Encid

And this morning the concrete is being poured...

I marked up a modified septic vent system for my builder... we really only need a single 2" vent stack, not a 4" and 2 x 2" stacks. He's given me the thumbs-up as it saves him time and material labour and money of course.

And by 5pm on Friday afternoon the beams formwork is pretty much complete (except for the carport).

Thanks for confirming what I already suspected, but was debunked by some "experts" on this forum. "Panels must always face South" was their mandate. It makes a lot of sense to harvest as much solar energy as you can in the late afternoon, which your graph clearly shows. Well done.

Another classic Thai Feng Shui belief is that “For double-door entrances, it would be auspicious if the two doors are of same size. If the left door is larger, the house owner might remarry, and if the right is larger, the house owner will live in loneliness”.

Feng Shui principles consider many factors relating to the internal layout of a home or unit. Most attention is usually paid to the master bedroom and living area. The living area should draw the "yang energy"... it should be airy and bright with good ventilation and a lot of movement. This is one of the reasons why the balcony should be off the living room rather than bedrooms, as a balcony provides movement from from the natural environment. This makes sense both from a design and a Feng Shui viewpoint.

Another Thai Feng Shui item that I only just learned about... you should never place an air-conditioning unit above your head in a bedroom, or have a ceiling mounted cassette unit that can direct cold air at your face whilst you are sleeping. Apparently this can cause bad health.

If you go back a few pages in this thread you will see that every footing is sitting on top of a 26x26cm x 6m long pile. Nothing is going to wash them away...

And here is a photo of those little spacers being put to use... inside the beams formwork. It may not be up to Western standards... the rebar may not be perfectly straight and the ties may not be perfectly vertical, but it is acceptable for me.

Then came some bad news... he sent me a photo of the 1600L septic tank that had been already delivered. It was not the same as the one specified on the drawings... same make, but wrong model. We specified a DOS HERO tank, not a DOS OK tank. This is what was delivered... And this little video explains why we specified the DOS HERO septic tank: I sent the video to our builder and told him that his substitute was not acceptable because it didn't have the features that the HERO model had, and he has agreed to change the tank to what was specified on the drawings. I suspect that he has delegated some of the procurement to his staff, and they are looking for opportunities to save money on the build... there is only about 500 baht difference between the two tanks but I guess every little baht bit helps. Anyway, we are going to get what we wanted.

He even produced a flyaround video of his proposal so we could visualize it better. 1679644900790.mp4 Note how the black water from the toilet is the only thing going into the septic tank, and that is vented through the roof just outside the building. The grey water from the shower and the bathroom sink goes into the western soakaway, and the eastern soakaway receives the grey water from the kitchen sinks and the overflow from the septic tank. The grey water systems are also vented through the roof just outside the building. We had quite a detailed discussion a month or two ago about the importance of venting both black and grey water drainage systems, which usually isn't done correctly (if at all) here in Thailand. I was pleased to see that he had taken heed of our discussion (although I might ask him to downsize the black water vent pipe from 4" to 2").

Today he came up with a novel idea for the soakaways... using some of the surplus concrete rings from our retaining wall. The design called for a single soakaway using 100cm dia rings, but by utilizing our surplus 80cm dia rings and making two soakaways we end up with a greater capacity and it fits really well into the available space next to the septic tank. Here are his plans:

And by 5pm the wrongly positioned beam had been relocated to its correct position and the grout bedding broken.

Another good point...

How long do you have your AC running? And what temperature(s) are they set at?

Thanks for that... I will look into it some more. Hopefully that would overcome the negative Thai "feng shui" aspects.

So where are their retail outlets? I wouldn't mind taking a look. I was considering only the regular maintenance cleanups, although if an unfortunate gecko managed to get inside and fry both himself and a circuit board, then emergency maintenance also needs to be considered.

Funny you should mention that... I used to work at an abattoir in my younger days... on the evening shift actually, on the cleanup crew. What a messy job.. especially when the meat workers went out on strike and left everything behind! The refrigerated rooms were kept between 5-8°C. We had to take a 1 hour break after 4 hours exposure working in those conditions... union rules.

My builder plans on using these... I'm used to them being called rebar "chairs or shoes"... here in Thailand they are simply called "mortar supports" or "spacers".

Our builder contacted us just before lunch and admitted that his people had made a mistake, and he will correct it. Apparently they were concerned that the septic tank (a DOS HERO 1600L) would not fit between the beams so they decided to move it. I told him that by moving it where they had excavated would result in our 4m wide access road being pushed further away and would adversely affect the future location of the Main House. As we had performed the survey together only a few weeks ago he remembered it well and agreed with my viewpoint. I further pointed out to him that the septic tank was 156cm in diameter, so should easily fit between the RC beams which are 2m apart. He agreed. After discussion with his people he told me that they had (wrongly) measured between the footings (which still had the cement cinder blocks boxing on them) and there wasn't enough room to fit the tank (which there is). He also admitted that they had wrongly placed the beam reinforcing, and that it should have been placed at the column further East. I agreed with him. So he has promised to keep a closer eye on the proceedings there so everything goes "to plan". He has further agreed that if he or his foreman want to make any changes at all to the design, they must first contact me for agreement. Here are his photos which show his measurements and the errors to rectify:

And here are the photos of the wrongly located beam and excavation:

I assume so... for us it would be standard practice to place concrete or plastic "shoes" under the rebar to enable full and proper coverage. It is something I am keeping an eye on...

I asked my SIL to go back this morning (Thursday 23 March) to take some more photographs as although the videos do give you a very good overview of the progress, they are not clear enough to enable one to pay attention to details. Here are the photos:

And on the next day we received the following video: 10000000_8931313343609902_4043077739811650396_n.mp4 Things seemed to be progressing quite well, until I spotted this... there's a beam going in where no beam exists and a hole has been excavated (presumably for the septic tank and soakaway) outside the plot... not where it should be! We called our builder and sent the photos and he told us he'd be there on site first thing in the morning to sort it out.

So on Monday morning the workers started fitting the reinforcing steel for the beams... initially sitting them on top of a sand/cement grout which had been set at a certain level for uniformity. This photo is taken looking East. As we can't be there every day, my wife's family are taking daily daily photographs and videos and sending them to us so we can keep track of progress. Little did we know how useful this would become in a couple of days time...