Thanks for your posts - Crossy - if you don't mind me asking - what was the cost of the 7m beams in concrete and how far apart are they placed (I assume it varies from construction to construction but just so I have an idea...

Cheers

Scott

What you can see form his plans is that the 6.8M span requires 25x25cm posts (standard is 20x20), and the beams are using 8x25mm rebar which costs around 7x more than standard 12mm rebar, and at 70x25 more than double the concrete than a standard 40x20 beam. Hard to put a number on it without understanding the full BOQ and plan, but I'd guess the end result would be an increase in per sqm costs of around 2-3x.

I can't put a cost to the beams themselves as we had an all-in fixed price contract.

IMHO gives a sensible analysis, we paid about 20k per m² in 2011.

Our contractor is offering similar homes now at 23k/m² (and getting contracts) now that the locals have seen that you can have a traditional style Thai home in modern materials.

All the engineering of our place (except the curvy roof) came from the free plans here http://www.crossy.co.uk/Thai_House_Plans/index.html as a combination of No. 27 and 30.