The aerobic treatment system and the effluent cistern have been installed and hooked up. Here is a picture from today: You can see what is underneath in this post from a few days ago. Now we just need to build a cover for the cistern and a pump to pump the effluent to a secondary…
First results from low thermal mass construction experiment
When we had the first house designed, my primary design goal was simplicity. This is not just the simplicity of construction, but also the simplicity of maintenance as well as function. This includes things like no “hidden spaces” where rodents and insects can hide and make nests, or for hidden water leaks to make a…
Sewage system mostly completed
Sewage is rarely people’s favorite topic, but in a home, it is a very important one. Nothing exemplifies this more than working on the electrical wiring around the new house and realizing you really need to use the restroom. And then you remember that you can’t because the sewage system hasn’t finished installation. Well, the…
Utility trench finished and closed up
The past few days have been hectic. We added a second water main pipe just for redundancy. (It will remain unused until we detect a problem in the first pipe at some point in the future.) But that was the easy part. On the last day that we had the excavator rented, we needed to…
Finished digging the trench for water and electrical supply
We’re now getting ready to run the final water and electrical mains to the first house. The trench has been dug the whole way about 1m (~40in) deep. The water main pipe has been laid down, but the HDPE pipe for the electrical won’t arrive for a couple more days. We are actually thinking to…
Canal side house foundation finished
The cement footings on the pilings were finished a few days ago, and we rented an excavator to fill the soil back in. Here is a simple progression over the past 2 days: The foundation on Nov 25.Everything finished and ready to fill in. The foundation on Nov 26. Filling the soil back in. The…
Making PVC look like wood
Is it possible to make white PVC pipes look like wood? Take a look at this photo and compare the white PVC pipe on the right to the fake wood PVC pipe on the left: I think that is pretty cool! But you stop and scratch your head for a moment wondering… why would someone…
Cement footings on the new house
The cement footings on the new house are a little different than on the first one. The neighboring pilings are connected together by a cement connection. Here is a picture of the work in progress:
Construction of second house begins
Finally we are beginning the second house. It is up against the canal so we call it บ้านริมคลอง (“baan rim klong” or “house on the canal”). The cement footings are mostly done so the steel frame will go up soon.
An organic looking metal welded walkway
Praew and I have been discussing how to design the walkway around the first house and the corresponding walkway roof for a few months now. We looked at different examples and nothing seemed to fit our sense of style. A few weeks back, Praew came up with the interesting idea of using a more tree-like…
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