lost in isaan

I have gotten zapped twice going around 10km/h over the speed limit. Never got a fine. Might be the same case with you 

30 minutes ago, scorecard said:

 

Don't ignore your wife's concerns. There's a good chance locals at the market will say nasty things to her, and possibly put pressure on her to give them handouts.

 

Plus, in your 'journey' so far have you have requests / demands from her siblings for handouts?

 

Keep in mind that the 'mansion' you propose strongly reinforces the belief that all farang are extremely rich with no limits. The pressure they might put on your wife could be quite intimidating for her. And quite possible she won't tell you about this for fear you will get nasty.

 

Good points to consider, thanks.
As far as i know, the only nasty thing happening is some locals calling her playfully ma dam (black dog) sounds a bit different than madam. Yeah, there has been requests for handouts, but she keeps telling people that i control all the money and she has none. So far, they have left it at that.
Her family is surprisingly nice. I have read many horror stories about families, but hers has never asked any money or caused problems.

I still have a long time before the build starts. The land I plan to build on is split between family members and we're in process of acquiring it. I also want to raise the ground atleast 2 meters and let it set around a year after the heavy machinery does its work on it.
The main reason i made this post is to get other points of view, not to bs or flaunt like some of the members are thinking. On the last house build i got many good advices that helped me to avoid quite a few mistakes. Many valid adviced so far in here too. I'm also travelling around thailand constantly, so maybe i'll find a better place i'd like to build a house onto. Nothing is set on stone yet :)
 

4 minutes ago, mfd101 said:

Here's a photo of us abuilding in Dec 2016, 3 months before moving in. And a couple in mid-2022.

 

And yes we made every mistake known to man. Went thru 3 sets of local/family 'builders' of varying levels of incompetence & thievery. Only when my boy took over the daily management & supervision did things improve. Took 15 months all up and the end result isn't bad, with some rough bits and some areas for improvement when we can afford it. But overall solid (built on stilts down to the bedrock below the usual hundreds of truckloads of 'soil'). Comfortable inside, plenty of room for all my books, large rooms, high ceilings. We used an architect design which I modified to reduce the number of bedrooms and build the main library u/s.

 

An interesting experience. If I were doing it again (God forbid) I would employ falang builders.

 

 

Cheers :) Glad it worked out at the end, looks nice.

4 minutes ago, gamb00ler said:

It sounds like the funds you intend to use for building your house have been earned before 2024.  If that is true it should be easy to prove that the funds are NOT taxable by Thailand.  Many AN posters seem to believe that any remittance will be taxable.  I think that is a very unlikely outcome.  The "new" tax rules have already been clarified that any income from any year before 2024 will not be taxed even if remitted to Thailand.  I don't think you should worry about paying Thai tax on the money you remit to be used for building your house.

 

Personally I would spend a lot less money on the house and much more money on hiring excellent gardeners, and cooks to preserve my health.  In Thailand the pesticide residues are a serious problem that will takes years to manifest.

The funds i will use for my house are currently invested in stocks and crypto. So technically they are not earned before 2024? But yeah, i'll wait it out and see how it plays out. Will contact a lawyer/tax specialists before i move anything to thailand.

I totally agree with you on the health issue :) The village i live in is luckily pesticide free (They were banned quite a few years ago) and we get most of our food from locals. Meat and exported food is another story.

5 minutes ago, Kinnock said:

You've managed to foresee many of the potential issues.

 

We built a large(ish) house on a plot we bought near the coast, and while we're happy with the place, we did encounter some challenges:

 

1. Unnecessary costs - We have more space than we need, but each room still needed furniture, AC and electrics etc ... so effectively it was wasted capital.  Then there's the cleaning - unused rooms seem to be dustier than used ones.

 

2. Time spent walking - depending on the design, you may need to walk through unused rooms to get where you want to go.  Sounds trivial, but the extra time and distances mount up when you forget where you left your phone 5 times a day, every damn day, and have to go on tour.

 

3. Raised wife expectations - status is everything in Thailand, and now your car(s), clothes, soft furnishings, pets etc will need to be upgraded to match the house.  And don't forget the ginormous TV's and mega sound system needed for the bigger rooms.

 

4. Her family - their expectations of support from the 'rich falang' will rise in proportion to the house size.  And if you don't deliver, their bitter resentment will rise on a  logarithmic scale.

 

Our house (yes I know it's hers, but I wanted that as I also have property in my home country) was only oversized by two large rooms and one excess bathroom - but the above principles still apply, and looking at what you're planning, your issues will be magnified.

 

My advice .... just build what you need to live comfortably and don't show-off.

Thanks for sharing. Really good points

16 minutes ago, Negita43 said:

Whatever you do make sure you still have liquid assets - second hand property (especially "in the stick" is not popular with Thais and will probably require purchase by a Farang.

  Yeah, good point. I'll have enough :) My only concern atm is how to move the money to thailand to pay for the house without paying the 35% income tax. Got to wait and see the fine prints of the new law.

11 minutes ago, ukrules said:

I find these houses with huge rooms a bit off putting knowing that I will have to wait quite a while for the AirCon to do its job every time I turn it on.

Good point. I'll have enough solar to run all the AC's during the day, so not really a problem for me.

8 minutes ago, Denim said:

 

I have an American acquaintance who built something similar but with only 5 bedrooms. Used local builders.

Predictable disaster.

 

Finished it with many problems , leaking roof , cracks etc. Gave it to his in laws in the end and moved to the outskirts of Bangkok where he again purchased something similar on an exclusive development for twice the price and very few issues.

 

For something that big with that many rooms a few live in servants will be needed to keep it clean . Good servants hard to find unless you really pay top dollar.

Yeah, that's one of the problems i'm considered also. Might need to hire someone to ensure the quality.
Getting the people to work for us will be a challenge for sure, as i live in middle of nowhere.
Thanks for the input :)

1 minute ago, AndyAndyAndy said:

You're missing a goal or a purpose in your life as an early retiree, so you're compensating with this house project. It will be fun while you're on it, but it won't solve the issue.

Fair enough. Something worth pondering on. Thanks for the input

5 minutes ago, Woof999 said:

That looks like one of the Emperor House designs. I'm literally about to do something similar, although much lesser scale (err much lesser), although on quite a sizeable plot of land.

 

Would love to follow the journey.

Good luck :)
It's actually from masterplan https://www.masterplan101.com/official-detail/MASTERPIECE 01

I was planning to send a hefty sum of money to Thailand for property and other goods and avoid taxes by staying out of Thailand for half a year. However, I was reading Siam Legal's post about it (https://www.siam-legal.com/thailand-law/thailand-new-tax-on-foreign-income-an-overview/) and am not sure if I can avoid it by just staying out of the country if I paid taxes the previous year. (I have not filed the tax report yet).

I hope things get clarified asap.
Quote from the post:
 

Quote

This provision requires an individual to pay income taxes to the Revenue Department of Thailand under the following conditions:
1.The individual is:

• A Thai citizen.
• A Thailand resident who filed taxes in the previous tax year.
• Foreigners living in Thailand for one or more periods totaling at least 180 days in any tax calendar year.

2.Receives income within or outside Thailand through:

• Employment (wage, salary, remuneration, etc.) under Section 40.
• Business operations under Section 40.
• Business operations of the employer under Section 40.
• Passive income or property (interests, dividends, rental income, goodwill, etc.) under Section 41 paragraph 2.

7 hours ago, ExpatOilWorker said:

That is a very nice and neat setup.

Do you pre-strain ur rainwater?

What type and how many microns are your filters?

What is the purpose of the greenish tank in the corner?

Thank you.

I use "first flush" system for rainwater and 100-mesh small filter before the pump.

On the wall i have 5 filters: small easily cleanable 100-mesh filter, 5-micron sediment filter, carbon filter, resin filter and lastly UV filter.

The greenish tank is a 100-litre pressure tank.

I don't intend to drink the water, it's just a simple and inexpensive way to make it more clean ????

12 minutes ago, In the jungle said:

The Mitsubushi pump like yours has two switches. 

 

It has a pressure switch and a flow switch.  The flow switch has encapsulated electronic components and is immediately before the pump outlet.

 

The pressure switch is adjustable although the manufacturer tells you not to touch it. 

 

Nothing you can service on the flow switch.

 

 

That explains it, thank you

I recently built DIY water filtering system. I have two water pumps: mitsubishi water pump that pumps from rainwater tanks and hitachi for well water.

The thing i'm curious about is why does mitsubishi pump keep pumping even after i hear the pressure switch click off? It runs couple of mins and stops at around 4 bars. I thought the issue was with pressure switch, so i got one that switches off at 1.9 bar. Previous one switched off at 2.8 bar, but that did not change anything.

My hitachi pump switches off at 1.8 bar and works like it should.

Not a critical problem as the pipes should be able to handle the pressure, but in a long run more potential leaks and i don't really need that much pressure.

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome.

Pictures of my DIY system:

House is progressing fast and will be completed in may. 

Plastering is done and they are now working on floor tiling.

I was waiting for over a month for a family relative to install poles for electric line and pull the cables, but nothing got done so i decided to do it myself during songkran.

Dug ~1m hole for each pole.

Filled the holes with 50+cm of concrete and installed the pole.

And pulled the cable.

All got done in less than 8h and wasn't complicated at all, so i don't really understand the 10k ฿ quete (labor cost) i got from a builder ????.

All the 5 poles were 20-25m distance from each other and are 2.5mm thick and 6m in height. Hope they will be strong enough for future storms.

Poles cost me 970฿ each and the wire connection parts were around 200฿ for each pole. I have 5 slots on each pole, because one will be for the internet and the other side will be for solar generated electricity for in-laws house.

My only mistake was not wearing long pants while doing the welding ???? It was a painful one week after that.

To be honest, my initial plan was to put the wires underground, but everyone thought i was crazy. Seems like it's not the norm in here and I didn't really care to argue.

1 hour ago, Denim said:

At some stage in the future you may want to enter the roof space for one of several reasons ( check on leaks , add more insulation, check wiring etc. 

 

To facilitate safe and easy access in the attic, I had the builders weld steel walk ways along the length of the house with a couple of spurs running off this.  Now , whenever I go up in the attic I can move around easily without having to worry about falling through the ceiling.

 

The guys from 3BB really appreciated this the other day when they had to replace some wiring that a mouse had nibbled through. They said they were often unable to work in attics and had to run cables along outside walls then drill through to wire people up..

 

On the subject of ventilation , we had  ventilated soffits all around the roof overhang plus ventilation slats front and rear. Nonetheless there is zero air movement in the attic and it gets very hot. We do have 6 inches of insulation on top of the ceiling but if I was doing things again I might try installing a couple of large extractor fans to suck out the hot air late in the afternoon around 5 pm ish. Because there is little air movement in the attic it retains the heat for quite a long time after the sun has gone down.

 

There is a forum dedicated only to building houses in Thailand. Very useful info there and I believe it is not treading on this forums toes :

 

https://www.coolthaihouse.com/forum/

The steel walk ways are a great idea, thanks.

I'm quite worried about the air flow also. I installed few temperature meters already and will be monitoring the situation. Currently without the ceiling, the hot air clears out really fast and the temperature drops similar rate as outside.

Didn't know about the forum either, i'll check it out.

1 hour ago, 4MyEgo said:

You will be surprised how much you can save getting the materials yourself and getting someone else to do the work once the builders have finished.

 

Amen to that.

 

Be interested to know what the build has cost you, e.g. builders cost to lock up stage + materials if your willing. If I were to take a guess, I would say around 700k baht including rendering inside and outside 

Total price for the finished house is around 720k. This is the original offer:

We increased the length of the house by 1m and got thicker roof steel. That cost me 70k extra.

Up until this point we have paid 600k (includes the rendering). Another 120k for tiling, paintint, electrical work etc.

So it's quite cheap and i'm not too stressed if the house quality will be medicore. I'll build a proper house if i'm still staying here after couple of years.

The builders completed the walls and are off to one-week holiday. The quality of the work has been getting poorer and some of the walls are not straight ???? oh well, at least the pillars are straight.

Now that it's time to talk about extra work (car port, extra plugs, tiling etc) they offered to do everything for 300k. I would gladly pay that amount, if the quality of the work was on par, but it's not. The real value of materials and labor should be around 150k, so we decilined most of the extra work and will do it once the house is built.

To be honest, it's probably better this way. Now we will have better control over materials and quality.

Latest pictures:

On 4/4/2023 at 4:33 PM, 4MyEgo said:

Please tell me you didn't listen to their advice.

 

Get the place insulated, and while your at it, put sisalation under the roof, then throw on a few whirly birds and hopefully eaves at least 600mm wide and vented, as well as some panels to allow air to enter and exit the roof while the whirly birds suck the air out, this is the only way your going to keep your place cool in summer.

 

If you are going to use an air conditioner, the above will help keep the cool air in, as opposed to rising out through your ceilings as the insulation batts will stop the cool air from leaving and the hot air from entering through the ceilings.

 

I have a 300 square metre single level house and it cost me 120,000 baht to do the lot and to me, it is like living in an air conditioned house, without the air conditioner being on, so well worth the investment. air conditioner only goes on at night for 30 minutes to cool the room down, then off it goes and on goes the fan on low to circulate the "trapped" cool air that the air conditioner circulated into the room earlier.

Thank you for the advice. I fully agree with you and will most likely add insulation under the roof. Since it's not that hard to add, i decided to wait until it rains first to see if there's any leaks. I also might add some extra solar panels to the roof, so i'd rather confirm first that there are no extra holes.

Roof is ready and things are going forward without major issues. I'm amazed how hard working the builders are. They work 10h every day, even in 40 degree heat.

It's been over 4 months since it last rained in my area and the water pressure from main line is dropping. I noticed that our 2000-litre water tank was almost empty, so got to reduce the water usage. When i asked around, the people said that on years where it's dry like this, the groundwater starts running out around June ????

This proves that my decision to store water will be on point and 10000 litres might not be enough, as many of you have already mentioned.

Some pictures from past few days:

4 hours ago, patman30 said:

i did look at those batts myself before going with felicity
from felicity Just under $2000 (currently 68k thb) will get you 48v 300ah battery delivered to your door
This one to be exact
https://www.felicitysolar.com/48-volt-300ah-lithium-ion-phosphate-battery-aa-rechargeable-lithium-power-batteries_p108.html
 

the only problem i have with no brand batteries here, is nobody is putting their name behind it, and cost is similar
felicity also sell everything else needed too, although i use growatt inverters

as for room
everything will function
but temperatures will affect battery life
i have FTKZ09VV2S daikin aircon in my small room
Daikin FTKZ models are most efficient
all depends how cool your room is without aircon

one thing i would also definately suggest (finding this out recently)
you could greatly benefit from having a few panels face/angled WEST
just to get more of the late afternoon sun, so you start discharging from battery later
Peak day you will generate excess and likely lose this excess if no demand for it once batt is full
as you can see from my image

i am off grid
 

Thank you for the link and tips. You are right, that battery does seem way better option. I'll most likely buy them if i don't find better options ????

My house will be pointing south-west, so i'll get some of the evening sun. Only issue is my neighbours trees that create some shading on the roof after 4pm. Hope i'll find an agreement about cutting them down.

I dont think microinverters are worth it since I won't have any shades 7am - 4pm

15 minutes ago, sometimewoodworker said:

Just under the tiles it isn’t acting as a reflector but as a radiant barrier, put it on the ceiling and it is a reflector but will decrease in effectiveness as the dust gathers.

That's a good point. I'll try to remember to clean the dust off before the hot season ????

Pillars are finally done and they started with the roof:

The house packet didn't come with any insulation or ventilation, but i guess it's the norm for thais in rural villages. Even the builders don't think it's necessary.

I've been reading a lot regarding this topic and some people on older topics claim that insulation can be harmful in Thailand due the humidity levels. Maybe it can be true if there's lack of ventilation?

I decided to take this as an experiement and install 6 bluetooth temperature sensors around the house. I'll monitor the temperatures and see if there's any point to improve the ventilation and insulation.

I refuse to believe that it's not necassery at all so i will start with bare minimum and bought thai style ventilation for the attic

Similar to this, but its from pvc and has a mosquito net.

Many people seem to favor reflective foil, but it's unclear if it's more effective to have it on top of the ceiling or under the roof tiles with few cm gap. I decided to get drywall panels that come with the reflective foil.

If these are not enough, i'll install reflective foil + insulation under the roof at attic and get some exhaust vents running. I'm still not sure about intake vents but might get them as well for better airflow.

28 minutes ago, Jumbo1968 said:

Would it not have been cheaper to instal a back up generator instead of solar panels, you don’t how long the power will be for and with a decent size generator it should be sufficient to power everything indefinitely ?

Yeah, that is a cheaper option and solar with battery will take very long time to pay itself back. However, I would like to be self-sufficient and not care what PEA does, especially if there's a solar flare or smt that will break the grid for more than few days.