Rasseru

The pieces will need to be attached to the sub-floor.

I am curious, by the way, as to why you call him, again, my 'highly touted' contractor.

You recommended your contractor very highly on this forum not long ago, didn't you?

It is heartening to know that you have decided that the pieces will need to be attached to the sub-floor.

When you can explain clearly what you want people will have a chance to help but when you go fishing not many bite.

Thank you so much for all your help.

Do you not find it a bit strange that the people you have chosen to buy wood from suggest an installer from Pattaya and have nobody to recommend in CM?

No, for a few reasons. They export most of what they make, only a small proportion of which is flooring, and don't focus on the local market that much or purport to know good installers here. The person in Pattaya is not an installer himself, but the owner of a company that builds gymnasia (with, yes, wooden floors) across Southeast Asia, and an acquaintance of the person who runs the company I would buy the wood from.

The kind of tradesman you need depends on the type of job you have. For example, is it short 12"-18" pieces that would be glued down on a concrete slab or is it 3 meter long pieces that would have to be nailed onto wood strips which are imbedded in or attached to the sub floor?

The pieces will need to be attached to the sub-floor. There seem to be several ways that this could be done, so I cannot answer more precisely now.

How many square meters?

About 120.

If you just might be content with the type of floor installations found in many 15 million baht and up houses, then there are tradesmen in Chiang Mai who do some of that.

I am not familiar with any such houses.

Do you have the knowledge to manage a flooring subcontractor or would you be better off having your highly touted contractor do it?

I have enough knowledge that I wish to be involved in the process. I would not be better off having my contractor do it. I am curious, by the way, as to why you call him, again, my 'highly touted' contractor.

Finally, you seem to have scheduling problems but you would be extremely lucky to find a good tradesman that did not have a backlog of work requiring you to wait weeks.

I will not need the tradesman until September. There is no useful reason for me to go into what the scheduling issue is.

Can you post details of the flooring you found?

Yes, of course, but I would like to understand what details would interest you. Are you curious about the flooring in and of itself, possibly with a view to buying some yourself? Or do you think further details of some kind would help you answer my question? In either case, please explain a little what kind of details would be helpful.

But those filter systems take up a lot of space under sink in a small kitchen, space you might want for something else. Have you considered the alternative of putting it in the storage room since it is only three small flex hoses that would have to go through the wall into the sink area? Might be easier access for service too.

Thanks for the suggestion. We have quite a lot of storage space in the planned kitchen, so it is not a critical issue, but your idea is a good one and I am going to give it some consideration.

I just posted the following in the Chiangmai forum, and then discovered the existence of this forum, so am repeating my plea here:

It took me a while, but I have found a place that I trust and from which I would be comfortable buying teak flooring.

My problem is, they do not do installation work themselves. They have offered to put me in touch with someone based in Pattaya who can do professional flooring installation. Unfortunately, though, that person is out of the country and not due to return until late next week. That creates a scheduling problem for me, the details of which are not relevant.

I have been advised by a friend that one cannot find in Chiangmai tradesmen who can install flooring in a professional way.

If, contrary to what I have been advised, anyone knows of any floorers in Chiangmai who can in fact install flooring well and properly, I would be grateful if you could provide me with their names and contact information. It would be enormously helpful if they spoke some English, but I would appreciate even leads to floorers who do not speak English.

I am going to go with an under-sink reverse osmosis filter system, connected to a small special purpose outlet located next to the sink.

Thanks to all for your advise and suggestions.

It took me a while, but I have found a place that I trust and from which I would be comfortable buying teak flooring.

My problem is, they do not do installation work themselves. They have offered to put me in touch with someone based in Pattaya who can do professional flooring installation. Unfortunately, though, that person is out of the country and not due to return until late next week. That creates a scheduling problem for me, the details of which are not relevant.

I have been advised by a friend that one cannot find in Chiangmai tradesmen who can install flooring in a professional way.

If, contrary to what I have been advised, anyone knows of any floorers here who can in fact install flooring well and properly, I would be grateful if you could provide me with their names and contact information. It would be enormously helpful if they spoke some English, but I would appreciate even leads to floorers who do not speak English.

And those of you who are buying street-vended (and even restaurant) food that is often prepared by people who are cleaning their butts with hands/plain water after toilet and oftentimes don't even own a bar of soap, how do you justify the importance of absolutely pure water in your home?

Compensation?

Oh and, btw, our ice cubes are so clear I frequently wear one as a monocle - cool, eh?

Excellent! May I encourage you to try wearing two as a pair of glasses?

Look further and you will find that RO systems are available which do not produce those high levels of waste water.

If you could provide any links that would allow me to find such information, I would be grateful.

I have a RO system in my kitchen and it produces a lot of waste water like all house hold systems do. This is not a problem as the tap water cost next to nothing but you need to have a drain where the system is located.

Thank you, but it is not the cost that concerns me. Aesthetically (the best word I kind find for it), I simply, but strongly, dislike waste.

There is one issue concerning RO filter systems that troubles me, though, and perhaps you or someone can set my mind at ease about it. The small amount of research I did into these systems uncovered an assertion that they are wasteful, in the sense that they require ten liters of water in to produce one liter of purified water, with the rest being passed on as waste water.

Your research is based on what? from where?

The Wikipedia entry for reverse osmosis, which contains the following section:

Disadvantages

Reverse osmosis units sold for residential purposes offer water filtration at the cost of large quantities of waste water [3].

That note [3] is a link to some kind of paper on what appears to be a North Dakota educational site, which itself contains the following:

Disadvantages of reverse osmosis units

RO units use a lot of water. They recover only 5 to 15 percent of the water entering the system. The remainder is discharged as waste water. Because waste water carries with it the rejected contaminants, methods to re-cover this water are not practical for household systems. Waste water is typically connected to the house drains and will add to the load on the household septic system. An RO unit delivering 5 gallons of treated water per day may discharge 40 to 90 gallons of waste water per day to the septic system.

Thanks for your additional thoughts, Steve2UK, which I take to heart and which push me further in the direction I am now leaning.

There is one issue concerning RO filter systems that troubles me, though, and perhaps you or someone can set my mind at ease about it. The small amount of research I did into these systems uncovered an assertion that they are wasteful, in the sense that they require ten liters of water in to produce one litter of purified water, with the rest being passed on as waste water.

One question is whether this is even true. Does anyone know?

Another is whether, even if true, it is meaningful. For example, if the process that produces the purified water that one buys in bottles large and small creates the same or even more 'waste' water per unit of purified water (assuming, of course, that the systems are being operated properly), then it hardly matters if one produces a corresponding amount at home with an RO filter system. Thoughts?

Why not get a 18L water dispensing machine with hot & cold water found in most offices?

Because I would like to have in the kitchen only a tap for drinking water, not a large machine, and I have room in the store room for what I am considering.

Thanks, though, for the suggestion.

[if] I picture correctly what you have in mind then the 20-litre bottle would be held upside-down in some kind of frame? A water-tight hose connection would also be air-tight - and the water that comes out has to be replaced with air.......... hence the bubbles that you see in those office-type water dispensers. So, I assume that the system has to be open to the air at some point - at least through a one-way air inlet valve.

Yes, in answer to your question, and I think you are quite right about the consequence, which you describe well. A point I had not considered (embarrassment here), but will need to.

To my mind, it all sounds like a bit of a business to do yourself - unless you can find something designed for the purpose. In your position, I think I'd be going directly for one of the filter systems - from posts above presumably RO is best?

I expect I would have to design it and build it myself (or rather, arrange to have it built, working with my contractor). Such systems don't seem to exist on the market. Your observation above is pushing me more in the direction of an RO filter system.

BTW, if you do go with what you describe, would you have two taps - one for drinking water and another to supply "general" water for washing-up, cleaning etc?

Yes, precisely that.

P.S. - a full 20-litre bottle is not light to lift to chest height..............

Yes. I have tried it, to be sure that I can do it.

Thanks to all for the helpful information posted here.

My original post was prompted by the fact that we are in the middle of a full renovation of our apartment, now at the point of deciding on the kitchen.

I am leaning towards setting things up initially so that we can keep in the storeroom immediately behind the kitchen one of those large plastic containers for water (20 liters, I think, based on some of the posts here), connected by a hose and pipe through the wall to a tap in the kitchen. The container would be kept at a raised level, so that gravity alone would bring the water to the tap. (I will keep open the option to switch to an RO filter system later.)

One problem, though, remains unsolved: how to connect the water container to the water pipe that leads to the kitchen? Does anyone know if water-tight caps or lids of some kind are available for these containers, to which one can connect an ordinary hose with a threaded connector? Any other ideas would be welcome too.

How about that foreign man I saw riding a bike the other day; one young child in the front and one on the back. I assume he just collected his children from school as it was around that time. None of them were wearing helmets.

You will find it at least equally shocking, I would imagine, but I have seen people riding on scooters with pet dogs who were not wearing helmets either.

. . . If it had clipped my wheel, I wouldnt be writing this now. . .

Why not? Were you not wearing a helmet?

Same goes as the above....

What is it with losers on TV. You post a serious topic and you get dumb responses..

Actually, I don't think my response was dumb at all. As I read your post, you either were not wearing a helmet at the time of the incident or were dramatically overstating the risk to yourself in it. My question to you, which you have not answered, went to that issue.

. . . If it had clipped my wheel, I wouldnt be writing this now. . .

Why not? Were you not wearing a helmet?

Thanks to all for the helpful posts so far.

While I take a vitamin/mineral suppliment daily, I often have the urge to go get a few spoonfuls of dirt, cook them in our oven, then stir them into our 'pure' bottled water. We are by nature meant to injest a certain amount of soil, just as plants need those minerals, and these bottled waters just ain't doing it for us.

An interesting observation from a man named 'Dustoff'. Put in those terms, isn't it a comfort to know that in Chiangmai, at some times of the year at least, one has only to take a deep breath to ingest all the dirt and minerals one needs?

I'll be there.

I cannot recall seeing any Western or Chinese restaurants in Istanbul but that was long ago and now it is likely that some of Starbuck's closed locations were around the area of the Blue Mosque.

Strange, isn't it? Or not so? Taste drove the spice routes longer ago than even an old geezer like me can remember and I am sure that the introduction of new foods/tastes long preceded the contamination of species-transfer.

One wonders what the Italians ate before they got pasta from China and tomatoes from the Americas.

Chinese immigrants have been selling Chinese food in the U.S. for over 100 years . . . Western food in China is a very recent thing.

My sources tell me that western food in China has a history of comparable length to that of Chinese food in the U.S.

'Shanghai has a distinguished history in western-style cuisines. In the 1930s, there were many western restaurants run by foreigners in up-market residential areas like Avenue Joffre and Avenue du Roi Albert, in the former French concession.

'In fact, western restaurants in Shanghai date back more than 100 years.'

Check it out:

http://info.hktdc.com/imn/05110802/food093.htm

I am having fun imagining a Chinese expat in Turkey wondering whether there is any place in Istanbul he can get the Chinese-style western food he loves.

How do you get your drinking water in Chiangmai?

I know of three ways that people do. One way is to buy it in those small plastic containers, which I think of as containing a liter of water, but maybe it is less than that. Another is to buy it in those large containers, which look to be made of heavy duty plastic of some kind, and which probably hold 25 liters or more of water. The third way is to treat tap water through some kind of reverse osmosis or other filtration system. (Some people may have wells that produce clean drinking water, but I don't know any.)

Are there any other ways to get drinking water here?

I have always bought my drinking water here in the small containers, but want to switch to one of the other two ways, both for convenience and because it seems so wasteful to buy it in containers that get thrown out (I'd dearly love to find out that they get recycled -- do they?).

If you get your water in the large containers or through filtering at home, do you like the taste of the water? If anyone has tried all three kinds of water here, do they taste the same or are there differences? If they are different, how so?

Any other points, apart from taste, that you think I should consider in deciding which way to go?

Provided the rumour is true, does anyone know WHY they don't hang the meat?

I do not, but note that, intriguing as is the listing as a topic related to this one of 'Crazed Malaysian Cop Slits Thai Lover's Throat' on the general forum (which I have not viewed and do not plan to), one hopes that one would not find there the answer to your question.