Building a house near Bueng Kan

[markm4255]

Hello, I'm new to this forum and am looking for some advice.  My wife and I are investigating the building of a house in Si Wilai, Bueng Kan and have been talking to one builder so far.  We are looking for a 4 bedroom, 2-3 bathroom home, one floor if possible and something beetween 1.75m and 2.25 M baht.  The one builder we are talking to is AAA House.  I'm impressed so far.  Does anyone have any experience with them previously?

 

Do you have any suggestions for competing home builders that I could call for possible plans and bids?

Thanks Mark

 

[finnsk]

I will advice you to think in some heat isolation of the house, specially the sunny south side of the house and the roof. Thai builders is not very familiary with isolation of family houses, do not expect any thing in this way, if you do not demand it.

 

Be prepared to be much time on the construction site to follow all types of the constructionswork, be prepared at many discusions with the building people. It will be a hard work to your wife.

 

We where not using a head company when we where building our house, we where hiring directly bricklayer, electrician etc, we where happy for that, but you must have good connections locally to do that. One of my friends hired a head company to do the hole house, he had to go on a lot of compromises with quality, material and technical solutions, he never get happy with the house.

 

Basicly be very critical before you write under any housebuilding contract. Not many farrangs know the thai language or thai contract rules, be carefull.

 

I wish you good luck with the housebuilding

[markm4255]

7 hours ago, finnsk said:

I will advice you to think in some heat isolation of the house, specially the sunny south side of the house and the roof. Thai builders is not very familiary with isolation of family houses, do not expect any thing in this way, if you do not demand it.

 

Be prepared to be much time on the construction site to follow all types of the constructionswork, be prepared at many discusions with the building people. It will be a hard work to your wife.

 

We where not using a head company when we where building our house, we where hiring directly bricklayer, electrician etc, we where happy for that, but you must have good connections locally to do that. One of my friends hired a head company to do the hole house, he had to go on a lot of compromises with quality, material and technical solutions, he never get happy with the house.

 

Basicly be very critical before you write under any housebuilding contract. Not many farrangs know the thai language or thai contract rules, be carefull.

 

I wish you good luck with the housebuilding

Thank you for the words of advice.  Extra insulation is high on my list.  Unfortunately I am in america, so I cant be on site full time.  My wife's father and brother will be there full time and can watch the building and her brother works at a home pro so he can look at the materials coming in and make sure nothing shady is going on.  The builder I'm using may be a bit more in price than the local builder, but hopefully a bit more reputable.  

 

[Kadilo]

Have a look at these and see if you think you’re in the right price range. Price ranges are along the top bar. 
 

https://www.moderntage.com/th

[kenio]

We have a house some km from Siwilai close to Phon Charoen.

We was building a garage on the sunny south side of the house, the garage is warm but the wall to the house is cold.

As Finnsk said, you and your wife must be there. If you have no time now, wait till you have time, it don´t take to long time to build a house.

Your wife must be there when it comes to buy material for the house.

If you´re not there it will be way much moore expensive.

When we were building our house, my wife and I bought all the material and the lokal builder build the house.

Our neighbour used a "construction company" way much more expensive.

They were cheated in many ways.

English is not my language, hope it´s readable.

And good luck, maybe we´ll meet one day at the lokal market in Siwilai.   

[MrJ2U]

Good luck.

Bueng Kan is going to be a fun place to live.

 

I cant wait until they finish that bridge to Laos.  

 

Get SCG to do your roof.

You get a descent warranty, something you won't get from anyone else even if they say so.

 

You get some good punishing rain storms up there! (I love the rain).  You need a good roof.

 

They also have some heat sink fans that the put in the crawl space to blow out the heat, save on air conditioning.  Wish I did that!

 

Good luck!

 

 

[thasoss]

good luck with your project.You really should be on sight,buy and choose everything yourself.Get as many quotes before deciding on a builder.......as a yardstick if you want a decent job done allow costs to be approx.11000 baht a square metre.Insulate the roof,put in a 1500 litre water tank,so if and when the govt. water is turned off you'll always have water.If the land size is more than 1 naan put in a deep well......cost between 15000-20,000 baht.

You cannot rely on relatives to protect you from a builder doing a lousy job....you should not build if you are not in thailand to oversee the project in my opinion.

[Martyjustice]

Alot of things different from US standards. As said in previous posts, be there. To that end, wait , get there, then rent for the first year. Rent is cheap in Thailand. 
Draw up the  rough floor plan to get an idea. Act as your own general contractor and be prepared to wait. The first word with workmen is “prung nee”(tomorrow). 
Insulation of walls is unheard of. What some people have done is make a double wall with a dead air space in between. As for the roof/ceiling SBC makes a roof tile that has insulation and foil in the back side. A powdered roof vent fan is a good idea too. 
Plumbing, make sure it is vented, not a standard practice in LOS. Electrical insure it’s a 3 wire a ground. Separate circuits for ACs and water heaters. 
Tiling is another issue only a few know about back buttering tiles. Most will lay mortar bed and just tap,tap,tap. Out of 5 tile jobs only found 1 that back buttered. I called the wife over to see. Said see this guy knows the right way to do it. If you don’t you will always get hollow spots under tile. You will always hear it.

Also as stated earlier buy your materials. If you don’t you’ll be paying 100% markup. 
I’ve rambled on enough. Good luck in your home building. 

[kenio]

39 minutes ago, Martyjustice said:

Alot of things different from US standards. As said in previous posts, be there. To that end, wait , get there, then rent for the first year. Rent is cheap in Thailand. 
Draw up the  rough floor plan to get an idea. Act as your own general contractor and be prepared to wait. The first word with workmen is “prung nee”(tomorrow). 
Insulation of walls is unheard of. What some people have done is make a double wall with a dead air space in between. As for the roof/ceiling SBC makes a roof tile that has insulation and foil in the back side. A powdered roof vent fan is a good idea too. 
Plumbing, make sure it is vented, not a standard practice in LOS. Electrical insure it’s a 3 wire a ground. Separate circuits for ACs and water heaters. 
Tiling is another issue only a few know about back buttering tiles. Most will lay mortar bed and just tap,tap,tap. Out of 5 tile jobs only found 1 that back buttered. I called the wife over to see. Said see this guy knows the right way to do it. If you don’t you will always get hollow spots under tile. You will always hear it.

Also as stated earlier buy your materials. If you don’t you’ll be paying 100% markup. 
I’ve rambled on enough. Good luck in your home building. 

It´s all so true, but I must say that I´m very pleased with the Thai way of tiling, in our house and four neighbors new build houses as well.

If you do the way "we" use to do, you need a smoother concrete base. Is that the way to say it?       I think you understand what I mean.

I can repeat it again, be there, or it will be very expensive.

If you have millions maybe it doesn´t matter. If not you must be there.

[kenio]

13 hours ago, thasoss said:

good luck with your project.You really should be on sight,buy and choose everything yourself.Get as many quotes before deciding on a builder.......as a yardstick if you want a decent job done allow costs to be approx.11000 baht a square metre.Insulate the roof,put in a 1500 litre water tank,so if and when the govt. water is turned off you'll always have water.If the land size is more than 1 naan put in a deep well......cost between 15000-20,000 baht.

You cannot rely on relatives to protect you from a builder doing a lousy job....you should not build if you are not in thailand to oversee the project in my opinion.

Lots of good advice. 

But where did that 11.000 baht a square metre came from.

We build our house five years ago 150 sqm for about 600.000 baht.

It´s a big beautiful thai style house with two bathrooms, tinted windows, AC.

Everything you need for a comfortable life, we stay there four month every year.

As I said before, my wife bought all the material and a lokal builder build the house like we wanted it to be. 

Here´s a photo.

[bbko]

For what you're asking, 1.75-2.25 M baht is a good deal.  You won't find much cheaper.  Wife's father there full time and the brother works at Home Pro? Let them know what you want, show them plenty of pictures of your ideal place and give them your budget, toss in some money for their time and effort and you should be set.  The only drawback in my opinion, is the location, for me I wouldn't want to be that far up north.

[thasoss]

10 hours ago, kenio said:

Lots of good advice. 

But where did that 11.000 baht a square metre came from.

We build our house five years ago 150 sqm for about 600.000 baht.

It´s a big beautiful thai style house with two bathrooms, tinted windows, AC.

Everything you need for a comfortable life, we stay there four month every year.

As I said before, my wife bought all the material and a lokal builder build the house like we wanted it to be. 

Here´s a photo.

with regards to my quoting 11000 baht a square metre was only meant as a guideline.Obviously the cost will depend on the products you are happy to use plus the labour costs.For example we wanted a ceepac roof(tiles) that are much more expensive than sunthai.Having said that your house looks good...well done.

[sirineou]

On 10/29/2021 at 7:09 PM, markm4255 said:

Thank you for the words of advice.  Extra insulation is high on my list.  Unfortunately I am in america, so I cant be on site full time.  My wife's father and brother will be there full time and can watch the building and her brother works at a home pro so he can look at the materials coming in and make sure nothing shady is going on.  The builder I'm using may be a bit more in price than the local builder, but hopefully a bit more reputable.  

 

Hi Mark, where in the US are you? 

I would recommend our Builder in  Khon Kaen. but your location is a couple of hours away and I am not sure if he would travel that far, also you need a builder nearby so that he would be there all the time, otherwise his workers would do all short of stupid things. His Name is Dook  and the company is TC house khon Kaen 

https://www.facebook.com/dooktanakorn7772

He did a pretty good job in our house , and in the houses of some other expats that I know of in the area . I also was in the US during most of the build, but my wife was there. Dook was very good with communications and does Cad drawing as do I , so we were able to collaborate and make adjustments via Google sketch -up  

  Of course past performance is no guarantee of future results, A builder is only as good as the people he hires. 

  He only uses AAC (q-con) block. as most builders do now days. We did a double wall cavity system for our outside walls using 7.5 AAC block

That accomplishes a couple of things. One it provides superiors heat and sound insulation. Two you dont see the columns, and Three, you cam screw or nail on them. 

Heat insulation is important in Thailand as it gets very hot here, and it will also save you a lot of money on electric A/C  bills. And Thailand is a very noisy place (barking dogs, Roosters all day and night) . On that respect good sound insulating windows are very important, especially in the barroom and/or  if you are a light sleeper. 

. Three are a bunch of other things you or your family needs to pay attention too, 

I could write a book LOL, but I dont want to make post loo long to read. PM me if you are interesting.