Top 10 building mistakes in Thailand and SE asia. 2019

[Andrew Dwyer]

2 hours ago, RocketDog said:

Right, Like burying unglued electrical conduits and plumbing in concrete floors and walls. An ongoing nightmare. Glue is often not used in joints or properly cured, insane. 

If I ever built a house here all those things would run on exterior and interior walls and to hell with the appearance. 

Yup, I hear you, after a couple of years our pump decided it would cycle on its own, initially once every 3 or 4 hours and then increasing in frequency until once every minute.

After testing pump and pipework it became obvious that the leak was somewhere buried in or under the slab !!

Soo, after a bit of donkey work, several metres of pvc/fittings and glue I had no option other than replacing all pipework externally.

 

Possibly a lackadaisical worker or labourer had overlooked the necessity of glue on a couple of fittings which caused me a few weeks of headaches and considerably more expense than the 50 satang of pvc glue necessary to avoid my nightmare ! 

[RocketDog]

2 minutes ago, Andrew Dwyer said:

Yup, I hear you, after a couple of years our pump decided it would cycle on its own, initially once every 3 or 4 hours and then increasing in frequency until once every minute.

After testing pump and pipework it became obvious that the leak was somewhere buried in or under the slab !!

Soo, after a bit of donkey work, several metres of pvc/fittings and glue I had no option other than replacing all pipework externally.

 

Possibly a lackadaisical worker or labourer had overlooked the necessity of glue on a couple of fittings which caused me a few weeks of headaches and considerably more expense than the 50 satang of pvc glue necessary to avoid my nightmare ! 

The problem started with pump cycling as you say. In my case the hard work was digging up all the pipes branching from the pump outside the house into the house several places under the slab. Each run had to dug up and fitted with a valve. Then each valve turned off to isolate the leaking branch. There were two leaking branches, both with poor/no glue but still outside the house. 

 

Then there was the weeping joint inside the bathroom wall. Had to tear holes in the wall to find and replace the elbow. 

 

Then it was losing all mains power one day. Seems the mains power cable coming underground then up the house  wall to the attic was poor quality aluminum wiring. Unglued joints in the conduit leaked, skinned wiring allowed leakage current which finally eroded one conductor in two. All had to be dug up, conduit replaced, and double insulated heavy copper cable installed. Naturally we got to know the local guys from PEA who had to keep turning the power off and on at the meter a block away. I added an outside wall cabinet with a large knife switch breaker where the mains came through the back wall so I can turn power off to the user panel in the house if I need too. 

 

Then the famous rumbling electrical outlet. Sounds like muted thunder coming from the outlet plate in the wall. 

Tear up the wall again, then the tile floor and find the electrical conduit joint, unglued, that was seeping water. Of course the skinned insulation on both wires allowed conductivity for the hard minetal water, which then boiled in the pipe causing steam and noise from the outlet. I replaced the conduit and wires and used an entire tube of silicone caulk plugging all three pipes coming into the T junction and covering it. So one conduit still has water in it but I elected to just plug it with silicone rather than tear up 15 feet of floor to trace the conduit and find the source of seeping water. Someday it will probably have to be done. I just burned out. 

 

All of this because of shoddy work and incompetent workers running plumbing and electric conduits. Needless to say I made myself very constantly annoying by supervising very closely every single step of every single job the repair guys did and vetting the materials and parts they used. This whole experience convinced me to never build a house myself here. It will be impossible to be vigilant enough with everything the workers touch to get it done right. Better to buy a fairly new house in a location you like and remodel it as needed. 

 

Since it is probably impossible to get such work done right in thailand, short of doing it yourself, it's better to just have it all exposed for easy repair. An informed future buyer will thank you for it too. 

[MadMuhammad]

On 1/26/2020 at 7:38 PM, GreasyFingers said:

Good luck if you think you can get a builder to do everything you mention. Your farang price would be double the normal farang price. Currently doing an extension and it is impossible to get Thais to do what you ask/demand. Even though they can do good work their mentality is that of cowboys.

No worry about the electrical though, the BIL is actually licensed and rewired the old house before we moved in.

I got lucky with my build regarding the electrical installation. While not perfect it is much better than many I’ve seen. Not so much luck with the plumbing sadly 
 

Edited November 30, 2020 by MadMuhammad