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Funny you should mention that... I was thinking exactly the same thing myself today after a visit to Hafele to look at all their lovely (but expensive) household ideas. I will give it some more serious consideration. It will not affect the build, as kitchen layouts, islands etc can be added later, although location of power points and water pipes/drains need to be sorted out early.

Well the architect has worked his magic on our basic Main House plan... and this is the result:

After the Guest House has been built, fitted out with furniture and necessary fittings and appliances, water and power connected, and fully habitable we will start with the construction of our main house. We may need to wait for a while because the build is dependent on the sale of our current house in Najomtien. Hopefully it will sell quickly and we can use the funds to build the new house in a timely manner. The construction is also to be based on piled foundations, using driven piles (22cm x 22cm x 6m long). I forgot to mention before that when we drive the piles for our Guest House, we will also setout and drive the piles for the Main House, so we will only have to pay for a single mob/demob of the pile driving equipment. The Main House will be a U-shaped building loosely based on a 4m x 4.5m column grid system, with a master wing comprising of a bedroom, walk-in-robe room, and large bathroom, a connecting open plan living/dining area and internal western kitchen, an internal bathroom with additional shower, and the second wing comprising of a second bedroom with a full ensuite bathroom. Internal living area will be about 168 sq.m. Just outside the western kitchen will be a large Thai kitchen area, with a ramp leading down to a covered carport that will be large enough to not only house our 2 cars, but also enough room for a small EV and a motocyc or two. Also inside the the carport will be a workshop/battery room where I will be able to store all my tools as well as the inverters and batteries for our future hybrid solar power system. The front of the U-shaped house will contain an 8m x 4m swimming pool, which will be surrounded on 2 sides by SCI wood decking. The pool will be an overflow type, with an infinity edge on the East and South sides. As the prevailing winds come from the North-East, any surface floating debris that gets blown into the pool should be blown to and overflow into the South-West corner of the pool. The decking (front and rear) will be elevated about 90cm above grade, hence the need for some steps at the front of the house, and the ramp access inside the carport. One the Main House is built, fitted out with furniture and necessary fittings and appliances, water and power connected, and fully habitable, we will then move in and the Guest House will become my Inlaw's (wife's parents) new home. We are all looking forward to it.

4m high poles alongside a road or accessway might be OK, but across working farm land it's too low. Don't forget that the electric cables also hang down in an inverted arc from their supports on the poles. You need to be able to provide adequate clearance for farm machinery, and if the crops change from rice to say sugar cane, then you really do have to have good clearance for the harvesting machinery. Plus... the cost difference (in the big picture of supply and install) is negligible.

Well the architect has worked his magic on our basic guest house plan... and this is the result: Awesome!

We have planned to install a sliding glass window between the internal kitchen and the external Thai kitchen that could well be used as a serving hatch

The cavity will be used for electrical conduits too, so they can only build the external wall first, then run the conduits and cable, then erect the inner wall so hopefully no glue bridges (or did you mean the ties between the walls to keep them the same distance apart?). The prevailing wind all year round is from the North-East, which is the lower left corner of the CAD plan I posted earlier, so the Thai kitchen will be sheltered apart from an eddy effect of the wind passing around the corner of the house, it should be relatively calm (except of course for all the toxic eye-watering fumes emitted during Thai cooking! My wife doesn't want a wall and door between the external deck and the carport... it is elevated some 60cm above the carport floor level... but we will see how the situation is after we have lived there for a few months. One good thing about the post and beam style of construction... it is easy to add on extra rooms, walls etc. at a later date.

We plan to install the PV panels on the Main House. Megawatts? 555... Yes I think you are right, and I was thinking of making a bench counter on the carport side of the external kitchen... good for storage of pots, pans etc too. And putting in a wall on the West side so elevated cupboards could be installed as well as some wind protection. However my wife is thinking that this will work well, as once each dish is prepared/cooked, it will be brought inside where the flies will not be attracted to it and the next dish can be prepared. There is a counter between the internal kitchen and the living area which we were going to use as a breakfast bar, and I was thinking of dispensing with the hotplate/ gas burners in the internal kitchen completely. Internally we will have electrical appliances like microwave, air fryer, coffee machine etc, but the plan is to do the majority of the cooking outside.

We have also contacted an architect in Bangkok whose design style and ideas we like from following his FB page. I produced preliminary layouts to scale using AutoCAD software, then sent them to the architect for further "architectural embellishment" before progressing to final detailed design construction drawings that can be used for bidding on by building contractors, and for submission to local authorities for permission to build (if needed). Our plan is to first drive the piles for both our guest house and the main house. This will be a single mobilization for the pile driving equipment, although we plan to build the main house much later... after the sale of our current house in Najomtien. Second we will build the guest house. This will give us somewhere to put our personal belongings while we sell our current house, and will provide us with an on-site presence for daily observation of the construction of our main house. The guest house will be a simple building based on a 4m x 3m column grid system, comprising a single bedroom, a single bathroom, and an open dining/living area, with a wrap around deck elevated about 60cm above grade. Internal area will be about 68 sq.m. which is adequate for our needs. Total area including external decking is about 120 sq.m. Most of our cooking will be done outside in the Thai kitchen on the deck. A car port will be added to the South side of the structure, which will provide shade from the worst of the sun, as well as protection for 2 x water tanks and a pump. The construction is to be based on piled foundations, using driven piles (22cm x 22cm x 6m long). The West side of the structure will have no windows at all, and will be constructed of a cavity wall made of 2 layers of 7.5cm AAC blocks with a 5cm cavity in the middle. I have not yet decided whether to further insulate this by inserting foam sheets into the cavity, but this is an option. All other walls (both internal and external) will be constructed using a single layer of 7.5cm AAC blocks. All windows and sliding doors will be double glazed with uPVC frames. We will also look at low-E options, as well as films. All (positive) comments and further suggestions for improvements (or things to watch out for) would be welcome.

Vetiver grass needs a Nitrogen rich fertilizer (such as chicken poo - available at every Global House) at time of planting, and again at regular monthly intervals during the growing season (which it currently isn't) and a good supply of water until the seedings have become established. We we fortunate enough to have planted our 2 metre high slopes with vetiver seedlings (at 150mm centres in rows 1.5 metres apart - as recommended by HRH Rama 9) and we had an exceptionally wet rainy season this year, which meant that our grass established itself very quickly. Now, we have no erosion at all.

Well our builder returned with a back hoe and some workers to replant all our downed power poles and replace the broken ones. This time they dug down to a depth of 1.5 metres before planting the poles then back-filling the entire holes with concrete mixed on site. The work was completed in one day, but they are going to wait at least 1 week for the concrete to cure before attempting to re-hang the cables from the poles.

As lop said... add more spikes so it's impossible for the birds to land. A few green plastic snakes here and there would also discourage avian visitors, and the spikes would protect them from larger flying predators.

@MJCM you could try something like this for your solar panels

One solution: They will have to find a toilet somewhere else...

Get well soon @Pink7... looking forward with interest to seeing some progress.

Where you do get your information from? What inverter(s) do you have? Has it been reliable?

So which inverters are the most reliable? I see from reading other members' posts: @KhunLA has a DEYE SUN 8kW single phase hybrid inverter @Crossy has 1 x Sofar 6kW GTI and 1 x Sofar 5kW Grid-tie hybrid <crossy edit> @JAS21 has a Sofar 5kW single phase hybrid inverter @Bandersnatch has 3 x Growatt 5kW single phase hybrid inverters @007 RED has a 2.2kW Sofar GTI @MJCM has a couple of small capacity GTI's but I'm not sure of the make and kW @Pink7 bought 2 x Growatt 5kW single phase hybrid inverters but we don't know if he has installed them yet. Other member's have probably got other stuff too but I have not searched through the forum enough to find out what kit they've got. So... any reliability issues gents? And, would you buy the same kit again?

How about an update @Pink7 Have you got your system up and running yet?

Really? I thought that Growatt was at the top end of the reliability scale.

Growatt’s new 6 kW inverters have an efficiency rating of 93% and offer 12,000 VA of surge power, up to 500 V of input voltage, and 8 kW of PV input capacity. Growatt has unveiled its new SPF 6000 ES Plus inverters for residential off-grid solar power systems. “The inverter’s string input current reaches up to 16A, making it compatible with 500W+ large power PV modules,” the manufacturer said. “The inverter includes dual MPP trackers for houses with multiple rooftop areas, supporting panel installation at different orientations and higher energy generation.” The 6 kW inverters have an efficiency rating of 93% and 12,000 VA of surge power. They also feature input voltage of up to 500 V and 8 kW of PV input power. The inverters are housed in IP20 enclosures and measure 460 mm x 395 mm x 132 mm. They weigh 15.5 kg. Their operating ambient temperature ranges from 0 C to 50 C, with an integrated automatic transfer switch (ATS) and two AC terminals for power input. You can read the full article here at PV Magazine Australia.

You are correct... after a bit of research it seems that you should trim the grass to 30cm above ground level initially after 4 months of planting. The second cutting should be done just before flowering starts in the second year. After that you can just leave it to grow, unless you plan on harvesting the whole plant for the essential oils found in the root legumes. We are not planning to harvest as we want the erosion prevention measures provided by the root systems.

Really? I thought that the flowers would produce seeds which would in turn scatter and self-sow and generate more grass. I will need to research this more.

The saga continues... I did try this... and bought a multimeter (as @Crossy suggested, but not the Fluke!) and the bloody things don't work with a car battery. The multimeter tells me that I have a 12V DC supply across the battery terminals, but when I attach the light to the terminals sweetFA happens. I tried using the remote control... inserted the batteries and pushed all the buttons... nada, nuffink, sweetFA! I managed to contact the vendor via Lazada chat, and after a merry runaround involving poor translations of Chinese, Thai, and English, the vendor finally replied today with "โปรดหามืออาชีพในการติดตั้ง" which Google Translate tells me means "Please find a professional to install." OK so it's not a lot of money and I guess I will have to take the hit but before I chuck them in the rubbish bin and find some new ones does anyone have any more suggestions to get them working?

Now that the rice has been harvested we contacted our builder and advised him that the land was now dry enough to enable a back hoe and trucks to enter so he can start to repair all the power poles that had fallen down. We sent him the photos which clearly showed the use of minimal concrete around the poles and buried less than 1 metre deep. For 8m high poles they were never going to remain standing. This is NOT what he told me that they were going to do (supposed to be 1.5m deep and full of concrete not just the top 15cm) so obviously his team took a shortcut which caused them to fail. Anyway, he has been good to his word and has promised to rectify them.

Well it's been 3 months since we last visited the building site due to rainfall and the need to get the rice harvested. A lot of FIL's rice fields were still under water due the the amount of land we relocated to fill our building site, so some of it had to be harvested manually, as it was too wet for machinery. We were please to see that the local couch grass had taken over everywhere, and our vetiver grass was growing well and flowering on the sloping sides... no more issues with erosion. The in-laws were even able to make a bit of money by selling the cut grass for cattle fodder... big smiles all around. The land has settled marginally but noticeably... I'd estimate around 200mm or 10% of the original fill height... attributable of course to this year's extended rainy season.