Our experiences buying, and building a Vacation Home

Never heard of Post-tensioning in a foundation. Can you explain?

here in so. nv. the soil is sulphorous and expansive causing the need for alternate foundation methods. pt can be used in slabs to mitigate the need for huge foundations by making the slab extremely strong. the cables are placed in a horizontal matrix crossing at 90 degree angles to one another throughout the slab.

my own house sits on a slab with pt in it....no cracks in the foundation, sheetrock, or stucco, no out of square windows, doors, etc. even after 13+ years.

when floods, heaving, contracting, quakes, etc. happen it is much less likely to damage a structure built with pt in the slab.

[jlg]

Frank,
I see how that could be a big help. Then I would guess that would be a monolithic poor, with a floating foundation vs. stemwall footer, then post tension the tendons? Interesting! Is this a common building practice in Nv? I originally wanted a Monolithic floating foundation, (For those of you who are not builders or engineers, its pouring the foundation and slab in one continues concrete poor,) I could just imagine my workers after mixing 30 yards of concrete non-stop with no cold joints. LOL

Bryan

Incredible post, I find myself looking for updates everytime I visit. What is your estimate / budget for the entire structure? Marilyn and Peter.

[jlg]

Originally Posted by hotairguy

Incredible post, I find myself looking for updates everytime I visit. What is your estimate / budget for the entire structure? Marilyn and Peter.

My original estimates were p1.3 to p1.5 million, or around $26000.00 USD. Labor and Materials, looks to be heading to a solid $30,000.00.
This estimate is for the Shop Building only, not all the infrastructure for the entire property. I have all expenses in excel spreadsheet that I can manipulate in several ways; I will release a copy when the shop is complete.

Anyone who has built a house from the ground up can tell you every project will run over budget. This will be no exception. When I started planning over a year ago the price of steel and gas were almost half of what it is today. I remember 10 years ago I paid $280.00 for a ton of rebar steel, today its $550.00. Funny thing my paycheck hasnt doubled. I have to have a talk with my boss, He's a total ass though. I own my own company, LOL

Interesting note, I put this out for bid to see what some local contractors would charge, bids ranged from p1.2 to 4.3 million. I couldn’t believe there was such a spread.

My next post will be material cost. Like the essentials concrete, steel, aggregate.

Bryan

[jlg]

Cost of materials.

I have found the cost of material can vary greatly from day to day, location to location, island to island.

This to me is one of the most frustrating parts of building. These prices are at Freedom hardware, and SGS construction, I can say I like SGS “Harry� the best. Freedom will deliver with their truck but add on to every item for delivery, this can add up to more than renting a truck yourself.

Prices not delivered, Bacolod Negros Occidental, as of 7/01/05

The Big three.
Cement, don’t even think about buying the cheep stuff. This is not one place to skimp on money!

Cement 40kg bag, Portland cement export grade, type1 p155-165 per bag, the bag has excel printed in blue on it

Opps I almost forgot to inform you about the most important thing about cement in the Philippines. It’s really humid here compared to most of the USA. Never buy more then you can use in a two month period. If you do you will have 40 kg excel stepping stones for your front yard. It will harden and be useless to you.

10mm rebar the good stuff p91.70 per bar or p23, 000 per ton, approx 250 pieces per ton
12mm p132.20 per bar
16mm p234.85 per bar or p23000 per ton, approx 100 pieces per ton, you get the idea its P23000 or $410.00 USD a ton the larger the bar the less pieces in a ton.
16 gauge tie wire is p45 per Kg.



Aggregate, this will vary greatly on price so it’s only good for our area, we live close to a quarry so I was amazed how cheep it is.
3 ½ cubic meters of mixed sand and gravel is p550 delivered. 30 minutes down the road it p800, so you see depends on your location. we did have to screen the material prior to use.

We need some where around 120 cubic meters of material for this project so total cost is around p22,000, Remember you lose about 20% of your volume of material delivered when you calculate the concrete you mixed. This is called fluff. For example if you ever had dirt or sand and gravel mix delivered to your site then decided not to use it, several months later it looks as if it shrank. That’s because rain and gravity did it job expelling all the air from the fluffy pile when delivered.

Lessons learned on the rebar, look before you buy. It should look like the same stuff you get in the U.S.; I believe most get their stock from Korea. They sell it by the piece no mater if you say I want 1 ton of 10mm you will get an invoice for 250 bars, or what ever they think is in a ton.
I will add more to this later. Is there any specific thing anyone would like a price on?
Check out the dump trucks in our area, six man shovel dump. They even loaded it by hand.

[jlg]

Hollow block. I hate, I hate, I hate hollow block, did I say I hate hollow block or CMU (concrete masonry unit) the fancy name some idiot gave it. I hate it.
Ok, do I really want to get into this? I would really like to use insulated concrete form, “ICF Block�, Radva Polystyrene composite panel or some new insulated building system.
The reason? For now I plan on using this as a vacation home, but some time I would like to retire on a limited income. I don’t want all my hard earned money to depart my bank account into some electric company tycoons’ pocket. Concrete is a poor insulator. So if you want to have Air-conditioning, you need to insulate it. One good thing is the maximum recorded wind speed in our area is 100 MPH that I could find through records and speaking with some old-timers. So it’s easy to engineer a metal roof that is insulated for the shop. But with none of the for mentioned building systems available, we are stuck with the heavy, sucky hollow block for walls.

Concrete is really strong for construction in area’s prone to Typhoons. It sucks in an earthquake, which is why we have reinforced concrete, without the steel it would just crumble in a severe one.

You might think I am bull****ting you, but I have personally be in a Typhoon with sustained wind speeds of 160mph and gusts to 208 MPH. That really sucked, or blew as the case may be.
I was also in a 8.2 earthquake that lasted 1 minute 40 seconds, days after I received an occupancy permit for a home I built, The really scary part was that my construction insurance was over and I hadn’t received my home owners yet. Luckily the house was engineered to with stand both Typhoons and earthquakes, and I personally managed the site to insure quality. We had no power or water for two months.

Oops I got side tracked on stories as I always do,


Hollow block, they suck. Oh said that already. And in the Philippines they have found a way to make them suck even more. Didn’t think it was possible. See in our area there is no block manufacturing plant. It’s the Mom and Pop corner block making / sari sari store. They perform magic at these little places. They manage to get 60-70 or even in some cases 100 block out of a single bag of cement. Then deliver them with kid gloves and collect their cash and carefully walk away trying not to shake the ground so the block won’t come tumbling down do to lack of cement in the mix. You think I am kidding please ask around.
So me being the smart Kano I am, I’m gonna offer them more money to put more cement in the mix.
The average 6� block went for 8 pesos, so we hashed out a deal for p12 per block to be made 30 blocks to a bag of cement.

So did I get 30 blocks to the bag or did he laugh all the way to the Bank? That my friends is the one million dollar question! if you can answer this, the moderator of this site will send you the check!

The blocks are stronger then the cheep blocks I tested. I made my own jig and test unit with a hydraulic bottle jack and a tale tale gauge. I can only compare the difference between the cheep block and my special custom Kano block, the mathematical difference was about 40% stronger, but still not enough for me. I think it’s because they have manual forms and the only vibration it sees is the block maker tamps it with a beaver tail looking thing. I still didn’t know if all the blocks built would pass quality control.

So My answer was to build my own blocks, I bought a Jacola block making machine from Manila, its quite a piece of work, the cost was p22300 and shipping on Negros Navigation was p1500. Its part manual part mechanized. And has a vibratory table for compaction of the mix.

I never even tested the block it made on my special home built Kano block jig, because after several cured I did some destructive tossing of them and it seemed to me they were as tough as the blocks purchased in the USA. The total calculated price per super Kano block we made on site is 8 pesos per block.

I rented the machine to a local resort builder for a tidy sum and I should see a return on my investment.

So, there is my block story, I HATE HOLLOW BLOCKS!

I see how that could be a big help. Then I would guess that would be a monolithic poor, with a floating foundation vs. stemwall footer, then post tension the tendons? Interesting! Is this a common building practice in Nv? I originally wanted a Monolithic floating foundation, (For those of you who are not builders or engineers, its pouring the foundation and slab in one continues concrete poor,) I could just imagine my workers after mixing 30 yards of concrete non-stop with no cold joints. LOL

yep, slab on grade mono w/ pt is the most common method here....it is good if done correctly but can also turn out bad if a sub doesn't have a clue...we have a LOT of defect attorneys here. must have something to do with being the hottest development market in the US LOL

i notice that the only dumps in evidence from the pics are of the mexican variety? (as in mexican dump truck=a wheelbarrow) i also see rebar being placed with bare feet?! do they pour with bare feet also?

btw would cast in place concrete walls be practical there?

Building Codes of Philippines
Links to National Building Codes of the Philippines

http://www.chanrobles.com/republicactno6541annexa.htm

If any one has some information regarding construction methods/resorces they would want to contribute to this STICKY.
PLEASE DO. (as this seems to be a post many will return to)



Thanx for everyones contributions.
Topics such as this one are what make Asawa unique!



Asawa Moderator
MarkUSA

[jlg]

Tools,

Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.


So I realized to have a quality house built, I would have to provide quality tools for the workers to succeed.

I looked in the area for small tools to rent, like mixers, vibrators, and stuff like that. I really didn’t find any that wasn’t worth more than scrap. So I went out on the search to Purchase tools and equipment. Looking around Bacolod I did find what I wanted but not the price. So while in Manila I searched for several equipment dealers and ran across a Place called Solanda.
http://www.solanda.com

Spoke with a salesman name Art.

I purchased;
2, 1 bag cement, mixers with Robin 8hp 2:1 reduction for p36000.00
1 5KW soundproof Diesel Generator p55230
1 Jeonil Backpack gas vibrator p17000
All with 6 month warranty

Solanda delivered all to Negros Navigation from shipment to Bacolod Negros Occidental.

The ship took about 1 day to get our stuff there. I picked it up a few days later when I arrived.

In addition to that I sent over my own compactor and spare Electric vibrator, through LBC, Cost to send both was $150.00 usd.

As mentioned before I also bought General hand tools, saws, hammers, pliers, manual rebar cutter and wheel barrows/Buggies. P25000.

The Jacala Hollow block maker p22,300


I really think this was the thing to do, at first it seemed a large capital out lay for equipment, but now that I am well underway in construction I have no regrets. The equipment cost can be deprecated into the cost of the shop, house, infrastructure and other projects, and then sold if not needed any more.

Here’s another useful tip, while in Manila, and the largest city in your province, borrow the phone book from your hotel, When you get back in the States it becomes really useful. I have my wife calling for prices and information all the time. Also remember while driving around keep your eyes open for other places not listed in the book. I have found several great places while just cruising around on a motorcycle. I have also got really lost doing this. Thank God I carry a GPS with me, so I can find my way home.

[jlg]

Mistake,

I made a mistake on the price of the Jacala Block making machine.

In previous post I listed it as p90, 000 my wife caught the error. Actual price was p22, 300; I have corrected the other posts.

They also have A- frame 1 bag cement mixers with 7.5 robin 2:1 is p39000 and with the Mitsubishi is p37925

Bryan