Land Fill - How Long To Settle?

[Pib]

Yea, I read about this in the news today. Will be interesting as to what they find out was the cause....construction company fault like concrete piles not being driven deep enough or not enough concrete piles or just a really unusual ground fault---like a sink hole occurring. But I expect it will be tied up in court for years which will delay any firm cause being released to the media.

[cycloneJ]

Rangsit's Tumbling Tower Block

plenty of coverage in Thai media, incl TV, guess one day it will filter down to the English-language ones

Daily News here with a good series of photos, and says it has dropped/sunk 1.5m

Read that this area was a pond/lake until 2011, so it is in-fill.

As you say - it will be years of blaming, dodgy engineers reports and incorrectly signed-off building consents . . . etc.

Bad news for people if they have paid a deposit/bought off the plan.

Edited April 2, 2013 by cycloneJ

[Crossy]

The leaning tower is in The Nation and Bangkok Post, and of course ThaiVisa http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/630190-tilting-building-near-bangkok-should-be-demolished/

[cycloneJ]

^ ha ha

typically a day late.

maybe they got around to reading yesterday morning's Thai news!

[apetley]

Here in my Bangkok moobaan the developer drives concrete piles down 3 to 4 meters at spacing of every few meters then lays the concrete foundation on top of these piles. Does the same thing for the home's perimeter concrete fence. Definitely no shortage of pile driving. My house is approaching 5 years old and was built this way...no foundation problems or wall/floor tile cracks anywhere so far.

3-4 meters I'd be seriously worried!!...the piles for our house are 22meters... 18meters was considered minimum by all the builders we talked to.

22 meters (72 feet) !!!!??? That's taller than light/electric poles. What are you building on? Mush?

When we were building our house the engineer happened to mention that if we were building in BKK they would have used 21m piling because of the soil conditions there.

[Pib]

The engineer for our house later told me it was 17 meters the homes in my western Bangkok moobaan. I mean when I asked he came back with an ASAP/immediate answer of 17 meters. Link

I forgot to ask him if they pile-drived the poles, or the first dug the holes and then inserted rebar/poured concrete into the holes like mentioned in earlier posts in this thread. I'm guessing they dug the holes to minimize vibration since this developer pretty much builds a soi of homes (around 10-12 homes at a time for a new soi) which is right next to another soi which already has built homes...this kind of one-soi-at-a-time is been ongoing for around 20 years in my moobaan although they haven't built any new home in approx. 2 years....flooding, market, and financing issues I hear...but they are slowly preparing an area for several blocks of new homes.

The construction of the homes on my soi were well past the foundation construction stage when I bought the home so I didn't get to actually see the foundation construction relating to the piles. The same developer has been building this moobaan for around 20 years...assuming 17 meters is the depth they always go to, it's apparently enough because in the five years I lived here I haven't seen or heard of any foundation/wall problems in this moobaan of hundreds of homes where probabally 90% of the homes were built by the same developer/land owner. I expect the actual needed depth will vary somewhat from area to area.

I also just finished up having some additional concrete pad with tile laid around part of the outside area of my house. This pad will only be supporting it's own weight plus some humans walking on it. What they did first was to dig down about 8 inches, then drove in a bunch of 2 meter poles around 1 meter apart, then laid some sand with rebar, and then poured the concrete pad which is around 6 inches thick.

Last year I also watched them sink 3 meter long poles about 2 meters apart along a long stretch where they will be building a wall just to separate a future moobaan home construction area from the surrounding area/maintain the gate community security.

[Crossy]

Our place in northern BKK (near the river on Bangkok clay) has 16m driven piles, I watched many of then go in

[krisb]

If your building a slab then the correct process is 200mm of soil then compact with machinery. This process then continues until desired level is reached. Some countries may vary this formula, but that's how it works here in Australia which has high standards of building codes.

If your using the raft system of building then compacting soil isn't necessary. As others have mentioned. This system of building is probably what you have going on as it's common in Thailand.

Try this website coolthaihouse.com

Heaps of great building tips all Thai related.

Good luck!

[apetley]

If your building a slab then the correct process is 200mm of soil then compact with machinery. This process then continues until desired level is reached. Some countries may vary this formula, but that's how it works here in Australia which has high standards of building codes.

If your using the raft system of building then compacting soil isn't necessary. As others have mentioned. This system of building is probably what you have going on as it's common in Thailand.

Try this website coolthaihouse.com

Heaps of great building tips all Thai related.

Good luck!

Can recommend coolthaihouse for practical info on building a house in Thailand too.

http://www.coolthaihouse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1070

Here's a link to my own housebuild with the info on footings on the first page.

Edited April 2, 2013 by apetley