Trades & Labor Best Posts in Thread: Master Builder (Qualified)

A skinny column (proper English), (pillar if you are Scottish) (post if you are a Texan) is only as thick as the wall. Cosmetically you cannot see them because they do not stick out from the wall. Concrete Hollow Blocks (CHB) used here are only 10 cm thick (4 inch).

Walls are weakest perpendicular to their length. Skinny columns do very little to resist the wall falling over because they are skinny

Your 32 cm column is three times as thick as a skinny column would be. Because of the way leverage works this is more than three times as strong. Furthermore because of the size of the larger column the concrete placed in it has a higher probability of consolidating correctly.

Because this has to do with horizontal loading, these issues have more to do with multi-story buildings. If you have a single story home with 32 cm columns you have nothing to worry about.

https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Concrete_frame

Its important to note that both wind and earthquake impose horizontal forces on the building, unlike the gravity forces it normally resists, which are vertical in direction.
http://www.understandconstruction.com/concrete-frame-structures.html

 

A skinny Pillar or perhaps known as cosmetic Pillars are not seen and usually they are half a hollow block wide and only 5 inch deep and are then like everything else in a CHB house they are frosted over with the cake icing (render) never to be seen again, they are worse than useless, if they are done the right way (but never are) they should be the whole width of a Block but still they only have sheer strength in the width and nothing in the skinny 5inch depth, 32cm pillars are the real deal if they have a mix of 4500PSI and have ratio of 140KG of steel per cubic metre of concrete, done the right way in one continuous pour! but this again is never done, usually they are poured in three sections, thus they will have cold joints between the sections, however as you say you will never know?

One very sound piece of advice I can give you though is; get the Feck out of a CHB house at the least sign of a tremor, a paid up funeral plan is not a bad idea either. Fact; in an Earthquake when people are killed, usually it is by falling Masonry.

I know it is not what you want to hear, but it is MY belief that very few houses here are built correctly and very few will stand the test of time?

 

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.

 

I must say something in favour of Polaris, my 480ltr Bestank was P8300 the same one in City Hardware is just short of 12K.

It really is a minefield out there in the world of building materials, it is not all that uncommon to see some places charging 30% more for the same item.

 

Just a little insight on using an alternative method to build here using steel stud frames, easy to work with and good for a small practical house on one level, it would also be feasible to build a second floor with this but a good standard of engineering and bracing would be required to do this. The cavity in the walls can be filled with insulation. Using a 12mm Hardiflex for the outer walls really stiffens things up and makes for a sturdy build.

 

Master Builder this is a term often used here by Filipinos to describe a tradesman, Master Carpenter for example, the workers on my building site also call me a Master, Drunken Master.

I am building a house in Valencia and the mains water there is very dirty and tends to be low pressure much of the time, so I decided to have a water tank and pump, my neighbour has quite a high end system for his house and he had many problems with this to have it fitted correctly, he had three different Master Plumbers involved in this but none could get it working correctly, he ended up doing it himself, so in light of this I decided to go to the company with the good name here, POLARIS, (their sales staff really know their jobs and give really good advice I had found in the past) to supply and fit a Tank and Pump, the system is a bit more simplified than my neighbours and consists of a Holding Tank of 500ltrs and a combined pressure tank and pump in one unit as recommended by this company's salesman.
On Monday morning the Master Plumbers 2 of them, arrived with all the equipment and started fitting it that day, at the end of the day they left site with the job not quite complete but with a temporary water supply from the existing mains, but this did not work and we had no water, they had fitted a one way valve in the wrong direction, in spite of the fact they are marked with an arrow, there is also 2 filters in the system, a rough filter with a cleanable element and a fine filter with a changeable element of 5 microns which I am told needs replaced every 6 months, not only did they have them fitted the wrong way around, with the fine filter first, they also had one after the Tank, so the next day Tuesday they had to do half the Plumbing again, and now there were 3 of them, when they had the job complete and did the hand over I turned on a Tap only to find we had NO increase in pressure, when I told them this they just shrugged their shoulders and walked away. they had left me with no information or handbook for the system, the handbook I found the next day lying in a corner with all the rest of their rubbish and it was wet with the rain the previous night. On reading the instructions I found that the pressure tank MUST be fitted above the holding tank and not below it which they had done.

Next day I was in the managers office and his immediate answer to me was; you have chosen the wrong system, this pump is only a simple system to supply one bathroom to which I replied I did not choose this, I wanted something different but was advised by your staff this would suit my needs and serve 2 bathrooms. I then showed him the dried out crumpled Handbook and the section that gives a warning on where to place this small pressure tank, after that he could not have been any more helpful and promised that the next day Thursday he would send his Technician up with a gauge to check the pressure of the mains and then the same of the system, sure enough the next day SIX men arrived complete with the Master! Master! Plumber but no gauge, right away he told me they always fit this same system of which they have done many, at the same level as the bottom of the main tank and they work fine, to which I told him, you will do this in the correct manner exactly as per the instruction manual.

I supplied them with metal, welder, grinder and chop saw plus SPIRIT LEVEL to make up a bracket/shelf to fit the 17kg pressure tank to a metal pillar adjacent to the system, it was now lunchtime, but they had the shelf complete and the tank sited on it all ready for the pipework, The Master! Master! did all the welding, while the 6 men were away I had a look at the shelf it was just terrible, not level a blind man running to catch a bus would have noticed just how bad this was and flimsy this could not stand the vibrations of the system for even a short duration, after Lunch when they returned I hit the shelf twice with a 1lb hammer, it was nearly off on the first hit and a little tap on the second removed it, I then turned to them and ever so politely I said, what the Feck is this!!! this would not even hold a balloon, I had wanted the frame bolted to the pillar but they insisted it needed to be welded and they could do this, I had my own worker weld this back on.

The whole complete system cost me P46K including labour of which I still have 16 to pay I suspect they may now have added charges to the original Bill?

So there you have it Filipinos are Masters of nothing, there has to be one or two good workers out there but I guess they are few and far between? when a big company like Polaris has not one good plumber amongst the 6 supplied to me what hope do you have of finding that ONE good man?

 

Recently I had the chance to take a picture of a Skinny Pillar after the wall it supported fell over, what you will see in the picture is segregation of the Concrete where the Sand and Cement in the mix migrates to the bottom of the form, good concrete when broken should look something like a broken bar of Chocolate with no voids whatsoever. The reason for this is quite simple and likely it will be the same for all small dimension Pillars? it is nearly impossible to get a properly batched mix (low water content) into the forms and down through the steel cage within, there is just not enough room to do that and to overcome that problem the mix is given extra water and made into a slurry (watery soup) eventually the watery sand/cement mix falls down through the aggregates to the bottom of the form then the excess water runs out taking the cement with it, every house here built with these Skinny Cosmetic Pillars has this problem I am in no doubt about that.

 

Light Fittings; Yesterday I was at City Hardware to get a couple of wall lights for my Hall, I knew they have an extensive selection of lights there, however on looking around at this large collection that they do have, nothing much appealed to me apart from a couple that were fashioned in wood, they were plus P2K each, everything else was black, grey or shiny Chrome, even the cheap nasty ones were all P800 plus, but way up high at the top of the wall there was one fitting I could live with and wanted to examine it more closely in my hands, so I asked one of the two staff members to get me one, cannot do this they said; the in charge of lighting is on lunch and they do not know where this item will be in the store, so I about turned and then went next door to Robinson Builders, there I saw another light I could live with, so again I asked one of the 2 staff members attending to me if they have two of them, we don't know they said? the In Charge of the lighting is on day off and he is the only one who will know, I'm not making this up this actually happened in both stores, however it was a kind of a blessing? my wife knew a store called 8 star where they sell electrical hardware at reasonable prices and she popped in there to be informed they have a sister company called Light Matters at the bottom of the World view Hotel.

Now this is the start of a Fairy Tale, Light Matters; there I was given proper assistance from the Lady owner I assume? she did know her products, how refreshing it was to find someone that knows what they are talking about, my earlier frustration and anger just melted away, I found two Wall lights fashioned in wood and glass that I really liked, P700 each they would have been a bargain at twice the price.

 

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

 

Please do not blame the Filipinos. This issue is not a Filipino issue it is a human issue that happens in all countries.

I know you are a good person and do not mean to discriminate based on race.

I started life as a commercial fisherman and built my first boat. Being new I often hired or consulted with "experts". I learned then that the more complex a system, the higher the probability was that I was dealing with a quack or a charlatan. A quack is a person who has a lot of confidence but not much competence. They believe what they say. They drink their own kool-aid so to speak. Whereas a charlatan is lying and knows they are cheating the naive person, a quack believes their own misinformation. Either way the naive party gets screwed.

The term con-man stands for confidence man. The scam is known as a confidence trick. This term is used for charlatans who have evil intent. But the confidence trick is also used by quacks who are not lying because they believe their own misinformation. They both play confidence tricks. This is because naive people measure a person based on their confidence and not their competence. Had the naive person educated themselves a bit then they could have evaluated the quack or charlatan based on their competence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick

To the loser of the situation, it does not matter much if the person they lost to was knowingly scamming them or only accidentally screwing them with their confident ignorance. Either way the naive person gets hurt.

The confidence trick often happens with the technical veil of secrecy. The more complex an issue the easier it is for a confident person to manipulate a naive person.

It is true that the overall education level here in the Philippine provinces is much lower than our home countries. As a result the standards of quality in the trades is not very high. Because of the higher education levels of our home countries, the technical veil of secrecy occurs for more complex issues and not simple ones.

My commercial fishing boat experience in the most advanced state of the USA taught me that if you want it done right you must do it yourself or at least know how it should be done. Knowing how it should be done requires that you make an effort to educate yourself.

I realize that I am an @ss, but I always try to provide accurate and truthful advice. You have some responsibility in this situation. Did you come to the forum and post your plans for the rest of us to review? There are may others here who are better than I, bored and have a lot to contribute. they would be happy to have guided you through the process of designing a system.