Dr B

Yes they use steel froms in two pieces bolted together. Readily available for rent. We live in Krabi and it is easy to spot the yards with the steel forms stacked up. main problem is that the locals do not vibrate the concrete, although small electic vibrators are available for < Bt 3,000.

If you want to have a suspended floor without a vapour proof barrier that is, of course, fine but the void between the ground and the underside of the floor should be ventilated, just as it was with all timber floors. If it is not ventilated (just a few opening on all sides for the air to blow through), then it will become damp, the underside of the suspended floor will become damp, and that dampness will come through into the house eventually.

All good. Are you familiar with "capillary action". This is based on surface tension, which is what makes your wine climb up the inside of the glass. If you have a small glass tube, called a capillary tube, the suface tension will pull water up the inside above the level of the water surface. Now if you have sand in the ground, you may have a "water table" say 2 m down. That is the level at which the water sits, but above this is a capillary zone, where some of the water gets drawn up by surface tension becasue of the very small gaps between the sand grains. Now if you cast a slab on ground, that will stop the soil from being exposed to the air and the water from evaporating. As a result you will get a dome of damp ground under the house, which will probably reach the underside of the slab. If you don't have a proper vapour proof barrier, then the damp will migrate through the concrete, up the walls a certain distance, and then evaporate. That will leave behind the minerals in the water (efflorescence), and nasty white staining which makes the paint peel off. All of the row of 26 houses opposite ours have that problem, as well as most other houses with ground bearing slabs. Thais see concrete used as walls, with the rain running down the outside, so think that concrete is waterproof. Not true. It is low permeability but not water proof, and it needs to be vapour proof. It is very hard to get a good vapour proof barrier here as there are no fittings for the necessary penetrations. In the end I used a surface waterproof membrane applied in two coats over the top of the slab for the enclosed ground flor rooms. Compacting the soil with a tamper is a good idea. We compacted the crusher run under our slab. Having done that and made it good and dense, you want to get the concrete slab supported by that compacted soil, but I very often see Thais putting down a layer of loose sand in between. I even see this on highway slabs. I have no idea why. It makes no sense to place a layer of loose sand between compacted soil and good concrete. Be careful with the water cement ratio of the concrete. More water means weaker concrete, but they love to add more water because it makes it flow more easily. That is where the vibrator comes in. Once they get the hang of it they will love it! Good luck

Sorry "reinfod" should have been "reinforced"

1 I have no idea what you mean by "put crushed stone underneath the concrete to draw moisture" in relation to piers. By piers do you mean piles or columns? Any load bearing concrete should be in contact with the stiff or dense soil or rock which is going to support it. 2 If the structure has horizontally poured reinfod concrete beams that is perfectly normal. 3 Unfortunately the vast majority of Thai builders do not understand the concept of vapour proof barriers, and think that concrete is waterproof so that is OK. The fact is that moisture will then rise through the concrete allowing the water to evaporate at the surface, leading to efflorescence. This can be seen all over the place in walls and columns just above the slab. I even have a video of concrete being poured onto a polythene sheet, not adequately lapped with any adjacent sheet, and placed on top of the steel mesh! 4 Again not sure what you mean by a "plate tamper". I am familiar with vibrating plates for compacting fill, which we have used here, and with poker vibrators for compacting concrete. These are also available here for less than Bt 3,000, but are very rarely used. I have one, and once the builders saw what it did they loved it, and even used it to vibrate the concrete in the kitchen units! When concrete is not vibrated it leaves air voids (honeycomb concrete), which they just patch over with mortar. This will allow the rebar to easily rust in the high humidity conditions, all hidden away from view. Hope that helps.

Reading must really be a struggle for you, but if you look carefully at the 3 letter word at the beginning of the sponsor's name, you might get a clue as to where the colour comes from, and it certainly wasn't Chonlath.

Maybe it is you who is out of date! "West Mercia Police, formerly the West Mercia Constabulary, is the territorial police force responsible for policing the counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire in England."

In addition, I believe that you will find that any statute of limitations runs from the time when you have known, or ought to have known, about the offence. My reading of the new charges is that they have only recently become known to the police.

To build a Land Bridge will require a massive investment, such as the $1 trillion that has been quoted in the OP. Investors will seek to get a return on their investment, which will presumably be in fees used to transit the Land Bridge, as with the Suez and Panama Canals. Those fees will need to be paid, not by Governments or investors, but by the companies shipping containers between China, Japan and South Korea, and countries to the West of Singapore. Now try to do some simple maths, using data which I believe can be found on-line, on typical ship sizes, numbers of containers, times to unload ships, times to load onto trains, times for trains to transit from coast to coast, times to unload from trains, times to load onto ships, daily cost of ship transport, number of days saved by not sailing via the Straits of Malacca, and the cost of using the Land Bridge. If that still seems like "a good idea" then maybe there will be some investors, but I doubt it. Remember that Thai politicians do not take their cut from the ongoing proceeds, they want it all up front, so when the Land Bridge is built but noone is using it they have taken their money and run.

It doesn't take much to realise that every one of the propoals involves new capital expenditure. That is all that any of the officials are interested in, so that they get their percentage. Most of the things suggested by posters above do not require investment, but action by officials, which would cost very little, but seem to be impossible without a paradigm shift in attitude.

The Minister doesn't know, and doesn't care. All any Thai Minister wants is to have a big slab of money to spend, like Baht 1 Billion. He knows he will get at least 15% of that, just for agreeing to award a contract to somebody, and Baht 150 million is still quite a lot of pocket money.

Unfortunately, the WEF seems to have relied upon an article in the Bangkok Post, which originated from AFP. Their quoted sources include someone from Greenpeace, a "climate expert" from Chulalongkorn University, and someone from the Bangkok Drainage Department. No-one who really understands the problems or the engineering. They do not even understand what happens when you fill in khlongs, or other low lying areas for building. As someone who has designed and constructed foundations for 50 years, including high rise buildings in Bangkok, there is no way that the weight of the buildings is causing measurable settlement. Most of the on-going surface settlement is due to past water extraction, and is loswing down as the water extraction has drastically reduced.

Can you provide any factual evidence for this opinion?

Almost certainly because the porch and the main house have different foundations, the porch probably being shallower. This is just consolidation of the soft marine clay, and nothing to do with sea levels or climate change.

You set out a carefully planned argument, which may impress some, but there are several major flaws in your knowledge. 1 There is no logic behind your bold print for "When there is a high tide". There is no sensible connection between high tides which occur twice daily, and rising mean sea levels. 2 Yes your reason number one is almost correct, but Bangkok is not "built on the delta of the Chao Prayah River. There is no delta, which requires the river to separate into many small branches, as in the Nile or the Mekong. The Chao Prayah River simply has a flood plain, but then it is not necessary for capital cities to be built "on solid rock". Many, including London, are not built on rock. 3 Your reason number two is confused. As I have stated, the Chao Prayah River is a flood plain, not a swamp. The levels of the major paved areas at Suvarnabhumi, from memory, are at about 4 m MSL, which is well above sea level. 4 The reason that the Chao Prayah River has a flood plain is because it floods, and has been flooding for millions of years, long before humans walked on the earth and certainly long before Bangkok was chosen. Flood plains create fertile land, so look around the planet and you will find many large cities built on flood plains, which are now at risk. As you have noted sea levels have been changing in cycles for millions of years, but for most of that time there were no humans and no major cities. Just because the changes in sea level have been happening before does not mean that they cannot be accelerated by human intervention. We are not really cocerned about sea levels prior to the emergence of humans, and then the discovery of fire and finally the industrial revolution. Despite youyr scepticism these can be shown to have to have accelerated the changes in sea level. 5 Your information that "the Groundwater level is also lowering dramatically!" is also fake news. There is reliable information in a paper by Giao et al (2013) that a reversal of the falling groundwater levels started in 1997 and continued for at least 15 years, with a rise in that time of over 10 m at 6 monitoring stations. 6 Based on statements I have made above, your reason number four would also appear to be without factual basis. The flooding of the Chao Prayah River basin has been going on for millions of years, and is nothing to do with deforestation. Perhaps, along with the politicians, you should also put yourself "in the right place where you have knowledge and competence"? Would you ike to suggest where that might be?

In an earlier post on this, the Thai Doctor said that she offered 3 solutions at the time: 1 Both apologise to each other and walk away. 2 Neither apologises to the other and walk away 3 Legal proceedings It was stated that the Swiss aggressor declined to apologise, but still needed an apology from the Doctor. Now he wants to say he tripped, so it was an accident. If he tripped, why was it such a problem to apologise? Only now that he finds out what a mess he has landed himself in he wants to apologise. I am happy to say "Too late. You had your chance to be decent. Now take the consequences".

An alternative interpretation of the same English sentence is that the primary source was mains power, and the uninterruptable power supply and the back up system are the same thing. This seems far more likely.

I actually didn't use the term "embezzlement", since that has a specific legal meaning. I said "stealing". That is a term I would use for paying a senior government official for approving the purchase of hardware at inflated prices, since government funds are public funds. I would also use it for paying an even more senior government official to approve a monopolistic concession, so that he could again overcharge for mobile phones and telecommunications services, all paid for by the Thai people. That is in addition to taking government funds for the awarding of state contracts, of which I had personal experience. Nor do I recall any evidence of his having paid tax on any of that. The abuse of power charges were, rather like Al Capone, all they could get him for as no-one would be a witness to any of the other stuff.

And at 50 years for Bt 418,560, how much would you get for stealing Bt 73 billion from the Thai people?

There is one thing about this, and some similar stories about incidents with Bolt Drivers, that confuses me. Maybe someone on this forum can help? I have used Uber, Bolt and Grab as ride hailing apps in Australia and in Malaysia. In all cases I pay the ride hailing organisation through the app, and no money changes hands with the driver. Why doesn't it work like that here. If the cash is paid to the driver how does the organisation get its share?

Based only on the limited facts available, could there have been a missing conversation between the Brit and the police that went something like this: Brit: Well I 'ad to 'it im 'cos he nicked my 10,000 baht didn 'e. Policeman: Do you have any evidence that he "nicked it"? Brit: Well I 'ad it when I stuffed it in me back pocket just before I left me room at 8pm, and it wasn't there when I got home at 3:30 am, so 'e must 'ave done".

Just for you. If a bottle originally cost Bt 200, it would have sold for Bt 700. With a 40% reduction in price it will sell for Bt 420. The 350% tax and the 40% reduction in final price are from earlier posts and not my figures.

Perhaps you need help with the arithmetic. If the total tax was 250%, then the sale price was 350% of the initial cost. A reduction of 40% of the final price would then be 40% of 350% = 140%. That leaves the final cost at 210% of the initial cost, or a new tax at 110% instead of 250%. Does that sound better?

Immigration would easily look to see if the surnames on the passport were the same or not. If not they would suspect some form of human trafficking. One of my daughters from the UK is divorced with three sons who bear their father's surname. She chose to use both her and her husband's surnames when they were married, and still uses that passport to avoid such issues.

It seems that you, and a certain number of other posters, seem to think that Thaksin is OK. I am one on whose life he did have a negative impact, but I won't go into that now. I note that he has been convicted by a Thai Court of certain crimes, which others suggest were "trumped up". I would therefore remind those who have forgotten, and inform those who never knew of some of the things around his wealth. All of it was acquired, not through normal business acumen, but through corruption. In the end he owned the AIS Corporation but, as Prime Minister, he was not allowed to have shares in any company which was a conflict of interest with his position. This has always been the case and is the basis for the action against Pita. Thaksin took care of this by, reportedly, transferring his shares to his maid and his driver. You can be assured that the "ownership" was nominal, as neither would have been able to dispose of any of them. Not long after they were transferred again, this time to his son and daughter. Even that was obviously nominal, because there was no attempt to cover up his selling of the shares to Singapore (either Singtel or Temasek Holdings) for Bt 73,000,000,000. At the time there had been a restriction on foreign ownership of strategic companies such as a telecommunications giant, which could not exceed 15%. Thaksin then arranged a Cabinet Resolution to change this and increase it to 45%, to cover his planned sale, but he actually forgot that the SET rules state that, if you hold 45% of the shares in a publicly listed company, you must make an offer for all remining shares. Many shareholders took advantage of the high offer price, leading to the foreign owners holding about 75%. More jiggery pokery was then done in terms of nominee companies to make it appear as if Thais were holding the shares which were actually held by Singapore. I have therefore never been particularly bothered about the "trumped up charges", as there should have been many more real charges pressed. If anything, it seems to have been very similar to Al Capone being caught on tax charges.