Only in Thailand? Drains built ABOVE the road

[webfact]

Only in Thailand? Drains built ABOVE the road

 

Pictures (3): Manager Online

 

Villagers in Kalasin province in Thailand's north east can't believe what the local authority have done.

 

Instead of putting in drains in the universally accepted position - level with the road - they have built them about half a meter above the roadway.

 

Now they have a wall.

 

 

Meant as a way of solving the terrible flooding in the area of Kutsim sub-district now the locals in Ban Khumkao can't even get into their homes.

 

Rather than being a drain the nearly 100 meter stretch of building at a cost of 300,000 baht is acting like a flood defense wall.

 

Khao Wong district chief Thepparat Tantayanon was bombarded with complaints and called in the Kutsim head Wichai Kwangsawat and his sidekick Chalermwit Pheutphut to explain themselves.

 

 

Chalermwit adeptly blamed the municipal council. He said he had warned them that putting in drains above the level of the road was not the done thing.

 

The problem arose he said due to budgets. The road is meant to be raised up 30 cms to half a meter but there was no cash to do it just yet.

 

The money would not be available until November.

 

But rather than wait and heed his warnings they went ahead and put the drain in first.

 

Source: Manager Online

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2018-08-23

[sirineou]

 Drain prevents!

What's the problem? they are to prevent the road from draining.keep it nice and moist.

[Jonathan Fairfield]

You couldn't make it up

[colinneil]

Somchai put a drain next to the road, ok boss will do.

One week later Somchai you +++++++ IDIOT , what i do wrong boss??

The drain should be below the road, but boss you not tell me that, you say put drain next to the road.

 

Now i am wating for expatthailover to say something.

[George Bowman]

40 minutes ago, webfact said:

The road is meant to be raised up 30 cms to half a meter but there was no cash to do it just yet.

I have seen this work before and eventually the road does get built. And where does the water go? To the houses which are now below street level. It is then the home owners responsibility to raise their house which many can not afford. So at the end of the day, these homes will suffer from even worse flooding. 

Edited August 23, 2018 by missoura

[BEVUP]

I like how they added strength from the existing infrastructure 

[ThreeEyedRaven]

42 minutes ago, webfact said:

Villagers in Kalasin province in Thailand's north east can't believe what the local authority have done.

I can. 

[rebo]

38 minutes ago, webfact said:

nearly 100 meter stretch of building at a cost of 300,000 baht

Beside the idiocy of the positioning of the drain --- With a price of more than 3'000 THB per linear metre I would be interested how much money was secretly drained into private pockets ...

[Jonathan Fairfield]

What also gets me is that the people in those houses have sat around watching this drain/wall being built. 

 

I don't know about anyone else here but if Somchai turned up building a wall right outside my house, i'd get the Mrs to go outside and ask what was going!

 

[BEVUP]

4 minutes ago, Jonathan Fairfield said:

What also gets me is that the people in those houses have sat around watching this drain/wall being built. 

 

I don't know about anyone else here but if Somchai turned up building a wall right outside my house, i'd get the Mrs to go outside and ask what was going!

 

Like my wife says " Just wait & see " & then do something about it if you don't like it 

[doremifasol]

And BTW, didn't you know these are the skilled workers that don't need 

any help from foreigners? They know best.

 

Pffffff......... pathetic!

 

 

[colinneil]

3 minutes ago, BEVUP said:

Like my wife says " Just wait & see " & then do something about it if you don't like it 

That seems to be the Thai way, wait until its finished then kick off.

Look at the judges houses at Doi suthep, that construction must have been going on for many months before anybody complained.

[CanuckThai]

25 minutes ago, Jonathan Fairfield said:

What also gets me is that the people in those houses have sat around watching this drain/wall being built. 

Ahh, but a Thai to question or challenge another Thai, would surely lead to a gun or sword fight.  Taught young, to smile and never question, causing potential "face"...

[spidermike007]

And few will believe that the engineers responsible for this brilliant plan were trained at MIT! They had a choice of rocket prolusion for NASA, systems guidance for JPL, or designing the new shell for the next generation of jet fighters. They chose the local sewer design to work on instead. Good work fellas! Always let gravity do your work for you! 

Edited August 23, 2018 by spidermike007

[Happy Grumpy]

1 hour ago, webfact said:

The problem arose he said due to budgets.

 

Yeah, the 300k baht wasn't enough for his cousin's building company, so now they'll have to dismantle it at 200k, and redo it for another 300k.

 

 

How to turn 300k into 800k in 2 weeks. 

[hanuman2543]

59 minutes ago, colinneil said:

...

 

Now i am wating for expatthailover to say something.

Thanks! Me too

[NanLaew]

1 hour ago, missoura said:

I have seen this work before and eventually the road does get built. And where does the water go? To the houses which are now below street level. It is then the home owners responsibility to raise their house which many can not afford. So at the end of the day, these homes will suffer from even worse flooding. 

Happened on a soi connecting the then un-named but paved Soi Buakhao to the similarly un-named dirt track that was to become Third Road in Pattaya, circa 1983. I had acquired a row of three, smart and modern townhouses on the soi. The city decides that better storm drains are needed so they erected 1 meter high shuttering and poured the drain walls on the surface of the existing soi, just like in the OP, then built the roadway up until it was level. There was no point in remonstrating as this was a city engineering job. The fact that I would have a 30 degree downward slope into a foreshortened car port with a less than 2 meter high entrance under the awnings while turning my previously bright, spacious and airy ground floor into an unwanted basement was of no importance. That was the first and last house purchase I ever did in LOS.

 

Given the local's national penchant to 'fill-and-build' I don't see why this story is so remarkable. Drive in the suburbs of any expanding provincial town or even the Bangkok suburbs and you will see strange looking homes where the ground floor has been rendered half-height and unusable with the front door up where the balcony was. In fact there's a whole lot of shophouses on the east side of Buakhao that look like Hobbit Houses.

Edited August 23, 2018 by NanLaew

[Don Chance]

This is country where they put septic tanks under the house or building.

 

Then, they don't even bother to vent the tank, so the septic gas goes up the sewage pipes and permeates into the top floor living area or bathroom. And they keep on doing it with new builds!

[trainman34014]

2 hours ago, Jonathan Fairfield said:

What also gets me is that the people in those houses have sat around watching this drain/wall being built. 

 

I don't know about anyone else here but if Somchai turned up building a wall right outside my house, i'd get the Mrs to go outside and ask what was going!

 

Pah;  Farang always fink too mutt !

[edwinchester]

5 hours ago, Jonathan Fairfield said:

You couldn't make it up

If you did you'd probably be facing a defamation charge.

[Get Real]

Brilliant!

[Lupatria]

Thailand 4.oh oh oh

[thailand49]

I got it the design came from a swimming pool?  The more they spend them more goes into the pocket of the local's officials.

[Deli]

After 9 years of waiting, they just paved the road in front of my work place, same same. Drain above the road on one side and as a hole / trap on the other side.

Road construction as it's best.

[skorp13]

81

[outsider]

After so many million years of evolution from pond scum, you'd expect them to have some basic levels of intelligence, at the very least...

[jaiyen]

At my wifes mums house the road has been repeatedly resurfaced and is now about a metre above the floor of the house, and to make it better the villagers have filled in the drainage ditch that was alongside the road. House gets flooded every time there is very heavy rain. 

[trianglechoke]

So they were going to raise the entire ROAD 30cm to match the drain and this not an error rather than............... put the drains in at road level... stupid 

[gadfly]

A drain with drain holes ??? is a clever Somchai engineered solution to guarantee future income.

[soistalker]

These are the same guys who decide where the electrical wall sockets are to go in a condo.