Encid

And all the LED lighting, both internal and external has been installed...

Well the concrete access road work is progressing well... it has been hot and dry so a good opportunity to get moving with it.

Well I went into The Immigration Office in Jomtien Soi 5 yesterday with all the required paperwork for my retirement visa extension. It was all checked and I was asked for a copy of my drivers license as proof of address. I got that copied, then signed it, and then signed a couple of cover papers which the IO had filled out, and was given a yellow numbered plastic tag and told to come back today to collect my passport. When I went there today it was extremely busy with people queuing outside in the sun... not a good sign. I went straight inside and approached counter 8 with my plastic tag, and was given back my passport complete with new 12 month extension stamp... no questions about 90 day reporting. In and out in under 1 minute... fantastic! So am I safe for another 90 days, then shall I try the online system again or should I report in person 90 days from today?

From the link in the OP...

The big guy giving his navel some fresh air is actually the head electrician... 555. Is that a look of quiet confidence whilst his compatriot flicks the breaker whilst wearing his welding goggles?

I just confirmed with my builder that they are copper.

Thanks STWW... I will pass it on.

And our external architectural feature is getting installed as well as the external cladding... I think that it's really going to look impressive when it's finished.

Today (Monday 14 August) was a flurry of activity as the new electrical cables were installed in HDPE pipe underground and reconnected... we are live again now! Also drainage pipes were laid under our access ramp to take any water away from our neighbour's property.

The local government has been kind enough to resurface the old dilapidated concrete road from the village to our farm in bitumen, for which we are most thankful. It has been painted too and some of the local villagers have been asking the in-laws why we are so special that we get a free road upgrade... 555. DJI_0183.MP4

I hope that you are wrong too... time will tell I guess. I will mention the smooth rebar idea to the builder and see what he thinks... thanks.

I don't know what the builder installed... from the cut cable at the breaker it looks like aluminium, not copper:

Work has also started on our access road... it is 4m wide reinforced concrete and is being poured in 8m long sections. We will be using a 20cm high HDPE water seal as a construction joint between the 8m sections, rather than the traditional Thai way of making construction joints by cutting the concrete then filling the cuts with bitumen. The road will slope very slightly towards the East where a spoon drain will be installed to drain off rain water. The first 8m section was poured on Wednesday. And on Thursday the boxing was being removed and the concrete was cured enough to be able to walk on and the next section was being prepared. This is the 20cm high HDPE water seal to be used for the construction joints:

On Thursday afternoon the ARC-CMR team had finished their work and had cleaned up... the house is nearly at lockup stage now, although there is still a lot of painting to be done.

Our double glazed uPVC windows and doors arrived on Monday and were fitted over the following 3 days. A great job by the ARC-CMR team and I would recommend them to anyone considering something similar. Ours are 6mm clear/8mm air gap/5mm clear insulating glass and all the hardware components are Deuceninck from Belgium, all assembled by ARC-CMR in Banglamung, Chonburi. We had one small hiccup when I noted that one of the sliding doors was in the wrong location, but it was quickly resolved without any drama. One important thing to remember when ordering sliding doors and windows... the architect normally provides a drawing or two called a "door and window schedule" and these are typically drawn in elevation view from the outside looking in... however in our case the installation team assumed that they were drawn from the inside looking out... hence the error in orientation. Anyway, after a bit of magic involving rotating and reversing panels and locks, the error was corrected and everyone was happy.

We isolated the electrical problem last week (no pun intended)... it wasn't an earthed active feed... the cables were stripped when they were being pulled through the 2" PVC pipe that was buried underground and that is why we were consuming so much power via earth leakage. Stripping occurred at the PVC pipe elbows because the cables were pulled only, not push-pulled. An unfortunate and expensive lesson learned by our builder and his team. The cables have now been cut as they are unusable and new cables will be pulled through an HDPE pipe and tested before reconnection.

No, my wife contacted a local company to do it. We are located in Najomtien... not so far from Pattaya's Darkside. Their contact details are below:

Has anyone used the Cobra iRadar app? I have seen quite a few comments on Thai langauge motoring forums and it seems popular.

Vast arrays of solar panels floating on calm seas near the Equator could provide effectively unlimited solar energy to densely populated countries in Southeast Asia and West Africa. Our new research shows offshore solar in Indonesia alone could generate about 35,000 TWh of solar energy a year, which is similar to current global electricity production (30,000TWh per year). And while most of the world’s oceans experience storms, some regions at the Equator are relatively still and peaceful. So relatively inexpensive engineering structures could suffice to protect offshore floating solar panels. Our high-resolution global heat maps show the Indonesian archipelago and equatorial West Africa near Nigeria have the greatest potential for offshore floating solar arrays. Heatmap for offshore floating solar panels. Red areas are best, followed by yellow, green and dark blue. The grey lines show tropical storm tracks. Image: Author-supplied, using OpenStreetMap base, CC BY-ND You can read the full article from PV Magazine here.

I have not had that problem with my polycarbonate sheet roofing here in Thailand... This is the polycarbonate roofing over our Thai Kitchen (facing South-East) - 8 years old now and "as-new". This is the polycarbonate sheeting over our external storage area for garden tools (facing West) - also 8 years old now and "as-new". "The length of time that polycarbonate roof panels will last depends upon the maintenance that the roof is given, and the kind of weather that it’s exposed to. If a roof is well maintained, it can last between 10 to 20 years before it’s going to need to be replaced. There are even instances where the polycarbonate roof panels have lasted 30 years" See here.

I have seen many such houses in the villages in Isaan... we drive through 4 separate villages from the highway turnoff on the way to my wife's village, and most such houses have been abandoned because of termite infestation... saying that they are made of hardwood that is termite-resistant is simply not true unless it has been chemically treated with a product like Chaindrite and regularly re-applied. I'm sure that I would not like to risk my health by living/eating/sleeping in a chemically treated timber house. I'm 65 now and my knees are shot from playing football in my youth... I want a house that has as few stairs/steps/landings as possible, and is as maintenance-free as possible. I also want a comfortable house, one that is not subjected to the uncomfortable ambient temperatures around Songkran time. Our Guest House will be quite passive by design, and will cost next to nothing to maintain (maybe a lick of paint every 15 years or so?) For me it is not a burden... but it is certainly a challenge, and one that will be rewarding for me and my family. But each to his own...

We like the look. Our current house has 2.15m high doors and the ceilings are only 2.4m high (with 2.6m high recesses for aesthetic appeal). And yes... they are all solid teak wood. It does not look disproportionate to me.

To be honest I don't know yet... Door supply was originally part of our builder's scope of supply, and I kept asking him regularly had he ordered the doors until he finally admitted that he could not order what we wanted from the usual outlets, and that we would have to go with custom-made doors. The reason why I was asking him was that I wanted to be able to lock up the bedroom area and use it as a storage area for some furniture that we had ordered and was being held (reluctantly) by the store in storage. They wanted to deliver it ASAP, and we needed somewhere safe and clean to put it. I guess we will have to wait until we rationalise the BOQ at the end of the project to determine if the cost is to our account or his. 2.2m high doors have been on the drawings since day 1...

You could DIY with a couple of these from HomePro... 1m wide and available in a range of colours too. See here.

And this morning (3 August) the doors and frames were delivered to site: