BUILD YOUR OWN HOME OR BUY READY BUILT

OH! you could not Boot them not even wearing Flip Flops, they would just topple over, they are hanging there by a thread waiting on the 300PSI render to hold it all together.

 

Thanks for posting Dave1952

I have always been amazed how they build houses in most parts of Asia, not just Philippines. Always take a bit of interest in reading threads like this and looking at partly built houses when in town and shake my head with disbelief.

I have built a fair few houses in my country, I'm not a professional but have a bit of a clue.

When the time comes to build in Pi I'm pretty sure I will build steel frame and possibly even import one from China and assemble it. I been to China plenty of times buying building products. Would end up doing the supervision and a fair bit of the work.

 

Can you share with us your tricks to buying materials from China. How do you find companies to buy from? How do you manage the import/export bureaucracy?

 

Been to Guangzhou maybe 10 - 12 times buying building martials.

First time was about 15 years ago I employed this agent called Amy, like a PA on the ground.
Amy would meet me every day at my hotel and take me to the factory's. She would arrange pricing, deposits, lunch, transport etc. Amy would arrange shipping and all the products to go to the container when ready.

I was Amy's 2nd ever customer when she first started out, she now has clients all over the world.

Over the years Amy and myself have found some great factory's and a few not so good. She now has a good network of reliable suppliers and she is very trustworthy.

Finding good suppliers in China is hard work, takes years.

PM me if you want her details

 

It may be interesting for some of us here to know what do you mean by steel frame, I'm guessing you mean GI Steel C channels thast what they call them here in Phils?

I am building with a combination of Black steel for the Pillars and Beams but using GI steel for the stud walls, not sure I would use black steel again especially heavy gauge it needs a lot of painting and so much of that gets scraped off when handling, up till now I have used 22x5ltr tins of primer average cost of p750 per tin and 5x5ltr top coat at P1950 per tin, also Pinoys are not good painters and very wasteful with brushes, half full paint tins with the lids lying off.

 

The solution might be paper! I read of an entire village or town built from papier mâché - loaded onto a ship and sent there flat-pack style. I cannot find any reference to it now so it may have been untrue or I dreamt it.

I have found: "In England in the early 1700s papier mâché was mainly used to make decorative ornaments, such as small boxes, wall brackets, decorative ceilings, card and tea trays and inkstands. As time passed, methods of making papier mâché objects shifted from time-consuming hand pressing to more industrial and machine driven methods, using steam to soften pre-made panels and machines to mould them into strong and even shapes. This meant that papier mâché could even be used to make furniture. It became a very popular method of making ‘ japanned’ furniture. "

A company recently made a pavilion for Coachella but "Meanwhile, Ball and his colleagues are looking for opportunities to try their paper-pulp building technique away from the desert. “It’s a different set of challenges, in terms of humidity and moisture,” he says. “We’re studying how to handle those types of conditions.”

That is the big issue, of course, CLIMATE.

 

This type of construction, and single level. Buy the walls as pre fab, little cutting and no painting needed. All galvanized.

 

Looking to buy precast concrete wall sections for security wall front of property, if not then would like to buy concrete forms to pour wall... live in Pamplona so hard to find source... any suggestions

 

Sir there is no need to buy forms just make them yourself with Phenolic boards, they are like the standard cheap ply boards but have a melamine finish to them, coat them with floor wax and they are good for many repeat uses, p1050 per 8x4ft 3/4 quarter inch sheet, look up the Texas Filipino builder on You Tube, he gives a good instruction on how to use them, he uses Coco Wood to brace them but better to use steel angle bar I think, buy a cheap form Vibrator around p4K or less and you can make concrete panels that need very little finishing, if you can think of a method to provide a key to each poured panel you can build a wall without pillars at 150mm thick. easy method if you put some thought into it.

 

Mark Higgins owner of the Octagon Bar, Bacong, Plus another Man named Len (a good Scotsman) provide these type of prefab houses, in fact the steel structure of the Octagon bar has been done in this way, They gave me a price for the steel structure in my house which I thought at the time to be too expensive, I now know they were not too far off the mark and it would have been far less problematic for me to have gone down that road.