Sixty residents flee for their lives as block of flats leans over backwards in Bangkok

[Card]

7 hours ago, ChipButty said:

Is this why you pay a Sinking Fund?

Expect to get flooded with replies on this one.

[khunjeff]

7 hours ago, webfact said:

Sixty residents flee for their lives as block of flats leans over backwards in Bangkok

 

Picture: Daily News

 

Almost sixty residents in a 30 room block of flats in Samut Sakhon fled for their lives as their three story building leant over backwards and appeared about to topple. 

More great journalism - the headline says Bangkok, and the story says Samut Sakhon...

[AlQaholic]

Did someone forget the piling? Samut Sakhon is practically part of BKK, just to the West. Similar to Samut Prakan just to the East.

[scorecard]

7 hours ago, LennyW said:

I think the rebar is the only thing stopping it from toppling right now!!

It's happened before in Bkk, twice from my memory, both apartment blocks, both eventually fell over completely. 

[hotchilli]

7 hours ago, ezzra said:

the can rename the leaning condo of BKK now...

it's not alone.

[Burma Bill]

How about this one in Taiwan:-

[Songlaw]

Rebar? What is this voodoo of which you speak?

[Swimfan]

3 hours ago, Bender Rodriguez said:

hope they are only renting

The owner of the property found alternative accommodation for the residents and other plans were put in place to assist them.

[Aussiepeter]

For the uninitiated in building things in LOS, rebar is the Thai name for steel reinforcing rod. When I built our 2 story palace in Saraphi in 2008 the plans, approved and checked by a building inspector mate in Oz, specified 8 X 25mm (one inch for you American folks) rods to be included in each support pillar. They get regular earth quakes in Chiang Mai. When our lousy builder started, he had Burmese lads binding bundles of skinny 4mm rods together to make each 25mm rod ! Useless ! It would never withstand a storm, let alone an earthquake of say, level 6. He was made to stop and use the real stuff - which upset him greatly and damaged both his ego and his profit margin, which is precisely why if and when you ever build anything in LOS, you make sure that you (the farang) are on site each and every day to keep an eye on things. Fourteen years on, it it still the strongest home ever built in Saraphi. Only thing is, the 'Nai Amphur' now owns it, as we live in the real world these days. For those who like a laugh - when I was posted to Athens Greece in 1988, there was a high-rise building just around the corner from the Australian Embassy in Athens' main road, that was abandoned at the eighteenth floor, as the building had a design flaw and from the third floor up, each additional floor stuck out several metres on one end, just like that tower in Pisa. The thing is, they knew about it at level three, but no one would make a decision to stop, knock it down and start again ! At about level 18, the left end was almost touching the already occupied skyscraper next door - only THEN did someone pull the pin on construction. It is still there and looks like a wedding cake that has been dropped. Saw it twice a day for a year, but never took a photo. I swear it must be listing around 40 degrees ...

[Truth Will Set You Free]

???????????????? Materials of China’s will be the blame and very poor workmanship of the Thais......

[Pluto56]

Well I guess some renter is going to lose his deposit....

[teacherclaire]

9 hours ago, Old Croc said:

A nice paint job is more important than strong foundations.

You forgot that the strongest foundations are in Thainess.

That's stronger than any steel. 

Hello Kitty constructions in the Land of Why's? 

[teacherclaire]

27 minutes ago, Aussiepeter said:

For the uninitiated in building things in LOS, rebar is the Thai name for steel reinforcing rod. When I built our 2 story palace in Saraphi in 2008 the plans, approved and checked by a building inspector mate in Oz, specified 8 X 25mm (one inch for you American folks) rods to be included in each support pillar. They get regular earth quakes in Chiang Mai. When our lousy builder started, he had Burmese lads binding bundles of skinny 4mm rods together to make each 25mm rod ! Useless ! It would never withstand a storm, let alone an earthquake of say, level 6. He was made to stop and use the real stuff - which upset him greatly and damaged both his ego and his profit margin, which is precisely why if and when you ever build anything in LOS, you make sure that you (the farang) are on site each and every day to keep an eye on things. Fourteen years on, it it still the strongest home ever built in Saraphi. Only thing is, the 'Nai Amphur' now owns it, as we live in the real world these days. For those who like a laugh - when I was posted to Athens Greece in 1988, there was a high-rise building just around the corner from the Australian Embassy in Athens' main road, that was abandoned at the eighteenth floor, as the building had a design flaw and from the third floor up, each additional floor stuck out several metres on one end, just like that tower in Pisa. The thing is, they knew about it at level three, but no one would make a decision to stop, knock it down and start again ! At about level 18, the left end was almost touching the already occupied skyscraper next door - only THEN did someone pull the pin on construction. It is still there and looks like a wedding cake that has been dropped. Saw it twice a day for a year, but never took a photo. I swear it must be listing around 40 degrees ...

 Useless ! It would never withstand a storm, let alone an earthquake of say, level 6

 

Not so many buildings worldwide would withstand a level 6 earthquake, methinks,. Innit? 

[owl sees all]

The whole of Bangkok is doomed. A bit like the US Dollar; everyone knows it but not quite sure when it will happen.

 

As water tables rise, and extreme weather kicks in, we will hear more of this stuff.

 

There are solutions. Some very innovative ones too, here on TV. Thai trading standards would do well to trawl through the past topics on this.

[RichardColeman]

Remember this when you buy your retirement forever condo 

[3NUMBAS]

since bkk is built on aluvial mud theres no solid ground

[KarenBravo]

5 minutes ago, 3NUMBAS said:

since bkk is built on aluvial mud theres no solid ground

The bed-rock in Bangkok varies from 500 to 1000 metres deep.

[pacovl46]

A friend of mine built a house in the Summit Windmill estate in Samut Prakarn. When they started building his neighbors place, I’ve watched the workers put the concrete pillars into the ground for the foundation. All some of those 12 meter long pillars needed was a gentle tap on the head with the hammer and they slipped right into the ground like a hot knife goes through butter! It was a truly amazing sight! No wonder Australians call Bangkok swampy! 

[hioctane]

The problem is not really the construction. If you build your house on the bottom of a hill, are you going to say it is not flood proof? Everything has to do with location and foundation. Even if you make your house “earthquake proof,” but you  place your house on top of a plate.. guess what? It will still topple over! Same with people living too close to the coast. I am not saying don’t build there, but know what you are getting into!

[chivo]

11 hours ago, ezzra said:

the can rename the leaning condo of BKK now...

TAT can market it!

[jerolamo]

I am really passionate about construction techniques (from the oldest to the most recent) and architecture.
And what I see in Thailand is quite mixed depending on the type of construction.
I have seen two types of construction: those made by and for the government, as well as for temples, and those made by and for private interests.
In the first case, they follow architectural studies and plans that adapt to many situations, with a study of soils and deep foundations, a real site manager (most of the time having already worked elsewhere, in United Arab Emirates or in other countries and having a real knowledge of construction and standards), with an architect (a real one) who has little to envy others around the world.
And in the second ... ouch ... no soil studies, no real knowledge of the construction, savings made on crucial points, no respect for the links of the rail bars, undersized foundations, no soil drainage, no deep foundations in clayey areas, no respect for material resistance standards when it comes to beam sections and supporting levers, certainly no load calculation or stress dynamics ... no standards either, and in addition, too liquid poured concrete which loses 75% of its strength because it is flooded.
all this means that small dwellings have cracks in only one or at most two years when the soils are clayey (soil expansion movements) and the connections offer stress without load which means that it cannot hold (reinforcement, that can not be improvised, there are reasons why the irons are tied in a certain way in the angles). The bricks are 6 cm wide instead of 20cm, they are not all poured with the same care (almost artisanal production with mixtures that vary and concrete qualities not controlled, dosages too wet and sometimes too vibrated).
Alas, it does not stop at the shell ...
As for electricity, it is out of the ordinary and sometimes very dangerous (wires tied in twists, insulated with Chinese tape offering zero insulation and a significant resistance which heats the entire line under load, no sheaths of insulation, coils on the lines, crossings, more power than needed for each line, no leakage protection, the phase is not always on the correct side on the outlets, by earth protection , nobody knows how to measure it if it happened to exist on an installation, etc ... and it is also so on the LV lines of the city). For carpentry, there is nothing really serious, the wood is never dry properly (if it has only been dried), it will therefore move a lot, links between woods are out of any regular building skills (sometimes dangerously), the aluminum is ok, but very thin, no double glazing, steel better from far because of easy to apply.

The rooms are naturally ventilated despite sometimes an air conditioning which has great difficulty in withstanding such a heat loss. (and no automatic motorized ventilation in damp rooms, which poses a health problem). Also orientation of houses are out of control and show no mind management about that.

Water is coming at 1.5 bars, sometimes upper when it comes, and very dirty. But well, this is not a big problem, there is always solutions (but expensive for a long run).
Obviously, we are very far from Roman constructions and the specialty (which is being lost) of knowledge in Thailand was bamboo and some specific wood (the ancients had to work well with wood, but it became too expensive) and bamboos are unfortunately now joined with steel wires (so the bamboo has a longer life than the exposed steel wire).

Prices seems to be cheap, but if you know to build yourself and you do it, you will see it is very expensive for the real quality the deserve from for a very short life time.
There would be ways to do otherwise with the soils present, but it is more work (rammed earth or cob) for less expensive in terms of materials (but more work = a higher cost and a lot of effort, thing. which seems to be increasingly relegated to foreigners from Laos or Myanmar, who work very hard).
Thailand is not the country of building knowledge in the world, unlike some countries which have a building culture dating back thousands of years. As it is not their culture either (their culture is more on the ephemeral, that can be understood), they do not understand it to what can be used well all that I have just described and which in the end would cost, a both known and applied, cheaper over the life of the building (especially if it does not fall, crack, burn, etc ... for 50 years and more, instead of 10 years) .

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

12 hours ago, ChipButty said:

Is this why you pay a Sinking Fund?

 

Just wait till global warming and rising sea levels wreak their havoc in BKK with rising groundwater levels... and then you'll really have a lot of sinking funds!!!

 

[jerolamo]

17 minutes ago, hioctane said:

The problem is not really the construction. If you build your house on the bottom of a hill, are you going to say it is not flood proof? Everything has to do with location and foundation. Even if you make your house “earthquake proof,” but you  place your house on top of a plate.. guess what? It will still topple over! Same with people living too close to the coast. I am not saying don’t build there, but know what you are getting into!

but... every real builders know that the construction start with the study of the soil to be able to target the kind of foundation to apply (it is also the big part of the price of the building and what will garranty a real strong structure). A building is almost all about a good foundation at the very first place.

If you <deleted> this point, all is <deleted>, what ever you do next.

So soil and foundation is the very professional part of a building, and when you see a non deep foundation with red clay ground area all around, and 6mm steel to use for rebars, you already know these builders are not real builders... it will failed for sure, no one real builders do that in clay ground (not for a bamboo bangalo... for sure).

[jerolamo]

2 hours ago, pacovl46 said:

A friend of mine built a house in the Summit Windmill estate in Samut Prakarn. When they started building his neighbors place, I’ve watched the workers put the concrete pillars into the ground for the foundation. All some of those 12 meter long pillars needed was a gentle tap on the head with the hammer and they slipped right into the ground like a hot knife goes through butter! It was a truly amazing sight! No wonder Australians call Bangkok swampy! 

This named a deep foundation with piles. In EU we use more steel piles, but in Thailand i see special armed concrete one (who can be very good to). This is good foundation and should be first apply by a geometer to test the soil (wish material, wish density at wish time of the season, how dry is the soil, how deep to go with what is the target to know next). It was a job i did before...

Well, the pile effect most of the time is not to support the building only by stop in the rock (that should be the best, but sometimes, many times in Thailand, you have 150m of clay ground under... you can not push a pile so far, and it serve nothing), but the friction effect on the surface of the pile should be enough (and there is calculus for that) to maintain a foundation. Next should be to drain the soil under (french drain around is a good and non expensive solution), because the water move and retention can become a big problem later.

12m is a standard (from UK) and they have some standard molds they use. So if the ground is still no good at 11.5m deep, they add some more piles to friction support.

There is other one way to do deep foundations, but the piles one is the cheapest one and can be very efficient if the calculus made by geometer and architect are good enough (or by experience if skills is there). It is rare to see that in Thailand, they do it for water tanks now, and for some temple, and all government building, but only for rich people houses... even if the piles and the job to put them are very cheap in Thailand.

You seen probably a really good job this time (if they didn't break piles).

[soi3eddie]

12 hours ago, ChipButty said:

Is this why you pay a Sinking Fund?

I always wondered what our Condo Sinking Fund was for. 

[pixelaoffy]

11 hours ago, Pilotman said:

Nothing wrong with property here if you know that it has been constructed to international standards. I watched mine being built and I had a Civil Engineer contracted to oversee the project.  My house is built like a medieval castle, it will out live a few generations of my family that's for sure.  However, I do agree with you about tall buildings, condos etc, where it is impossible to ensure that the build is safe.   

Nonsense ! The safety or lack of in buildings on top of the poor quality materials  is only one good reason of many  to not invest in property in bkk 

[Pilotman]

1 minute ago, pixelaoffy said:

Nonsense ! The safety or lack of  of the building on top of the poor quality materials  is only one good reason to not invest in property in bkk 

if its 'only one good reason' (your words) why is it nonsense?   Nobody said that were not many other reasons not to invest in Bangkok properties, I agree that there are many. 

[katana]

The photos in the News stories don't really convey what happened.

Here's CCTV footage:

 

 

[tomauasia]

12 hours ago, darksidedog said:

And shows the precise reason why I would never buy a property here, especially a tall one.

You would need to buy from a trusted developer.

[kiwikeith]

16 hours ago, Pilotman said:

Nothing wrong with property here if you know that it has been constructed to international standards. I watched mine being built and I had a Civil Engineer contracted to oversee the project.  My house is built like a medieval castle, it will out live a few generations of my family that's for sure.  However, I do agree with you about tall buildings, condos etc, where it is impossible to ensure that the build is safe.   

Yes the footings are the problem here, mind you Bangkok was a rice field years ago. They have done a pretty good job considering the amount of flyovers and buildings in this concrete jungle.