House Build

Howdy Shawn , yeah I recognised it as Tugas in your pics , great place , my wife has about 200 relatives in that area , the termites are pretty rampant , building design and method can reduce a lot of expense later on , be good to see your project progress with pics if you keep posting them , regards Tony

 

Tony,

It is funny, I'm always teasing the wife that she must be related to half of Tanjay since we run into so many, especially in the market area. Tanjay is a small town and Tugas a small area, so I am sure our wives know some of the same people. I do agree that it is a nice place.

Termites are a concern and I'm in the mindset that preventive measures will save in the long run. That Solignum is not cheap...

I'll keep postings pics, the nipa and perimeter wall was fun; but now we are getting into the actual house build and that is where it gets interesting.

Shawn

 

Columns going up

It took longer than I wanted to get going on the columns, but we are pressing forward.

 

Additional pictures

We placed the concrete for the last 3 footers. The wife prioritized the nipa guest house, so that is where the majority of the workers have been concentrating on. I also want to move the dirt from the column excavations to some low areas behind the nipa hut as well as the area by the well and my future vegetable garden.

Once you dig down 4ft for the footers you are into native soil that has a lot of clay. We'll bring in some better fill that we can get decent compaction with for the around the columns.

The picture with our trike loaded down is what I guess would be called the stem of some palm frond with the leaves removed. The wife plans to use that for the walls on the bedroom in the nipa. I have no clue how she plans to do it but am looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Shawn

 

Keep those photos coming Shawn, it's been interesting so far......cheers JB

 

A few more pictures

My plan was to place concrete for 16" of the columns, backfill and then dig for the wall footers, this way we could use the sides of the dirt "trench" as the forms and get the wall footers all tied into the columns. The column foundations and wall foundations are at different depths.

Something was lost in translation and after backfilling around the stub of a column they dug out everything to the depth of the wall footing. Not the end of the world, we will just have to form the footers and backfill/compact again. Lost some time, but should get a bit better compaction (they are starting to like my little plate compactor) and I am all about compaction.

Should be able to go with 3 courses of 6" block before switching over to the EVG panels. The panels won't go in until after we've finished the columns, beams and roof slab.

Shawn

 

Howdy Shawn , couldn't agree more about compaction , I have always had the philosophy that if the building is not right at the base , it won't be right anywhere, I think your methods are pretty darn good, most important is the project management , which you seem to be on top of , great stuff , good luck with the future works , Tony

 

Thanks Tony. It has been pretty eye opening for me so far and the next couple of months are really going to be fun. We've gone through quite of few workers that ended up not cutting it, but think we have a good crew right now. A majority of our crew really take pride in their work and want to do a good job and see the project to the end.

One thing I have learned is that if they don't fully understand the drawings or task they tend to do things the way they always have. It has caused some minor rework or extra work (all the excavation for example). I've taken to drawing out a lot of extra details and it seems to work. Some things I did not think needed extra detail, but missed the mark on that a couple of times so I've started putting together details on anything that could possibly cause confusion. Hopefully we will be able to minimize confusion/mistakes going forward.

Shawn

 

Shawn, when i built my place i put the footings in and left them for a year,, 1 meter by 1 meter, now the house has been finished for over 6 years and nothing has moved,, no cracks in the walls or anywhere,, also do not tie your floor to the walls,, if they still settle at least they won't take the floor slab with them.

 

I'm hoping to move in by the end of July, but it will probably seem like a year. The floor slab will be a basic slab on grade, it will not tie in. My plan is to put 1/2" styrofoam around the walls before placing concrete for the floor and then cut it out a bit and put in a good joint sealant, should help with any expansion/contraction of the slab.

Hopefully in six years I can also say we did not develop any cracks in the walls.

Shawn