It is Friday November 25 and the flood is completely gone from our area of Prawet. Unfortunely, the same is not true for several northern districts of Bangkok and provinces just north of Bangkok. Those that have been under high water for more than a month are making everyone aware of thier plight through protests and damage of flood barriers. Many homes have been under 2 meters of smelly black water for over a month and they need relief from the government. The areas that are now dry need cleaned and homes/buildings require major rehabilitation. Below are photos of the damage to a family friend's home.

On the brighter side of things, our house construction is progressing nicely. The second floor concrete work is done and the roof is about to go on.

I am off to the good old USA for a while so the blog may suffer a little. The wife will continue to oversee the house contruction and take photos.

For more than 40 years my wife and I planned to build a retirement home in Thailand. I aways pictured the home as a Lanna style house in Chiang Mai and in 2006 we visted Chiang Mai to find land and a contractor. After find just what we wanted in a new housing estate, we failed to negotiate a satisfactory contract and but our dream on hold. Later in 2007, due to health issues and family pressure (my wife is from a large Chinese Thai family in Bangkok,) we opted to build in Bangkok. The wifes family offered a lot and house in a quiet Muban next to family members so we purchased it from them. Initally, we intended to renovate the house but a survey of the structure changed my mind. Although I am an aeronuatical engineer and not a civil engineer, I could see that rehabilitation would consume unreasonable amounts of money and time for what we would end up with so we opted to start all over and build a new house. This is what we started with in Bangkok:

It had been unoccupied for many years.

Our next step was to find a reputable contractor to remove the old house and other structres on the 87 square waa plot of land. This turned out to be one of the most diffcult tasks. My wife and I had to return to Korea where i worked at the time so we accepted the gratis help offerd by a family member. As the old saying goes "help is worth what you pay for it!" After a year of no action, I finally paid to have the buildings demolished. Again, not being present I was not aware that the demolition team merely took the resellable items, smashed the builds down and left, never to be seen again. That left the foundation and tons of debris to be removed.  No company wanted to do the clean up since it would take considerable time and effort with heavy equipment. The property went untouched until 2011

In 2011 I retired and we moved into the guest cottage of  my wifes nephew that is next to our property. This afforded me the oportunity to oversee the build process as it takes place. We then talked with a lot of custom home builders as well as large contruction companies that offer ready made plans. The costs had increase about 15% since we set our budget at 2.5 mil TB and we had to adjust of plans to fit. Custom builders became to expensive so we looked for a builder with ready floor plans. We talked with several large home builders that use ready made plans and have standard bills of material. They all exceed our budget when we selected quality materials and a floor plan we liked.

My niece did a google search for home builders in the Bangkok area and gave me a large list. Afeter contacting them, most of the builders turned out to be small companies that we could not research for reputation and quality. However, one company sent a representative to take us on a tour of thier homes under construction and a few completed homes. Meter Squared is a small business ( three principles), but thier workmanship and materials were a cut above that of the other builders. In July of 2011, after much discussion, in Thai unfortunely, they agreed to comlete the removal of the remains of the old house and prepare the property for contruction at no additional cost should we sign a contract. We gave them 50 K Baht as a security bond so they would draw up plans based on our modifications to one of thier standard floor plans. Two weeks later they returned with a set of plans for our inspection.

Plan changes and government paperwork took until late September to comlete. Once they building permit was issued, our contractor sent the crew to prepare the land for contruction. This took a full two weeks. 

 

This after week of clean up.

Our neighbor asked the PooYia ban to stopped work when the crew started to use jackhammers to break up the foundation. They wanted a guarantee that the work at our property would not damage thier fragil house. This was not without cause. Thier house incurred the same cracks I found in our original house that cause me to tear down the old house which occurred during the contruction of our nephew's new home. We had to agree to drill rather than drive piles for our new house. This increased the costs by 100 K baht and took a week to accomlish. 

Lay out for foundation piles.

Hand Drilling for pilings.

Once the construction crew finished building thier homes, they stared on the foundation.





After massive amounts of steel and concrete, the foundation was complete November 1.

Rain and flood caused short delays, but the crew has made progress. As of November 24th. the second floor framing is about complete.





Bangkok Flood

A big surprise this morning. The water in our Soi and Muban has almost vanished. I awoke early to watch the construction crew work on our new house and was surprised to see that the Soi in front of the house is dry since just yesterday the water was about 20cm deep. Later I trolled to my usual sites on the net to see if other areas were as luck as mine and found that Thon Buri and Don Mueng areas are still under a lot of water. Most other place within Bangkok province seem to have a lot less water. Many streets that only the military trucks (used for bus service) could travel are now open to normal traffic. Once the water is pumped out of the west part of Bangkok life should begin to normalize.

Around Bangkok

Thailand has been experiencing floods for over three months. The central area has been hardest hit with major flooding in Nakon Sawan and Ayuttya provides. We in Bangkok awaited the floods without much concern until Phatum Thani, the province just north of the capital, was under several meters of nasty black water. Three weeks agot he magnitude of the flood sent Bangkokians into a frenzy of activity. They cleaned out the supply of dry noodles and bottled water in short order. Then, when Bangkok was in immediate danger of washing into the gulf of Siam, the government built huge sandbag walls along Rangsit canal and important buildings. The old airport was overcome with two meters of water and then flooding creaped south for three weeks. My home in Prawet was spared the indignity of inudation when the flood level stayed at 30 cm.

Now that most of the flooding is over and the water level is going down almost everywhere, there seems to be an anti climatic shortage of concern. Sand bag and cement barriers are disappearing and all the reports on various online maps have stopped. Finally, we can breath easy.