Building A House

[strawberry]

Hi All,

we are about ready to start building a house. couple of weeks ago the builder took us to see a house to give him an idea what we wanted. Had a look downstairs and on going up I was most unimpressed by the heat. As I intend to live upstairs making it into a farang only land. I'm interested in knowing ways to make it cool (er). This particular house had a hi roof but was black and no vents so I figure thats why it was so hot, I remember years ago reading about insolation in the roof and I seem to remember that the insolation was called fiberglass batts. Has anyone any info on these and are they available in Thailand. Has anyone any info on any other ways to keep the heat out. This house I'm living in has hi reflected heat from the ceiling in fact one can't keep your hand on it on a sunny day. A house like this makes Air con very expensive.

Regards Joe

[Jai Dee]

Hi All,

we are about ready to start building a house. couple of weeks ago the builder took us to see a house to give him an idea what we wanted. Had a look downstairs and on going up I was most unimpressed by the heat. As I intend to live upstairs making it into a farang only land. I'm interested in knowing ways to make it cool (er). This particular house had a hi roof but was black and no vents so I figure thats why it was so hot, I remember years ago reading about insolation in the roof and I seem to remember that the insolation was called fiberglass batts. Has anyone any info on these and are they available in Thailand. Has anyone any info on any other ways to keep the heat out. This house I'm living in has hi reflected heat from the ceiling in fact one can't keep your hand on it on a sunny day. A house like this makes Air con very expensive.

Regards Joe

I suggest you have a bit of a search on this forum...

Quite a few useful topics and postings there.

[StuartinBKK]

http://www.cardiffair.com.au/cvsa.htm

And it's GREEN.

[Abandon]

concrete roof with an air gap, and tiles is best (and costly). If you will not be running air con - high ceilings, with air con - low ceilings. Silver foil type reflective covering on the ceilings (the roof side). Water sprinkler on the roof for hot days (really takes the heat away).

Double skinned walls - most in Thailand are single layer. But make sure they are putting in wall ties, or the 2 layers will bulge apart.

Trees, big ones

double glazing for air con rooms

build it somewhere high up, up north

[tuky]

Try this link in the house building forum.

thread moved to correct forum.

/mod

[lopburi3]

You might want to reconsider location of your private zone to downstairs - perhaps in the rear. Upstairs is always going to be much harder to keep cool and in a few more years you may not want to climb those stairs.

Fiberglass batts are available at any building supply store and aluminum faced is also available. In the other thread a foam type in rolls was reported to be available at a reasonable price from Home Pro so that might be better if anyone knows how to handle it.

The attic fan idea mentioned in Stuart post is for cooler areas I am afraid. In Denver, Colorado it works great to get home down to sleeping temperature but when the outside temperature does not get into a comfortable range it will not be of much help - not matter how green it may be.

Another thing is to use gypsum rather than cement board for your ceiling. That cement board is great at being waterproof but it conducts heat like a radiator.