Updated 6 July 2016:
I have just published a 750 page eBook that follows the challenges, frustrations and successes of building a house in Thailand from the very start of us buying the land through to moving in and beyond. You will be part of our building team for every day of construction and I will share many do’s and don’ts all designed to save you time, money, sleepless nights or all three. This book is a must have as part of your research on the subject of building in Thailand and you can find it HERE.
We moved into the new house at the end of March and I see that my last building post, which you can find HERE, covered the first couple of weeks after we moved in. This had us installing the kitchen benchtop and the front wall being built. The inside was mostly complete apart from wardrobes in the bedrooms and some detail work.
I thought I would update those of you following the build with what my impressions have been after two months of living in the house and what additional work has gone on. I had a reader suggest that I had gone quiet writing new material for the blog because I was spending my time watching the mangos grow. There’s a lot of truth in that comment but not completely true as it relates to the house 🙂
I have had a number of visitors since we moved in and the common question they all ask is “has the design worked?” No matter how much time and effort you put into drawing up plans on paper the supreme test of success is liveability day to day and this house works extremely well. Therefore my answer to that question is “yes” but I have a few reservations and I will share those with you here.
Cool House
This bit is a really Thai house build enthusiast topic only so I would skip it if building in Thailand isn’t on the agenda. If it is you will find this topic helpful.
Insulation and cool house design is always a “hot” topic in Thai building forums. I would like to tell you that I built the best solution and all of you should be following my example. Double thickness AAC or super-block walls, quality windows with double glazing in the bedrooms, insulation under the roof and on the ceilings, light coloured high quality aluminium roofing and minimal window exposure to the direct sunlight. It all sounds promising but does it work?
Will it surprise you to hear that as an ex-government employee I can comfortably answer that question with a “yes” and a “no”!
The whole package does provide a measure of protection from the heat, and for those of you in Thailand at this time hasn’t it been hot. Up to 40 sometimes and certainly in the high 30’s daytime in Isaan. The house never heats up more than 31 degrees inside where outside shade temperatures are as mentioned. The direct sun temperature is obviously higher. So I can say that a 31 degree house is better than a 40 degree one, and the family home we lived in while our house was being built with its uninsulated tin roof and wooden walls was hitting temperatures higher than 40. However for me anyway anything above the high 20’s inside starts to be uncomfortable. 31 is certainly liveable with a fan but it’s not that “hit” of cool as you enter the house that you’d like it to be.
So success in building a house that is cooler than outside air temperature but not successful as I would like in the overall outcome.
The reason for this shortfall can be explained both in house design and the type of heat we have here in Isaan and probably elsewhere. The forums argue endlessly about high insulation v’s a more Thai low or no insulation alternative. Building a very insulated house such as mine does give benefits by minimising the effect of external temperatures. Close the house up in the morning and minimise exposure to sunlight and the internal temperature only goes up a couple of degrees during the day. The downside is, as debated in the forums, in that the heat then gets trapped internally if the outside temperatures drop below the internal. Here the Thai “solution” allows the house to quickly expel it’s heat in the evenings and be more comfortable. Bloody uncomfortable in the daytime though.
My high insulation house would work more efficiently in cooling down if we had more movement of evening air. Unless there is a storm around here, as I found in Chiang Mai, the air is almost totally still. Opening windows and allowing cooler evening breezes to flow through the house just isn’t an option as it would be say in a coastal situation or maybe if in a more exposed/higher location.
I am sure that if I left the house open at night we would have a lower “starting” temperature than the 29 degrees we have now. However as most of my openings are sliding doors without security screens, an open house policy at night isn’t a realistic solution. Electronic solutions to draw cooler air inside and expelling hot air through the roof space has been discussed in forums but I haven’t seen a realistic working example.
The solution is one I had always planned and budgeted for – air conditioning in the living areas. Not the ideal solution but the only one on offer in my case. The bedrooms were always going to be air conditioned as 27 degrees is my comfortable sleeping temperature and that isn’t going to happen based only on air temperature in the hot season.
Here the excellent insulation design of the house works in my favour not to exclude heat but to keep artificially generated cool in. The bedroom air con, a 9,000 BTU unit servicing over 30 m2 very easily, is turned off when we get up and the room is still markedly cooler than the non-air conditioned part of the house for most of the day. I am running a 18,000 BTU inverter air con in the living areas covering 70 m2, an area double its rating. It won’t achieve Arctic cool but does definitely gives you that wonderful relief in temperature when you step inside.
How effective are the individual components of the house design? Impossible to say without building several houses and comparing the end result. I believe the main contributor to the “natural” lower internal temperature is the roof colour and insulation. I suspect that if you built the same house with my roof but say double non-AAC block walls and cheap windows you might end up with a hotter house but not dramatically so. I could be wrong – who knows?
I do think you’d have to upgrade air conditioning for this latter design and pay more in electricity costs because the house would “leak” cool air more than mine. Maybe short term savings for longer term costs.
Noise
The other major criteria for my design was to reduce the noise of an Isaan village. The double blocks, insulation and double glazed windows were all aimed even more to a quiet outcome than for the heat. Air con fixes your heat problem but apart from ear plugs what legally solves the 5.30 am loudspeaker announcements and endless night time dog singing sessions?
Here I can report that the result is worth every baht spent. The heavy duty 6 mm windows in the living areas vastly reduces daytime noise and the double glazing in the bedrooms is dramatic in its ability to provide for a peaceful night’s sleep. I have now been through a couple of funerals, Songkran and now the lead up to Bun Bang Fie, which you can read about HERE, as well as the travelling speaker trucks and the Moo Baan announcements without having an overwhelming desire to buy rice land in the sticks or change my retirement base.
I am not sure that I could cope with the endless intrusion of noise into my home at anytime of the day or night without medication! If noise is your problem do what I did and live happily.
Miscellaneous
1. The main bedroom has a large sliding door facing the morning sun. It wasn’t an ideal placement but I wanted to have a room visually connected to the garden. I knew it would be a heat problem and it is. We bought good quality curtains and they stay closed for the morning until the sun moves. The solution was always to build a pergola (a covered area) to protect this window but that hasn’t happened yet.
The second bedroom faces the setting sun but only has a blank double AAC wall on that side. It is the coolest room in the house. I wonder how a double non-AAC wall would cope with the hot afternoon sun compared to the superblock.
2. The effort in building the best shower in Thailand was all worth it. Don’t give me how refreshing a cool shower is! A high pressure, hot as you like shower is blissful no matter what the temperature.
Both Kudos shower heads developed splits six weeks after installation. Maybe they already had faults that weren’t helped by the water pressure going through them. We bought them in January at Global House but didn’t install them for a few months after when the bathroom fitout happened. Global only have a 30 day return policy. I wrote to Kudos stating the facts and received a very prompt response from their representative, a Suwatcharawut Suphaprod, who organised for me to exchange the heads at Global. Excellent follow up and a great result. Thank you Suwatcharawut.
3. Our first electricity bill came in at 2,300 THB or A$85.00 for the month and the second, after we were running the living room air con sometimes during the day, at 4,300 THB. One bedroom air con is on every night. Gaun is also watering the garden a couple of hours a day during the dry and this kicks the bore pump in to top up the main tank and a second pump is used to provide pressure to the hose. That storage hot water must have some effect too.
Considering this is the only major utilities cost as water, sewerage and rates are zero, it is a pretty low expense base. We had to exchange the gas bottle used for all our cooking at a cost of 420 THB or A$15.00. As we bought the original bottle in Chiang Mai when we first moved there November 2013 this a pretty good result!
4. We arranged with PEA, the Provincial Electricity Authority, to exchange our temporary meter box for a permanent version. I thought the new one would be free for an ongoing connection but not so. We paid 12,000 THB for the new one and will get a 10,000 THB refund on the existing one. I think the unit rate reduces once you get a permanent connection but will report back on that next time. Once the wet season starts in earnest Gaun won’t have to water as much as that will reduce costs.
5. The front wall was completed over this period and painted. A stainless steel gate was installed courtesy of a place on the 210 out of Udon heading to Nong Bua Lamphu just after the intersection with the 216 bypass. I can provide further information in the unlikely situation someone reading this wants one. It cost 10,000 THB a meter, a 40,000 cost including installation. Some places charge per square meter so make sure you know what sort of meter you are talking about before ordering.
An impressive look at night. Just need a flag and I could be an embassy! The wall lights come from underground power and are switched on and off from the house courtesy of Tam the A Team leader.
The gate is set up for a powered opening system but Gaun says she is happy to be the remote and save money! One day maybe.
6. The entry was concreted thanks to the A Team. All done by hand. I have left the driveway as gravel mainly for cost reasons but also because I am well over more building work.
A mansion entrance for a less than mansion home.
A vivid letterbox, still to receive it’s first mail item, and a sign with our street and Moo Ban number, used a few times in the Thai lottery without success so far, completes the front. Planted up by Gaun.
7. The design of the outside areas has worked really well. The sitting area at the front is the most used part of the house in the daytime. If you are building a house here do make sure you are generous with your comfortable outside living spaces unless you are a type who sits in the air con watching sport, in which case don’t bother. The outlook from here over the pond and garden is relaxing and will only get better as the garden develops.
The view from the outside living area. Contact me if you want to buy a beautiful pot like this in Udon Thani. On the 2 heading to Nong Khai. Easy in Chiang Mai, difficult to find here.
A coffee in the morning and a beer at night.
The dining area on the other side is also used quite a bit for breakfast and dinners. The Thai kitchen gets more of a workout than the inside kitchen although when the flying ants hit, see my post HERE, then all cooking and eating is done inside and it’s great to have that option. I am expecting inside to get lots of use in the cool season November – February as well.
8. The wardrobes in both bedrooms have proved a bit of a challenge. I originally wanted to have built-in wardrobes and the design allowed for that. Finding someone who can give me this result is more difficult. I have ended up ordering stand alone units from Living Index and they will be delivered this Sunday. I will provide photos of both bedrooms next update.
9. The pond is both a wonderful focal point and a pain. Isaan is very dirty in the sugar/dry season with dust and sugar cane residue after burning the crop. The warm water and sunlight has also resulted in excessive green algae rather than the clear water to view Koi fish and two turtles.
The benefit outweighs the work so we will stick with the maintenance. If you do have a green algae problem rather than chemicals try a biofilter option. We have been running ours for a few days and there is a definite improvement. Heaps of info and YouTube videos if you search for “how to build a biofilter” or go HERE.
My step-daughter Peng and Gaun.
10. TOT efficiently transferred my wireless broadband from the family home to the new place at a cost of 1,200 THB and two beers. I am still getting the advertised 13 mbps download rate for 690 THB a month plus tax. A new 20 mbps plan is coming soon for 890 THB a month that might be worth checking out.
A satellite dish was fitted at the back of the house, because they are butt ugly, by Tam head of the A Team, a guy who can do anything. We now have 200 + channels of absolute rubbish Asian TV 🙂 I watch farang TV streaming from my laptop to the TV so see no need to buy a True TV type option.
11. House and contents insurance has been taken out through AXA Insurance. 2 million on the house and 400,000 replacement for the contents. Around 6,000 THB a year premium.
12. The overhead fans are wonderful. Don’t build a house without them whatever your Thai wife says. In retrospect I would have put them in the outside areas as well instead of the floor fans we are using.
13. The powered drinking water filter isn’t just a gimmick. We replenish the fridge’s 5 liter water container regularly. This feeds the cool water outlet on the front of the fridge and the ice maker inside. Instead of waiting for the water to be forced through the filters there is a large filtered tank that does the 5 liters and then the filter pump refills quickly.
14. We ended up with heaps of minor surface cracks as a result of using render on AAC blocks. Ming, the builder, came back and did a big two day effort to fill and repaint them all. We have had a couple of new ones but the walls seem a lot more stable now.
15. The huge 3.6 meter front window is a lovely view point for the garden however it does transfer a lot of heat inside. I might have reduced the size had I realised just how much difference it made to the lounge room temperature during the day. A great feature but at a price in cooling efficiency.
The Garden
Two weeks after moving in we had the basis for a garden thanks to Gaun’s tireless work. Where the house was all my design and input the garden is totally Gaun’s. In this heat I am happy to let her do her thing and also it is her passion and she loves every moment.
What we started with at the end of March.
And two months later. Gaun has planted everything herself. No input from me other than money!
Most of this was done in the first two weeks after moving in.
Complete with static turtle as well as the real ones.
Water pots with lotus plants have been added to this rather blank stretch of gravel on the left of the house. Heaps of new plants that will add shade, privacy and colour over time. You can see the wireless broadband dish on the roof.
I am sure I have missed things I should have told you. If you need any specific information please write.
I might do another update in a few months but it will probably be more on sharing the garden progress for those of you interested in that side of the home. I will also cover the couple of items flagged in this update.
In summery this is a wonderful house and a joy to live in. The combination of high quality living farang style, a beautiful tropical garden in the making and the vibrancy of Thailand just outside the gate is pretty hard to beat.
Thanks for reading.
Hi Tony,
It all looks SO beautiful. Gaun is welcome to stay at my place as long as she likes and potter in the garden…there is plenty to be getting on with here
Re; extracting heat from the house. Our house is hopelessly uninsulated and upstairs was impossible in the heat of summer. There is a small aircon in Glens office but that was the only usable room up there – trying to use a fan to circulate the cooled air from that room was pointless as we had no way of removing the heat.
But a few years ago we installed An electric power vent on the roof – designed to extract heat from the roof cavity. In Australia it was through a company called Skydome (they had solar versions but when cloudy, we felt they would be ineffective so we have the electric version). To make it effective at cooling the overall living space upstairs, we installed a ‘blank’ aircon vent on the ceiling that can be adjusted to restrict airflow and we have it open just a little so that heat that gathers near the ceiling is sucked up through the roof cavity and keeps the space cool. It’s important not to have the vent open too much as the force of the extraction fan will pull the cooler air up and out as well over time – you just need enough of a gap that the accumulating hot air can escape from up high. With the vent fully open, the Venturi effect would eventually extract the cool air and suck the outside hot air in via doors and windows etc and defeat the purpose.
As a result, upstairs no longer creeps up into the mid 30s, rather it tends to sit at about 26-28 if we have the extractor on and use a fan to circulate cooled air from the single small aircon around the large upstairs space. Very happy with the system overall
Will write to you soon – life has been busy with lots of things. Will make for a long and rambling letter
Love to you both xx
Thank you Janet. I will reply direct to you but in the meantime for anyone reading, the Skydome link is here http://www.skydome.com.au/Electric-Powervent. Worth investigating as a long term solution to getting cooler air into the house in the evenings.
Hi Tony,
we have just built and moved into out house about 12 kms south of Prakhonchai in Buri Ram province.
While we were building, we rented a house on the main highway 24 which provided us with fibre optic connection at 20mbs- fantastic speed.
Now were we live we are well removed from civilisation and only a handful of villages about 4 or 5 kms away.
Can you tell me more about your TOTwireless internet as when we went to TOT to tell them we are moving they were not able to suggest any alternative and the 3G hotspot on my phone is too slow for internet TV.
Do you have to be close to an\ tower d=for the TOT or sew you close to a village ?
Any advice much appreciated,
cheers
Rod
Hi Rod.
We live in a “suburb” of Si Bun Ruang, which is a small but growing town 30km South of Nong Bua Lamphu. I don’t know what the alternatives are for broadband in the village but we have always had wireless since we moved here in November at 13 mbps @ 690 THB + tax per month. We are lucky to be in sight (just) of a tower and get a very reliable service from TOT. They have just started a 20 mbps service for 990 THB, which I might look at, but I am not sure whether it is wireless or cable based.
By the sound of it you aren’t near a tower which leaves cable as the alternative. Do you have black cables hanging under the power lines in your area? If so someone should be providing broadband. Get your partner to chat to neighbours? 3BB is the alternative provider in Si Bun Ruang. Maybe talk to them too.
Good luck with it. I know how central a good broadband service is to us farang in Thailand. The times I haven’t had it made me feel very cut off from the world.
Cheers Tony
Tony,
uncanny timing.
before I read your reply today, I noticed on Friday morning that there were some guys in a pickup truck pulling a cable along the road opposite our house; didn’t think anymore about it and assumed it was another temporary electric cable for some other house being built up the road.
When my wife went to the little food stall at the end of the road for her daily dose of SomTam, the woman at the stall happened to mention that there were guys eating there in the morning who were laying cable to a faring house further up the road in the next village, and happened to say they were from 3BB.
My wife casually mentioned this to me, and I of course became all excited.
She will call 2BB on Monday to see what is being laid on the other house and what speed we could get.
Like the look of your garden, ours is still a builders yard at the moment, but at least we are in the house and the outside can wait a bit till we have some spare dosh,
cheers
Rod
Great news Rod and funny about the timing. I hope it ends up being a winner for you.
Broadband keeps us farang in touch with the rest of the world. I would be lost without it. Let me know how you go.
Tony
Tony, thanks again for taking the time to write about your home building project. The house and blog are both nicely done!
Thanks MJ. I appreciate the comment.
Tony,
I friend recently pointed me to your blog. I read a number of your very enjoyable posts – including much of your record on your house building. I have a couple of thoughts on your recent revisit on your house – especially the cool house aspect.
As I followed your blog, I was wondering about the possible options:
1. Regarding the venting of your attic space. Did you think of putting those fans on a thermostat and/or clock timer? My suspicion is that running the fan when the roof-space exceeds a certain temperature would help reduce the ambient living space temperature by 1-3 degrees(?). What temperature should you use to trigger the vent fans? I suspect you would find that temperature after doing your own experiments. Hopefully that could be an economical and easy retrofit to try? And, while you were at it, perhaps a cheap remote temperature sensor in that airspace with remote readout in your living area might be interesting/informative?
2. I also wonder about the potential value of close-able external window covers over your east and west facing doors and windows? If you had those external covers closed over your east-facing glass at sunrise, and over your west-facing glass in late afternoons – so that direct sunlight would not hit those glass areas? I wonder how many degrees that might be worth? I suspect that you could make such covers from almost anything – preferably reflective. White wood shutters and “barn doors”? Reflective cloth perhaps as an inexpensive temporary retrofit to test the concept?
IMHO, internal drapes/blinds inside such windows may help a bit. But external shading should be much more effective. Perhaps worth another 1-3 degrees?
3. Another possibility might be reflective window film, installed as a retrofit on your glass especially that facing east and west. Below is a link to 3M’s site in Singapore. I am not promoting 3M, just suggesting that your own browsing on possible options might be helpful. Some such films are DIY. Others involve booking the installers as well.
http://solutions.3m.com.sg/wps/portal/3M/en_SG/PrestigeWindowFilms/Home/Products/
4. As you note, open ground floor windows all night are not practical without security grates. Perhaps, that suggests that security grates on some doors or windows might be a good idea? In your house – I wonder about an effective but artistic wrought iron security gate over the door to your morning eating area with outside kitchen? Perhaps with a floor fan aimed out from, or in from, that doorway at night? This option might require someone to get up and close doors/windows before the loudspeakers fired up in the morning..
Maybe one or more of those could help?
Regards, Tom
Hi Tom. Thank you for the time and thought you have put into this comment. It is much appreciated.
I did originally plan to have whirlybirds, as they are called in Australia, installed during construction but changed my mind until I assessed the situation with the house after we moved in. They are easy to retrofit. I currently think that the main problem is not the temperature in the roof space. We have a reflective and insulated Colorbond roof and a thick layer of insulation between rood space and the internal rooms. I do have a spare remote thermometer which I will place in the roof and report back of the variation in temperatures.
The main problem as I see it is that we don’t achieve a decent variation in internal and external temperatures as a base to start the day. The house does a great job in excluding heat and only gets two or three degrees hotter during the day. However where the starting temperature is 29 or 30 the end result is uncomfortable. The problem is exchanging external and internal air during the cooler evenings and nights, which then allows you to trap that internally at the beginning of the day. If I could start with an internal temperature of say 25 or 26, the increase during the day would be acceptable or at least minimise the use of air con.
I think your suggestion of security screens is an option. Unfortunately the main openings in the living areas are three large sliding doors which makes fixed type grills ugly. The outside dining area could take a grill but it is only one of three entrances.
A possible solution is the use of stainless steel security mesh screens such as these http://www.meshtec.com/th/products/. I have heard they are expensive but I will investigate further and let you know. They would allow us to securely leave the living area open at night and this would make a big difference to our base temperatures.
The other option, or both could be used in conjunction, is something like Skydome, which you can find here http://www.skydome.com.au/Electric-Powervent. This was suggested by a good friend of mine on this blog. I don’t know if Thailand has a variation of this or imports them but will make further enquiries and also let you know. The benefit is the Skydome powered vent is that it will extract the hot air from the rooms and allow cooler air to be quickly dragged in. Mesh screens and the powered vent would be a winning combination I would think but the cost may be excessive. We will see.
We have planted up golden palms on three sides of the house and they will quickly provide window shade from the morning and evening sun. Since moving in I have built an external screen which protects the bedroom window from morning sunshine. I am looking at getting an extension to the roof built on the East side to provide total protection and also increase our external living areas. This will be ready for my next house update. We have good quality curtains on all windows, except the kitchen where we have venetian blinds. The house was designed to minimise Westerly exposure and we only have one door facing that way. A cover of some sort would be a good idea until the palms grow. In Australia we had those roll-up bamboo blinds that could be fitted externally. I am sure they are available here.
Tom, you have motivated me to become more proactive on the heat problem. We are in the wet season here, although it is anything but wet, and the temperatures are comfortably in the high 20’s low 30’s. A nice time to be here. I will plan to have some ideas in place before the next heatwave and will keep my blog readers informed.
Thanks again.
Tony
G’day Tony,
I just stumbled across your site today while surfing the web dreaming of building in Isaan one day. It seems we have a few things in common; I currently reside in Canberra (although working OS at the moment), I am married to a Thai (13 years with one son), we own some land in the village my wife is from which is about 10kms south of Nakhom Phanom (Northeast on the Mekong River), and we would like to build one day.
While we are about 10-15 years away from building, I am keen to hear of other people’s experiences with the process, as there are a few horror stories out there.
I am slowly reading through your blog; however, a couple of questions have come to mind, if you don’t mind answering. How much land do you have? How big is your house under roof? And lastly what was the total cost for the build?
I must say your house does look great and I hope your garden is going well.
Cheers
Nick
Welcome Nick. I hope that those dreams works out for you one day. I haven’t been to Nakhon Phanom yet but it is on the list. My wife has a friend there who is currently living in England. Next time she is in the country we will get across to explore the area.
There are some horror stories about everything in Thailand. Thankfully I have yet to encounter any of them. The main problem with building can be trying to project manage when outside the country. A huge mistake. If you can’t be here don’t build – as simple as that. Try and employ a real builder who can read plans (and have some plans for him to read!) and not just a rice farmer in the off-season and it is best to leave family out of the building process as employees if possible.
In answer to your questions (1) I have half a rai, which is 800 m2. I actually think it is closer to 1,000 m2 but haven’t taken the tape measure out. (2) The house is 260 m2 under roofline. Of that about 160 m2 is internal and the rest is made up of one metre eaves and two largish outside areas. We actually spend as much time in the outside lounge area as we do inside and definitely more than the expensively furnished inside lounge! I have just extended the outside area by 2 x 7 meters to make it more spacious and encourage you to give as much attention to how you will live outside as inside when designing your home. (3) The total cost ended up around 2 million baht or A$80,000. This includes the carport and the front wall/gate. Take off 100,000 for these. If you go to Week 22 of my building posts you will find a breakdown at the bottom. I can send you the full Excel spreadsheet if you want. I suspect materials are much the same cost as in Australia maybe a little less but the labour is the real bonus. I paid 380,000 THB or a bit over A$14,000 for the entire labour cost. In Australia that would cover you for the first week!
Thanks for your comments about the house and land. They are a real joy ever day. We have almost completed some extensions and I will be writing a house build update in the next couple of weeks so keep an eye out for that.
Let me know if you have any further questions.
Tony
Hey Tony,
Happy new year! Your posts have been absolutely so helpful in my quest to build a home in Nong Bua Lamphu.
Could I inconvenience you into sending that spreadsheet? I would love to see the detailed costs.
If you have time to chat, I am always available via email.
Thanks a million!
Hi James.
Thanks so much for the comment.
I have sent the spreadsheet to your mailbox. Happy to help out if I can.
Tony
G’day Tony,
Thanks for the information; it will come in handy when we start to build. I think you lucked in with your land as it does look a lot larger than a 1/2 rai in the pictures. I also totally agree with your statement regarding using the in-laws in the building process. I get on well with mine; however, I don’t think it would end well if they were involved.
It’s good to have an appreciation of what your money will buy, and you have clearly put a lot of work into documenting the cost of everything. We are planning (our pipe dream) of dividing our time between Thailand and Australia, and was thinking of spending somewhere in the order of 1 to 1.5. So I don’t think it will be as grand as your house, but it should do the trick. I will definitely be designing in some large outdoor areas as I know that is where I will be spending most of my time.
In regards to your design, I see you made up a plan yourself, which I intend to do. Can I ask, did you then have a professional draft up you design and convert it to Thai for your builder?
Lastly, I like your blog on Chang Mai, funnily enough we are going there in a few weeks for a holiday.
Cheers
Nick
No problems. You can build something nice for 1 – 1.5 million. Single skin walls, Thai roofing (if using aluminium), standard windows and a Thai kitchen inside/outside will save you heaps but still give you a very livable house.
I got the plans drawn up by a guy in the planning department of the local Tessaban (the town council). My land is outside the Tessaban area, which you can determine by whether your garbage is collected or not!, and therefore didn’t need any sort of approval. Not that approval would have been a problem as the guy who drew the plans was in charge of the area that would have approved them 🙂 They cost me 8,000 THB.
Enjoy Chiang Mai.
Tony
Hi Tony
I left a comment for you on coolthaihouse.com a while back, but didn’t get a response. I was wondering what you calculated your final build cost was excluding air conditioners, fans, and kitchen appliances. BTW I’m thinking seriously of purchasing your ebook when I start my build. Thanks, Steve
Sorry Steve. I haven’t followed coolthaihouse since I finished the build.
I think the base house, that is excluding everything outside the four walls, came in at about 1.8 million. The book has a chapter with all the daily costs notes broken into categories, which people have found useful. However I will send you a summary to your email address of the final costs, which might answer your question more specifically.
Let me know how you go.
Best regards.
Tony
Hello Tony, interestingly enough I was just in Nong Bua Lamphu last week visiting my fiancé’s family. As a gesture of gratitude for accepting me to their home, I went to the local home improvement center (Global House) and purchased two (2) 13,000 BTU/Hr Toshiba wall mounted AC units and had them installed. During installation I accompanied workers into the attic and was shocked not to see ANY thermal insulation barriers!! I guess I know what my next project is when I visit in the near future. As I mentioned, I have a Thai finance and plan to retire in Thailand within the next 8 or so years. We thought we would build on property in Nong Bua Lamphu that her family owns, but my generally inactive allergies were raging during the visit (never been around rice pollen before and those 5 days I had no relief and very little sleep). So the retirement home has moved south towards Jomtiem where I have no issues. With that said, I was scouring the internet and found your website! I will soon order your book as we plan to build a home somewhere in Thailand (preferably close to a beach). Your website has a lot of relevant information that will save someone like me time, money, and frustration, so I look forward to getting the book soon.
Hi Richard. I am sure those air con units will be much appreciated come the hot season in March/April and beyond. Insulation is a mystery to most Thais. Even just some foil under the roof would make a huge difference and it’s free once installed.
I understand about your problem with allergies and the rice pollen this time of year. We get the smoke from the endless sugar cane burnoff starting January and that can cause problems for some people too. Jomtien sounds a safer option.
I am pleased to hear that you will be buying the eBook at some stage. I am sure you will find it useful as part of your research into the methods and challenges of building a farang quality house in Thailand.
Good luck with it all and drop in for a chat next time you’re in the area.
Cheers. Tony
Hi Tony,
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Matthias
G’day Tony, firstly thanks for doing this website, I have only just found it two weeks ago and have been reading through for ideas on building in Thailand, (even though I don’t think I’ll be doing it for another 5 years.)
I’m from W.A. the last 11 years living in the pilbara. Have you looked at whirly birds or mushrooms with vents on the eaves to draw out hot air from inside the ceiling which in turn reduces heat inside the house? Have you thought about solar power? Have you looked at window security screens for leaving windows open at night?
My pleasure Mark. I am glad you are finding it useful.
I can only comment on your questions in respect to my personal experience, which may or may not be helpful. Whirlybirds are readily available here, although not widely used. I think they have limited impact if you design your house properly in the first place. I have a white steel roof (Colorbond) with foam/foil and then the best foil/batt insulation you can buy on top of the ceiling. The roof space stays 5 degrees under outside air temperature and the internal spaces are 5 degrees lower again. We had six weeks of over 40 degrees and the house without aircon never got over 31 degrees. In my case installing whirlybirds would expel cooler air and replace it with hotter outside air, defeating the purpose. Where they can be useful is if you have concrete tiles, which retain the heat (which is one of the reasons I didn’t use them) well after the sun has set and the air temperature has started to fall. In that scenario the outside air temperature will fall under the roof space temperature and the hot air pulled out might be helpful.
I still think that the key is to have the best insulation between the roof space and the living areas so that what is happening in that upper space is not an issue. I can put my hand on the ceiling and can’t feel it being warm in peak hot periods. The other important aspect is to make sure you have insulated walls. I have seen houses built with some insulation on the roof but then they use plain concrete blocks or the small red bricks, which have zero insulation properties. You might have a cooler roof but you end up with hot walls so you have a hot house anyway. Using AAC blocks is the best option and not THAT much more than the concrete/brick alternatives if used in a single layer. I went with a double layer and get zero transference of heat through the walls even in the days when they had sun on them (lots of greenery now). Go single layer and maybe a double on the west, setting sun wall. Make sure as little sunlight as possible gets into the house, the same as back home. No windows facing west if possible.
Solar – Electricity is still reasonably cheap here. I pay about $100 a month to run the house including a total of seven water pumps of various types. The big expense is for those expats that build crap hot houses that require everyday aircon because they never took the time to understand about building a cool house. Do it cool originally and the savings are there for a lifetime. We went through the hot season here Apr-May/June this year and only used the aircon in the living areas maybe 5 times in late afternoon. Unless the season is extreme the house sits between 27 in the morning getting to 29 late afternoon with NO aircon. We have overhead fans and that’s all we need. I do run a small aircon in the bedroom (9,000 BTU for 35 sq mtrs) set on 26 degrees at night. All our aicons are one size down from the recommended rating, which you’d need for a hot house.
There are solar companies run by farang around and I can give you a couple of names if you want to explore further. The economics just don’t work at this time where a small system can cost 300,000 baht. I would love to go solar if I had the money but as long as I could have storage capacity (Tesla Powerwall sort of thing), not to save money but to give security of power in all situations.
No I haven’t looked at security screens. Because the house is so cool we rarely have windows open, which lets in hotter air from outside. I checked my thermometer when I read your comment last night. At 20:00 it was both 27 degrees inside and out so no benefit in opening the house. In the hotter seasons even during the night it is cooler inside than outside and in Isaan we mostly don’t get evening breezes so there’s no opportunity to swap hotter inside air with cooler evening air. If you lived on the coast with sea breezes the dynamics of open windows might be very different. If you have a Thai partner you might find them very worried about open windows at night. It isn’t just the security situation but they are very superstitious (especially if from Isaan) and the possibility of spirits/ghosts climbing through windows even with screens might be an issue.
Probably more information than you wanted but designing a house for the tropics is a hot topic for me 🙂 You come from an extreme part of Australia so have a far better idea of what’s needed than the poor guys who arrive here from Europe and let their Thai partners design their house!
[email protected] will find me if you wanted to ask questions “off-line”.
Cheers and good luck with the planning.
Tony
Hello Tony, we spoke a while ago where I introduced myself and let you know I am going to marry a woman from Nong Bua Lamphu. We would love to have you and your lovely wife at our wedding planned for Friday, October 12 (early of course). As details firm up I will let you know. I’ve been to NBL several times and have wanted to contact you; perhaps this can be the time we meet.
Looking forward to meeting as we will be neighbors in the future.