Encid

Yes I am aware of that requirement. What I was not aware of was that you needed your neighbour's approval for you to build on your own rural property (not village). My wife scoffed at that when I mentioned it... she says we can do what we like on our own land! Time to talk with the Pooyai Baan I think...

This is the builder we have been dealing with. Khun Dook is a pleasure to work with and his ideas have already saved us money. He can also speak some English which is certainly useful for me because my Thai is limited to conversational only, and building terms are out of my (current) comprehension level. Someone else mentioned him and his company on this forum a while ago (but I cannot remember who) and I made note of it, checked out his Facebook page, and made contact. He has gone out of his way to help us so far (even sleeping on site with his workers whilst our power poles and cables are run). I have been very impressed so far.

That's news to me (and my wife) too. Something else to look into for next week's agenda.

It really has progressed significantly over the past week hey? We need to get the sloping walls planted out then it will be time to slow down... let the weather do it's work and let the soil compact. We will travel up on Monday for a first hand look-see.

All of our new power poles have now been installed and back-filled with concrete. Running the power cable is starting today...

That's another reason why we are building the Guest House first. It will be build to my standards, not to local Thai standards. By having a Tabien Baan the PEA gives you a different "domestic electricity supply" rate, as opposed to the more expensive "casual" rate which is what we will be on at first.

Looks like the gates to Mordor! Are you going to stick a tacky family crest on it too?

The walls will not be retaining... they are to stand alone. That's why we made sure that all the fill was done well inside the property boundary.

Really nice for suburbia, but not suitable for our rural location.

Good idea. I will add it to our agenda for next week's visit. I'd like to meet him anyway... he's been asking about our plans and the in-laws have been deliberately vague to everyone up until now. That has been specifically at my (and my wife's) request... not their business. I don't want every local Tom, Dick, and Somchai pestering my family with offers of their expertise or services etc. knowing that we are about to invest significantly in their vicinity.

That is why I plan to have a separate grey water tank just for the western kitchen, Thai kitchen, and washing machine.

Land fill stage 2 summary: 644 trucks @ 180 baht/truck = 115,920 baht. Next step will be to try to stabilize the sloping walls with vegetation before the really heavy rain come in September/October. We are planning on travelling up on Monday to 1) visit a local nursery and purchase several hundred suitable plants, and 2) visit the local PEA office in Prathai to get our meter installed and connect to mains power. Next major steps will be a perimeter wall on 2 sides (the 2 sides closest to the road) and a sliding lockable gate. We are thinking along the lines of a simple concrete block wall similar to this: But no concrete rendered finish to be applied. We also want the wall to be 3 metres high... very high from the outside but only waist-chest high if walking on the filled section inside. The wall will be constructed on the border of the chanote so might need the local lands office to verify before we start to avoid any potential issues with the owner of the land to the south of us. We have been very careful so far to ensure than none of the new fill falls on anybody else's property. The gate I want to have (and I have admittedly never seen one here in Thailand) is a lockable rut-runner gate that is wide enough to allow tractors and other farming equipment to pass through. The gate would look something like this: In the future we will look at automating it by adding a motor with remote control, but for the short term it will suffice to keep unwanted animals (cows, dogs, people etc) off the property. As the wall will be 3m high, the gate should probably be at least 2m high, Thoughts?

BIL and SIL are most impressed. Passers-by were asking if we plan to build a resort or a factory... Both the land fill team and the electric poles team have been sleeping on-site overnight, in a small shelter on the family owned farm next door. My wife has been sending her brother cash amounts to ply them all with cold beer at the end of the day. No shower facilities - only washing in the pond, but they are all happy. video-1648632710.mp4

And the land fill is complete to our new required level. Don't ask me why the photos are all different sizes... 555

The poles are buried 1.5m deep and today they are filling the holes for the poles with concrete, letting it cure overnight, then they will start running the cable tomorrow. Our builder has assured that we will not have any leaning poles even 6 months from now! Time will tell!

The installation of our new power poles continues...

As the well will not only provide water to the domestic buildings on the property but also the farm (currently rice) and our future garden (fruit trees, salad, herbs, & veggies etc.) I was thinking along the lines of a 4" 1HP submersible pump with a water delivery volume of about 90 litres/min. With a reliable and constant supply of fresh water my FIL will be able to plant more than the 1 crop of rice that he is currently doing. Too much?

I'm hoping that will be the case for our well water too... good enough for the guest house. As far as the main house water supply is concerned, I am thinking along the lines of a hybrid (rain water/well water) system like @MJCM. There is no municipal water supply near us so we will need to be self-sufficient.

To be honest I have not yet gotten down to that level of detail. As you say, if it's installed correctly it should be leak-free. The radiant foil under the entire metal roof area combined with the 50mm insulation rolls on top of the bedroom ceiling should suffice.

Personally I don't like those types of metal roof as if there are any leaks the foam underneath makes it difficult to find the leak(s) because the water travels through the foam before exiting, and not necessarily in a direct vertical direction.

Yes I've been thinking about that too. As soon as we have electric power I want to drill a well... apparently the water quality is pretty good only a few metres down. I want to go deeper though... maybe 20 or 30 metres. Even if the water quality is good (and we plan of having it tested) we will probably need a filtration system of sorts, so I am thinking of doing the following: It is a simple cascading gravity flow system from two small filter tanks (with bleed valves at the top of the media level for routing cleaning) into a 1000 litre storage tank. Not all couplings and unions are shown... it's a schematic (but drawn to scale wrt the tanks). Everything could sit on an RC pad with the elevated filter tanks sitting on AAC blocks. The tanks could all fit under the extended eave (now 2m) on the East side of the Guest House (no windows). As they would be facing East they would see the morning sun, but only until about 10:00am. If we need further filtration or softening we could install one (or more) of those cylinder style filters downstream of the pump. With initially only a few of us staying there, we'd probably have to refill the system from the well pump once every 3-4 days. If it overflows it doesn't really matter. What do you guys think?

As I posted earlier...

The builder has sent a 3D model movie of his interpretation of my Guest House drawings... not bad. What do you think? small house.mp4

The land fill work continues. BIL is overseeing the work. Each truck gives him a ticket after dumping it's load so the total number of trucks cannot be disputed... everyone is happy with this arrangement. One thing of note... the trucks are hok-lor (6 wheeler) not sib-lor (10 wheeler), hence the reduction in price from 280 to 180 baht per truck. The load capacity of a hok-lor is about 5m3 and the capacity of a sib-lor is about 8m3 so a factor of 1.6 difference in load capacity. 180 baht x 1.6 = 288 baht so nothing to complain about really, although I did think we were getting ripped off again when I first saw the small trucks. video-1648468330.mp4

That is exactly why I asked the question.