Trades & Labor Master Builder (Qualified)

Dave in the Philippines do they put black plastic on the ground under the slab.

 

Vapour barriers never seem to be used here and very difficult to find, I did find one place that stocked a clear plastic sold under the name of vapour barrier and that was what I used but it was worse than useless,, in fact I fail to see how it is possible to lay down a barrier and lay steel over the top of it and not cause damage even with high quality material? mind you there is a Blue/Orange plastic Tarp you can buy here that does have some resilience, still the Pinoy workers will find a way to damage that?

The idea of the Gravel without fines under the slab acts as a capillary break, here in the Philippines your average Pinoy builder does not consider any of this and a very common problem here is Tiles starting to lift after a few years, I would guess this is caused by dampness wicking up through the thin floor slabs, normally they plan for 4inches, but the clever Pinoys lay down 2.5 inch and make up the final level with 1.5inch of Tile Adhesive this gives them plenty of scope for adjustment to the final level.

Your average CHB house here, (especially a Pinoy build) have so many faults such as this, that is never seen by the home owner, but once that cake has been iced over all that sh*t is hidden, BTW in my opinion many of the Foreign builders here are not much better and are doing the same sh*t to increase profit margins.

 

The issue with the tiles lifting from what I understand was a lot of the workers don't use the correct tile adhesive and just cement, also put it on to thick rather than a self leveling cement first fix up the levels.

 

I would suggest self levelling compounds are hard to get here? Yes they do often use cement as adhesives but there is an admix readily available here to add to the cement that turns it into a Tile Adhesive, this admix is called Tile Grip at P150 add this to a bag of cement and 3 of sifted sand for around p400 all in you get the equivalent of 5.2 bags of regular Tile Adhesive, which will cost around P1300, you are correct though this could also be the cause of lifting tiles when they use the cement mortar without the admix along with a few other variables, such as thin poorly laid thin floors, combing the adhesive in more than one direction another major problem in these parts and also a problem in 1st world counties? it is highly unlikely to get all three of these variables done correctly here, Pinoys just do not know their jobs all that well.

 

I have never herd of the admix, good idea I guess.

Are timber floors used much, natural or the floating types.

 

I would think Timber floors are not used here all that often due to the possibility of termite damage? I see a product on the shelves of the big hardware stores it is a laminate flooring made of compressed Bamboo stained in different colours that looks interesting to me, certain hardwoods are more resistant to termites but these are hard to get at a price to do large floors? However during the building of my house much Coconut wood was used for various purposes, much of this was riddled with termites after 1 year, but from every tree there must be around 20 to 25% of it which is really hard and the termites tended to leave this alone, I could imagine you could have a very strong hardwood floor from this if you favour a dark wood, I have cut and planed this to make a simple shoe rack and it worked well, but there is a downside to this; it takes the sharp edge off the tools used in a short period of time.

If when you do come here and you decide to stay on then after a while perhaps even build a family home, you will find much of the materials you were able to get in your own country are just not available here, there is just not the demand for it, a good example of this would be both the self levelling compound and the vapour barriers, there is just no demand for such products therefore no one stocks them, after spending nearly a day going around all the hardware stores looking for a fitting to take a 38mm waste pipe from a sink into a 50mm sanitary drain pipe and was nearly giving up until I discovered I should have been asking for a P trap reducer, most did not carry them, as the Pinoy Plumbers have little use for this, they just stick the smaller pipe into the larger one and then bung it up with Vulcaseal which is just like a thick compound that goes hard, ask for a 4inch 90 degree bend for a sanitary pipe and you will be met with a blank stare or told out of stock, ask for a 4inch 90 degree elbow and they will have it, another thing held by all hardware stores here are masonry nails, but this term cannot be used here, you must ask for concrete nails, most of the assistants in Hardware stores here do not understand what the products they sell are used for, so giving them a description of a particular item is no use to them, you must give them the exact product name as they know it by, otherwise their answer is out of stock an easy option for them.

 

And Dave that all leads towards my idea of the fully imported house. At lease you got just about everything in a box.

 

And the box it comes in might serve better as a house than what they build here (I assume after reading this very informative thread).

 

The house I had built last year with a builder is much better than the house I had built 11 yrs ago, by different qualified builders. I think builders have learned from their mistakes and better materials are available. The result depends on the abilities of the construction crew. This time I was wiser and told my builder Quality over time.