Nirvana

Some poster seem to complain again and again only. If all is that bad and it never seems to get better, why do you stay here and become so disillusioned and bitter???

It might be dirty because the current at the moment brings that filth and if current movements change the sea will take it out again. That happens since years. During this weeks many hotel owner let their staff clean the beach in front of their resorts.

Lamai is one of the best beaches and overpriced? All price classes are available.

Agree. What a load of nonsense, this is natural with higher tides. I believe it is generally a very clean beach. With the season and such tides you can clean as much as you want and build up huge piles of rubbish and still will be back again. Also on prices you have many choices.

Nirvana

Just an interesting point; your insurance premium is less if you live in a detached house.

Less likelihood of a fire spreading to your house from a nearby property.

Maybe I have a lousy policy , but when reading all the small print some years back i found alot of exclusions which I was informed are pretty standard for Thailand.

Interested to know differences in coverage as mine up for renewel. I am with ayudhya insurance. Maybe time to look at the bigger company's , if they have any money left to pay out that is...

Nirvana

Hi

Installed and up finally in time for rains.

Time will tell

Cheers for help

Nirvana

Bought some stuff from them. They are ok in my experience and I will buy again.

If you like, they will take you into Burma where they source the old teak.

They can knock-up anything you want if they havent got what you want although

they inventory is pretty big.

Good luck

Thanks to all for info and replies, will take note. Especially for the ordering.

I have not even contacted them for prices yet , so maybe a nice surprise coming..

Cheers

Nirvana

Afternoon

I am thinking of buying some furniture and came across this company "Siam Old Teak" near Hua Hin.

As it is in your area , could anyone give any info or experiences.

Good Quailty / Prices / Experiences on the product etc.

I am talking about wardrobes / beds etc

I have viewed the website and pretty impressive selction etc

Any local knowledge appreciated

Thanks

Nirvana

Afternoon

Maid / child care required for a friends family on temporary basis 8th of November to 1st of december - 3 children, English Speaking with some Thai.

Location Koh Samui.

Any reputable local servce provider welcome to contact by PM.

Salary to be discussed by PM.

Thanks

I have an English sparky who does odd jobs for me now and then, top quality work. if you're interested PM me.

Thanks to all for replying, PM's sent

Nirvana

Evening Forum Members

I am hunting for an electrician for quite a while now. Have gone through the usual experience of Thai and the usual consequences.

Would appreciate any recommendations. I have made a post on DIY forum but as the small job is in south have had no luck.

Seems the definition of western standard becomes shall we say "lost in translation".

Thanks

Nirvana

Can anyone recommend a reliable decent electrician for Just outside Pattaya (Near Phoenix Golf) Having real trouble finding one for the House i am doing. The house is around 300M2 and maybe 70% of the groundfloor wiring (cable only) is in place, but there are a few alterations and quite a few more sockets to add, plus all the first floor, and its becoming a nightmare trying to find an electrician, any help would be greatly appreciated

Cheers

Jeez , I am still struggling to find a decent one in Koh Samui who at least has some idea of British Regulations...

Any suggestions welcome.

I can understand your predicament completely/

one thing that is worth mentioning is welding

take a hammer and go up there and bash lots of welds to knock of the slag and look at the quality of the welds, it can be shocking at times how scary the welding can be.

now a good weld will be stronger than the steel, a bad weld will weaken both and leave a point for corrosion.

ok how important are the welds?? well at 0.5kg per tile and 75 tiles to the sq meter with 80 sq meters that makes for 3,000kg or three tons of tiles plus the weight of the steel. all resting above your head.

you can also add to that loading with monsoon and wind loads.

here is a pic of a good quality weld

here is a pic of a bad weld

i really cant stress enough how important it is for you to inspect those welds!!!

I was a welding instructor here in thailand for some time for a very very high profile construction company I trained there construction crews, and to put it simple the work was scary!!!! hence they paid me big money to train there crews to get them up to standard!

it is common that this area is not looked at so the least amount of effort is put into the quality, but it is the area that you need the best quality, a tile or two coming off is not major but the roof falling down is!!!

Hello

I am certainly checking that for this place and also in other house the other day while up inspection hatch I found one that is not as it should be. Working on rectifing that. Cheers for the heads up

Nirvana

No hole for the wire? Do you have traditional-style tiles with the wedge underneath that hooks over the batten ('kabuang kroc')?

Hi Going homesoon

Sorry for delays in posting. I will post some pictures very soon, but yes what you say is correct "kabuang kroc'.

The guy that did the roof structure screwed it up and was outed, spacing between the metal c section was off compared to the recommended distance on the detail supplied ( I was given a glance of but unable to copy). Ie now the amount of tile showing is about 2.5 cms more than it should have been.

Now we are advised to fold tin inbetween tiles before tiling the roof to assist in water proofing. I did ask about the ties and was advised that weight will hold it down at 35-40 kgs per square meter which is about 60 tiles now instead of 75 more or less.

Not a happy story so far..

comments appreciated

Nirvana

Wire tie roof, just watch when they install tiles as the workers seem to have a tendency to tie what and when they want to. If you have access to roof from below (access door) every tile can be tied. I have watched tiles going on where they tied every tile, every other tile, every other row of tile, every third row of tile, and once where no tile were tied.

I think the OP is using the small clay tiles on a smallish roof which can of course all be wired on.

If however a normal C Pack style roof is fitted it is usual to fix every other tile otherwise tiles can not be removed, the roof can not be repaired, the void space can not be accessed and the tiler can not slide tiles up to use the batten rails as a ladder to reach ridge tiles. Also the UBC man hates you because he can not get his cable under the tiles.

All reply posters

Morning.

Thanks to every one for their time. I am going to look at this over next 2 days and decide. The tiles I am looking at buying are PPK orange clay tiles , 5 inches w by 9 inches L. They are around 9 baht a piece. roof size is 80 sq m . 1 sq meter is 75 pieces and each tile is 0.5 Kg roughly.

ONe thing notice from the sample is there is no holes at all in the tile so any pics on how they are tieing these on ?

Any further advise / comments deeply appreciated before I go ahead on this one.

Thanks

Nirvana

Any foil should be under the rails not on top of it.

And if the shining side is put upwards there should be an airgap of minimum 5 cm to the tiles, else the foil will not reflect the radiant heat properly and it will be a waste of money.

If you use foil, ensure you insert air gaps on the upper part of the walls so the thermal heat has an exit.

Hi Stgrhe

Ok , so Shiny side facing outwards towards back (inner side ) of tile. As is if the foil is fixed on inner side of frame then it definately will not be 5 cm between tiles. any ideas ?

Noted on air gaps.

By the way for an outhouse with bar under do you think it will make much difference not to use foil in first place , I .e is it necessary ?

Thanks Nirvana

It looks like your contractor has used L section steel as roof battens, in which case I suspect the tiles will be wired on.

The correct galvanized 'top hat' section batten is only slightly more expensive and allows tiles to be screwed onto the rail.

Any foil should be under the rails not on top of it.

If you want to put foil on top of the rails you can but you will have to use a heavier grade of foil to prevent the tiles punching though the foil.

Hi Rimmer

any idea where I would source that "top hat section" and the name in thai (i knw i am pushing it)

Thanks

Nirvana

Hello All

I am building an outhouse / bar with clay roof tiles with a natural colour (not orange) as I understand it they are around 11- 15 baht a piece. Roof size is 80 sq meters or so.

They will be fixed onto a steel structure which will be checked by an engineer as this is going to be pretty heavy. See attd pictures

What I would like to know is normally just so i can check contractor is doing it correctly, is the procedure for fixing and underneath the tile.

Is it again best to use the foil etc. A brief idiots guide on process and check list would be well appreciated just so i can monitor personally.

Thanks

Nirvana

Seems a couple of people on here, have a beef & like putting the boot in. Keep it up & I will soon close it.

Roo.

No specific beef against this company mentioned. Just the way that so many people end up terrible positions just by maybe trusting company's to do what they agreed to do. Maybe some may call them naive to be so trusting in first place, but still I feel for them. All to often its about company's taking money in the front door and over extending them selves. In this case I am pretty surprised. It will not be the last. Feel for the workers, they have to feed families. I am sure they are pretty desparate now. Not alot of work on..

By the way no second account and prefer sandals to boots (just stated as few posters to this topic).

Nirvana

They are still doing work on my friends house under warrenty so they are at least trying to help. Unlike a lot of other developers who simply close shop and to hel_l with their remaining customers. You have to give them credit for being open and honest. Some peole will always run them down but these are the people who have never achieved anything as they are too scared to try. Armchair business men I call them.

Open and Honest - Me thinks not.

Keyboard warrior - Could be.

We all have different values and standards. For some people this pass as normal behaviour.

Its best not to assume things about people you know nothing about.

Nirvana

------------------

If that was supposed to alleviate your fears then believe it has done more harm than good.

IMHO a terrible company statement to release into the public domain..

Nirvana

Would you have preferred something less honest?

Depends on your definition of honesty in the first place. I guess mine is a little different to theirs and maybe yours..

Nirvana

Quote

Profmil Group - Official Statement

September 22nd, 2009

The Profmil Group has had a very hard time because of the severe impact by the economical crisis. We have in effect had no new sales in 2009 as many projects have been cancelled, stopped or delayed.

The Profmil Group is discontinuing all work on the sites to assess the current economical situation and to see how we can help our customers the most.

Please be informed that the company is not going bankrupt, but we are temporarily closing down our construction department to ensure that we can stabilize the situation.

We also would like to urge people not to believe all the various rumors that are currently being spread around by outsiders, as they contain false information. This statement is official and the only official explanation of the company's current situation.

Last week, we were suddenly informed that one of our suppliers would not honor their agreements and they would not deliver the ordered materials for three houses. On top of that another supplier stopped work on a site because of financial reasons. Lastly we received many postponements of new constructions which added to the cash-flow problems.

We have discussed this dire situation and we decided that there was no point in continuing on like this as it would make the situation worse. We have lain off all our lower staff and we shall lay off most of our higher staff by the end of this month.

We have a large stock of building materials and we are assessing now how we can help our customers by giving them as many materials as possible to finish their houses, this to minimize any possible losses to an absolute minimum.

Our customers have been informed about the situation and we are constantly in touch with them to help them as much as possible.

The remaining people are working day and night to answer all questions and finding the most suitable solutions.

Our sales and rentals departments will continue their operations without change.

If you require more information, please do not hesitate to contact us at **email removed per forum rules*** and we will try to assist you in the best possible manner.

Unquote

------------------

If that was supposed to alleviate your fears then believe it has done more harm than good.

IMHO a terrible company statement to release into the public domain..

Nirvana

Yes, I now see what appears to be a green wire in the upper right. In a closer look I see now what appears a black, dark blue, or possibly that green wire connected to the "E" bar and then maybe straight to the "N" bar? I attach a photo of the area.

As you say Crossy the photo needs to be a straight on view and closer.

Crossy / Lopburi3/ Artisi

Thank you so much for your comments and time spent,sorry for not posting soon, its been a hel_l of a week. I will get some more pics from straight and closer angle and post.

So it seems then definately some work needs to be done here for RCD for a start. Would that be a hard job to install ?

Need to check where green wire goes as you said could be into thin air above the ceiling.

Will revert and if ok, take a bit more of your time.

Thanks

Nirvana

from that post exactly. Why is it old news & what is exactly so amusing about it? A man was shot. If you have a link to the story then please provide it.

But the tone of your posts show a total lack of sympathy for someone who was killed. It may be old news to you & "everyone" in Lamai may be aware of it already but the op is asking a question & sources are being verified.

are our posts now required to show sympathy? ...guess I missed that in rules

Manners and decency are free and not governed by rules, some us are blessed with bountiful supplies of such virtues, where as some of us are not... I guess.

As you seem to only have the one panel I would recommend you buy a new panel to house a main breaker/Safe-T-Cut/your current panel. They do not cost that much and provide room to tap the non RCD breaker if required due to nuisance trips from a leaky air conditioner or refrigerator.

Hi Lopburi3 / Crossy

Would you say that this Panel has RCD and looks to be safe.

We have assurances from our electrician that everything is earthed.3 pin plugs throughout.

Not that it means much if you are a layman when it comes to electrics.

comments / advise well recd.

Thanks

It sounds like a job for a management company as seldom do you find a housekeeper etc with ability to speak english.I am sorry I cant recommend any, but i am sure that someone will on this forum.

Nirvana

It's eerily ( sp ? ) quiet in my opinion & the quietest i have seen the Island in the 6 Years i have been here..

So are you agreeing with what i wrote or just quoting me as " Indians " were mentioned, & my User Name suggests i'm Indian, or of Indian Heritage, at least ??

Agree, and before you mentioned it i did not get from your name that you are Indian.

you write like a british.....

can you not be British and an Indian then ?

(What a brilliant marketing scheme -- you force water up your butthole (do it yourself, no labor costs involved), we give you some seaweed/moss/roughage pills and we don't feed you anything! Start-up costs? A tube, a bucket, water and some herbal pills and a bunch of new age bunkum hype. ...sorry, gotta go and touch my crystal.)

I have to laugh at that one. made my day