I have promised the outlaws that I would make full land for them this year when i go back, has anybody the cost per cubic metre I would be looking at, I was under the impression it is going to cost me about 30,000 bht to do the lot..

UpC do you mean you want to fill the land? If so we paid 200 Baht a truck but that is in Si Saket

Siam Steve
We want to fill the land so it is level with the rest of where the house built, this we enable us to build next door etc.
200bht a truck sounds about right, not sure how many truck loads I am going to need.. Did they spread it all out etc etc??

Hi upcountry
Par reckons we paid 300baht per truck in nongki in March 2006 depends on price of diesel at the time she says (probably more to do with farang inflation), couldnt tell you myself just handed over my wallet as usual
for this they also levelled out the land where we wanted it

N Barton
Thanks for that, I think I wil be hidden when it comes to the price agreement and exchange of cash, the missus and in laws are fully aware of the Thia/Farang price and take care of it..

300bht seems okay, have no idea how man cubic metres these trucks hold though...also can you just have it put over the top of anything??? I mean the father in law still uses a dirty little squat toilet out in the garden when there is a decnt one inside... Would I have to clear the cocnut trees etc as well??

they literally game along with a jcb type vehicle and knocked everything down, then covered it. No doubt in years to come i shall have a coconut tree sprouting thru my living room floor,
By the way, found out the wifes village is actually no 2, so presuming they are numbered in some sort of location order, although probably not knowing Thailand, it cant be far from your wifes village no5

it can be really suprising how many truck loads you may need! I know it depends naturally on the size of the truck but when it's emptied out and spread around it looks like nothing.

We had trucks loaded up to fill approx 100x100ft of land which was slightly sunken from the road, they raised the level to above the road rather than the initial thoughts of level to the road (glad of this due to levels of rain at times). It took about 90 truck loads (make sure a tally is kept as they arrive and drop off). Before they arrived lumberjacks cleared the trees and a crane with scoop (which arrived on the back of a lorry) removed the tree roots, a tractor with plough and scoop was used to level the land and an electricity pylon was moved a few meters along the road out of the way. Lots of workers, 3 days work from start to finish and including the purchase of the land it only cost me 30,000baht total, not my initial impression of 30,000 for land and 30,000 for work! No rip off for this farang methinks

It took about 100 truck loads to raise da`s family land. Council workers brought it from a site they were working on. They did it all in one night, finished at about 2 am. The nieghbours were not impressed i can tell you. The land is about 40m accros / 25m deep (i dont mean deep as in top to bottom) It is ammazing how a big earth carrying truck has little impact on what appears to be a small area.
we paid 300 bht per truck.

Paul

The neighbours are going to love it when myself and the missus sort it out when we go back then. They are so jealous, they keep trying to palm me off with there daughter everytime I go and buy something from there shop....

They got me up at 5am to clear a load of rubble once because the water wasnt drainingfrom there land

Yes they did UpC

Because soil bulks up when excavated (typically 15-20% by volume)and they just dump it without compacting it properly, it settles a lot, especially during rainy season and you will probably have to top it up next year.

we put a load of soil on our land late 2005 had the second lot last summer now ready for building,yuo have to wait 6 months to ayear for it to settle,ive seen a house in the village that didnt wait,not a good idea

Sounds like you guys paying 200 Bht per truck got a bargain.
I have just paid 360 Bht per truck. Made up by 150 for each lorry load(big one, the type that transports the sugar cane)130 Baht for the macro(digger) and 80 Bht for the tractor which did the levelling. 418 truck loads to cover approx 2 rai to 1 metre.
Before you say farang price I kept in the background, wifeys friend hired the team so they had no idea who was bankrolling the project.
Had a friend recently pay 1000 Bht per load too but maybe they saw farang coming.

quote:

we put a load of soil on our land late 2005 had the second lot last summer now ready for building,yuo have to wait 6 months to ayear for it to settle

In the UK the authorities would simply not allow a house to be built on soil that has just been laid, even after 10 years, If you choose to build this way then you can bet that in a few years cracks will start to appear, I'm talking about typical Thai foundations here.

In this type of situation you would be much better off with a "raft" construction as oppossed to the typical thai pillar construction

quote:

Originally posted by a petley:
Sounds like you guys paying 200 Bht per truck got a bargain.

Depends on the size of the truck? ....and did they compact the soil thoroughly? If you got a good job done then I wouldn't lose any sleep over paying 360 baht a lorry load.

As at last week (and I don't know the size of the wagon)in Buriram it was 450 baht per load (50 in total).

When I did an infill in Udon area I waited until a local was having a reservoir dug just up the road and got the loads for 150 baht after serious negotiations involving several bottles of Lao kow

quote:

In this type of situation you would be much better off with a "raft" construction as oppossed to the typical thai pillar construction

Just in the process of buying a new piece of land in my wifey's village near Nong Phai.

The plot is about 40m by 60m and needs a 1.5m fill at least!
In the last Few week i've been shown a number of houses in construction and they all claimed they using a raft design but to me they looked like the same pillar design, just they started the walls aa bit deeper in the ground.

what is atrue raft design?


the claw

for a few dollars more

quote:

what is atrue raft design?

The raft basically sits on top of the ground and the rebar for the coloumns tied in, and shuttering made , then cast the coloumns in situ.

The raft is made up of rebar and concrete again cast on site.
The theory is that your house can't fall down, it just leans a bit
Apperntly this method is used for buildings to be built in potential Earthquake areas andswampy areas, although I think they forgot this at Suwanapum airport

silly question may be ,but when you say they flattern it do they just spread it over with the jcb bucket or do they actually use a wacker plate/
next question just how safe is it to build on newly laid earth?
surly the foundations must be really deep?

The Claw - if I could remember how to post a photo I would show you a picture of a raft design. There are several different types of raft - some with simple mesh re-inforcing - some with a full ring beam and mesh and then the full mashing of ring beam/cross ring beam/mesh. I built one of the latter in the UK last year and boy are they expensive.

The sites I've seen in Thailand haven't actually built on top of newly laid earth, they have dug the pillars through it.

Personally I've never understood this obsession with 'filling land' - draining the land to a soakaway is much better, probably cheaper and more effective in my opinion. Stripping metres and metres of topsoil from one area to move to another also causes serious environmental damage.