boatguy

If I had time over again, I would rent NOT buy or build, nightmare and only one benefitting is Thai.

Thought about that idea recently for the inland areas of Thailand. If your 'house' was 'floating capable' it might have made out better in those really bad floods they experienced this year. I'm over here now and I see many villages that experienced really high waters as the result of the dams up north having to release waters to lessen their overwheming loads....and many facilities that were located on the lakes formed by those dams.

Also since foreigners can't own land in Thailand, many times they build a house there and have to give it up for a total lose as they don't own the land it is built on. (in Thailand foreigners can't own the land, only with majority Thai nationals...girl-friend, wife, family) Now if the 'house' was mobile...as in floatable, or sectional...or....they just might salvage part of their investment in the event of a break-up....and it happens quite often in Thailand

Besides if your house could 'float' you might have this garden/pond scene without all of the foundation problems associated with being right next to water,...and you could rise and fall with the flood water much like a spud barge, or floating docks at a marina.

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/145005-post23.html

mate, due to the amount of fill they put on the land before building they need to have what is equivent to deep peerage/floating slab in Australia so that the house doesnt sink and has foundations on something solid. Are you also looking at a truss roof with framed walls so that there are not cement coloumns all through the house and more open style rooms. Have to admit I hate the concrete columns as it restricts what you can do with the rooms, roof trusses let you have bigger rooms

Why not make a 'floating structure' for a foundation, whether or not you are floating on water or not? Then skirt it to block out the floats.

 

I worked on The Taiwan High speed and 2 High speed projects in China. Both systems are supposedly low maintenance but that is only if you built them with adequate and proper quality control . Taiwan saw a mass influx of ex-pats who remained for maintenance , China had ex-pats in "Consultancy " roles who , other than writing a report on the ongoing quality of the works , were powerless to intervene in headlong rush for production metre's . The outcome of this will be the railway falling apart and becoming a liability in the future as it will no longer be "Low Maintenance"

I think you might be correct there.

I googled 'images' of 'floating house'. WOW, what a variety of designs world-wide. I hadn't done this before.

Tomorrow I taking a trip down to the Kanchanaburi for a few days with my wife. hope to see a lot of other ideas, styles. Likely out of touch for a little while.

Cheers. Brian

Made that trip, and got LOTS of photos on a number of different rafts and their tow boats.

Half-way to getting all of these photos downloaded from my camera and resized and organized into files. Will post some when I get a little more time. (had a number of 'honey-do-it' projects to get done on the land-based abode, then long trip back to USA)

Made a trip to the floating market at Amphawa as well

Since a high-speed rail system is usually elevated to avoid grade crossing with vehicular traffic, would there need to be substantial land appropriation to accommodate such new tracks, or are there sufficient easements on the existing rail lines? If land appropriation is needed, that apparently can be a lengthy process. It was quoted as a reason for a significant amount of the delay of widening the road between Pattaya and Jomtien. That seemingly simple project took what, five years?

Certainly if Thailand were to consider such a project there needs to be some serious forethought given to the various alternatives. and I would suggest that a few of these studies need to come from some serious people that both have a good knowledge of a variety of systems, and some that don't have a vested interest in what might be built.

And I don't believe that an on-ground track system is a good choice for Thailand with yearly flooding problems,...would play hell with maintaining proper and safe roadbed,....and would likely make for a lot of unhappy land owners. I think a system somewhat akin to the Transrapid one in Germany would be a good consideration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid

BUT, it does not have to be this fast, and way to complicated and expensive to include the magnetic levitation. Tone it down and you still might use the linear electric propulsion.

Above ground system could be constructed off -site for the most part, then brought to the local sites for erection.

There is a lot of good info and ideas to be had here:

http://www.monorails.org/

Been a long time since I looked at this site with lots of interest

Brian

Looking back thru this subject thread, I'm almost reminded of trying to read thru the USA tax code documents. ...bah humbug.

And why is Thailand not on a more favorable arrangement with the USA in terms of survivor benefits? Certainly our countries were on much more favorable status during Vietnam. And certainly there are a fair number of US men who have married Thai ladies, and live here.

Has there been so much abuse of the social security 'system' by people in Thailand that it has put them on a less favorable status?

I've never been married before, this very first one with my Thai wife. So I have no kids, and no living parents. We've been married for 6 years, and we live part time in USA and part time here (heavily dependent on season of the year),...but certainly not over a year at a time in either place. We also got married in both places so there would be no doubts or legal wranglings about the official nature of the marriage. And I file a joint income tax statement in the USA with her listed.

So why should it be so complicated for her to receive my SS retirement pmts when I die, just as any other wife in the USA would upon the passing of her husband?? (I'm 71, she is 57) . Why does she have to have lived in the USA for X number of years for this to happen. We are legally married in a court in the USA.

I guess it is sort of like trying to understand Thai immigration rules.....

1) Any place down in that area to put a 'floating house or cottage'??

2) Are there flood-prone areas that raise big questions about feasibility to build traditional foundations and/or stilted ones?

Naturally I talking about back away from the gulf waters shoreside directly, as I recall those very nasty wind and wave conditions that are experienced a year or so ago.....I believe it was?

Just wondering if one could have a nice little 'floating capable' cottage down in that area on an inland water area, or even on a pond area inland,....that maybe someday could be moved (towed by water) to another area to the south or east

..a bit more sophisticated and secure than this, but you get the idea?
http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/117683-post16.html

...something like this, but Thai styled

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/145964-post25.html

JT ... I hear what you are saying, however, it might just be archived as most older files are to save on computer resources.

But, the age of the thread may have little effect as, for example, the Chelsea Thread was started in 2006 and going strong.

So my request to the Admin team is can they 'un-archive' that thread that I refer to above please.

As mentioned, only Admin can unarchive a topic. I've only unarchived one topic in order to edit it as I had to remove some member's personal information from it. And Crossy has the correct logistics answer. The archive is not based on the origination date but on the last post date. If no activity in the topic for 2 years it is archived.

I was just doing a search on this forum for 'ground water heat pumps' and ran across a subject thread that had some pretty interesting contributions from a number of the contributors. It would have been nice to reopen such a subject thread and try to get the 'group' of contributors back together again, rather that just hoping they might see a new thread on the subject.

...my 2 cents

I googled 'images' of 'floating house'. WOW, what a variety of designs world-wide. I hadn't done this before.

Tomorrow I taking a trip down to the Kanchanaburi for a few days with my wife. hope to see a lot of other ideas, styles. Likely out of touch for a little while.

Cheers. Brian

I don't think weegee was proposing that shipping containers would be utilized for accommodation, but rather that they might be used to judge the widths that could be moved over the road without special concerns.

In the USA, the std legal with without additional rules is 8 ft in most states, but now 8.5 ft in many.

Then you move up to wider loads that you need to carry signs with, then still wider loads that you need and escort with, and certain very wide and heavy loads that can only move during daylight hours I don't even know all this 'classifications, but ultimately you can move pretty wide loads. I only suspect you can move such loads in Thailand with certain permissions, and proper escorts.

At any rate I think you could create quite a nice 'floating house with two 12 ft wide units.

Got a question about those photo hosting sites, and/or the Picasa site of Google in particular.

Is my understanding correct, that when you sign up for that site that you are giving them permission to upload all the photos on your hard drive?? I think I read this somewhere in their introduction/sign-up pages?

Brian

Boatguy, the trouble with a double wide is that it's effectively two single wides designed to attach together on site, placing them on blocks or a foundation. They are two trailers, each strong, but the attachment points between them aren't strong. They are designed to just slide together and the bolt together on site. Everything above the frame is wood framed, even on a single wide.

I think you'd have to do a heck of a lot of reinforcing including welding in new steel frame members to hold the two trailers rigid, and to securely attach the upper halves.

They make single wides now that are 14' x 64' (4 1/4 m x 19.5 m) and that's a decent house.

This dbl-wide idea is not an impossibility, and in fact might be solved easily....so don't discount it yet.

I brought it up as I thought about the possibility of construction of the housing modules in a semi-factory, off-premise location and then trucked / trailered onto location in an existing pond area, or a 'man-made' pond area.

Again I would ask if anyone knows of a very particular maximum width that can be moved of the roads of Thailand?? I saw a water tower being moved a few days ago, and it seems the top spherical portion was quite wide.

Boatguy....The honeycomb material you are mentioning works great, for light weight construction. The problem with firbreglass in Thailand is the heat..

Having said that, I have a fiberglass Pool here, but I did build a roof over the top, to beat the effects of the sun....

The material you are using will work great where you are in that climate,(Washington) and it's in the water (which keeps the heat away).

For the scenario of the floating house, I would use Ferro cement and chicken wire on framing to build the floats myself (in Thailand)...This can be sealed with ordinary house paint after curing...and it's really maintenance free from then...The cost is cheap, and any shape that you want is easy obtainable. I believe the Italians came up with this idea first, many moons ago.

Thinking along those lines, and knowing how it's done (concrete Yacht construction)....the whole house and the floats can be built as one piece, and the inside of the floats can be used for domestic water storage....but stability would have to be taken into account, even with the Spuds..

Just my thoughts...I find this a very interesting subject

Just to clarify, I was NOT suggesting any the honeycomb material for below water application. And I was NOT suggesting fiberglass construction. Sorry if it appeared that way.

Its been awhile since I considered this idea, as when I looked at the possibilities of building such a floating Thai styled 'house' in the USA. I sort ventured away from the idea when I ran into so much resistance possibilities with local municipalities.....just easier to do a 'boat' structure rather than a 'house' as its already an acceptable form of structure that can't be ruled against.

There are a whole lot of new building material that could be considered in the building of these 'floatable houses'. I remember seeing a very lt-weight masonry block that was being used on a local hotel construction here in Khon Kaen (I think I saved a piece of it somewhere around here). During one of my stays back in the USA, I attended an 'International Homebuilders Show' held that year in Orlando FL. It was fascinating. I need to go to another of these.

I'm going to be going down to the Kanchanaburi area this coming week, and I'm sure I will see some interesting ides there..

I am glad there are some other folks on this forum that find these ideas interesting, but I really feel as though we should be discussing them in a subject thread that was better titled to represent what material is under discussion. What do you think of this? I could see this subject thread getting quite lengthy and very informative. perhaps we could put our heads together for a better title??

Brian

If you were looking for a Thai home just a bit more conventional,...say wider than a mobile home, there are what as known as double-wide mobile homes that are brought on site in two halves. This pond floating home I am speaking of could be built in the same manner. Perhaps constructed in a 'factory location', the trucked to your site and put the halves together.

How wide of a load can you put on the Thai roads? I saw a pretty big water tower (upper portion) being towed the other day.

You want light weight easy construction of the 'boxed' portion of the construction,....how about this polycore material with two different face materials (one for exterior, one for interior) glued on to either side of the polyethylene honeycomb core material??

...somewhat analogous to what I am proposing for the superstructure of this 40 trawler
http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/showpost.php?p=179504&postcount=127

PP_Honeycomb.pdf

I found this quote from that other 'archived' subject thread of interest as well.

- BUT I HAVE A MUCH BETTER "RESIDENCE IDEA FOR FARANGS IN THAILAND": Since those things are not (yet) built in Thailand = Import a double - wide MOBILE HOME from the U.S. Then put it up on your Thai Wifes (GF) Land. Have the Mobile Home registered in your name. I think can do, like you can own a car.

Positive: If your Thai-Wife decides she don't love you anymore: Let the Thai-Wife (GF) keep her precious Isaan-Land and you move YOUR property (the Mobile Home) 2 miles down the road to your new "precious-one".

This way, a lot of future financial damage to farangs could be avoided.

Negative: You would have to have Insurance that covers "ARSEN". Because at the slightest hint, that you may be pulling out shortly, your female companion may want to arrange for some fireworks arond the property, with the main victim being your Mobile Home.

I had suggested something similar for the 'floating house'

http://www.yachtforums.com/forums/general-yachting-discussion/5554-bali-thai-style-houseboat-2.html

Thought about that idea recently for the inland areas of Thailand. If your 'house' was 'floating capable' it might have made out better in those really bad floods they experienced this year. I'm over here now and I see many villages that experienced really high waters as the result of the dams up north having to release waters to lessen their overwheming loads....and many facilities that were located on the lakes formed by those dams.

Also since foreigners can't own land in Thailand, many times they build a house there and have to give it up for a total lose as they don't own the land it is built on. (in Thailand foreigners can't own the land, only with majority Thai nationals...girl-friend, wife, family) Now if the 'house' was mobile...as in floatable, or sectional...or....they just might salvage part of their investment in the event of a break-up....and it happens quite often in Thailand


Besides if your house could 'float' you might have this garden/pond scene without all of the foundation problems associated with being right next to water,...and you could rise and fall with the flood water much like a spud barge, or floating docks at a marina.

Just watched on TNN news about a family in Issan, who worked how to beat the flooding through their house....

This guy has built a lightweight steel framed house on stilts (Normal)....BUT then he has gone further and put rows of Plastic 200ltr drums under the flooring, followed up by spuds(Pile anchors used in the dredging game) on the corners....and hey presto, water floods in and the house rises with the level of the water....when the water recedes, the house lowers exactly back down on the posts....The electricity cable looks long enough to raise with the house....

To imagine what he has done, just think about a floating Wharf principle,common everywhere in the world....

What a fantastic idea !!!!!!!!!!! other than building a houseboat.

I had suggested such a thing back over on this subject thread
Living on a Houseboat

But I believe the idea of a 'floatable house' that can rise and fall with the water level makes more sense than a house built on stilts...sometimes. The floating house does not necessarily mean it will float away when the water rises. Look at some of the floating docks in hi-tidal areas. Besides I would like my 'house/ cottage' down at water/lilly-pad pond level, yet capable of rising.

How about this last year's flooding in Thailand? What if your small home or cottage could float up and down with the water level ....and still stay in place. Some stud barges and floating marina docks do just that.

Here is an interesting reference I must read thru

Synthetic Diamonds - the players

http://www.asia-gems.com/diamonds/synthetic-diamonds-players.php

I did notice that one of these synthetic producers was based in Wash DC

http://www.washingtondiamondscorp.com/

I wrote them an email asking,....

"I have this engineering background and have know of synthetic diamonds for years, but just recently began to do a little research. I found your website via this reference on a forum discussion.

http://www.asia-gems.com/diamonds/synthetic-diamonds-players.php

I see that you do not sell to the public, but I have a more basic question for you?? You state that your stones are generally priced 25% less than natural diamonds. BUT aren't natural diamonds marked up in such an inflated manner that it would be difficult to base your pricing on them??"

Here is an interesting reference I must read thru

Synthetic Diamonds - the players
http://www.asia-gems.com/diamonds/synthetic-diamonds-players.php

However, the Russians do make man made diamonds that are so good De-veers has spent millions of £ in developing ways to detect these diamonds. The technology used to made these diamonds is from the defunct nuclear weapon industry.

Anyone know more about this?

The beauty of a diamond is how it disperses white light into all colors of the rainbow with a sparkle, from any angle the viewer may be looking at it from. Believe me, people look and they notice, especially other women. Just my own wrong opinion.

Now I'm certainly no expert on diamond jewelry or even any jewelry, but I did have an experience recently buying my wife a diamond marriage ring. Finally picked a 'multiple stoned one' rather than a solitary as I felt it presented so many more facets of reflectivity to 'shine' better than a solitary stone??

So now we were looking at some earrings, and I'm discovering the same thing. The 'multi-stoned ones' , even with much smaller stones just seem more brilliant than the single stone versions.

Is that just my perception....or ??

Another related subject thread here on Thaivisa, that got 'archived' for some reason. I think I will extract a few quotes from it and put them over here for more discussion.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/205429-diamond-ring/page-2

Although i bought my wife a diamond when we got married, I almost wish that i had spent that money on another sapphire and a few baht worth of gold (which I do buy on occasion and stash away). Diamonds are not a great investment nor are they rare. Companies like De Beers control the market and determine how many diamonds should be on the market at any given time. Unlike gold, diamonds do not increase in value. I have never heard of anyone making money off of a used diamond, even certified ones.

The link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond privided even more gems of information.

"Currently, gem production totals nearly 30 million carats (6,000 kg) of cut and polished stones annually, and over 100 million carats (20,000 kg) of mined diamonds are sold for industrial use each year, as are about 100,000 kg of synthesized diamond."

Six tons of a "gal's best friends", and that doesn't include the amount of rough diamonds that didn't get cut and polished. Common as muck really.

How about buying a cubic zirconion, indistinguishable for all intents and purposes but a lot cheaper?

Diamonds suffer huge markups here (and in general everywhere with retail purchasing).. I was quoted 600k on a ring I could have the same size and approx color clarity and cut for 100 - 150k tops at that 'worlds biggest gem store' on san Kampeang rd.

If you want to get your moneys worth only consider a GIA certified stone.. Everything else is subjective and these dealers who self certify are for sure raising the color and clarity by a few notches which makes a huge difference in price.

I have a trustworthy gem dealer in bangkok who mostly does wholesale.. He can supply a stone and custom ring for a fraction of retail pricing. PM if you want to discuss your budget with him.

Are you saying that the big inflated price was at this store that you refer to, and/or that you could get that sort of discount at that store??

I am rather enjoying the change for I know in about 2 months there will be many on here complaining about the extreme heat and humidity . It is rather nice to put a jacket on at night , no fans or air conditioning and still warm enough to go swimming during the day with sea a bit cooler not like getting into a warm bath very refreshing .

Its like nice crisp fall weather back in DC. I'm enjoying it.

Good sleeping weather with a nice comforter my wife bought for us.