you have done it exactly right. You've got a fair amount of thermal mass in the walls but the insulation sandwich there will slow the delivery of heat so your aircon should keep up easily. If you can keep them shaded with plantings that will help a lot.

Unless you've got a light-colored roof (such as the Bluescope steel light colors) your roof is probably getting hot as hel_l but you don't care because the heat cannot get down in significant quantities and what does gets wafted out the vents. So the heat is just getting radiated back up into that blue Isan sky.

I like moving non-conditioned air and a certain sense of connection with the outside, and for that reason don't like the new American style housing which is so sealed that it feels like being in a coffin and promotes unhealthy accumulation of unwanted gases. It also promotes excess use of aircon which of course is the real purpose of it all, an invention of the devil's corporate culture that outwits the environmentalists at every turn. But you've got it so you can open up the house if you want and skip the aircon except when you want.

There is only one beneficial thing that your rural neighbors have with their plain tin roofs. With night skies dropping to 5 deg C or lower, their roofs get cooler than the air by 3-4 degrees so they get free aircon at sundown, paid for by sauna-like conditions in the daytime. But in the end there is a certain native genius to this, too. They sit under their houses, chatting and gossiping with the neighbors, not sitting alone in a room on the internet like I do. This is very good for their mental health, prevents the isolated brooding that we northern folk are prone to. As you can see from the photo, my wife likes the local kids to gather around and "being available" assures plenty of visitors. But this gets into the interesting subject of village social life, perhaps another post.

Thanks for your post, most informative.

Swelters

Some of you worry that you've done it wrong.

But you didn't do it as wrong as I did, the first time I built in Thailand.

We see above the guys putting on the roof panels on a traditional Thai house I built in Bangkok, over the foil which (shiny side down) is in turn over the teak panels that my wife wanted on the ceiling. She didn't want to look at aluminum. And you can see from the picture that there is not going to be much space, maybe very little space at all, between the bottom of the foil and the teak ceiling. And very thin or irregular spaces are not very effective at interrupting the flow of heat from the roof tile, you really want an inch or two of space.

Should I have start shouting at those guys not to walk on that foil when they are putting on those roof panels? I thought not.

Let's see what theory tells us about the effectiveness of foil like this, whether applied correctly or not.

The top little sketch below shows the R value for the roof "sandwich" without any foil at all. We assume the roof temp is 50 C, the room temp is 36 C in each case. The foil-less sandwich delivers an R value of 2.7 altogether, and the estimated temp of the underside of the teak roof is 40 C-- too warm. The heat transfer into the room is 28 watts per square meter, or in excess of 500 watts for a room. Not as bad as a simple tin roof which would deliver maybe 2000 watts to the room, but not what we'd like.

Now suppose we add foil. First, we do it badly, the way I did it, so the foil is mostly resting its shiny side on the top of the teak. The foil is not very effective, as shown on the third of the little sketches.

Now suppose we do it right, we leave a space of an inch or more beneath the foil. That's the middle sketch. This time the R value is 3.85, a little improvment over the no-foil case(R=2.8), bringing down the underside of the roof to 38.5 C. The heat flow drops from 28 watts to about 20 watts -- some improvement but hardly the "more than 50 percent" claimed by the aluminum salesmen. It will cut our airconditioning cost by up to 25 percent. (Research at Univ Florida shows foil cuts power cost by about 15 percent.)

Whether we use foil or not, the fact that we've got a roof "sandwich" has reduced our heat flow from more than 100 watts per square meter (the hot tin or tile roof) by about 75 percent. It's the same layering effect we use in cold weather clothing. In the tropical heat, this eases our ventilation problem, we don't need a howling wind blowing through the room to blow away the heat seepage like we do with the tin roof.

Conclusion: foil is pretty good at cutting radiant heat, as when used alone, in the country house I showed earlier. In a layered roof, it's moderately helpful, adds perhaps an R value of 1.

As to how much ventilation, I'll develop some guidelines in a future posting.

Safest thing is never believe anything insulation sales people tell you. Few understand the basics...

Swelters

I was looking at insulation in the shop yesterday and noticed that the rolls of 75mm thick fiberglass covered with aluminium were really squashed down / packed tightly to fit into the packaging bags. I've read that squashing down the installation reduces the effectiveness, wouldn't the claimed R value be less then?

Many companies seem to be favouring the 10mm thick foil-foam-foil solutions, can they really be effective at maintaining the cool inside the living space and the hot outside, or is this another marketing / sales pitch with little substance?

As most of the insulation options available are now covered with shiney foil at 95% - 100% aluminium as a radiant barrier, the question is what to have as an insulation material and how thick, this particularly is what I'm interested in.

Can't wait to read more on the subject from you Swelters, but as our house is already build with no aluminium foil or insulation, I'll have to wait eagerly for the attic floor solutions.

Don't worry too much if you missed the foil solution, there are other ways to go, I'm going to follow up on this.

The 10 mm bubble foil is ok, but not much better than the plain foil. The R value claims are mostly lies for this product. It doesn't really have its own R value, it can be said to have an R value only when used as part of a sandwich of things.

On the squashed down issue, I just bought a bunch of that stuff, supposed to be 4 inches, I'll open a bag and see if it springs back.

Swelters

From www.radiant-barrier.org

You do not have to install the aluminum foil with the shiny side up. Most products have one shiny side and one dull side. This finish look is created in rolling mills during the process of making the aluminum sheeting. Radiant Barriers work by reflecting infra-red energy so the aluminum foil would work just the same if both sides were dull.

doh now thats confused me again...they are saying it doesn't matter if shiny side is up or down or even not shiny at all

who to believe ??

Safest thing is never believe anything insulation sales people tell you. Few understand the basics. This quote is absolutely wrong, the foil will not function as a radiant barrier unless it is shiny.

Swelters

So last time we saw that the underside of tile roofs (or metal, same thing) get very hot. And I said that foil would help, shiny side down.

You don't believe it? I did an experiment. First I built an upcountry house made out of parts of old wood houses in the village, folks didn't want them anymore because they were low class.

Since I figured on hanging around the house in the day I didn't want that radiant heat blasting down so I went to Home Pro and bought rolls of foil insulation. I bought the plain foil, but my wife switched the order because she thought that thin bubble stuff "maybe better". She chatted with the sales guy about R values which neither understood and which are advertised in the most misleading way. Never mind, it didn't cost much more, even if it's not much more effective either.

I had to fight with the contractor to get the stuff shiny side down but here it is.

It works. Everybody agrees, the house is quite pleasant, no hot radiation from above and enough natural ventilation that the hot air never builds up. So it's as nice as being under a tree, which is the gold standard. Very hot behind the foil, over 40 in the afternoon with the sun on the roof.

Maybe you don't think it looks so nice. But there's a bonus: when you turn on one bare bulb at night, the room lights up with a pleasant glow, reflection from the ceiling.

Here's your exam question: at night the temp behind the insulation is about 15C when the air temp is about 18C. How can that be, where is the cold coming from?

Swelters

Swelters I do understand about using light construction. My air conditioner will be running 24/7 which is why I wanted to put up a concrete ceiling. My wife sleeps under

3 covers and I sleep with out any. I once lived in a 2 story house built in 1826 in Mississippi. The exterior walls were brick, 7 to 8 inches thick, with stucco on the inside.

O the second floor where I slept, in the summer, it was allways cooler outside at night. It took several of those hand rolled things, to get to sleep.

Thanks again for the help.

Man, I will tell you that I'll help anyone who leaves me happily wondering what a hand rolled thing is, even if they lived in a hot house from the days of Huck Finn.

Swelters

Thankfully more and more builders are now using the non-asbestos variety of corrugated roof tiles. These are not as brittle and are easier to work with.

Unfortunately, the existing tons of asbestos tiles sitting on Samui and Pha-Ngan roofs will break up with time, and continue to do its deadly work for generations to come.

The exporters (Canada, Russia, others, banned there of course) of this hazardous material insist asbestos is safe if used "correctly".

The first "correct" use of the asbestos/cement roof tiles around here, is to drill them onsite in order to fit U-bolts and attach them to the roof structure. Not happy with creating this deadly dust, the tiles are also often cut and shaped further using an angle grinder, releasing kilos of this potent carcinogen cloud into the local atmosphere. Then after a few years of use and abuse, these tiles are then thrown around and left to break up into even more deadly asbestos dust. A favourite use of old asbestos tiles is to fill and cover pot holes on dirt roads with them, creating more hazardous dust each time the tiles are broken into smaller and smaller pieces by passing traffic - who said Thais don't like to recycle?

Asbestos dust lays around everywhere, and takes a long time to become safe - thank goodness for asbestos-eating mould.

The only effective way I've found to "educate" locals on the use of this dangerous material, is to refuse any dealings with them outright. "Say, that's a beautiful bungalow on your beach, but too bad it has asbestos tiles and panels - sorry, but cannot stay here..." It seems the pocket hurts more than one's health for Thai (and some expat) locals.

Lets not get too hysterical guys, I like Thailand because they don't buy into this American obsessive stuff. Long term heavy breathing of certain types of asbestos can create a grim health problem but most of us face much more danger from our wives than from asbestos.

Swelters, this is the type of information I was looking for when I asked for help on my roof design. Thanks. I just built a room on the top floor of the in-laws house. The ceiling is wood framing with sheetrock/drywall, with glass insulation with foil on both sides. It made a big difference.

My question is, would the foil be better just below the roof with an air space, or placed on top of the ceiling, or both?

I hadn't got to blanket insulation yet, but in short I think you did it right.

Swelters

Several bites, they are picking up this week, maybe the increasing heat. The boys are selling zappers up and down Sukhumvit.

Swelters

This shiny side up/down thing always confuses me, physics was never my best subject

Should it not be "shiny side INTO the roof space" whether it is under the tiles or on top of the ceiling. Reduces radiation into the roof space when under the tiles, reduces absorbtion into the room when placed above the ceiling.

Either way plenty of roof ventilation can only help, can't it?

Would placing insulation/foil both under the tiles and on top of the ceiling be even better or is my aging thought process faulty?

Don't worry, the emissivity thing confuses everybody, it's not an everyday obvious experience. Foil on the top of the ceiling, shiny side up, which you suggest as an alternative, would redirect the radiation back up to the underside of the tiles, which is good. But the effect would be short lived because of the accumulating dust problem and consequent loss of shine. Especially if there is good ventilation which would bring in more dust. Ironical!

I'm going to develop this subject further in subsequent posts.

In regard to the magic "space", it needs to be on the shiny (down) side of the foil, in other words don't lay the shiny foil on a surface. With the foil right under the roof, it's fine, even helps more, if there is also little space above the foil too.

But you will get rid of the radiation problem even if the foil is actually glued to the underside of the roof. This is what they do in some places like Houston Texas, where the underroof is plywood (asphalt shingles on top). This means that you could actually use ordinary supermarket foil, glue it to the underside of the tiles before you put 'em up. Trying to drape big sheets of roll foil or that bubble stuff over roof joists and purlins, then put up tiles over this is dangerous and not fun. Funny to see the Houston builders making a big thing of this simple expedient, blathering on about how this was learned from "space science." You just can't keep the sales guys out of this business.

Swelters