Trades & Labor Master Builder (Qualified)

Please excuse the misunderstanding. I was not trying to be nice. I was only pointing out that there are morons everywhere on earth. This is not unique to the Phils.

In the USA I once hired a roofing contractor that had been in business a long time and had good references. They subbed out the roof removal and installation of the underlayment to a subcontractor. The subcontractors workers were clueless. The underlayment is a water resistant layer below the roofing tiles. It comes in rolls and is supposed to be laid out from the lower portion of the roof to the top just like tiles with each upper layer overlapping the lower layer. This way the water running down the roof will go over the seam onto the lower layer. These morons in the USA did it in reverse from top to bottom. This way the water ran under the lower layer and into the house. The general contractor did not notice the issue when installing the roofing tiles.

My point is that there is poor quality workmanship everywhere. It is not exclusive to the Phils.

Here we do not have the long term relationships where we have sorted out the bad quality from the good. We cannot trust the people sent by local businesses. We meet people randomly and do not have the time to sort out the bad quality from the good.

Random local workers are OK for the work that we can see and can be reworked. Framing, masonry, etc. Plumbing and electrical is a bit more sophisticated and we need to be more involved in its design and installation. You have a team that you have been working with. Next time have the local vendor produce a sketch and a bill of materials that you will buy and have your team install under your direction. This way you will have better control over the quality. In the end this is what happened. The welder working for you built the shelf.

We have no idea what experience they have or what Polaris is paying them. Maybe they have spent their lives working in a coconut plantation and cutting sugarcane.

Nah. I am not going to tell you to go to church. You will not get your plumbing work done there.

What I am saying is that in order to ensure the job is done correctly you have to lay out and direct the work yourself. As the saying goes: "If you want it done correctly then you have to do it yourself". The advantage here is that we can pull together low cost teams that do the physical work at our direction.

 

What I am saying is that in order to ensure the job is done correctly you have to lay out and direct the work yourself.

Well this all sounds good in print and mostly what you say is correct up to a point? but the potential for even the simplest of things to go wrong are still so very high, I cannot explain this situation all that well, only to say that to give a simple instruction to those that do speak English on a site, some may even say before you finish telling them; Sir of course we all know this, then you start to feel stupid and think to yourself why am I to try to tell them how to do their job.

Then you decide to get off the site and out of their way and when you return they will have it done, Well this ain't gonna happen as I said before the potential for even the simplest of things to go Wrong is so very high and in truth they really do not know their jobs at all, this has happened to me so many times in my year of building here, you really have to work with these guys to understand that even though they have been building houses for years, they have NO IDEA of what is good, bad, or indifferent, even the simplest of things that would seem impossible to get wrong, they will manage the impossible, its about they only thing they are consistently good at?

 

Sadly you and your crew are only building one house and will not reap the value of the lessons learned by building more. The team building and learning process is slow. It is so slow that sometimes it is hard to see the positive change. Future builds will be much happier.

The Polaris incident was a new group of people thrust into the situation. The welder on your team who had worked with you previously did fine. It takes time to sort out the differences.

My advice would be to reduce the use of outside labor and patiently have your crew do the work under your supervision. Only use outside "experts" to design the system and source the parts. (Which you will then review with your friends.) This will take a little longer but it will greatly reduce the frustration.

 

As a former educator, I'm in the "poor education" party. This includes literacy, but also motivation and application sufficient to compete 12-year high school education in an advanced country. That is the level of literacy necessary to correctly use the installation manual, which I think is the basic problem. In Negros Or., only a 4-year college grad might attain that level.

 

Just getting info on this one too.
Anyone been able to do a cost comparison on a cement truck pouring a slab vs. the local workforce?
Ya'll know what I mean, mixing on the ground, shovel into bucket, dump bucket. I have seen that using a cement mixer here is not much more efficent than 2 or 3 guys and then the time between batches causes seams between where the cement has started to dry and the new wet batch. I think the 1 bag mixer is just easier on my lower back, or it was till I learned that I will just have someone else do the mixing while I control the amount of water used.

 

Yes I can give you an idea of the costs involved, I had 25cube of Ready Mix at a strength of 4000PSI a bit of overkill I know, but I wanted to make sure at the very least I would get 3000 PSI, the company recommended that 2500 was enough and it cost me 12K extra for the higher grade, with a pump to spread it the cost was P123K the hire of the Pump Truck was 10K 30mtrs was a close as the cement trucks could get to the work site 25 cube is equal to around 200 1 bag batches of concrete from a mixer, unless the area was small and only a thin slab required for say a motorbike, it is always better to use a mixer. hand mixing never gives consistent results, having said that mine had come in three batches=3 truck loads but the second mix was slightly more wet than the first and the last. This big slab was all poured in 2hrs.

One crap builder here gave me a recommendation to use a dozen guys and two mixers the cost of the materials alone worked out at just over P83K, it would take 10hrs to mix all this, with two mixers running at fast speed.

 

On many occasions I have posted here and said, you can have a good house built here if you do a bit of research and then to supervise all of the work yourself, now I think I am wrong to have said that? I am now of the opinion that you would have to build 3 houses to get the final one as you would really want it, House 1 would have many mistakes, house 2 would be an improvement over the first, by the time you build house 3 you will have it all sussed out and have the tools and knowledge to build that exactly to your satisfaction.

 

I employed a fair few Filipinos in my business, did a better job than the moron Australian workers I had.

I went through a period of time that I had to stop employing apprentices kids, had no one suitable to train the kids.

I stared importing Filipino workers and it turned my business around. They did the job to what I called a 80% standard but 100% reliable and respectful of supervisors and equipment. Within about 6 months they became very good tradesman now 99% and I now had someone to train young kids again.

One thing I took out of it was treat them with respect and praise them, it goes a long way. Spend time retraining them how you want things done don't expect they will just do it to your standard.

A few friends that had the same business as mine didn't have much luck with Filipino workers and its because of the way they treated them.



Just my 2c

 

Also house No3 you will do it faster and cheaper, the variation in prices of materials here can vary so much, I will attach a picture of two PPR fittings both are elbows one male which was bought in Uy Mataio P90 and the other female bought in Polaris P333, it would appear that the male fitting has more metal on it than the female, one builder told me the difference in price and how they justify it is; the Polaris fitting works up to 300PSI and the other a mere 150PSI any domestic system it unlikely to be higher than 60PSI, they really are a rip off company, however I did find find a place who were much more reasonable price wise and had everything I needed, One Line Direct they are actually a Hardware store behind Zenith at their rear entrance, they also have electrical fittings and perhaps more I never did ask all the stock is at the back where you are not allowed to go. if you really plan for a house build and have a place to store materials great savings can be made on line, some stuff you have to buy there anyway, for example if you wanted Silicone sealant in anything other than white or clear about the only place to get this is online and also get the choice of the type of cure you want.

 

Big box stores with competitive prices is one thing I miss back in my home country. Here one has to drive around to a number of different shops to find what they want at reasonable prices.

Thank you for posting about your build and where you source your materials. It gives others information about where to get this stuff.