grin

My wife's family and friends take some pill called Transamin which seems to be widely available in pharmacies here. Some of her friends coming back to visit Thailand buy several bottles to take back to where they live outside of Thailand.

It seems to work to lighten dark skin on the face but I have found very little reference to Transamin being used in this manner by searching the web. From what I have read it seems even a bit scary to me that Transamin is being used this way. Some of these women take 2 or 3 pills daily. Is anyone else aware of this?

Grin

We are buying a house from a developer and may get a mortgage from a bank. I've read all of the posts that I can find on usufructs but cannot find anything definitive on having a usufruct with a bank mortgage. Some posts state that <a> banks won't loan money with a usufruct in place and others state that <b> once the bank has a lien on the property that you cannot get a usufruct. Catch 22. Meanwhile there are posts saying that to fully protect yourself that you should get a mortgage and have a usufruct. Obviously these posts seem contradictory.

Could it be that <a> or <b> above is not true?

Or is there some way to do both? I.e. can the usufruct be in second position so that it is only valid once the mortgage is paid off?

I have an appointment with a lawyer next week so I would like to be as prepared as I can before the meeting.

Any suggestions on how this might work would be much appreciated.

Grin

Edit: tried to fix problem with parens and emoticons

The PVC gutters available at Nopadol Panich are made by Windsor Windows. The Windsor shop is on the opposite side of the road and south a couple hundred meters. They have the white PVC gutters and a dark brown PVC gutters that look a lot better but cost twice as much. I would expect that you'll get a lot better information directly from Windsor. However, you might get quotes from both places on the price. In my experience Nopadol Panich usually has the lowest quote.

Grin

The tone is not based upon the spelling, the spelling is based upon the tone. The tone of any word was based upon the original phonetic environment of the vowel and the length of the vowel.

Are you ignoring the words with tone marks, or do you know something about the origins of the three original Tai-Kadai tones? If the latter, could you please share it with us, via a new thread if need be.

I have always wondered if Thai syllables "without tone marks" are pronounced in some natural manner as opposed to those syllables that have tone marks. Or is there some other linguistic feature of these syllables that groups them together?

My other thought was that maybe this type of syllable is the most numerous so this method of spelling would involve using the least amount of tone marks. Or is the pronunciation just an historical artifact?

Can anyone elucidate on this?

Grin

Here's what we have been offered by Bangkok Bank here in Chiang Mai for a mortgage:

I will be the guarantor for my wife who has no income

The first year's interest will be 2%

Subsequently the interest will be about 5% (I have not been able to get them to be specific, so this is a possible deal breaker)

The minimum term is 3 years

The maximum term cannot go past my 65th birthday

The maximum loan amount is 50% of the land and house value combined

The minimum monthly income must be 3 times the payment at the higher interest rate

The remaining amount to be paid by me after accounting for the deposit and prepayments to the builder

must be deposited in a Bangkok Bank savings account before the application will be considered

There are prepayment penalties for paying off before 3 years (no matter how long the loan term is)

The bank manager explained that if I want to pay the mortgage off early then I should pay off 95% of the principal,

keep the account open, and make minimum payments until the 3 years is up and then pay it off and close the account

I have not been able to get this info in writing from them so this is strictly my interpretation

Also note that this mortgage application has not been started yet as I am not satisfied with all of their answers yet

If anyone has more info on Bangkok Bank mortgages it would be appreciated

Grin

Thanks for the info on the Wat.

One problem I see is that I don't know how trustworthy Joe is in that he could just walk out of a Wat whenever he feels like it. However, if he were far enough away with no cell phone and no money then maybe he would stay put.

When I checked the novice monk web site, it occurred to me that it might be on the other side of the ID checkpoints that you hit when you go up north. If his ID were left in the custody of the monks then he might not get very far if he tried to leave without it.

I do not have any new information as I haven't talked to my friend since the original post. I did find out that one thing I did not know before. I thought that Noi was being overprotective of her older kids in that she didn't let them walk or bicycle to school. It turns out that it is a requirement of the schools that the kids be dropped off and picked up by a parent or a relative.

I am wondering if this post would get more responses if it were moved to the Chiang Mai forum. Is there any way for me to do that or is it allowable for me to make a post on that forum with a link to this one?

I recently visited San Francisco and bought an iPod Touch 2G from an ad on craigslist for only $100. The guy was selling it due to it only having 8 Gig of RAM and he needed more for music and video. I only use my home entertainment system to listen to music and watch video so 8 Gig is more space than I will ever need.

I spent $10 to upgrade to the 3.0 OS and have been very happy with it. The only problem I have had is I cannot get it to pair with a bluetooth headset. I have tried to pair up several headsets including a decent Nokia headset. The iPod pairs with my MacBook so the bluetooth hardware seems fine.

I have downloaded and tried over 200 free apps. You can only see 180 on the springboard so now I have to delete an app before downloading a new one. I have yet to buy the paid version of an app as most of them are garbage. I've found quite a few that hang or crash but in general the user interfaces of most of them are poorly designed making them not very useful. However, that being said, I have about 5 free apps that I use on a daily basis and maybe 20 that I use once a week.

The app I use the most is Skype. It sure beats hauling my MacBook around. Skype works quite well with a set of ear pods with a built-in microphone that came from an old cell phone. It uses a standard 2.5 mm connector. However, it would be nice to get a bluetooth headset working.

Other than Skype, the apps that come with the iPhone seem to be more useful than the free apps, at least to me. But I agree that the iPod is the best PDA. Why spend the extra money on an iPhone when there is no 3G network here? - Grin

I have an older friend who is fairly new here in Chiang Mai. He is dating Noi, a Thai lady in her forties who is having a big problem with Joe, her oldest teenage son. My friend is not very computer literate and basically knows how to use a browser and web based email at Internet shops. He reads Thai Visa but has been unable to post for some reason. Yesterday I set up a guest account for him on my laptop and we tried to register him on Thai Visa but never got an email confirmation. He still cannot post so I am helping him out here. I also know Noi and in fact I introduced them so it didn't take a lot to persuade me to help him out by posting this for him. She is not aware that we are doing this.

Some background:

Noi's Thai husband died when the children were young and she has basically raised them by herself. Fon, a young woman in her twenties, stays with the family and helps feed the kids and gets them to school and back. I think Fon is Noi's younger sister, or maybe her dead husband's younger sister. Her kids are never left unsupervised. In particular she has them all in private schools and they are driven to school in the mornings and picked up in the afternoons. They are not allowed to go school on their own. These are not the best schools in town as my best guess is that she can barely afford them as I don't think she really makes all that much money with her business.

I am deliberately obfuscating this information and trying to only put enough here to describe the problem and make it so that neither my friend nor Noi can be identified. In particular she only opened up and confided this to him a couple of days ago. I think she would not be happy to know that he has discussed this with me. Also threats have been made against her son and her family. As an aside I previously dated her myself and think that she is one of the nicest and most gracious ladies that I have ever met on this planet. The only reason things did not work out between us was my lack of patience.

Literally I was lucky to go out with Noi once a month and occasionally she had one or two of her kids in tow. When she did not bring any of her kids she always brought a friend along so we never had a date with just the two of us. Her kids themselves were not the problem as they are very well mannered and brought up properly. The problem for me was that she really had no time for an outside relationship. Many dates were cancelled or delayed due to something going on with the kids. I was really torn because I liked her so much but it was clear to me that any time she spent with me was time that she was giving up spending with her kids. I would have loved to have spent more time with her and her kids together but she kept her distance. I mention this only to show how much I was impressed with her devotion to her kids.

Current situation:

My current information is from my friend and he got it from Noi and a lot of it comes from her son Joe so I have no idea if he is telling the complete truth. He had always been a good kid and she trusted him enough to let him to go out with his friends on occasion. His best friend and part of the problem is the son of a respected public person. This friend would show up on occasion in the evening and ask if Joe could go with his friends for an hour or two. She has known this kid and his family for a long time so she trusted them as well. When she let him go out he always had a strict time to be back home and she required that he take a cell phone and answer it whenever she called.

The problem started a month or two ago in that Joe did not always come home at the time he was supposed to. Noi would call him and he always had some excuse and she believed him. Then a couple of times he did not answer the cell phone and did not show up at home until the next morning and was late for school. Each time she reprimanded him and he would cry and say he was sorry and would never do it again. Then two weeks ago he disappeared for three days. He didn't answer the phone and she was devastated until he came back. His excuse this time was even less believable. At that time she suspected that he was smoking and drinking with his friends and admonished him even more and he promised to be good.

After that things only got worse. His friends showed up every evening at the house to pick him up and intimidated Fon into letting Joe go with them. He started missing a lot of school. When Noi was there she wouldn't let him go out and he got extremely agitated. He told her that if he didn't go with his friends that they would kill him. Now this is where the timeline gets murky. I cannot figure out what was known when because I can only rely on what I hear from my friend.

Essentially Joe told Noi that he was no longer a good person and that had been doing drugs with his friends. He didn't tell Noi everything but later told Fon that he had been forced to do the drugs. It seems that his so called friends were really a gang. Joe is really mild mannered and soft spoken. He does well at school and the teachers all like him. I have only seen him a couple of times but I can see how it might be easy to intimidate him.

Fon told Noi what Joe had told her about the drugs. This is about the time Noi confided in my friend. At his suggestion she got her older brother to come and talk to Joe because Joe looked up to him. Joe told him that he was beaten by his friends until he agreed to do the drugs. There were over a dozen boys in the gang including some older guys in their twenties. It is not clear if his friend, the son of a public person, is the gang leader or what.

He said that they had got him hooked on the drugs and he confessed that he was selling drugs every evening. They threatened to kill him if he didn't. They told him that he should not be afraid of the police because the police would not kill him but that he should be afraid of the gang because the gang would kill him if he didn't sell the drugs. They also threatened to kill his family if he said anything to Noi or to the police. Also he said that they took his cell phone every evening and only gave it back when they let him go home. After Noi's older brother got all of this out of him Joe finally opened up and told Noi everything as well.

This week Joe was expelled from his private school. Noi normally would turn to her extended family for help with Joe and send him to live with one of them. The problem is that none of them live very far way and it seems that his friend, the son of a public person, has been around the family long enough to know where to look for him. Joe living with other family would only make problems for them. The other options she has considered are to turn him over to the police but it is unclear to my friend whether this would be for protective custody, rehabilitation, or what. The other is to send him to live at a Wat somewhere outside of Chiang Mai. Naturally Joe doesn't like any of these ideas.

My friend and I have discussed this for a couple of days now. We have been doing web searches for family services, juvenile counseling, drug rehabilitation, and anything else we could think of. Everything that we can find in English indicates that these kinds of organizations exist here in Chiang Mai but we could find little specific contact information. We got no answers at the few numbers we found. I'm guessing they were old. More contact numbers probably exist on Thai websites. One restriction of course is that this needs to be a Thai solution. Neither my friend or I believe that Noi would trust non-Thais with help in this delicate situation. It also seems unlikely that she would want to go outside of the family for help but they obviously have limited resources.

We are looking for specific information about anyone or any organization that we can contact for help. I don't how how badly Joe is hooked but he needs help, be it counseling or rehabilitation. It also seems that he needs to spend some time elsewhere so that his friends cannot reach him.

Please, no comments from the Peanut Gallery, if you know what I mean.

I've been all over Chiang Mai looking for a whole house fan. It needs to be 60 to 75 cm wide and capable of moving 100 to 200 cubic meters of air per minute. Anyone know of a place that sells such a fan? Also I need a thermostat to control it. From a previous post it seems that the fan may need to be single phase in order to use it on a timer or thermostat. - Grin

The Rimping market in San Sai has had Karo brand corn syrup in the past. I have not looked recently, but any Rimping in CM would be a good bet.

Things are a bit clearer now so thanks for the helpful replies. The next time I am out by the airport I will drop by immigration again and this time I have a good idea what I should be getting done.

For those interested, the title/subject of the letter from the US Consulate to Thai immigration was: "Ref.: Transfer of Visa."

However further down it says "It would be appreciated if you could transfer the bearer's immigration stamp from his/her cancelled passport to the new one."

I probably should have paid closer attention to the whole letter.

I just picked up my new US passport from the US consulate and they gave me a letter to take to Thai immigration and give them when requesting that my visa be transferred from my cancelled passport to my new one. My tourist visa is for 60 days with 3 entries. It was obtained from the Honorary Thai Consulate in Portland, Oregon.

I went to the immigration office near the airport and found a window that had a sign over it: "Transfer Visa to New Passport." I gave the letter and both passports to the young woman at the window and asked for my visa to be transferred. She looked at my old passport and said that they could not do it. Then she told me that I needed to show both passports to immigration when I leave Thailand. I explained that my tourist visa still had two more entries but got the same answer repeated. She spoke good English so I assume she understood me correctly. I asked then if I need to show both passports until I use up all three entries on the visa but she just walked away and did not come back.

So my first thought was that this is all a misunderstanding and that I would go back later and ask a different person. Later when looking at the visa in my old passport I thought that maybe she did not recognize my tourist visa. The honorary Thai consulate in Portland uses a passport page size rubber stamp with black ink to make their visas unlike the full page color sticker visas that the other Thai consulates give out. Both types of visa are all written in English.

Has anyone had a problem transferring a multi-entry tourist visa to a new passport? Anyone been able to transfer a tourist visa from an honorary consulate?

Any suggestions?

I am in Chiang Mai and have a TOT phone line that was installed for the TTT Maxnet service. I am unable to make international calls using the 001, 007, 008, or 009 prefixes. I always get a busy signal after dialing the 3 digit prefix. My assumption is that international calling is not enabled on my TOT line.

I have tried calling both TOT and TTT. I have visited two TOT offices, the big office on Thung Hotel Road and the one in the Carrefour. I have also visited two TTT offices, the one in Panthip Plaza and the one in Central Kad Suan Kaew.

In all of the calls and visits with TTT they say that I need to talk to TOT which makes sense to me.

When I visited the TOT office on Thung Hotel Road they checked something on their computer and said that international calling should work.

In the call to TOT the person spoke good English and said that I needed TTT's permission to have international calling enabled. The people at TTT say that they cannot help me with this.

When I visited the TOT office in Carrefour I thought I was getting somewhere as they had me fill out a one page form and said it should be working in 2 or 3 days. However it has now been over 2 weeks and it still does not work. Subsequent visits to the TOT office in Carrefour got responses such as wait a few more days and it will work or that it should be working already and that there was nothing they can do.

Anyone know specifically what the problem is? Do I need to get international calling enabled?

I get the feeling that the people at TOT and TTT either don't understand what I am asking for or don't care.

Any suggestions on specific language I should use or how I can go about getting international calling enabled?

Cites leadership woes and protection of vested interest

http://telecomengine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_5460

Eight Asian telcos to build subsea fiber optic network

Higher bandwidth capacity and redundancy will benefit region known for its subsea earthquakes

http://telecomengine.com/newsglobe/article.asp?HH_ID=AR_5344

Thanks, trogers, that fits with what Koolpunt Ville has in their plans. They have vents on the 2nd floor toilet lines but not on the first floor. The implication of this and the small vents sizes is that they are not concerned with venting the septic tank or sewer line. Yesterday I gave the following requests for changes for the drains to Koolpunt Ville:

Put in P traps instead of bell traps on the floor and shower drains and use one piece traps everywhere.

Add vent pipes to the gray water stacks on the second floor at the vertical drop same as the toilet stacks.

Use Y couplings instead of T couplings for drains connecting to the horizontal lines below them to allow easier snaking.

Last but not least do not cover any of the drains until I have inspected them.

You may be right. I am worried about the smell quite a bit and like you find something being done incorrectly every time I visit the construction site. The building foreman seems to only work from the plans. However, as he is used to building all of the houses the same he misses some of the details that are changed in the plans. He does not speak English so I have to speak with the front office to correct things. They do not seem to actively manage him to make sure he is following the plans so that seems to be my job.

I certainly don't expect the house to be built up to any international plumbing code plus if it works it works. There is no reason for overkill. However, I have lived in 3 cities in Thailand for 7 years total in 4 different rentals of fairly new construction in semi-upscale areas and they have all had sewage odor problems inside. I may not be able to do anything about the smell outside if the whole neighborhood smells bad but I would sure like to relax inside my home without smelling sewage.

In the US before they had venting figured out they used to have whole house traps to keep sewer gas out of the houses and there were some pretty famous disasters where sewer mains exploded. Without anything to relieve the pressure the explosive gases just built up. Essentially the sewer mains are airtight and the vent stacks in all the houses are the vents for the mains. That is why the US requires a 4 inch vent stack all the way from the sewer to the roof of the house. The sewer mains have no venting at ground level and are only vented through all the houses above roof level. This is also a pressure equalization system in that it not only serves as a vent but can relieve negative pressure in the sewer mains. You can think of it as allowing the sewage system to breathe.

It may well be that the sewer lines in Thailand are not airtight. They certainly won't be if there are vents on the septic tanks between the sewer main and the house. In my limited experience with septic tanks the vents are only needed if you have a drain field and vents are not needed as in my case where the septic tanks serve only as pretreatment before the sewer mains. Maybe the vents are not needed here to equalize the pressure from the mains but only serve the purpose of preventing the water from being siphoned out of the traps. If the vents are not needed so much for the sewer mains and septic tanks then maybe the small size of the vent and the height above the ground does not matter that much. I'd especially like to see people's thoughts and ideas on this. Any comments?

Anyway, once all of the drains and vents are in place and covered up it would be a nightmare to repair them as concrete floors or suspended ceilings would have to be torn out. And of course the idea of paying a bunch of money for a house that smells bad just does not sit well with me.

The meeting with Koolpunt Ville went well and pretty much as expected but left a few more things that I need to resolve.

It was confirmed that the three soil stacks for the toilets are indeed vented. They found a house in the right stage of construction so I could look at how this was done. The attached crude drawing of the master bedroom toilet drain shows what I saw. Before the toilet drain makes the vertical drop into the soil stack there is a 2 inch air vent attached to the top of the drain which goes up about a foot and then it looks like it goes horizontal with a 1 1/2 inch pipe through the exterior wall. The vent is cut off even with the exterior wall. Toilet_Drain_Vent.pdf

They also had no problem venting the gray water pipes the same way that they were doing the black water vents. They already have traps on all of the fixtures but are only using the little bell type traps on the shower and floor traps. They agreed to switch these out and put in P traps. The main thing is that they understand the concepts of traps and vents so now it is just a matter of adjusting things.

Here are the major problems I see with the vents as they are now. The air vent is really small and not 4 inches, it is horizontal and not vertical, and it is nowhere neat the height of the roof. If any sewage backs up it will just drain out the side of the house as the vent is lower than the toilet.

My first thought is to just run the four inch stack out the wall at this point and up the side of the house to just below the eaves and vent it there. All 3 of the stacks are very near bathroom windows but nowhere near bedroom windows. One potential problem however is that odor could possibly enter the attic through the air vents under the eaves. At least these stacks on the back of the house and on the side with no yard so if I extend the pipes up the walls and paint them the same color as the house it should be quite acceptable.

One nice thing is that they build the brick wall around the column after the pipe is put in place so things can easily be changed now. The main structure of the house is now in place and they are starting on the roof but no plumbing is done except for holes in the concrete flooring. I probably have about a week to finalize what I want them to do.

My main worry is venting possible odor from the septic tanks. I think that using the small air vents as planned would work fine to prevent siphoning of the toilets. Anyone have any feedback on whether I should enlarge the vents to 4 inches? Or whether I should take the vents up the walls higher externally?

Thanks for all of the suggestions so far.

And, Crossy, thanks for moving this thread to the DIY forum. I think your advice is probably spot on.

I was able to get Koolpunt Ville to send me a PDF file of the drain system drawings. I will try to attach the file.

Koolpunt_Drain_System.pdf

The first page shows the first floor and the septic tanks and the second page shows the second floor. Several things are obvious from the drawings. First is that the gray water drains are separate from the black water and do not go to the septic tanks. Second is that there are three columns of stacks. An interesting observation is that the four most used toilets all drain to the septic tank in the back and the two least used toilets drain to the septic tank on the side. The septic tanks seem to be for pre-treating the black water before directing it to the public sewage system.

The drawings are not isometric and seem to be missing information. For instance they show 4 types of pipe S, W, CW and V but I only see the four inch S pipes as being marked on the drawings and they are obvious anyway. The interesting thing is that the V type of pipe is shown to be a one inch riser to the roof so maybe they do at least vent at least the black water stacks.

However, as I said before I have seen no holes in any roofs but maybe I did not look closely enough for exterior pipes. So if I am lucky maybe all I need to do is make sure the gray water stacks have vents and then make sure all of the gray water drains have traps. In the drawings it looks like most of the gray water drains just tee into the horizontal drains below them. Maybe the horizontal drains could be lowered a bit so that traps could be fit in above them. If there is not enough room to do that then the traps could be placed next to the horizontal drain. Then I think they still need to connect to the horizontal pipes with vertical tees and not horizontal tees.

Any comments on putting in the traps? Do they sell integral two inch PVC traps here? I.e. where the trap is not a bunch of elbows glued together? Any suggestions of the type of traps to use?

I do like the idea of not having holes in the roof. Maybe one vent pipe could be connected to both the black and gray water stacks in each of the three vent columns. The vent pipes could come out of the house under the eaves and then go horizontally for about a meter to clear the eaves before going vertical again. Any suggestions on how high the vent pipes should go above the edge of the roof?

Koolpunt Ville has been quite professional in the front office. I have an account rep who is also doubles as the interpreter. I have been fairly amazed at her knowledge of construction although I do have small problems at times when she uses what I assume is British construction terminology. Both the main architect and the assistant architect have been quite good at explaining in detail why certain things I have requested do not make sense and more importantly they do come up with alternatives that do make sense.

I have a meeting scheduled with the architects for 10 AM tomorrow (Wednesday). Anything I should be asking them?

Any plumbers out there? I've looked at similar threads but couldn't find specific answers to my questions.

I'm buying a 2 story house in a Koolpunt Ville project in Chiang Mai and am dismayed at the drains I've seen in other houses already started. I don't see any evidence of any traps on the fixtures nor any air vents for the drains coming through the roofs either. I don't see any clean-outs and I also see a bunch of T joints and 90 degree elbows where I think Y joints and two 45 degree elbows would be less prone to clogging.

I'm familiar with two types of drain systems that I have seen in the US. Both types have traps and air vents. The older type I believe may be called wet venting and has all of the fixtures close to one soil stack which also doubles as the vent stack. The newer type has separate vent stacks from the soil stacks and each fixture has an vent pipe behind its trap going to a vent stack.

My knowledge of drains and vents is minimal but I understand some of the science behind it. The traps are there to provide a water seal to prevent septic gas from entering the house and to possibly deter vermin as well. With traps you should get smooth water flow and you won't hear gurgling noise from the drains. The air vents prevent the water seals from being siphoned from the traps. Vent pipes connect to the vent stack above the flood level of its fixture so that the vent does not become a drain. Also I think that the vent pipe needs to tap into the drain pipe before it slopes down below the water level in the trap.

In the construction that I have seen in the US all of the drain lines slope down to the soil stacks at 1/4 inch to the foot. My understanding is that if you have more slope then the liquids will leave the solids behind when draining. Also having a near horizontal drain may make it less likely that a plug will form and cause clogging or siphoning. Does anyone know if having initial vertical sections on the drains will make it more likely that plugs will form?

Is there any reason to believe that Koolpunt Ville is doing something that makes limited sense? Maybe they will have a trap for the whole house before each septic tank. But how is that trap vented? Does anyone know how they typically build their drains? Maybe the gray water doesn't go into the septic tanks. Then there would be no problem with septic gas on the gray water drains but then you would still have the vermin and gurgling problems.

How can I work with what is already used in the Koolpunt Ville project? The drains have vertical drops through the floor and then sloping drains that go to the stacks. On the ground floor there is limited crawl space but room for traps and there is a suspended ceiling on the first floor below the second floor drains. Actually I am assuming that the second floor drains run into a vertical stack and do not drain separately.

Installing traps with this construction seems to be easy enough but the air vents seem to be a problem. Toilets have self contained traps but do the vertical drops pose any problems with the trap? Where would I put the air vent on these lines? There seems to be enough room under the floors to put traps on all of the floor, shower, and tub drains. And there is no problem putting sink traps under the counters.

There are no vents planned through the roof but I assume I could put holes in the roof. Another alternative would be to put vent stacks on the back of the house that rise above the roof. Putting in individual vents for each fixture requires a bit of work. For sinks and toilets I assume the vent pipes could run up through the interior stucco like the water supply lines. For the floor, shower, and tub drains which would have traps under the floor it seems like the horizontal drain after the trap needs to be low enough so that a horizontal air vent connected to it after the trap still has enough room to rise 1/4 inch per foot to get to the vent stack. It seems like the vent pipes would still need to rise vertically near the vent stack to connect to it above the flood levels for their fixtures.

Doing some searching on the net it also seems like using AAVs is a possibility. I'm somewhat familiar with what we call a Studor Vent in the US. I believe it is just a brand name for an AAV. I've seen them in use on basement toilets that have been added on and once on a new kitchen island which had a sink.

It seems that large AAVs are made that could be put on a main stack if it was extended to the attic. It also seems that one AAV installed on the sink drain may be adequate for all of the gray water drains in each bathroom. Then maybe I could use one AAV for the laundry and kitchen which share a wall. I have no idea how the toilets could be vented with AAVs. Does anyone know if it is possible to do everything with AAVs? It seems like using AAVs would require fewer changes to the current plans. But do they work well or are there any known problems with using them? Do they even sell AAVs in Thailand?

Koolpunt Ville will refund the cost of any work I wish to get done myself. It might be easier to use a contractor that already knows how to install a western style drain and vent system. Is anyone aware of such a contractor in Chiang Mai? Or is anyone interested in designing it?

Sorry for the long post.