Bad Experience Having Stainless Steel Gate Made

[xerostar]

Just a warning to anyone who wants to buy a stainless steel gate or fencing.

This guy operates a business on the main road, left side coming into NS from the west.

We stopped by there one day and had a look at the display.

We asked the guy to come to our place and do a quote for a main gate plus a fence for our pool.

He turned up with his "foreman" a few days later.

The foreman took all the measurements and I gave them a drawing of what I wanted (with measurements). I explained how I wanted it made etc.

The guy phoned a few days later and gave us the quote which seemed about what they has said when we were at his shop. Fairly expensive I might add.

We didn't know any other business like this so we said OK.

A few weeks later he telephoned and said he was coming to install the main entrance gate and the pool fence & gate.

We happened to come home late that day and they were almost finished, nearly dark by then.

It looked OK and everything worked as it should except for two things I noticed.

They had put a huge pipe going up from inside the wall over the gate and down to the top of the wall.

I asked what that was for and he said - "in case very windy - can stop gate from fall down".

But I said why did you make it go over the top of the gate (which is about 3 metres high at centre)

You could have made it different so that it doesn't go over the top. (An angular brace on the inside).

"No problem I come back and fix next week".

Then I noticed the pool gate was very wobbly. When the gate closed the whole thing wobbled back and forth like it was made of rubber. I asked why they had not made a gatepost fixed to the ground like I had in my drawing?

I showed them how it should have been done.

He said "OK but will cost 3000 Baht more".

OK I said - you come back next week and fix it. No problem.

My wife had the money in her hand, she seemed eager to pay. (for some reason Thai people regard successful business owners as superior beings!)

So I said OK - they said they'd come back next week, so I'll take them on their word.

Bad decision!

We phoned week after week for a few months and they promised with excuses but as you have guessed we never saw them again.

Now it's pay-back time!!

All you expats that want him to make a gate - don't pay anything untill you are satisfied that everything is correct and to your satisfaction. Otherwise you'll get the same as I got

Better still go somewhere else - but use the same cautions I have mentioned.

I would suggest going and watching while they make it, checking everything- because they will make mistakes!

That isn't the last of it.

A few days after, I thought "hang on" the pool fence vertical bars seem a bit wide apart?

So I got a ruler and checked - My drawing had specified 10 cm between centres. You guessed it they had made the bars 10 cm apart! I don't think they know what centre to centre means.

So our dogs wander/wriggle straight through any time they feel like it.

Also they had put horizontal bars to connect the fence posts to the wall (not in my design).

Not correct when it comes to pool fence design.

There should be no foot-holds anywhere on the fence at all.

Now children have a built in ladder to climb over!

Except that the conical finishing points on the vertical bars are razor sharp and dangerous!

So any kid would probably have more chance of being badly injured or killed on those spikes before he even made it into the water!

Feedback welcomed..

[nam-thip]

A few picys of the work and associated problems would help your story.

Maybe a picy of the shop in question?

[rfukata]

I think this is 'normal practice' in the minds of Thai workmenship. I have built 2 houses in Ubon and experienced similar incidents but not as bad as yours.

Yes, you have to be around and supervise your project otherwise they will screw it up. Most of the workers including the foreman/supervisor does not have any engineering or building degree therefore they do things what works for them without

really thinking about other important factors supporting your fence, house, carport, etc.

They think if it looks good (in their version) that it will suffice. - ABSOLUTELY WRONG!

[tgstainless]

I can understand the frustation........

Anyway, i just open a stainless fabric in Sattahip.

if you want, i will help you out for free(some hours) and U"maybe" recomend me in the future ?

[loquent]

I can understand the frustation........

Anyway, i just open a stainless fabric in Sattahip.

if you want, i will help you out for free(some hours) and U"maybe" recomend me in the future ?

When I read your post it was hard to avoid conclusions based on 'pool, high walls, big money' and that most likely is what the workmen thought. You have been taken to the cleaners, welders or whatever. Your wife seems to have delivered the typical Thai response of face saving and therefore going along with it all. Maybe you've paid through the nose all along and though been satisfied have paid over the odds.

But then having the house etc, didn't you supervise that and thus learn anything?

With my wife I told her how to do it. I wanted every single bill. I wanted written estimates in 3s. She delivered and I accepted the results.

I'm doing it a different way. In stages. At first I built a house for my in - laws. That is, I gave a sum of money to start the job to my wife. Away she went and spent it. Then I paid some more and away she went again. Finally, I viewed the place. They'd done their best. Thai style. Their way. Everyone was happy. I catologued the faults and left it at that.

A year later I'm living in it. Now the faults are things to sort. But how far do you go? I have her family fixing, changing odd jobbing it. They still do it their way despite my presence. It works but H&S would scrap it. The materials are cheap and shoddy as is much of the work. They simply do it their way based on a life of botch and make do. Banging in screws with a hammer is the norm. Bits of twisty wire for suspended ceilings; no plastering just rough render; no earth cable; support posts in the middle of rooms; doors that open out of rooms; wcs in middle of the bath room. It never ends. But then again how many farangs are living there?

My next plan is to build 'our place'. No relatives. A plan. Follow it. Supervise it 24-7 myself. Buy all the materials. Hand out all the parts to be used that instance.

I don't want to do it. I'm retired but to get the easy life I've still to do the hard work.

Where I clearly do differ from you is that I'll never take the one quote. I don't believe you've done that back home so why do it out here? I'm travelling considerable distances to check prices and tradesmen. At least I know what it would cost me elsewhere. And when I've got her brother trying to collude with tradesmen to inflate prices and rip me off [ he no longer is on the scene] you've got no choice but to plough your own furrow.

Hence, I know square meterage costs of everything from reinforced cement, to walls, roofing, electric cabling, complete re-wiring, tiling, lawns - another long list. Therefore, I can price a job before I ever consider putting it out to tender. And there's labour costs. How come a guy in Bangkok earns 150 baht a day but here they tell you it's 300 baht?

I'll pay 200 baht and believe it's generous for getting in extra labour and providing jobs where there aren't any other than the seasonal farming. The Thais are opportunist and if they can rip you they will. Hence, even in this response you have some generous soul wishing to offer his services.

Barge poles come to mind. They make 'em stainless but get a quote or 3 first. And go visit their customer base for satisfied folk like yourself!

[ColinChapman]

My next plan is to build 'our place'. No relatives. A plan. Follow it. Supervise it 24-7 myself. Buy all the materials. Hand out all the parts to be used that instance.

Just make sure you understand very clearly the implications of "Supervise it 24-7 myself". You cannot take your eyes off them for one second. I'm sure many people have stories to illustrate this, but this is what happened to me this week:

This is in Bangkok, in a newly built condo. I needed cabling for my western cooker running from the consumer unit, along the length of the living room, through the wall and into a breaker and then the output from the breaker connecting to the cooker. The required cable is 4 square mm for the live and neutral with an additional earth cable. It must be connected to a 32A breaker in the consumer unit.

I was recommended two electricians by the condo management. Both of them ignored my job spec and told me to plug the cooker into the adjacent wall socket (despite the fact that this would not earn them any money). I showed them the plate on the cooker which specifies the required cable and also gives the maximum power consumption as 7,000W. Using a calculator, I demonstrated that 7,000W at 220V equates to 31.8A, and thus couldn't possibly be plugged into a wall socket. Neither of these "electricians" appeared to have the slightest understanding of the relationship between amps, watts and volts or of the implications for cable diameter.

I then asked at a shop that sells western cookers and they sent another electrician. He did at least bring the correct size of cable with him and did not suggest using the wall socket. But his mate did! I heard him explaining that the electricity from the wall socket was "mai por".

He then showed me where he proposed to run the cable: out of the consumer unit, down to here (indicates a point about halfway up the wall), along the wall, etc. So I would have a cable running the entire length of the wall, bang on the middle of it. I told him that in my weird, farang way, I would prefer it if the cable was at the top of the wall. He pointed out that this would mean he had to fetch his stepladder. Assuming that this was back at base, hence his reluctance, I said that was OK, I could wait. He was back in five minutes having gone down to his truck in the car park where the stepladder was located.

He ran the cable to the kitchen wall, very neatly, and started to prepare to drill through. I asked him why he proposed to run the cable about 1m along the end wall from the corner and drill there - why not just go through at the corner? He pointed out that this was where the cooker was situated in the kitchen - about 1m out from the wall. This was indeed true, but only because I had pulled it away from the wall to give him space to work, but he considered it perfectly reasonable to want the cooker sticking out into the middle of the kitchen, proud of the other appliances, creating an obstruction and with a 1m by 0.6m dead space behind it.

He then finished the cabling, connected the cable to the cooker (wrongly, apparently he was unable to read the circuit diagram adjacent to the connection box on the cooker) and returned to the consumer unit. There is one spare 20A breaker, which he proposed using to feed the cooker. The same conversation that I had already had with the two other "electricians" was repeated with the same lack of understanding. As he had no 32A breaker, he left.

I bought a breaker and installed it myself. I connected the cable to the cooker correctly and routed it through the cable grip, which he had said was not possible. I then noticed that he had connected the black cable to the neutral terminals of the breaker above the cooker and the white cable to the live, so I swapped these over to be correct. (This is an improvement on my last condo, where live, neutral and earth cables where all a rather nice blue colour.)

And I won't even get into the washing machine waste pipe installation and the belief prevalent amongst Thai plumbers that water naturally flows uphill.

So, good luck, but I think you may go insane trying to supervise the building of an entire house...

[xerostar]

[Q] But then having the house etc, didn't you supervise that and thus learn anything?[/Q]

My two brother-in-laws did the building with a team of farmer/labourers.

One BIL is quite skilled and can think logically, the other, well .. both are hard workers.

Many things have gone wrong but since I don't command enough Thai, I have to get my wife to interpret.

e.g.

Sometimes I feel like shouting "holy f***ing Sh*t you idiots! but they would not have a clue what I said!

Besides we are getting a lot of their labour as part of the family co-operative effort and I don't wan't to

denigrate them badly and have them walk off.

So I'd go to the TW and say "darling they have made a big stuff-up again!"

She'd say "I not understand .?." "

"Come and look at this" I'd say

"what you mean?"

Look, Look it's too bl**dy short!, you can't leave it like that!"

"look OK to me .. what you want?"

"Oh <deleted>, forget it!"

"what you mean <deleted>, I no unerstan' you?"

"I mean the job is no gooood!, we would never accept a job like that in Australia ...!!"

"Ok .. I tell Lat .. tomorrow he do again.."

"but we don't have any more tiles!, He's used the whole f***ing lot!

- look there are lots of offcuts he could have used!"

"We go to Nakhon Sawan tomorrow, buy new ones!" (95 Km)

"You know this is wasting a lot of money, the cement is set now anyway .."

"Argghh just leave it then, nobody around here gives a sh*t anyway!"

"What you mean shit? You grumpy me? I not like that..""

and so on ...

In a sort Mai Pen Rai way I have had to lower my standards to enable me to stay sane!

The last building we did - a western/Thai kitchen with attached bathroom and walk-in-pantry

I supervised a lot more. I did the plumbing and electrical myself and it works great.

That didn't stop Lat though!

I explained to him that we need to have a S'lope down to the shower floor outlet.

He set up all his fishing lines and showed me - yes there was some fall between the

wall and my outlet (with the p-trap under the floor). I thought well he seems to have understood that OK.

I came in the next morning and had to fix a few minor leaks between the wall outlets and the taps.

I notice a pool of water in the middle of the bathroom and it wasn't flowing towards the shower outlet ..

You are right ColinChapman - water can flow up hill can't it ...

I am a slow learner .. but I am learning! - if want a good job, do it yourself or supervise 24/7

and be the ogre! I now get workers too scared to start or continue without calling me have a look and explain

what or how I want it. They are like a bunch of kids! But we do get along OK.

I could write a book about this stuff and no doubt anyone who builds a house can as well !